First things first, let us take a moment to elaborate on what employer branding actually is. Employer branding is all about how people see a company’s values and work environment. It includes everything the company does, whether on purpose or not, to promote its unique identity as an employer to current and potential employees.

Employer branding has become a critical factor in attracting and retaining top talent. According to a survey conducted by LinkedIn, 77% of candidates say that the reputation of a company is important while 80% of HR leaders think that an employer brand has an impact on their recruiting.

However, the evolving nature of work and the increasing expectations of candidates and employees pose unique challenges to effective branding.

This is where the power of AI tools in HR comes into play.

By harnessing the capabilities of generative AI algorithms, you can transform your company’s branding efforts and create a lasting impact to your employees and to the world.

But how does it happen? Let’s go further to understand better the value that AI automations put in your company.

AI in the HR environment

As an HR professional, you already know the magical benefits that AI can offer. AI tools have shortened the time to ramp, alleviating concerns about the screening process, candidate communication, and tracking. This allows you to focus on more creative tasks while leaving automation to handle the mundane tasks.

At the same time, AI can push forward your efforts for better company branding.

Generative AI can be leveraged to enhance various aspects of branding, from employer branding to internal communication. By tapping into the potential of generative AI, you can elevate your company’s brand identity and establish a compelling narrative that resonates with your audience.

Therefore, the result is that effective branding has a positive impact on potential candidates, as well as on the external world and the power of word-of-mouth. Does this sound like marketing to you?

Marketing obviously has a huge payoff – for example, Avatar: The Way of Water was able to make until now $2.320 billion at the box office on an estimated $200M marketing budget. Of course, you don’t have that much money in your recruitment budget, which means you will need to utilize tools like AI to boost your brand.

Allow us to elaborate.

How AI can be used to boost employer branding

Good branding reflects positively on others. The image a company projects to the public can be reshaped using AI tools. A company that uses automation and keeps up with the latest technological developments to handle repetitive processes, while leaving room to utilize people in more creative processes, appears larger in the eyes of others. This creates a positive perception of your business in the public opinion.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that 88% of companies worldwide were already using AI in their HR practices, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. This technology is particularly helpful for talent recruitment and selection, and can also enhance employer branding to attract new talent.

Are you still wondering how these concepts could be applied to your company? Let’s take a look at an example.

AI cheat sheet for better employer branding

Imagine a three-year-old company in a crowded startup market which had sought to revamp its branding and establish a strong reputation after the latest developments in AI. They begin experimenting with these tools to transform their approach.

By leveraging generative AI algorithms, this company has developed personalized and captivating employer branding messages. These messages communicate the organization’s mission, vision, and values, express a commitment to employee growth and development, highlight the culture and work environment, share success stories and employee testimonials, and indicate the company’s impact more clearly in the community.

The company utilized AI to create engaging and informative internal communications that fostered a sense of unity among employees.

At the same time, the organization utilized generative AI to create personalized job postings that would catch the attention of potential candidates. By analyzing large amounts of data, generative AI algorithms produced compelling narratives that would resonate with their intended talent pools. This approach enabled them to customize their employer branding messages for various demographics and increased the chances of attracting suitable candidates.

Moreover, the HR department introduced a new referral system to attract more talent with the help of satisfied employees within the company.

As a result, this company witnessed a surge in qualified applicants, an enhanced candidate experience, and improved employee engagement.

Their innovative use of AI tools propelled their brand reputation, positioning them as a forward-thinking and desirable employer in the industry.

Adopting such tools can help your business in two ways. Firstly, it positions your company as one that people want to work for. Secondly, it establishes a reputation as a company with the very best people working for it.

Intensify candidate attraction with AI

In today’s candidate-driven market, providing an exceptional candidate experience is paramount. Research shows that candidates who have a positive experience are more likely to accept job offers, refer others, and even become customers.

More specifically, in a recent survey, 49% of job seekers confirmed that they have rejected a job offer due to an unfavorable experience with the prospective employer. The way that HR professionals handle communications between candidates can boost or harm your brand reputation.

AI tools can transform the whole process of hiring by paying attention to creating a good rapport with those who apply for a vacancy in your organization. The outcome of achieving that can be very beneficial to your company.

Jacob Rios, Co-Founder and CEO of JobSage said: “You don’t have to spend much time on the internet to learn that most online reviews tend to skew negative, so it’s great to see such a high percentage of candidates also sharing their positive experiences.”

“You don’t have to spend much time on the internet to learn that most online reviews tend to skew negative, so it’s great to see such a high percentage of candidates also sharing their positive experiences.”

“It is so helpful and empowering to future candidates,” Jacob continues. “We’ve spoken to many jobseekers in our line of work and most simply want to learn the truth, both the good and the bad.”

Through generative AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, candidates can receive personalized responses to their inquiries, obtain relevant information about the company and position, and even receive guidance throughout the application process.

This level of personalized engagement not only enhances the candidate experience but also showcases your company’s commitment to providing a seamless and tailored journey.

AI algorithms can analyze your company’s values, mission, and culture to generate internal communications that resonate with employees. From employee newsletters to internal social media posts, generative AI can help you craft compelling content that captures attention and drives engagement.

The 30-60-90 day onboarding framework and AI copilot by Workable are all examples of how AI tools can increase brand reputation and retention rates.

Employer branding equals reputation

As an HR expert, you should consider brand reputation and employer branding as one. Their parameters overlap, and together they create a whole that affects both the internal and external environment of the company. AI tools can assist you throughout this process, but human intervention will always be decisive when it comes to branding.

A business is driven to progress through its people. Therefore, welcome your people, help them become a part of your culture, provide feedback to those who were declined, and keep your eyes on the positive outcome.

The post Boost your employer branding & retention using AI appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Which bears the question: how do businesses recognize Juneteenth in a way that shows substantive support both now and in the future? And more importantly – it’s not just for the actual holiday itelf. Consider this a primer on how to ensure a truly inclusive working environment throughout the year and to recognize the day going forward.

Let’s start from the beginning:

What is Juneteenth?

A portmanteau of the words “June” and “Nineteenth”, Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce the abolishment of slavery in the state under President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Also called Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day and Emancipation Day, Juneteenth is regularly celebrated across the United States but until Biden’s announcement was only a paid holiday in eight states including Massachusetts, New York, and Washington.

Five ways for employers to offer substantive support

While it’s important for employers to recognize this federal holiday, it’s also critical to strike the right tone considering the day’s historical significance and gravitas. Striking the right balance between celebratory and serious is essential.

With that in mind, here are five ways for employers to effectively show their support:

1. Offer paid time off

While employers aren’t obligated to offer time off — or holiday premium pay if staff work on federal holidays — this is the gold standard of support. If this isn’t logistically possible given the short time between the presidential announcement and the holiday itself, consider adding an extra day’s paid leave to staff accounts for them to use later this year, and subsequently recognizing Juneteenth as a paid holiday every year thereafter.

This is the approach taken by Workable. According to a recent email from CEO Nikos Moraitakis to US-based employees, “Workable will honor Juneteenth in 2021 by adding 1 bonus day to employee time-off balances. Going forward, Juneteenth will be observed following the federal holiday calendar.”

2. Create corporate events

Another way to show support for Juneteenth is by creating corporate events. These could include in-person information sessions or digital webcasts featuring guest speakers and experts who can help explain the history of Juneteenth, why it matters and how it relates to other U.S. holidays such as the Fourth of July. Here, your best bet is creating a healthy mix of fun events that celebrate the impact of Juneteenth while also paying respect to its more painful legacy.

3. Invest in worthy causes

Investment in causes such as fundraisers, charity drives or memorial races can also highlight the impact of Juneteenth and help corporate team-building efforts. If your company takes this approach, two components are critical: Finding the right cause and ensuring staff buy-in.

Before spending on any support effort, do your research so you understand the backstory of the event, are confident in where donations are going, and are clear about the expectations. Once you find the right cause, encourage staff participation by making it a full-day event during the regular work week that’s focused on both social recognition and socializing, rather than asking staff to show up on their own time.

4. Connect with black-owned businesses

Money talks. And with a host of black-owned businesses operating in every state and city across the United States, companies can show their support for Juneteenth by supporting black businesses owners that are instrumental in their communities.

While it doesn’t matter what product or service your company chooses to support, it does matter that this is an ongoing relationship — if you’re only supporting these businesses in June, expect some backlash.

5. Share staff stories

You can also recognize the federal holiday by highlighting the stories of your own employees and what Juneteenth means to them. Sharing these stories (with permission) across both internal networks and external social media accounts can serve to showcase your support — but must be done with caution. While posting on social media is quick, easy and offers substantive reach, this approach will appear self-serving unless it’s paired with more substantive support efforts.

Ready to show your support for Juneteenth? Just remember the three Rs — relevant, responsible and respectful — and you’re on the right track to highlight this federal holiday.

The post Juneteenth: 5 ways employers can recognize the holiday appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here is what you can do to foster a truly inclusive workforce in your organization.

Making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive

Let’s start by looking at the numbers. A Human Rights Campaign survey found that:

• 46% of LGBTQ workers are closeted at work
• Half of non-LGBTQ employees reported there were no openly LGBTQ employees in their company
• 1 in 5 LGBTQ workers have been told or had coworkers imply that they should dress more feminine or masculine (compared with 1 in 24 non-LGBTQ workers)
• 54% of non-LGBTQ workers said that they would be very comfortable working with an LGBTQ coworker; of those who wouldn’t be very comfortable, a majority said it was because they “didn’t want to hear about their coworker’s sex life.”

LGBTQ employees are not comfortable everywhere they work, and there are some misperceptions out there. No one wants or needs to hear about their coworker’s sex life, which shouldn’t even be an issue on the table regardless of preference.

We share five tips on how to make your workplace more LGBTQ inclusive:

1. Speak with your pocketbook, not your rainbow logo

It’s easy to change a logo, put up a flag, or tweet about happy Pride Month. But LinkedIn took a step further and started paying the heads of their affinity groups $10,000 a year for the extra work. This demonstrates their desire to support all diversity groups, including LGBTQ groups.

Nothing says real support and inclusion like cash which recognizes the hard work these employee resource group leaders put in.

2. Be thoughtful about pronouns

This is a hot button issue at work, and you need to tread carefully. For example, look at the following exchange on Twitter:

Katrina Kibben: One of my Pride wishes this year is to ban the phrase “preferred pronouns.” They are not preferred. This isn’t steak or shrimp. It’s a human’s identity.

Dr. “Coach” Dawn Reid #ReidReady: I respect how you feel and I ask if you can consider preference is about a label choice. I.e., My son is non-binary. He has a pref of they/she/he depending on his affect. It’s his pref of a social label in the moment. Not who he is as a person.

Katrina Kibben: Every experience is different. I respect it. For me? My first thought is that your child may be code-switching for their safety (I do it too), not changing pronouns.

Dr. “Coach” Dawn Reid #ReidReady: Agreed. It’s different for each person. Code switching is another topic. We all do that for communication clarity. The original term/use is from linguistics. And that’s not it for them. It’s his preference. We are talking about this now.

In other words, there is no way to get it right. An October 2020 survey by Tallo found that 88% of Gen Z candidates think it’s important for recruiters to ask them their pronouns. But many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers find it offensive to ask their pronouns. This leaves you to guess, but there are some things you can do.

Listen to what people want to do. Respect and use their pronouns. (But it’s not reasonable for an employee to expect everyone to follow regular pronoun changes.) Allow people (but don’t require) to list their pronouns on email signatures and other work-related things.

3. Don’t make assumptions

Does someone look gay? Is that person trans? Whisper, whisper, whisper. This type of thing makes for a very unwelcoming environment for everyone.

Instead, make sure your staff understands employees treat every other employee and client equally across the board. Everyone gets respect. If you allow people to bring personal items to decorate their cubicles, then everyone gets to bring a family picture – regardless of what their family looks like.

Make sure you schedule and provide promotions and perks based on performance and seniority, not the perception that so-and-so needs a bump in pay because his wife just had a baby. If an employee announces the impending birth of a baby, don’t speculate about just how that baby was conceived or carried. Instead, just say, “Congratulations! Let me get you the FMLA paperwork!”

4. Remove bias from your recruiting process.

EPM Scientific gave five tips for reducing bias in hiring. These are:

• Anonymizing resumes in the review process
• Encouraging validated pre-employment testing
• Pre-employment testing, such as work samples, predict job success.
• Encouraging a diverse interview panel and hiring committee
• Challenging bias in recruitment and hiring decisions

All these things help you ensure you hire the person who is best for the job regardless of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or national origin. Letting candidates know you do through these processes helps them feel like they have a chance based on their skills.

5. Educate your leadership on the benefits of diversity

You can only increase LGBTQ candidates when you have a welcoming environment. But, to make a welcoming environment, senior leadership needs to be on board. Presenting the business case for making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive will help.

People who have to hide their identities at work experience more stress. Higher stress results in more days off and an increase in medical costs. It’s saving you money to have a welcoming environment.

Consulting giant McKinsey reported in May 2020 that companies with diverse leadership have higher financial returns than those that don’t. While they looked only at gender and race, it stands to reason that bringing in people with different sexual orientations would bring additional viewpoints that would help the company reach different audiences and support all employees.

Finally – candidates, especially Millennials and Gen Z, want to work for inclusive organizations and leaders. They’ve made that clear. So make sure you let them know what your company is doing to ensure everyone feels comfortable.

The critical point of all this is that everyone deserves a job based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Everything else should be irrelevant. This means ensuring that everyone is welcome in your company. A simple concept that goes far.

The post 5 tips on making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s look at the 17 main takeaways from these employers:

1. Treat your employees as people

There’s plenty of cynicism about your colleagues being your so-called “family”, but for many of the employers we heard from, that approach is the right one. The difference being: asking employees to be part of the “family” is the wrong way around.

Rather, it’s about you, the employer, treating them as you would treat your own family. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that calls for respect and support in both directions. That same spirit applies in the workplace.

Tom Monson of Minnesota-based Monson Lawn & Landscaping says exactly that. “In 2022, I learned that making your employees feel like family can help keep them around.”

Tim Connon, the founder of ParamountQuote Insurance Advisors in Chattanooga, Tennessee, found that supporting his employees through the tough moments was his biggest accomplishment from 2022.

“I did this by having them write out affirmations and keeping those affirmations at their desk to reference throughout the day while they dial leads,” Tim says. “This led to their mindsets completely changing and they were able to eliminate common frustrations from their work days.”

Mutually assured success

For Jim Trevors, the Head of Operations at online tire review site We Review Tires, the biggest lesson was that treating his employees as equals rather than subjects can have great results.

“In 2022, my biggest challenge with managing my team was having the confidence to know that I could have that authority,” Jim confesses. “I try to practice humility and not be too full of myself, and I was worried that I would come off as being too aggressive with my leadership or that the team wouldn’t like me. However, I’ve learned the balance, and I have a great team because of it.”

Founder Rinal Patel of Philadelphia-based real estate agency Suburb Realtor also considered the ability to improve engagement through supporting employee happiness to be his biggest accomplishment as a business owner and leader.

“It’s just as the ancient proverb would say, you can force the horse to the stream, but never to drink. Having employees who are happy to participate and are committed to contributing to the growth of the company, has increased the level of our productive efficiency as a company, this has been one of my primary concerns as a leader.”

Be kind

Tom found that being kind to his people in his landscaping company paid huge dividends.

“Times were tight for a lot of the year but I’ve been good to my employees over the years and this year they repaid me by working harder than I’ve ever seen them work for me,” he says. “Even when I expressed to them that if things kept going the way they were going, holiday bonuses might be quite a bit lighter this year, they never wavered.”

For Tom, this reaped rewards for both employer and employee.

“We didn’t have a single employee leave for greener pastures and with inflation starting to cool over the last few months, I’m happy to say I was able to once again reward my employees with the bonuses they deserved.”

2. Survive, not thrive

There are times for growth, and there are times where you just focus on pure survival. Josh Wright says that was the advice he’d have given himself in his capacity as CEO of cellphone service company CellPhoneDeal for surviving 2022.

“With rapid inflation, my customers saw their dollars going less and less far. Couple that with the continued chip shortages through much of the year and prices on technology continued to increase,” explains Josh, who works out of Atlanta, Georgia.

He adds that, in 2022, even the cheapest options were becoming more expensive and more and more customers were staying with what they already had rather than upgrading to a new phone.

“I had hoped that 2022 would be the year where I hired on a few new hands and expanded what we offered into laptops and tablets, but it became pretty clear early on in the year that simply staying at the size we started would be a victory in and of itself.”

3. Be ready for the worst

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst, as the adage goes. Jim could have penned that himself in running his tire review company.

“If I could meet with myself and my team back in December 2021, I would say that they should be prepared because things will be rocky at first, but everything will turn out just fine. Just have some patience and grace.”

Shawn Richards, who organizes expeditions for the guide service Ultimate Kilimanjaro, would also tell himself the same thing in preparing for 2022.

“I’d tell myself to have more faith. A lot of the challenges and preparations were a result of uncertainty, so telling myself to just believe in my gut would have helped a lot.”

Executive Kimberley Tyler-Smith of Resume Worded, an AI-powered career tech platform, echoes this sentiment. For her, persistence is the key.

“If I could meet with myself back in December 2021, I would tell myself that it’s okay if things don’t go exactly as planned – just keep trying until things do go according to plan!”

4. Be agile as a business …

Drawing out business plans for the upcoming year is crucial, but anyone who has attended business school knows the importance of having three financial plans – the optimistic plan, the realistic plan, and the pessimistic plan. While this means being ready for what comes, as above, it also means that you need to be nimble in your work and be able to turn things quickly as needed.

Diell, who didn’t share his last name, highlighted the importance of agility at Ukraine-based video interview startup Playhunt.

“What happened in 2022 was an eye-opener on the importance of adaptation. Business won’t always go your way and follow your terms, so you need to always have a backup plan for possible risks and adapt to change,” says Diell, Playhunt’s CEO.

“That’s what I’m planning to put more focus on in 2023, so when things are about to happen, the business is ready for survival.”

Flex your hiring

VPN Helpers co-founder and CEO Ankit Bhardwaj highlighted the importance of adaptation as well, but in terms of hiring people.

“My single biggest challenge in terms of managing my workforce in 2022 was adapting to a highly fluctuating job market,” he says of running his online privacy resource site. “This included changing regulations and quickly pivoting to find the best way to create flexible yet reliable positions that could easily transition as needed.”

Ankit ultimately subscribes to that philosophy across the board.

“While planning can help us stay one step ahead of any issues, ultimately having contingency plans ready and having employees who are well-versed in multiple skill sets are some important factors for a successful 2023 workforce strategy.”

Bend, don’t break

Kimberley also highlighted the importance of being resilient in the face of challenge – and ultimately, that means teamwork.

“In 2022, the single biggest accomplishment in my ability to manage my workforce was the ability to push through a lot of challenges in order to get the job done. It’s important to remember that when you’re working with people who are not just your team members but also your colleagues,” she says.

“You need to be able to work together and communicate effectively. You also need to be able to anticipate potential problems and develop solutions while also being open to feedback from others.”

Ankit would give the same advice to himself a year earlier.

“If I were to meet with myself and members of my team back in December 2021, I would tell them to be prepared for anything when it comes to the workforce and hiring process – both internally and externally – because flexibility will be key,” he says.

“We should focus on creating an environment that allows for innovation so that we can continue learning as we go.“

Manchester, England-based entrepreneur Julian Goldie anticipates his biggest challenge in 2023 to be navigating the post-pandemic economy and its effects on his business and workers.

“I will need to be prepared for possible changes in consumer behavior and market conditions, and be ready to adapt and adjust my business strategy accordingly.”

Plan, but be quick

The war in Ukraine posed a huge financial challenge for Diell as much of his business was in that country. He had to make some tough calls when managing his company of 12 employees.

“A strategic decision was vital in order to save the business. I made the difficult decision to temporarily reduce our workforce in order to cut costs and maintain financial stability. In line with this, I invested the same saved money in online marketing in order to attract global markets and keep the balance sheet positive.”

That agile thinking led to a turnaround in Diell’s business.

“We started getting traction so our customer base grew, and when the profit margins started increasing, I was able to quickly and efficiently re-hire many of the employees who we had let go. So my biggest accomplishment was that I wasn’t only able to survive in a difficult situation but also thrive and re-hire our previous employees.”

Diell plans to invest in online exposure and has big plans for 2023.

“The biggest accomplishment I’m hoping for in 2023 is turning from a small-sized business to a medium one by getting more business and hiring new people to help with our vision.”

Ankit, meanwhile, plans to, well, plan ahead and be proactive.

“My single biggest challenge will most likely revolve around dealing with the ever-changing job market again – how do we anticipate potential changes or issues ahead of time? And if/when something does happen, how do we remain agile enough to pivot quickly?” he hypothesizes.

He’s also thinking about it from a group perspective.

“When talking about 2023 plans with members of my team right now, I’m mostly focusing on staying informed on current trends so that we can prepare ourselves better. We need to continuously evaluate where the labor market is going so that we’re ahead of the game when it comes time for making decisions regarding our future hiring needs.”

5. … and teach your people those agile skills as well

Being nimble and rolling with the punches is not only for business operational success – it also applies to worker success as well.

The humane approach

CEO & founder Joshua Rich of international location marketing strategy service Bullseye touched on the importance of human skills.

“One thing I would highly recommend to my employees and the rest of the staff If I could go back in time would be to pay emphasis on soft skills and stick true to their inherent values,” says Joshua, whose company has offices in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Guatemala.

“These are things that help teams remain cohesive and individuals to be resilient in the face of difficult economic climates.”

Just get it done

At Sojourning Scholar, founder Chuky Ofoegbu subscribes to the ‘done is better than perfect’ mentality, even if it doesn’t have the hoped-for result. Chuky’s company provides support and resources to international students in the United States.

“If I could give myself and my team advice in 2021, it would be not to be afraid to experiment and try new things instead of waiting for the perfect solution to materialize. I now understand the importance of failing fast instead of endlessly procrastinating.”

The flexibility of the working culture at Swiss-based cannabis and CBD producer Formula Swiss has mutual benefits, according to founder and CEO Robin Roy Krigslund-Hansen.

“In 2023, I want to make sure that the culture of our company stays balanced and flexible. That would be my biggest accomplishment so far in terms of managing our employees. I’d love to see them satisfied with how the company respects their personal preferences at work, so employee engagement and retention would be a lot higher than this year.”

6. Give your employees skin in the game

People are more motivated when they’re financially invested in the success of their employer. This means bonuses, rewards, incentives – anything that means when the company prospers, employees prosper with it.

United Medical Education CEO and founder Brian Clark highlighted a huge success from 2022 which was the addition of seven new employees despite inflation and decreased consumer activity at his Utah-based company.

How did Brian do that? By giving his existing team incentives.

“Out of those seven employees, five came from a new employee referral bonus program I implemented early in 2022. I am super proud of the employee referral initiative. I committed to paying out a large bonus for any hire through referral, no matter if it was a junior marketer or CFO,” Brian says.

Giving what he called an “active stake” in building the company culture ultimately led to greater team unity.

“We are mostly a remote company, so being able to involve my team in the hiring process went a long way for the grinding atmosphere we have at United Medical Education. We work hard for each other and for our mission to provide free and low-cost emergency medical information.”

Chuky utilized clear-cut KPIs in his engagement strategy.

“My biggest accomplishment was instituting performance management metrics that accurately assess employee productivity and potential. This has helped me identify and reward our high-performing employees in addition to giving them more responsibility.*

7. Reward loyalty

A part of the ‘skin in the game’ conversation is rewarding employees for sticking around and continuing to do a good job.

Netherlands-based Amy Bos, the co-founder and COO of psychic medium website Mediumchat Group, includes that incentive as part of her overall compensation package, which she considers her big win for 2022.

“Our biggest achievement has been creating a benefits menu that covers all the bases,” she says. “It’s points-based and our employees can select the benefits that suit them as long as they stay within their allocated points. Your points grow according to length of service and grade, which helps significantly with employee retention.”

Meanwhile, Rinal plans the same for his employees in 2023 at his real estate agency to highlight the importance of employee commitment.

“As one who is knowledgeable on the effect of incentives in the bid to incite employees’ commitment, I would improve the quality and percentage of bonuses.”

8. Give your employees a north star

Mission and vision statements are crucial to business – they help everyone pull their forces together into a common goal and singular objective.

Tyler Guffey learned that right away in 2022 as the CEO of internet resource site SycamoreNet. He recognized the need for change right away at the start of the year.

“This meant revisiting the organization’s core values, redefining the culture in such a way that employees can connect to the mission and goals,” he says. “We want a thriving team, one that will be independent, proactive and make decisions that don’t compromise the organization’s core values. When employees are better equipped to make decisions, what you have is a thriving team.”

Angus Chang subscribes to the same dictum at his e-commerce store Iupilon – with the additional importance of transparency.

“Make your employees a part of the big picture,” he says. “The best benefit a company can provide to their employees is the opportunity to make a difference through their work and show their skills. Clear and frequent communication about company happenings, individual and departmental direction and big-picture company direction makes all the difference in employee happiness.”

9. Open up the communication channels

On the topic of transparency – this means increased communications throughout the company.

Kimberley found this to be a big learning experience in her career tech company in 2022:

“The single biggest challenge that I had in managing my workforce was one of communication: keeping everyone on the same page, making sure they understood what their role was, and making sure that there were no misunderstandings about what needed to happen for us all to achieve success together as a team.”

Talk and listen

That’s the reality for CEO and co-founder Omer Usanmaz of mentorship software company Qooper as well.

“My current priority is to improve our internal communication so that we can become a more effective team. I have always been a firm believer of internal communication and I firmly believe it is the key to success.”

In Ukraine, Diell highlights communication as a huge key in business success – but that all changed in the shift to remote from 2020 onwards.

”So,” he says, “the challenge going into 2023 will without doubt be improving the communication between our team while working remotely.”

It goes both ways

Life Grows Green CEO Chad Price values the two-way street at his California-based hemp production company.

“Our meetings will be more feedback-oriented as we are searching for suggestions and insights from our employees,” he says. “We want to construct activities that are beneficial to everyone and our employees know what they are looking for. We also want to get an idea of everyone’s professional and personal goals, that way we can help our employees grow.”

Brandon Wilkes, the marketing manager at The Big Phone Store in England, also noted his own role in improving communications.

“First, I’ll need to get everyone on the same page in terms of what our goals are and what we need to do to achieve them. This will require some serious team-building and communication skills on my part,” Brandon says.

“Once we’re all on the same page, I’ll need to make sure everyone is working together efficiently and effectively. This will be a challenge, but I’m up for it.”

Know what your employees want

Lead attorney David Aylor of David Aylor Law Offices in South Carolina found that open communication and engagement led to his biggest triumph for 2022 in the face of the global talent crisis and the struggles of filling open positions – or “winning the talent war”, in his own words.

“We have responded by building a winning employer brand that reliably attracts high-caliber candidates. In addition, we have worked on improving every aspect of our employee experience, covering recruitment, onboarding, engagement, and retention,” David says.

“We have found success in recruitment by listening to what employees really want and making sure we are able to deliver.”

10. Trust your people and let them grow

Sometimes a business thrives on good management – other times, a company succeeds because they trust their best people to carry out the job.

Tyler found this to be the case in his Washington-based company. While he found he still needed team leaders to coordinate and guide employees, he wanted to teach that the whole process required a careful balance.

“The coaching process required high discipline because you don’t want to stand in their way and find yourself doing what you expect them to do. You are only providing support and guidance. Listening to them and asking them focused questions can help you know their thinking,” Tyler explains.

“I remained disciplined by not compromising myself to give them solutions to the problem on ground. I just permeate them through questioning and help them see.”

Tyler added that if leaders and managers find themselves giving the answers and solutions all the time, then employees lose their independence and opportunity to grow and learn.

“When employees are better equipped and prepared towards performing roles that sit beyond their normal tasks, the organizational culture is set in motion. So when new employees come in, we let our existing already-trained team leaders take them through the process of introducing them to our system of operation.”

Don’t micromanage

Susan Anderson, the lead editor of the e-commerce resource The Worthy Goods, admits that micromanagement is a flaw of hers and that it was a learning experience for 2022.

“If I could go back and have a meeting with my team members in December 2021, I’d ask them for more feedback. How did I interact with them? Did I help them grow professionally? Did I listen more or talk more? Did they feel that they were making progress?” she says.

“Micromanaging can sometimes get in the way of this dynamic. I would remember that my team members are intelligent and can figure things out.”

Failure is an option

Omer at Qooper finds that failure can be a great teacher.

“The single biggest accomplishment in managing my workforce was to give them the freedom to make decisions and accept responsibility for the outcomes of these decisions, even when these outcomes did not produce favorable results,” says Omer.

“The staff members might have had to struggle a bit in the beginning of their careers, but they learned to be more responsible, which resulted in a better work quality and productivity.”

11. Ask your team for help

Running a business and managing teams is hard work. WIth that, it’s crucial to be able to step back and ask for your team’s help.

Jim found that giving himself permission to ask for help was his biggest accomplishment for 2022 when managing his workforce at We Review Tires.

“It’s so easy to get so deep into the business that you forget that you can reach out to others for advice and assistance,” Jim says. ”I can’t do everything, and I shouldn’t do everything. Everything came together when that finally clicked, and I got the help I needed.”

Tyler takes a similar approach as CEO of his business.

“I have become more of a facilitator than involving myself in the day to day activities. We have team heads that monitor activities. And that has greatly reduced my workload as CEO,” Tyler says.

“We made sure our employees were kept active and involved. We delegate problems and not just tasks and trust them to come up with solutions. This is inclusiveness.”

12. Find your balance between in-person and remote

Workable’s 2022 survey report on the New World of Work found that most businesses were settling into a hybrid work model after oscillating between in-office and remote work settings since COVID-19 hit.

This was a learning experience for Shawn throughout 2022 when working at his expedition company.

“I think my biggest accomplishment was managing more remote and hybrid workers than before,” he says, adding that it was a struggle during the pandemic as much of the work relied on people being physically present.

“This year though, we managed to find a great balance that works out even better for us.”

Change can be stressful

Brian also called the shift from remote to hybrid his biggest challenge at United Medical Education in 2022.

“COVID was extremely difficult, and I think it made a lot of us sensitive to shifts in the workplace,” he says. “We needed to get back in the office part time for collaboration purposes, and it ended up being a challenge to get everyone motivated for another life adjustment in schedules and workplace life.”

Brian, whose company employs roughly 50 full-time employees, adds: “I am proud to say we didn’t lose anyone, but there were times where I thought we were going to be out several employees. For any small business leader, employee turnover sucks and is expensive.

“When you are dealing with an important work environment shift, the thought of having to replace people who are not on board is very stressful.”

Adaptation is key

Ankit also highlighted the struggles of adjusting to new environments – in his own case, moving some operations to a digital plane at VPN Helpers.

“In 2022, my single biggest accomplishment in terms of managing my workforce and especially, adding to or subtracting from my workforce was the successful integration of a virtual workforce into our business model,” he says.

“It took a lot of hard work and perseverance to adjust our traditional methods and learn new tools, but we ultimately achieved success by leveraging technology and new ideas.”

Amy has accepted this new world of work as the norm going forward.

“If I could travel back to December 2021, I’d tell myself and my team that remote work is here to stay and is no longer a benefit,” Amy says.

“My business was working remotely long before the pandemic and that had made us very attractive for top talent. Now it’s the norm we have to get creative to retain our appeal.”

Julian in Manchester highlighted the importance of adaptability to the remote work model.

“If I could go back and talk to myself in December 2021, I would tell myself to be prepared for the challenges of remote work and to be flexible and adaptable in managing my team. I would also advise myself to invest in the right tools and technologies to support remote work, such as virtual meeting platforms and collaboration software.”

Evolve your engagement

Anthony Martin, the founder and CEO of life insurance company Choice Mutual in Nevada, learned he had to get creative to overcome the challenges of operating as a remote-first company – especially in the lack of face-to-face interaction.

“Our biggest challenge was ensuring that remote workers felt valued and not overworked. Since we moved to a fully remote model, that challenge is knowing what our employees think when we can’t see them,” he says. “There’s no body language in emails or messages, and the tone can be difficult to read. Therefore it can be hard to tell if someone is dissatisfied with their work and if they want to stay at the company.”

Anthony’s company opened up communication throughout 2022 and now takes a proactive approach to employee engagement and morale, including more video meetings where colleagues can check in with each other regularly.

“We also ask for anonymous feedback; we feel that employees are more likely to be honest about their true feelings and have a better gauge of what changes we need to make. We want to see the signs of stress before they happen, even remotely, and make sure our employees don’t burn out,” he says.

“This has definitely improved employee morale and satisfaction.”

Sometimes you have to negotiate

Chad’s own big win for 2022 was the opposite – getting his team back into the physical workplace.

“I know this might seem a simple task, but it was difficult for some of my employees as they had changed their lifestyles to suit remote working. We had to have negotiations and allow more flexibility for it to work for both parties.”

As the director of Internet Advisor, Sean Nguyen expects that workplace flexibility will be the biggest challenge going into 2023 – especially in managing employee expectations in his company which employs 25 full-time workers in Los Angeles

“As a remote company, we’re already pretty flexible. But our employees are starting to want even more flexibility and that means that we’re going to need to make a number of changes to our business and various processes.”

The ‘balance’ in this case for Sean is finding a way to keep his people engaged while still maintaining the bottom line.

“We want to ensure that our employees appreciate the workplace, but we also want to create a workplace that inspires productivity and collaboration. That can be especially difficult if all of our employees are working at different points in time throughout each day,” he says.

“We’ve been testing a variety of different setups. Some are working quite well and our employees are communicating effectively, but others have fallen flat. This isn’t a decision that we’ll be able to make quickly and I don’t doubt that, after we implement the changes that we decide on, there will be even more challenges that we’ll need to deal with in order to keep our employees happy and productive.”

Sean’s still going to try and make it work in any case.

“I think more flexibility will be excellent for our workplace – especially since it’s clearly one of our top employee expectations. It’s just a matter of implementing it correctly.”

13. Expand your horizons

Sometimes solving problems and addressing challenges means taking a different approach with an open mind. This is also the case when it comes to building teams especially during a year where job quits were through the roof.

Jenna Carson, the director of HR at online music resource center Music Grotto, said as much about her own work in hiring strategy.

“In 2022, our single biggest accomplishment in managing our workforce came from expanding our recruiting efforts and successfully hiring and onboarding talented employees outside of our region of the United States.”

Jenna confessed that this solution created a new predicament.

“This brought with it the challenge of remotely onboarding employees who were capable and comfortable working primarily independently in time zones where the business day may not coincide with ours on the west coast of the U.S.,” she says from Portland.

“We had long considered expanding our recruitment efforts to outside our local area to increase the size and diversity of our hiring pool but had hesitated due to the added challenge of training and developing new staff and keeping them engaged.”

Talent is universal

Shawn at Ultimate Kilimanjaro also opened up his recruiting efforts to other locations.

“I often look for local talent, but the pandemic opened my eyes to all the skilled people around the world. Because of this, the majority of our hires this year worked remotely in other countries.”

Diell in Ukraine says that’s the advice he would have given himself in the past in the face of another crisis.

“If I could go back in time I would definitely tell my team members to start thinking about ways of entering new markets and practice taking some working shifts at home in a remote setting,” he says. “It was difficult to let go of employees and start adapting to working from home when the situation in Ukraine shifted dramatically for the worse.”

Growth strategy manager Eva Tian, who works at single-family rental investment company Mynd, found that the global job market posed new problems for her company.

“We were competing with companies from all over the world for the best and brightest workers. This made it difficult to attract and retain top talent, as employees had more options and were willing to switch jobs for better opportunities.”

She took a more agile attitude as a result.

“We had to constantly evaluate our recruitment and retention strategies and make adjustments to stay competitive. Overall, managing and adding to our workforce in 2022 was a constant challenge and required a proactive and flexible approach.”

Joshua Haley, the founder of relocation service Moving Astute, also struggled to fill positions in 2022, and reassessed his talent identification strategy as a result.

“My solution to this challenge was to look for candidates who were different than the ones that I had typically hired in the past,” Joshua says.

“This included expanding my search parameters and actively seeking out underrepresented populations such as women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and veterans. By doing this, I was able to find talented people who could bring fresh perspectives and different skill sets to my organization.”

DEI is important, especially, for Joshua.

“I would stress the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. This means actively recruiting candidates from underrepresented populations, creating an equitable work environment, and ensuring that everyone on our team feels included and valued.”

14. Establish a well-thought-out candidate evaluation process

The recruitment process is core to business success. This includes every step of the process.

David says as much in the advice he’d give to the 2021 version of himself, highlighting the importance of candidate experience when hiring for his legal service:

“Analyze the candidate’s journey,” he says. “The candidate journey, from job descriptions and applications to interviews and onboarding, is a crucial aspect of your employer brand. It is well worth the investment to look closely at the entire journey to ensure every interaction is accessible, fair, and inclusive.

“To attract the very best candidates, you must optimize your interactions with them at every stage of the recruiting process.”

See where their passion lies

The Great Resignation posed a huge challenge for Carla Diaz in terms of candidate evaluation at Broadband Search, a website that helps consumers choose their ideal internet provider.

“This made it harder for us to identify candidates who were looking for a more serious position in our industry instead of looking for something that would just pass the time. When we hire employees we want to make sure that they’re in it for the long run,” says Carla.

“We want people to start working for us who are truly interested and who value the act of trying to help people get connected. If that’s something that they’re truly passionate about, we know that they’ll probably be a good fit in our company.”

This was a major learning experience for Carla, whose company employs 21 full-time employees.

“Our hiring process is set up to help us identify this type of passion, but it was a lot more difficult to do so in 2022 and we had a few instances where people came in and left shortly after finding a different job that they were looking for the whole time. We’ve now refined the hiring process even further to help us better identify these types of candidates and it seems to be working well so far.”

Culture fit is fitting

Health and fitness entrepreneur Michael Perry anticipates that he’ll have to start recruiting people again once he recalls all his staff to his FitnessFixedGear.com office in Los Angeles.

“The strategy is still the same – to prioritize fit and culture. We’ve been working so well because we jive together. Everyone improved a lot because the work atmosphere was lively, cheerful, supportive, and positive.”

This, of course, means evaluating for those kinds of attitudes – even ahead of hard skills.

“The primary goal is to identify the traits and qualities you want to spread in your workplace. Then find key people who exude them. It doesn’t matter if they are less skilled; they will quickly learn all those. It’s much harder to ask people to change their attitude!”

Culture fit is very important to Logan Mallory, a VP at employee recognition software company Motivosity, which employs 65 people in Utah. He is even willing to wait – to the point that it became a problem of sorts in 2022.

“Our biggest challenge in terms of adding to our workforce *was maintaining company culture during periods of growth. It was important to us that when we were hiring, we were focusing on finding the right culture fit, rather than rushing to simply hire to fill a position,” he says.

“This meant that it took us a bit longer to fill a couple of open roles, but by taking the time to find the right person for a specific position, we were able to ensure that they’d succeed in that role and be able to fit in well with the rest of the team.”

Joshua also highlighted the importance of culture fit when looking at potential new employees for his relocation company – plus, hiring those who could bring value to his teams right away.

More so, onboarding was key to success for Joshua in 2022.

“I made sure that all of my new hires were fully onboarded and trained properly so that they could be productive from day one,” Joshua says. “By taking these measures, I was able to not only find great employees but also make sure that they were set up for success from the start. This helped me ensure that my team remained productive and efficient throughout 2022.”

15. Invest in your people

Businesses are not the only ones that need to shift and change and grow with the times. Employees need to too, and they also want to.

Amy recognizes the value of that in terms of employee engagement at Mediumchat.

“We’re having meetings with our team over the next month to discuss their personal training and growth plans. As a business we believe in nurturing our employees and helping them reach their career goals through tailored plans.”

Eva recognizes the importance of that not only for employee engagement at Mynd, but for staying competitive as a business as well.

“With the rise of artificial intelligence and automation, many traditional job roles were becoming obsolete, and it was crucial for my company to adapt and stay ahead of the curve by constantly updating our skill sets and offering training opportunities for our employees.”

L&D doesn’t have to be expensive

Robin found that training and development programs are key to retaining talent at his Swiss cannabis company – but the cost and resources for that became his biggest challenge in 2022.

He found a solution that worked.

“After several trials and errors, we decided to take a leap of faith and give our new employees a reasonable budget so they could take the right classes taught by the right people. With this step, we saw positive results and were planning to continue giving them opportunities for growth going forward.”

Chad is worried about tracking team productivity and boosting motivation throughout 2023 in his own cannabis company in California – and his hoped-for antidote to that is, of course, L&D.

“Sometimes tasks begin slipping through the cracks and motivation seems low, but that’s a challenge that we will overcome. Ideally, we’d like to add learning and development activities to our weekly regimen.”

Fran Haasch Law Group personal injury attorney Francoise M. Haasch in Florida acknowledges that 2022 was a year of uncertainty – but knowing what he could count on was a huge win for the year.

“It has been challenging to predict what is going to happen in the world and the economy. Against all odds, however, we were able to face this uncertainty and embrace all the challenges that came our way. While we couldn’t predict the state of the economy, we could focus on investing in ourselves, and I believe that is our greatest accomplishment.”

16. Incorporate technology

Digital transformation is, of course, one of the biggest – ahem – workplace transformations coming out of the pandemic. It was in fact one of the paradigm shifts that turned out to be true according to our 2022 New World of Work survey, with more than half of all businesses saying digitization of operations becoming a permanent strategy.

And this is continuing, for people like Ankit.

“In 2023, my single biggest accomplishment in terms of managing my workforce and especially, adding to or subtracting from it will likely involve implementing even more efficient processes that take advantage of available technology.”

David also considers DX a major shift in his attorney practice.

“Digitization is rapidly transforming the working landscape, and employees will be needing new skills and opportunities to develop their careers. A lack of training opportunities is fast becoming one of the main reasons people quit their jobs,” he says.

“As a forward-looking employer, we will be investing heavily in career growth and development in 2023 to ensure our employees stay engaged and continue to be productive.”

Play the numbers game

Aaron Davis, the CEO of Business Frame, says he’s completed the digital transformation of his Tennessee-based accounting firm – with data and analytics at its core.

“We even have AI working for us now. We’ve truly revolutionized the operations department. And now, it’s time to bring HR into the future. Finding things in the dark, looking for signs, and trusting your gut feeling are all obsolete,” he says.

“Everything should now be based on scientific principles. A data-driven business decision is more effective than anything else.”

And his advice for businesses? Capitalize on all this readily accessible information – and don’t forget the importance of being human in it all.

“Train HR teams in using people analytics and how to create a strategy based on the results: The more experience they gain, the better they become,” Aaron says.

“To help you even more, ensure that listening is prioritized: You can maximize the return on your people analytics investment in two ways: by being transparent in your communications and getting the entire business’s support for continuous listening.”

17. And finally: be kind to yourself

We’re in a wild world right now. We may be returning to a semblance of normal in some ways, but we’re also moving to a new kind of normal – whether that’s the “next” normal or the “never” normal, we’ll only know in hindsight.

In all of this, it’s important to be kind to yourself, celebrate the small wins, and pay attention to the positives.

Medical education entrepreneur Brian Clark says it best:

“Something my dad said to me once comes to my mind. I would tell them what he told me during a rough period in my life. This is just a season of your life, work is what you do, not who you are.

“That is tough to accept, especially when you are passionate about what you do, but knowing this would have taken a lot of stress out of the challenges and allowed for my joy in reflection of the accomplishments and the journey to get where we are today.”

The post Employers’ top wins and lessons of 2022 – and what they’re planning for 2023 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here are 15 of the best – or worst? – workplace horror stories:

1. When you must never, ever chicken out

A few years ago, I took a marketing position in a UK-based company. After a brief training, I realized that I had to carry a wooden sign in a supermarket every day, and stand there and promote various products. There was no specific time schedule; I could stay there as long as I wanted so long as I reached my sales goals.

At the end of the day, we would all gather at the company’s offices. Our manager would step in while the speakers played the song “Pretty Green Eyes” at maximum volume, and then the show would begin. We would ring a bell and have a cheery round of applause for everyone who reached their goals. But, what about those who had almost reached them? We would form a circle and that person would stand in the middle and act like a chicken – because apparently they chickened out instead of hitting their targets. Oh, and if anyone’s phone rang in the middle of this “show”, they’d immediately have to do 10 pushups.

– M.

Takeaway: While totally unconventional, this was a company’s misguided effort to evaluate and motivate employees. Even if it’s well-intentioned, there are better ways. When you want to assess employee performance, start with the goals that you’ve set. Make sure they’re challenging, but also realistic. And to motivate your staff, emphasize the positives and work together on areas of improvement. Causing fear – or even embarrassment or humiliation – will have the opposite effect.

2. When your colleagues are toxic – or think that you are

When I was working at an embassy, I had a colleague who was convinced I was a Russian spy. We sat across from each other, so I would often catch her looking at me from behind her laptop screen. She also wouldn’t let me touch the mail or go into specific areas of the embassy. She wouldn’t even accept food from me. In fact, when my mother sent me cupcakes for my name day, she demanded that they be X-rayed to see if there was anything inside.

Another time, a colleague asked me to make a copy of a visa applicant’s ID. When she saw me in the copy room, she yelled “I knew it!” and kept asking me where I found that ID and what I was doing with it. She was lucky that I saw the humor in all this – I even greeted her in Russian every morning.

– A.

Takeaway: You don’t necessarily want or need to create a “buddy” culture in the workplace, but you certainly don’t want to have a hostile environment. Employees should feel safe and happy at work. In fact, having friends at work boosts employee engagement, whereas toxic employees hurt morale and productivity. Keep an eye out for unprofessional behaviors and set up strict policies to prevent serious cases, e.g. harassment or violence, from occurring.

3. When the cool company culture turns out to be lukewarm

Years ago I worked for a tech company that loved to brag about how laid back and hip it was. We had the standard industry perks like snacks and drinks, and a pool table in the kitchen. The CEO, convinced that employees were wasting time enjoying these benefits, installed a hidden camera in the kitchen and began sending out company-wide emails calling out individual employees for “consuming more than their fair share” of snacks or drinks, or spending too much time at the pool table.

– R.

Takeaway: The company culture is not what you say you are; it’s what you actually are. You might promote yourself as the “best place to work” when in reality your workplace is toxic. Or, you might have installed a beverage machine and a ping pong table in the office because all the cool companies have them, but in reality your employees hardly use them as they’re always working overtime. If you want to truly build a positive employer brand, focus on what matters: meaningful employee benefits and fair reward systems.

4. When you just want to work legally

In my very first day job, I was hired as a PA to the CEO of a medical company. I had just completed my graduate degree in Communications and was thrilled to find a job in what I thought looked like a really decent company. I was also told that I would take on marketing tasks. I couldn’t wait to dive in! I started off working six hours per day for the minimum wage but that was OK, because I was going to be full time in a couple of months and get a raise. Or so I thought.

I never got a raise and I hardly did any marketing tasks. However, I did end up with a proper working bench, illegally boxing and shipping drugs to patients with long-term diseases. I found out later on that that company was actually laundering money for a big pharmaceutical.

– E.

Takeaway: While this particular company seemed to know exactly what they were doing, make sure that you’re not getting into legal trouble out of ignorance. Consult a lawyer or hire an HR professional with expertise in labor legislation to ensure that your employment contracts and your company policies comply with local laws.

5. When irrelevant tasks take up most of your time

I was working as an intern at a non-profit company where the operations and purpose were a bit shady. The owner, a former politician, usually sat in his office which had only a small glass window looking into the area where we were working.

At some point, he asked me to create a list of investor companies in the United Arab Emirates, find a few economic problems that Serbia was facing, and then call the Serbian embassy to arrange a meeting with their financial director. I did everything he asked, wondering what that was all about. When the financial director agreed to come and meet him, he told me his plan: I was supposed to listen in on his meeting, and each time he mentioned Serbia, I would hold cards with the economic issues I had found in front of his office window so he could appear knowledgeable to the director.

When he mentioned something I didn’t already have, I’d Google it on the spot, write it on a new card and hold it up like the others. He’d also tell the financial director that his company collaborated with all the Emirate investors in the list, in order to earn her trust. I left his “company” shortly after.

– A.

Takeaway: It’s fair to ask employees to create ad-hoc reports, prepare presentations and so on. But make sure they understand the purpose, particularly if these projects don’t seem immediately relevant to their regular tasks. It’s also important to follow up with them and let them know how their project was used, how it contributed to larger plans and what the next steps are – if any. Otherwise, employees might feel that their time gets wasted or, worse, that someone else gets credit for their work.

6. When the employer is playing hard to get

I got a call back from a company a couple of weeks after my application, saying that they really liked my resume and wanted to schedule an interview with me. I responded that I’d be glad to do so and asked when the best time would be for them to interview me, as I was unemployed at the time and was flexible. The lady replied with: “Oh wait, I don’t have the calendar in front of me so to see my availability, let me call you back in a sec”. I’m still waiting.

– E.

Takeaway: You’ve heard it before: candidate experience matters. The way you treat candidates gives them a hint about how you’ll treat them as employees. Changes in the middle of the hiring process can happen and, while they’re not ideal, don’t keep candidates in the dark about them. For example, if you decided that it’s not the right time to open this position, be honest and don’t put candidate on hold for no reason. Poor candidate experience leaves a bad taste in the mouth and that has a long-term effect on your employer brand.

7. When work looks like Big Brother and Survivor at the same time

I worked at a company where they had cameras, mics and speakers installed all over the place, even in the kitchen. If you spent two extra minutes at lunch, the wife of the business owner was screaming at you through the speakers. She would also get her manicures and pedicures in the office and, afterwards, ask employees to empty the bucket she used to soak her feet in.

– L.

Takeaway: Lack of appreciation and lack of trust toward your employees will only hurt your reputation and cost you great professionals. And while this example might sound extreme, there are several, more common, signs that employers mistrust their staff. Think of time-tracking tools, micromanagement and meetings behind closed doors. Even if your company is a career stepping stone for most employees (e.g. because you only offer entry-level roles), make sure that their time with you is not wasted and that they acquire useful skills without making them feel under the microscope when doing so.

8. When your boss is getting inappropriate

I was working as a call center agent. One day, my boss called me into his office to discuss my performance. He had noticed that some of my performance metrics were not up to expectations. But, instead of advising on how I could improve, he started making some comments like, “That’s a shame. You’re such a sweet girl.”

I thanked him for the feedback, saying I’d try to get better, and quickly left his office out of fear that things might get worse. I wasn’t sure whether I could share this incident with anyone, but luckily he was soon transferred to another department. Although his comments might have been well-intentioned, he definitely made me feel uncomfortable and didn’t give me any real feedback, so I was relieved that I didn’t have to work with him again.

– G.

Takeaway: Sexual harassment and all types of inappropriate behaviors are completely unacceptable. At work, it’s the HR department’s responsibility to ensure that employees feel and are safe. No matter how healthy your work environment looks, you need to implement anti-harassment policies and define how employees can speak up if they face or suspect harassment.

9. When the job title is slightly inaccurate

I took a job in student accommodation as a Service and Sales Advisor. On my first day, I was looking forward to seeing the office where we would welcome students, and getting comfortable at a desk. Instead, as soon as I arrived on campus, the manager pointed out a mattress to me. Unfortunately it was not for a power nap after lunch. I actually had to carry this mattress on my back, plus a few dozen more over the next few weeks, and deliver them to students’ rooms. I have to admit; this was not the kind of assistance that I’d thought I’d provide!

– T.

Takeaway: The first weeks at a new job – sometimes even the first few days – are critical. It doesn’t make sense to oversell a job just to “hook” good candidates. Sooner or later, they’ll find out what the exact role is and not only might they leave, but they’ll likely share this negative experience with others as well. If the position you’re offering is not the most attractive one, be honest about that and try to make up for the less exciting tasks with perks. You can also engage candidates by describing how their role can evolve in the future – taking care not to promise things you can’t deliver on.

10. When everyone’s making fun of the newbie

I was offered an administrative job at a real estate agency on a trial basis. During my two weeks there, I got zero training because the person doing the same job was reluctant to cooperate; the fact that the company decided to hire a second employee for that job meant that she would go from full-time to part-time employment, and for some reason she wanted to punish me for that.

Also, on a regular basis, one of the co-founders kept asking me to make him coffee and then the other co-founder would notice that I wasn’t at my desk, so she’d call my internal phone demanding I return to my workstation. As a result, I kept running from the kitchen to my desk and vice versa, something that I guess made me look like Charlie Chaplin. On top of that, my other colleagues would make prank phone calls on me multiple times per day. Oh, did I also mention that this probation period was unpaid?

– C.

Takeaway: The onboarding process can make or break your employer brand; you can help your new hires feel immediately at ease, or make them want to run away as fast as they can. Don’t be the latter. Get their workstation ready before they arrive at the office, help them out with the necessary HR paperwork and build a detailed training plan for their first week, month and beyond. Also, check in with them regularly to see if they need any further help. And if it wasn’t clear already, don’t turn them into your own personal entertainment.

11. When your new colleague gives you a headache

We hired a new project manager at the tech company where I used to work. From the very first day, he showed how talkative he is. But not in the friendly, “I want to meet my new colleagues” way that you may imagine. Quite the opposite. He would not stop talking – about things irrelevant to work – even when we were all obviously rolling our eyes with frustration. I remember one day where I could not bear listening to him anymore, so I left my desk and went to another room to focus on work. About an hour later, I returned to my desk and guess what? He was still talking about the same topic…

– S.

Takeaway: The debate never ends between those who prefer open spaces to those who’d rather the privacy of cubicles. There’s no wrong or right; both workspace designs have their pros and cons. It’s up to you, though, to make sure that your own work environment boosts productivity and eliminates distractions. Open plan offices can still be quiet as long as employees have separate rooms where they can have their meetings and common areas where they can have a break, grab a coffee or have lunch together.

12. When the employer wants you to go off script

A few years ago, I was going to edit people’s resumes and cover letters as a quick way to make some extra cash. At least that’s what I thought I’d be doing. It turned out that the company wanted me to fully write resumes and cover letters from scratch without ever even speaking to the person. This was very short-lived and felt totally unethical.

– J.

Takeaway: The obvious breach of ethics aside, being honest about the job should happen during the hiring process, not after the person is already hired. This is fair for the employee, and also helps you ensure that you choose the right person for the job. Otherwise, you risk hiring someone who doesn’t know how to do or doesn’t want to do this particular job. In some cases, things could change between the moment you offered the role and your new hire’s first day, e.g. due to organizational restructuring. If your new employee’s job duties are not exactly what you had discussed, make sure to explain what happened and provide proper guidance so that they don’t feel everything has changed.

13. When your CEO is way too distant

In a previous job, the CEO that we had was not the typical “leader”. He had zero involvement in almost all of the current projects. Even worse, he didn’t want us to tell him when things didn’t go well, because he said he was getting really stressed out. He preferred that teams would talk to the clients directly and fix the issues on their own.

When the CEO told my manager, who was one of the team leaders, that he didn’t know what’s going on in the team, my manager suggested he [the CEO] should speak more with the employees. The CEO thought that this was a good idea and asked my manager to remind him to talk to the employees once a month.

– S.

Takeaway: It’s one thing to value your team members’ skills and, rest assured, that they can handle things on their own, and another thing to be totally and even deliberately ignorant. Employees want to be trusted by their CEO (and their manager or team leader as well) but, at the same time, they expect some guidance and support. A good CEO needs to find a healthy balance between the two extremes of being the sole decision-maker and being an absentee boss.

14. When the breakup is not smooth

I was working at a private school and, right before summer break, I informed the owner that I didn’t want to renew my contract in September when school would be back in session. The owner was quite bitter seeing me leave, but I reassured her that I’d prepare detailed manuals for all my job duties and I’d clear up all school folders before my last day. And I did so. I also told her that she could contact me when the school opened again in case my replacement had any questions. I had no idea I would soon regret that.

In September, as I expected, the owner of the school indeed called me with some questions. I had already organized everything so well that the questions were unnecessary, but I kindly replied to let her know where she could find the files she was looking for. But then the phone calls became more and more frequent. She would call me every day for the tiniest detail and she would email me very long lists of questions she had. All of these were things that she could easily find on her own in just a few seconds just by looking at my notes or doing a simple search on the computer.

One day, I didn’t pick up the phone (because I was at my new job) and she sent me a blunt text message: “Why don’t you answer??” That’s when I realized I should probably stop being so kind.

– X.

Takeaway: Often, your biggest ambassadors – for your consumer and employer brand – are your former employees. Regardless of the reason why they left your company, don’t hold grudges. If you end your work relationship on good terms, the departing employee can refer some great candidates in the future, leave a positive review online or simply encourage others to apply for open roles at your company.

15. When meetings get awkward

I was working at a project with fellow developers, senior managers and team leaders. One day, we had a meeting, so we all gathered in a meeting room and logged in a video call because one of the developers is working remotely. To our surprise, the moment the remote developer joined the call, one of the senior managers walked out of the room without even saying a word.

We knew he disliked our remote coworker, but this was so awkward. Especially since we saw that he was pacing around outside of the meeting room, trying to listen in for the end of the video call. When the call was over, he re-entered the meeting as if nothing happened, leaving us all wonder how this project will go on.

– N.

Takeaway: Meetings are often dreaded by many, but they shouldn’t be a waste of time. It’s an opportunity for coworkers to sit together to discuss a project, make some decisions, build out plans, share updates or solve issues. Disagreements may arise, and that’s natural, but personal differences should not impact meetings and collaboration in general.

Don’t be in this list

As you’ve noticed, we didn’t disclose any of the companies, but don’t rest assured that these (along with many, many more) workplace horror stories will be buried in anonymity. When people talk to their friends and families and when they post reviews online, they most certainly name names. So, work your best to create a healthy and motivating work environment; not because you’re afraid of being called out, but so that your employees can thrive and be happy working with you.

Not getting enough sleepless nights, and interested in even more terrifying HR content? Read 15 job interview horror stories and a chronicle of the worst interview ever.

The post Workplace horror stories we wish were not real appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

On stage with Michelle was Workable’s CHRO Rob Long, who presented six unexpected findings from Workable’s Mental Health in the Workplace survey report for Michelle to address.

Here are the main takeaways from that discussion which was attended by hundreds:

1. Take a whole-organization approach

The first finding Rob presented was as above: 92.6% of our 1,303 survey respondents have or have had mental health challenges which impacted their work.

And on top of that, two out of every five say mental health is generally not discussed and they don’t want to be the first to bring it up.

Likewise, 35% don’t talk about mental health at work because of a fear of stigmatization and discrimination.

Clearly, there are blockers to open conversation about mental health at work.

How can a company change that?

“It is a whole organizational approach,” Michelle says. “It is a cultural change initiative.”

She admits it’s not easy. But it can be done.

“If we think about the roles that we can play and how we can remove [the mental health] stigma, a big part of that is starting to normalize the conversation around mental health and embedding that as part of the culture.”

“If we think about the roles that we can play and how we can remove [the mental health] stigma, a big part of that is starting to normalize the conversation around mental health and embedding that as part of the culture.”

First off, your company’s leaders need to be involved.

“They play a really key role in this and having them talk openly about their mental health journey, sharing stories, or even just making it really clear to the business around [how] that stance on mental health and wellbeing can make a massive change in terms of embedding and normalizing that as part of the culture.”

2. Assign a wellbeing champion

Rob then presented another finding from the survey: nearly two thirds (62.1%) said their employer is already prioritizing mental health, and another quarter (23.7%) will prioritize it going forward.

That’s a majority of employers, of course, but it’s just a first step. It behooves the question: now that mental health is prioritized, what’s next? What do employers do in terms of actionables?

Michelle’s answer is direct: start with having someone in charge beyond simply talking about it. This means tasking a person or group who can drive this initiative forward as part of their work – these can be termed as wellbeing champions or wellbeing gurus, for example.

“They really play a critical role in this as well in terms of launching those initiatives, keeping the conversation going,” says Michelle.People managers also have their role – since they’re the ones working directly with teams, they need to be adequately prepared to have conversations so that their direct reports feel comfortable in opening up.

“Anything we can do to enhance that psychological safety role is [going to] be really important there, to provide a very inclusive environment.”

“Anything we can do to enhance that psychological safety role is [going to] be really important there, to provide a very inclusive environment.”

The end goal, Michelle notes, is that mental health is viewed and discussed as on an equal plane with physical and dental health.

3. Be proactive, not reactive

A proactive approach is crucial as well. In that discussion, Rob shared his own experience in meeting with a counselor regularly, likening the experience to how some individuals hit the gym to maintain their physical health, and not only handle a physical problem when it actually happens.

“I go and see a counselor every other week, which I used to think was kind of something you did when you were ill,” he says. “But, actually, it’s just something to prepare yourself for when there are difficult times you can handle them better.”

This preemptive mindset is also something an organization can introduce into the overall culture. Instead of – or rather, in addition to – supporting employees when they’re in need of that support, your company can introduce regular 1-1s and check-ins, an open-door policy, mental wellness apps (i.e. Headspace, Calm), and other strategies.

The goal is to maintain your employees’ mental health – not simply come to their rescue when times are dire.

4. Look to the standard

One particular challenge rising from the mental health report is that while nine out of 10 respondents say it’s a priority in their company, that does mean one in 10 say it’s not a priority at all.

An additional third also say they’d like to do something but they aren’t sure where to start.

Put together, that effectively means 43% say their company isn’t tangibly doing anything in terms of mental health support.

After presenting these findings, Rob asked Michelle how HR professionals can drive progress in their company.

Michelle points to a standardized process for mental health at work as of June 2021: ISO 45003, titled “Occupational health and safety management – Psychological health and safety at work – Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks”. It offers a framework to protect mental health in the workplace and reduce psychological risk.

“It’s a good place to start to start to think about how [we can] look at our workplace and that inclusive environment and job roles and capacity and all these kinds of things to protect our employees, mental health and wellbeing at work,” says Michelle.

This has a double benefit: first, it serves as a roadmap for organizations stuck in the planning stages, and second, it’s a potential driver for those who need to see mental health incorporated into the company zeitgeist before they start prioritizing it.

5. Track everything

Tracking is crucial. “We can’t manage what we don’t measure,” says Michelle.

Tracking is, of course, about employee satisfaction surveys, but it can also be monitoring productivity levels.

Michelle herself also likes to keep a close eye on commentary in employer review sites such as Glassdoor. As she says, if even one employee refers to your culture as overworked, susceptible to burnout, or toxic, you need to pay attention.

“You have to take that on face value because that’s their perception of working there.”

Another related element of tracking is monitoring your company’s demographics so that your organization can understand the unique needs that may apply to one group but not to another – and ensuring that there’s something for everyone so that there’s a truly inclusive environment.

6. Don’t settle for ‘good intentions’

In regards to the most common mistake that employers can make and what they can do better, Michelle says it comes down to the way mental health is addressed one on one:

“Those of us that are trained in the language that we need to be using; these can be counterproductive. They can actually [be] detrimental, but we know that it doesn’t come from malice. It just comes from that misunderstanding,” says Michelle.

“We’re actually [at] that moment that people managers think that they are being empathetic.”

That’s where management training comes in; teaching well-meaning managers on how to have a proper discussion around mental health.

This again involves training leaders and educating people managers, and ultimately demonstrating that it’s part of the company culture to open up and discuss these sorts of things.

It’s also about maintaining a consistent process, and not everyone does that. Michelle has seen many companies launch the initiative of increased focus on mental health, but with staggered results in the long term.

“You know, it starts off with really great momentum, but you start to see those things drop off and it can be tough because those groups of employees tend to do that on top of their day job.“

“You know, it starts off with really great momentum, but you start to see those things drop off and it can be tough because those groups of employees tend to do that on top of their day job.“

In short: don’t simply let that initial statement of support speak for itself. Actions speak louder than words, and sustained actions speak even louder than that.

7. Be aware of differences in experience

While the conversation is becoming healthier all the time, not everyone feels equally great about it. A full third of those identifying as a minority say that the workplace mental health trend is actually getting worse, compared with 22.9% of those who don’t identify as a minority.

The first step, Michelle advises, is to ask those individuals what they mean by it getting “worse”. That doesn’t always mean asking them directly – it means carrying out anonymous surveys and anonymous focus groups.

The findings could range from that there’s more stigma attached to mental health, a less-than-satisfactory conversation with their manager, or discrimination based on gender, race or ethnicity.

And, Michelle adds, “we don’t know what else these individuals have dealt with.” We don’t know their life story or what they’ve personally experienced – which highlights the importance of recognizing one’s own biases and privileges before drawing conclusions on another’s journey or even prescribing policy in a misguided attempt at support.

8. Know the gender disparities as well

Similarly to the minority question, there’s a gender difference as well – more men than women don’t feel comfortable talking about mental health at work (29% of those identifying as male vs. 23.1% of those identifying as female).

Michelle, again, pointed to the stigma, coming from societal norms and identities around the male gender.

“We know in certain cultures and backgrounds, you don’t even talk about mental health because it’s seen as taboo or weakness,” Michelle says.

“We know from studies that men can rank lower in terms of life satisfaction because of things like financial burdens. We know that four out of five suicides will be by men… it’s just a really unfortunate step to see, but it’s not surprising in the fact that mirrors what we know.”

Likewise, those identifying as male are much more likely to utilize their company’s existing mental health services (49.5% vs. 38.5%), whereas females are more likely to procure support from outside of the company (33.5% vs. 24.3%). What does that indicate?

Michelle suggests that it comes from differing levels of knowledge or awareness across the genders. “We know again from literature and studies out there that those that identify as female […] have more knowledge about what support is out there for them.”

And so, they’re more likely to pursue that support that’s right for them rather than simply taking on the existing benefits that their company provides.

And, Michelle surmises, “Is it that those that are identifying as male here are heavily relying on what their employer gives them because […] that’s all they know and they don’t know what’s available to them outside of work?”

It may even go back to who designed the mental health services at a company. “Is it something to do with who shaped that wellbeing strategy?”

9. Do what’s right for you

Michelle, in conclusion, makes it clear that none of these things can drive a difference on their own. It needs to be a collective approach, a concerted strategy, and a consistent objective throughout.

And: much like people, organizations are different from one another. Taking the right approach can get you so far, but the right approach for your organization’s employees, which may be different from another organization, is key.

As Michelle says: “It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Related:

• Workplace mental health: Support your employees through the deep dark winter – written two years ago, but still has many relevant takeaways
• INFOGRAPHIC: Mental Health across the ages
• Employer mental health policy template

The post RecFest 2022: Six unexpected findings on workplace mental health appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is an alternating four-day workweek?

The idea of a four-day workweek is nothing new, and it’s something some companies have been offering as an option – or even a required schedule – for years. In most cases, this means that the employee works 10-hour days instead of eight, so the standard 40-hour workweek is completed in just four days. That way, instead of two days off per week, the employee gets three.

An alternating four-day workweek is a little different. With this plan, the employee works five days one week, and four the next. The day off could be Friday to allow for a three-day weekend every other week, but that is up to the individual employee and employer. Those additional days off provide the employee with tremendous flexibility to take extra trips, engage in their favorite hobbies, or whatever else they’d like to do with their spare time.

Why an alternating four-day workweek?

When the pandemic hit, we had to transition our team from being in-office to being a fully remote workforce. It was really all hands on deck to help the company come through the pandemic unscathed, and our team hunkered down and helped us figure out how to make our day to day operations more effective as a remote workforce. This meant lots of retooling and new process development … and long hours.

Working remotely can make work-life balance challenging and increase risk of burnout. A recent survey discovered that 69% of remote workers are experiencing burnout symptoms and 59% of remote workers are taking less time off than normal. Another survey stated that burnout at work doubled from March 2020 to April 2020.

Our hypothesis was that implementing this new perk would help prevent burnout, increase employee job satisfaction, and make our team feel more rested and ultimately, more productive, at work.

Our main concerns

My primary concern was ensuring that our clients and customers still had the level of support that they have come to expect from us. At the same time, I didn’t want this effort to make it harder on our support team as a result of any client frustrations or support ticket backlog. It was important to me that we still had adequate coverage for all teams and for all departmental responsibilities.

My secondary concern was making sure that this new schedule wouldn’t prevent anyone from being able to do their job. I didn’t want this alternating schedule to create any unnecessary stress for employees that couldn’t get something done because a key stakeholder was out of the office. But, all of these concerns can be prevented with proper planning.

How it’s been going so far

We piloted this new program from April to June 2021, a full quarter. We then said we would ressas with leadership, and see if this is something we would want to implement for the long term. Once the pilot was nearing the end, we sent a survey around to our team to get their feedback on this new work schedule.

Here are a few key takeaways:

• 100% of employees said that they wanted us to continue offering this benefit
• 93% of employees have said their productivity has improved, while the other 7% said their productivity has been the same
• 85% of employees said they feel more rested and happier at work

Anecdotally speaking, we also had a few key learnings, including;

• It really enabled better habits when it came to time management and meeting scheduling. For example, everyone seems to be more thoughtful about scheduling meetings in general, so as to not waste time.
• Many of the team members use Fridays for “deep work” days, with no meetings or interruptions.
• This has been a great perk to mention to job candidates during the hiring process, and has been a deal breaker for some of our recent hires.

Four-day workweek tips for you

If this is a concept that you are considering for your team, here are a few things to consider and tips for implementation.

1. Try it as a pilot program first

I highly recommend you “try it on” by first implementing it as a pilot or trial program, with a specific start date and end date, to see how your team and customers adapt to this change. This gives you the flexibility of trying it out before having to fully commit. You may learn that it’s great and everything is fine to move forward with it long-term, or you may learn that you need to tweak a few things.

2. Make any special conditions very clear

Ensure everyone is aware of any special conditions or restrictions to this process to set the right expectations. For us, we didn’t require longer hours during the week of their Friday off, but other companies do. So, if there are special conditions, make them very clear from the start.

3. Make the schedule transparent and visible

Meet with your team leads and schedule out everyone’s Friday off in advance. Make sure it’s clear and visible in a shared calendar so everyone is aware of who is and who isn’t “in the office” on a given Friday. This also helps the team think in advance about any vacation days that may overlap or big events or meetings that need planning around.

4. Ensure your leaders lead by example

Leading by example is essential not only because leadership also needs time to recharge, but also because failing to follow through with the process can send mixed messages to employees and could cause anxiety on whether or not they should take the time off.

Matt Buchanan is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Service Direct, a technology company that offers local lead generation solutions for service businesses. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University. He has 15+ years of expertise in local lead generation, sales, search engine marketing, and building and executing growth strategies.

The post Implementing an alternating four-day workweek: how & why appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Employees want skills development, growth opportunities, and connection

The pandemic was an “awakening” for many people. Most welcomed remote work with open arms. Unsurprisingly, a majority of office employees would prefer remote work to continue in some form, with 68% preferring a hybrid remote working model, according to a Slack survey.

And nearly a third of workers in Workable’s Great Discontent survey put considerable value on remote work.

Integrating work and home a top benefit of working remotely in US

The idea that work could be done remotely was not the only thing employees realized and latched onto. Multiple surveys have revealed that the pandemic caused many people to rethink their career paths. Now, people see upskilling and career pathing as an even greater priority. In fact, BCG found that 50% of U.S. employees are happy to reskill for new roles.

We’ve seen this play out at our own organization. MentorcliQ recently hired a Client Partner from outside of our industry. During their interview process, the candidate proactively asked what resources were available to learn more about the HR space. After hiring, we paired them with an experienced Client Partner through our functional onboarding program who helped them come up to speed in a new space.

Employee needs now go beyond remote work and skills development, however. The pandemic has dramatically increased feelings of loneliness. Even as people demand more remote work and upskilling opportunities, they’re also seeking more options to connect with their colleagues.

Finding ways to foster those types of connections is critical, as loneliness at work increases the risk of turnover. And that’s not lost on employers, who say building connections is a major priority when onboarding new employees remotely.

Mentoring programs offer a solution for all of these challenges. They’re easily adaptable for 100% virtual work environments, in-person workplaces, or remote hybrid workplaces. Your company can also create multiple types of mentoring programs that serve different needs, such as functional skills training, onboarding, or interest-based group mentoring to help employees form deep and lasting connections with their colleagues.

Candidates want to see what you’re doing for DEI

Many companies have been slow to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. That’s a serious mistake. If you still think DEI is a fad, it’s time to change your thought process. Studies by McKinsey and many others have shown that, on average, companies that are more diverse have better financial performance than their non-diverse counterparts.

While that’s an important business case for DEI, diversity is also a priority for potential new hires, especially those from the Millennial and Gen Z generations. A 2020 Glassdoor survey found that 76% of employees use available diversity metrics to evaluate whether they even want to apply to a potential job. Putting your DEI cards on the table is a distinct advantage.

Consequently, that means if you have mentoring programs that focus on DEI, as well as data to back up the value of those programs, you should make that information available. That can include reverse mentoring programs, talent networks for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ employees, and employee resource groups (ERGs).

Importantly, don’t just say that you have these programs; be willing to give potential hires the freedom to speak to employees who utilize and benefit from these programs.

All good relationships are built on trust. Better quality candidates will be attracted to your company when they feel like you aren’t holding back information that’s critical to their decision to work for you. Show them how you’re using mentoring to increase and foster DEI and they’re more likely to find that your company aligns with their value

Replicate what’s already working to attract better candidates

Hiring managers often feel pressure to get innovative and creative to attract talent. Sometimes, however, the best thing you can do is to see what successful companies are doing and apply those strategies to your own organization.

Recently, MentorcliQ found that 84% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs. That number goes up to 100% among the top 50. The reason why so many of these companies offer mentoring programs is fairly straightforward: through trial and error, the most successful companies in the world discovered that mentoring works.

Consequently, during the economic upheaval of 2020, Fortune 500 companies with visible mentoring programs experienced year-over-year profit changes that were 53% better than Fortune 500 companies with no known mentoring programs.

What you’ll find is that most of these companies also proudly advertise their mentoring programs on their company websites, in job advertisements, and throughout the hiring process. They want potential applicants who research the company to see exactly what perks they offer, and they recognize that most applicants will be attracted to mentoring as one among many perks they look for.

Source: Hilton careers page

Mentoring is versatile; that’s why it works

If your company already has mentoring programs in place, consider leveraging those programs across your public-facing presence and prominently within your hiring process. Make it obvious that you offer mentoring programs so that it’s not a mystery, and ensure that potential applicants know what type of mentoring programs are available.

Don’t have mentoring programs at your organization? It’s never too late to start. Many companies use their existing ERGs as a launching pad for structured mentoring programs. Even starting with an onboarding mentoring program is an easy way to step into mentoring with a huge potential value-add to your organization, both in reducing turnover and attracting talent.

The great thing about mentoring programs is that they’re highly versatile. Understand what your potential applicants are looking for beyond just the salary. Then, speak to that by focusing on the perks that you offer, including how your mentoring programs support personal and career growth, connection, DEI, and/or overall well-being. That’s an investment with high value and return both for you and for your employees.

Lora Zotter is vice president of people operations at MentorcliQ, a mentoring software solution that helps organizations launch, support, and grow high-impact employee mentoring programs. Lora leads MentorcliQ’s global People Ops team with a focus on optimizing every aspect of the employee journey from hiring & onboarding to comp & benefits to internal mentoring & professional development, all while maintaining a fun, engaging, and inclusive culture.

The post Invest in your employees: It’s worth it for both you and them appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

My mind won’t stop freaking out. Day and night, the constant mental chatter and energy drain of trying to support my teams as the world continues to be tremulous and precarious has taken a toll. My mind is sizzling and is omnipresent. I know I am not alone.

It’s not easy – but there’s a better way

I also know that our nervous system is ridiculously under-developed for the tasks at hand. We have essentially brought a fruit roll-up to a knife fight. The world needs us to be responsive, adaptive, nimble while also being compassionate, kind and productive.

While there will always be those who seem to be able to rise to the challenge of adversity and uncertain times, this is not the norm. Most people are reeling from years of micro and macro traumas, all while trying to hold the course of business as usual.

This is not business as usual. We are in a stress season that has lasted longer than anyone could have predicted yet we persist. Because that is what we do.

Stress is everywhere – including at work

Although stress permeates absolutely every part of our lives, we don’t get training on how to navigate stress effectively. Most people model how to ignore, avoid, or ward off stress. Society offers an infinite number of maladaptive ways of escaping stress to no avail. Just as telling an upset person to ‘calm down’, which has never in the history of the world worked, telling someone not to stress is equally ineffective.

Stress is inescapable because it originates inside of us. Trying not to stress is like endeavoring to run away from your own feet. There is an interplay between our reflexes and our reactions. Your body often will react before you are consciously aware of the threat. The faster you react, the safer you are.

Unfortunately, the threats aren’t just coming from one place. We are being peppered in every facet of our lives.

This is why so many people feel such a deep sense of urgency about everything when they are stressed. Stress tells us that everything needs max attention, immediately. It can’t wait.

The response is natural – but it’s not always helpful

Unfortunately, most of the things we are stressing about are not life and death, but our nervous system doesn’t know that.

‘Fight or Flight’ are commonly known stress reactions, but there are actually two others: freezing and fawning. Freezing is a stunned response. Instead of escaping or preparing to have a scuffle, you do nothing. You just stand or sit there. A common example: you watch Netflix so long, the ‘Are you still watching?’ prompt pops up, and despite having a report to write, the next episode starts, and you do nothing to stop it.

The fawning response is when someone is triggered, they acquiesce. Like a little, helpless fawn, when threatened, the person becomes soft, gentle, kind, or accommodating. They exhibit any behavior needed to ward off the enemy by showing that they are not a worthy opponent.

Fawning can take many forms. It could be staying stuck in toxic relationships, to taking on more work, to inviting relatives to a family gathering simply to keep the peace.

The fawning response unpacked

Psychotherapist and trauma expert Pete Walker, who authored Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, introduced the term and explained it is when people seek safety by appeasing the needs and wishes of others in a self-sacrificing way. It is often associated as a trauma response, but people can fawn without necessarily having experienced trauma.

It is important to note that this is an automatic. All stress reactions happen to us. We don’t get to pick which stress reaction to experience. If we could, that would be helpful. Your physiology, biology and the oldest parts of your brain take over. Your body and mind, without giving your higher-order thinking time to process, are making decisions on your behalf.

With fawning, the evolutionary part of your brain, the one that knows how to survive, reads the situation, and reacts by placating and appeasing. You placate because that is your best option for survival in that moment.

When you fawn, you’re giving yourself up

When you are fawning, you are erasing yourself. You push aside your own needs, feelings, and even thoughts. The reptilian part of your brain cannot even consider speaking up, setting boundaries, or being honest in that moment. It doesn’t have that capacity at all.

Also, even if the more advanced parts of your brain start to engage, you wouldn’t say anything anyway. That would be self-damaging. On some level you might be aware of your needs and feelings, but it is extremely scary to express them, so you become monotropic. You focus only on the other person.

Fawning in the work environment

This fawning response is running rampant in most organizations and companies, yet few are calling it what it is.

A colleague recently shared with me that they were leaving their job. They were having the HR meeting the next day. The exit plan was ready. We planned a call to debrief, unpack, or cry – whatever they needed. With deep frustration, not only did they not resign, they accepted a promotion! This strong, fierce, proud scholar – who studies this very area – fawned.

We cannot control the stress reaction we are going to experience but we can make decisions on how to respond to the reaction. Learning to work with your stress reactions takes insight, work, and a heck of a lot of practice. And still sometimes, nature wins. That’s okay. Your fawning response has kept you safe up to this point. Practice makes better.

What to do about fawning

Here are some researched informed practices that help with fawning and can also serve as critical insights for those working in HR to see the signs.

1. Create spaciousness

Make a rule for yourself not to respond to anything in the moment. Try saying, “I will look into that’, or “I will get back to you by EOD’. This allows enough time for you to shift from stress reaction to thoughtful consideration. You can even put a post-it note on your computer or your phone to remind you.

For leaders and managers: knowing your teams are weary is paramount. Build in this spaciousness. Try not to put people on the spot or add to artificial urgency of needing to know now.

2. Recognize the ’Disease to Please’ factor

Having someone upset or disappointed with you creates discomfort. Be compassionate with yourself and recognize how this behaviour creates a false sense of safety. Realistically, you cannot please everyone, and if you are trying to, you are already not meeting your own needs.

For leaders and managers: it is helpful to notice. Notice who you ask and why you continually ask the same people. To protect team morale, holding everyone accountable is a must. A person who is fawning is likely to take on more than their fair share of the workload.

3. Ensure what you do is aligned with your values

Knowing who you are and who you are not, is critical. Are you betraying yourself in making this decision? Know and hold your boundaries. Your boundaries are your life-enhancing systems, protect them.

For leaders and managers: be aware of who is establishing boundaries and who is not. Notice when emails are being sent. If you see work happen at all hours of the day or even when someone is on vacation, call it. Unfortunately, many people on the team benefit when a fawner doesn’t hold their own boundaries.

4. Embrace all of it

Feelings are fickle friends. We welcome the good things and go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the bad ones. Learning how to sit with all your emotions is a needed skill. And feelings do have a place in professional spaces.

The idea of siloing one’s emotions at work contributes to stress and overwhelm. Of course, we still hold ourselves accountable to being professional, yet we honour the whole person.

5. Be aware and practice your responses

Here is a simple tool that yields tremendous results. It is simply slowing down a wee bit to allow our consciousness to catch up.

• See it: Notice the feeling or behaviour
• Place it: Where is this likely coming from?
• Name it: ‘I am fawning. I am trying to stay safe, but I can choose another way to respond’
• Action it: Do something about it. Let it go. Move on. Try again.

Fawning has its place – but you can learn to manage it …

Fawning is an effective defense mechanism that has served many of us well in our lifetime. And it is totally reasonable to want to reclaim how we react in stressful situations moving forward. Knowing about fawning is an excellent start. Practicing self-compassion is needed.

Thankfully, despite it feeling like everything is coming at us all at once, the reality is we can only react to one thing at a time. If you don’t like how you are showing up, choose again.

… and to lead through it

Leading is not for the faint of heart in normal circumstances. Leading and supporting teams through the last few years requires enhanced strategies. I challenge you to have the courage to intervene when you see fawning behavior. Fawning leaves people feeling alone and disconnected.

Having your leader show up and help hold the line for you, when you need it most, is likely the most effective retention strategy available to us in this great talent resignation. Our top talent isn’t leaving because they have better offers, they are leaving because they no longer feel efficient and capable in their jobs. They are fawning or bowing out. That is the stress talking.

Remember you cannot outthink stress, but you can feel your way through it, especially when you have someone in your corner who gets it.

Be that leader who gets it. You will see first-hand the transformation of what is possible when we create awareness and respond through the lens of psychological safety.

Resilience expert, author, speaker, mom, and multi-award-winning education and psychology instructor Dr. Robyne Hanley-Defoe believes that now more than ever, the fawning response is causing burnout in women who we asked too much of even before the pandemic. In her book Calm Within The Storm: A Pathway to Everyday Resiliency, Dr. Robyne shares her kinder and more sustainable approach to taking on the challenges of life and developing authentic self-alignment and balance using resiliency.

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Pinchai isn’t the only one building office space. Builders are working on 146.6 million square feet of new office space in the United States. Are builders being hopeful or is there a point at which everyone fighting to work from home will start heading back to the office?

And maybe it’s not the office – maybe it’s the space and the location. If it’s dingy and gray and two hours from your home, of course, you don’t want to commute. But if it’s close by and bright with private space? Maybe that’s what people look for. For instance, even people who can work at home are choosing to go to a co-working space instead. You find one close by, they have all the amenities, and there’s opportunity to mingle or even collaborate with like-minded professionals.

Returning to the office gets a bad rap on social media, and some companies are recruiting directly from competitors that announce a return to the office:

From a CEO:

“Every time a competitor mentions return to office our recruiters reach out to their people. We’ve hired 15+ of their engineers in the last 2 months.”

So easy.

— Chris Herd (@chris_herd) October 3, 2021

Don’t take this to mean you don’t need an office. You may well need one, and if you do, you want an office that works for you and your business. Here are some thoughts about what your employees might want if you’re planning to be part of this new office trend.

Ban open office space

This office space trend was a money-saving plan sold on the idea that everyone would collaborate if they shared a table rather than having private space. It turns out, people hate it, and it doesn’t work. Researchers found that people interacted 70% less when they worked in open office settings. They were more likely to use email and instant messages when sitting in a shared space.

If you have a hybrid workforce, you need fewer desks, as not everyone will be in the office simultaneously. Use that to give people their own space. The point of people coming into the office is to have collaboration. Don’t waste that precious office time by having people send each other instant messages while they sit across from each other. Give people offices, or at the very least, cubicles, and watch the communication flow.

But be careful of hot-desking

Hot-desking means you come to work and set up wherever you can find it. People hate that office space trend too. And so you ask, how on earth do you set up private office space for everyone without hot-desking?

Easy. Have two workstations in an office or a cube. Set it up so Jane comes in Tuesdays and Thursdays while Jon comes in Mondays and Wednesdays. On the rare occasions where they are in on the same day at the same time, they can share that space. But, mostly, they’ll have their dedicated, private space.

After all, people like to leave their sweaters at the office or have a picture of their kids or cats on their desk. Hot-desking takes that option away from them.

Your office space reflects your brand

In some cities (for example, Boston), so much office space is empty that you can have your pick of places. What was once a premium space may be much more affordable now. You can be picky and use the cost savings to make your office space something that helps you recruit employees.

Yes, even though people clamor for remote work, remember that many do want to work in a hybrid environment and they’d like for that to be a lovely space. This doesn’t necessarily mean pool tables and bean bags in the break room, like the stereotypical tech startup, but it can mean quality office chairs, good climate control, and free parking.

It can also mean rethinking the office. The owners of a co-working space have to ensure that every person who rents a desk is happy with the space and amenities – with more value to an employee than they get if they work from home.

The owners of traditional office space only need to keep the big boss happy. Who cares if the cubicles are half size and 1970s orange? Employees do, in fact, and co-working spaces know it. When thinking about new office space trends, consider the value of coworking spaces for your employees.

Your employees need a reason to commute

Most white-collar jobs can be done at home. But, some are done better in the office. You need to give your employees a reason to come into the office – beyond just having a nice destination for work.

Maybe you have a good cafeteria or you’re near good restaurants. (Cities and restaurant owners would love it if your employees went out to lunch again.) Maybe you add a room for yoga or have an office space across the street from a fitness center. Then strike up a deal with the fitness center – your employees might appreciate that. Maybe it’s high-quality catered lunches, or a quality lunch-and-learn every Thursday for those in person.

You want to make sure your space reflects your brand. When someone walks into your office space, they should automatically know something about your business. If you’re in creaky, old, and dark basement rooms, it’s time to move upstairs and into the light – unless you’re in the business of keeping secrets.

Be honest about your office

Sometimes companies lie about remote work in their job postings – assuming everyone wants to work from home. They figure they’ll hire you, get you working for a few weeks, and then drop the bomb that you need to come into the office. Don’t do that – that will reflect poorly on your employer brand.

If employees have the choice on how they work – say so. If you want everyone in the office all the time, say so (and be prepared to see your applicants drop). If you want people to have a hybrid approach to work, proclaim that loudly on your job postings. And be honest about what that means.

If it means working from home twice a month and the rest of the time in the office, that’s very different from the opposite. Just be upfront!

For example, Gallup described a hybrid working situation like this:

“A flexible, casual and hybrid work environment that allows you to work on-site and from home (you will determine with your manager and team what hybrid looks like for you).”

Visa spells it out very specifically:

“Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office two days a week, Tuesdays and Wednesdays with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% of the time based on business needs.”

That’s so much better than companies (which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) simply have a remote/hybrid box checked off.

If your office space is welcoming and reflects a positive culture, it can be a powerful recruiting tool. People want to work at least some of the time in the office – but only if it’s a nice place to work.

Know what they want before you commit

We all love the “sunk cost fallacy.” We tend “to follow through on an endeavor if we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, whether or not the current costs outweigh the benefits.” If you have already spent big bucks remodeling office space or have three more years on your lease, you may wish to ‘protect’ your return on that investment by requiring everyone to return.

But, turnover can rapidly negate any justification for having space people don’t want to work in. Take the time to speak to your employees about what they want. You may find that the majority in fact want to be in the office. You may find the opposite. You won’t know until you ask the employees themselves.

By taking the time to speak with your current staff, you’ll be more likely to make a decision that reflects your current company culture – not just the culture you think you have. Keeping your current employees happy also goes a long way toward recruiting new ones. After all, candidates ask around about how much people like working there.

Will more and more people return to the office voluntarily, or are these builders full of wishful thinking? Is this new office space trend going to fizzle out? Only time will tell. But as you ponder what to do with your office space, think through how this reflects on your business and how it makes your employees feel. That will help you make the right decision.

The post Office space trends: if you build it right, they will come appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In our Great Discontent survey of 750 workers in the United States, we found that the ‘community’ of the workplace is very important to workers – more so than the externally facing aspects of a company such as their reputation and even their contribution to society at large.

Let’s take a deeper look at what the data shows us.

How important is workplace community?

When we asked what elements of an employer would attract respondents to a new opportunity, the number-one factor picked by respondents is their relationship with colleagues and teammates (37.1%) followed by overall company culture (34.7%).

Close behind are management and executive leadership (33.1%) and responsiveness to individual employees (31.3%).

At the bottom of that list are social / environmental / DEI engagement at just 13% and brand reputation at 16.4%. Respondents are even lukewarm when it comes to a company’s mission / vision / values (25.3%). Which may come as a bit of a surprise, considering the growth in social awareness and activism in recent years – one would think this would also translate into the workplace.

But there’s a potential explanation: the lower value placed on those more value-driven aspects of a business shows that people aren’t as attracted to those elements of a prospective employer as they are by their relationships with others in the workplace – be they colleagues or management.

“The workplace I’m in has a great foundation of workers; we all contribute and support each other and have nothing but encouraging words to say to each other.”

This makes sense, especially since respondents were asked to choose three from this list. It shows what they prioritize in an employer. People want to work well with others, and they want to work in a healthy company culture with capable leaders and managers. They like a healthy workplace community.

“Yes. Strong leaders have strong teams. Never start somewhere that’s already, or constantly in disarray. You can’t jump on a sinking ship to save them.”

How important is employee experience?

The same rings true when asking the question about what employees would like to see improved for a better employee experience in their current capacity, with some additional insights.

Management and executive leadership tops the list (38.7%) followed by responsiveness of a company to individual employees (37%). Again, the externally facing and brand-related elements rank at the bottom of what employers can do to better the working lives of their employees.

This indicates that it’s not just about relationships and workplace community – it’s also the sense of feeling like you’re an important part of the company as a whole. We all like to turn to our leaders for guidance and inspiration; it’s a common facet of human life.

And we like to be listened to; if our voices are heard, and in turn, acted on, that is a very powerful thing.

“I think a workplace should be transparent and the executives should interact with employees more and let them know what is going on instead of sending an email.”

The post Workplace community is more important than most in US appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s dig in:

How important is workplace community?

When we asked what aspects about an employer would attract respondents to a new opportunity, the most popular attractor picked by respondents is their relationship with colleagues and teammates (47.3%) with overall company culture (34.7%) lagging behind in second.

Responsiveness of the company to individual employees is in third at 28.3%. Management and executive leadership, company mission / vision / values, brand reputation, and company transparency were more or less evenly represented down the list – except for one.

Lingering at the very bottom of the list is social / environmental / DEI engagement and action, with just 13.4% of respondents picking that as something that would attract them to a new employer.

The lower value placed on those more value-driven aspects of a business shows that workers will be more likely to move because of an opportunity for stronger relationships with others in the workplace, whether they’re colleagues or management. This doesn’t necessarily mean that social / environmental / DEI engagement and action are not valued – they’re just not what people will move for.

These selections also make sense because respondents were asked to choose only three from this list. It shows what they prioritize in an employer. It’s very important to workers in the UK that they work well with others – and to have a thriving, healthy workplace community.

How important is employee experience?

The same rings true when asking the question about what employees would like to see improved for a better employee experience in their current capacity, with some additional insights.

Again, relationships with other workers tops the list, with 31.8% of respondents picking that as one of the three areas for improvement at their current employer. Respondents also want to see better responsiveness of the company to individual needs (30.1%), and improved management and executive leadership (27.2%).

“Managers should do 1-to-1 with staff; staff can share more ideas and problems.”

Again, the externally facing and brand-related elements rank at the bottom of what employers can do to better the working lives of their employees – especially brand reputation (7%).

No one likes to work in a vacuum. People like to work with people, and they want that to be a good relationship. And we like to be listened to; if our voices are heard, and in turn, acted on, that makes for a very powerful and positive workplace community and overall employee experience.

“If an employer shows that employees are valued, rewarded for loyalty and good welfare is in place then employees will be attracted or stay.”

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This kind of attitude is familiar – “If it doesn’t affect me, it shouldn’t affect you”. After all, you aren’t personally involved in the crisis. Whether it’s a war in Ukraine, a terrorist attack in West Africa, or even a terrible car accident on the freeway, people often assume that it’s no big deal unless you yourself were there.

They are wrong. And as managers and HR people, we need to be aware of the world and local events and understand that even people without obvious connections may be shattered by what goes on elsewhere. You need to support your employees during crisis. Here’s why, and what you need to do.

Everywhere is more global than you realize

I went to high school in St. George, Utah, with Michelle Truax. She was the high school orchestra concertmistress, and I was a very bad cellist. If you know anything about St. George in the 1980s and 1990s, you’d know it was not a very diverse place.

And yet, today, Michelle is the mother of seven children, three of which she and her husband adopted as teenagers from Ukraine. Her children remember their Ukrainian families and keep in touch, and so, why you might see Michelle as a woman from Southern Utah, she’s also a mother of Ukrainian children, and you can bet that this war affects her life.

Also, 13.7% of people living in the United States immigrated from another country. They, most likely, still have friends and families in their countries of origin. Their American-born children are likely still deeply connected as well. And Ukraine isn’t the only country in crisis. Just because you haven’t heard about a particular tragedy doesn’t mean it doesn’t profoundly hurt your employee.

And it’s not just the United States that has a diverse population. Here are the top 10 countries based on foreign-born residents:

1. United States — 50.6 million
2. Germany — 15.8 million
3. Saudi Arabia — 13.5 million
4. Russia — 11.6 million
5. United Kingdom — 9.4 million
6. United Arab Emirates — 8.7 million
7. France — 8.5 million
8. Canada — 8.0 million
9. Australia — 7.7 million
10. Spain — 6.8 million

So how do you react to this information? When tragedy strikes, assume someone in your organization is closely connected to that country. If they are stressed or concerned, listen. Do what you can to support your employees.

1. Do something

If you have employees in Poland, they may well be housing Ukrainian refugees. But your employees in Boston are far less likely to be taking strangers into their homes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do something to help.

You can organize a fundraiser or join a reputable organization to raise funds. This can support your employees during a crisis and helps your employees feel like you care. Doing something, no matter how small, makes people feel like they can make something a little bit better.

You may even have employees in Ukraine or Russia who are affected firsthand by the war. Many companies in this situation are reinvesting their resources and are actively working to move these employees to safety.

With a big crisis like the Ukrainian invasion, there are obvious ways to help. With smaller or local problems, it might not be so obvious, but there is always something your company can do.

2. Compassion is better than sympathy

You can be sympathetic, and it can still come across as cold, even though you don’t mean to. Harvard Medical School Psychologist Susan David breaks down the differences in how you react to someone else’s problems and pain. Here are her three examples:

• Sympathy: I’m so sorry you’re in pain. (Distant)
• Empathy: I can imagine what this pain feels like. (Shared)
• Compassion: You are suffering, and I will do what I can to help. (Connected and Action-oriented)

Compassion is the best way forward when an employee struggles, whether from a personal problem or a global tragedy. What you can do will vary from person to person and from job to job, but doing what you can and asking your employees what they need is genuine compassion.

Don’t assume based on what you think you would need – ask. And keep in mind that sometimes, your well-meaning suggestions may sound tone-deaf. For example, if an employee comes to you and says the war in Ukraine is very stressful because her relatives live there, and you respond, “Remember, self-care is important. Why don’t you take a day off to relax?”

You may be trying to be nice, but your employee may respond; “How on earth can I relax when they are hiding in the basement of their apartment building?”

Focusing on compassion is never a wrong way to support your employees during a crisis.

3. Remember your Employee Assistance Program

You probably have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that comes with your insurance – and if not, look into getting one. The EAP can be like magic in times of crisis. They have access to resources you wouldn’t think of, and your employees might not know what they need. Remind your employees that they can call, and you won’t even know they did. (Your EAP should report only that someone used their services and not identify the person.)

It’s not the first thing that comes to people’s minds in times of crisis, so remind people that it’s there. Post the details in the break rooms or distribute them via online channels such as Slack. Let people know that you want them to call if they need help – and emphasize the privacy to support those employees who may be otherwise hesitant during a crisis.

4. Be as flexible as possible

When an employee suddenly finds their cousins will be arriving from a war-torn area or following a natural disaster, your employee will need time and money to prepare for their family members. If you can offer extra time off, allow your other employees to donate their days, or put out a call for beds and dressers, it can be a tremendous help.

If someone needs to travel without much notice, even if it’s your busy season, remember to be compassionate – this is something you can do.

If someone needs time off because of stress or anxiety, it’s possible that FMLA or ADA can cover that. Send them to their doctor. And if not? Be proactive and give it anyway. Remember, it will take you far longer to replace an employee that quits because you couldn’t be flexible in times of trial than it would to give them the time off and show that you’re thinking about them.

The war in Ukraine won’t be the last tragedy that befalls us, so even if this doesn’t affect your employees directly, the next thing might. Prepare now for the next problem.

The post How to support your employees during a crisis appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Not only that, but the company:

• Achieved a 45% year-over-year growth
• Quadrupled its revenue since 2016
• Has more than half a million students in their courses
• Was featured in the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces for 11 years in a row
• Won three Malaysia’s Healthiest Workplace awards in 2019, for the healthiest employees, healthiest employer, and healthiest work environment
• Has a 4.1 satisfaction rating on Glassdoor, on par with Microsoft, Siemens, and O2

Also, they achieved all this with a predominantly millennial workforce; the average age of Mindvalley’s employees is 26.

The Pygmalion effect worked wonders for Mindvalley, so let’s look at what it is exactly, and how you can use it in your workplace.

What is the Pygmalion effect?

The Pygmalion effect describes the positive effect other people’s expectations have on a person’s performance. Otherwise said, what we think, act, perceive, and achieve can be positively influenced by other people’s expectations of us.

It was named after the Greek sculptor Pygmalion who carved a statue and wished (expected) for it to come alive… and it did!

Today, the effect is also known as the Rosenthal effect, after psychologist Robert Rosenthal, who studied the Pygmalion effect extensively.

Rosenthal conducted research in the classroom where he gave children an IQ test. After that, he shared the list of top performing kids with the teacher, and observed the teacher’s resulting behavior

The kids who were deemed fast learners progressed way better than the other kids because the teacher had higher expectations for them. The catch? Those ‘fast learners’ were actually selected at random and not at all due to their IQ test results.

The only difference in their learning was the teacher’s expectations from them. And still, they performed better than their peers and got better results regardless of their actual IQ test scores.

But the Pygmalion effect isn’t only limited to the classroom — it can be used in different work settings, from factories and banks to different service industries and even in the military. Companies such as Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton, and Zappos all use it on a daily basis.

Four ways to use the Pygmalion effect in the workplace

Researchers have defined the four factors that will help organizations implement the Pygmalion effect in the workplace:

1. Establish a leader-member exchange relationship
2. Set goals
3. Enable learning opportunities
4. Provide timely and detailed feedback

Let’s look into each one.

1. Establish a leader-member exchange relationship

A strong manager-employee working relationship is all about creating a warm, nurturing, and safe environment where the newly hired worker can feel at ease, and easily focus on the task at hand.

The foundation of this relationship is trust, respect, and mutual obligation.

For this to work out, the leader needs to set up high expectations in a safe environment, whereas employees will feel motivated to fulfill those expectations.

They both create a relationship of trust, where they believe in each other and where there are no hidden agendas. The manager wants the employee to grow and be productive, while the employee doesn’t want to let down the manager.

How to implement this factor in the hiring process:

• Use a collaborative hiring process to immediately introduce the candidate to their future coworkers. The candidate will integrate easily with the new team, as they should have already met fellow team members during the hiring process.

2. Set clear and attainable goals

The leader needs to help the team member set high expectations for their goals. For this, the goals need to be:

• Specific. The employee needs to know exactly when a goal is reached.
• Difficult. The leader will set goals that are out of the worker’s comfort zone so they will have to apply themselves in order to succeed.
• Ambitious but realistic. The team member needs to know that if they apply themselves, they’ll hit the goal. If the goal is far above their current skill set, they’ll communicate that before they even start.

How to implement this factor in the hiring process:

• In the later stages of your hiring process, you can present challenges and case studies that are relevant to the candidate’s role and field.
• You can even include performance metrics (i.e. KPIs, OKRs) for the outlined goals in your job description. This will communicate to the candidates what’s expected from them to succeed in that specific role.

3. Enable learning opportunities

In the mid-1960s, Dr. James W. Sweeney was a teacher at the Tulane Biomedical Computer Center in New Orleans. He believed he could teach anyone to become a capable computer operator. And he did just that with George Johnson, a former hospital porter turned janitor, who was deemed a slow learner and was a poorly educated man.

Sweeney managed to teach Johnson so well that he became one of the top computer experts at the university. This event later became known as Sweeney’s Miracle.

Learning opportunities are essential in today’s marketplace. According to Gallup, 59% of millennials stated that learning and growth opportunities are crucial to them when picking out a job. Likewise for tech workers – another survey finds that 62% of tech workers cited “More training and learning” as a top motivator at work.

And finally, learning opportunities are more about the leader than the member. Creating the right learning environment means that the leader is not only confident in the employee’s ability to learn, but that they’re confident in their own ability to teach.

How to implement this factor in the hiring process:

• Include learning opportunities in your hiring process as a value proposition and attractor. You can even invite your candidates to take part in different learning opportunities such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).
• You can include details of your learning opportunities in your job description. That way, you will communicate to Millennials that they can grow personally and professionally in your company.

4. Provide timely and detailed feedback

Feedback helps the employee realize how far the goal is from where they’re currently at.

Leaders in organizations will usually offer more feedback to the candidates and employees they expect more of. They will also provide feedback more often with the focus on helping team members grow and improve.

Feedback will help employees grow personally and professionally. This means that they’ll reciprocate the attention by trusting their leaders and engaging in the task.

How to implement this factor in the hiring process:

• Have your managers with the best teaching skills mentor and onboard new employees in the company.
• According to research, the expectations set to the new employees in the first year will determine how much they contribute to the organizations within the next five years. So put your best people on it.
• Assign a mentor and a buddy to the new hire in your organization. A buddy will help with social integration, while a mentor will teach them the tools of the trade.
• Provide feedback to the candidates that didn’t make the cut. That will motivate them to apply again when they acquire new skills.

And now, the Golem effect

Leaders communicate the most when they try to communicate the least. Just think about it — silence, at a moment when you should be speaking, says more than anything you could say with words.

So if you have a leader who has low expectations for his or her team members or candidates, the opposite of the Pygmalion effect will happen — The Golem Effect. The low expectations from the manager causes the employees to fulfill those expectations, causing bad performance.

That’s exactly what happened at the Metropolitan Rockaway district office where they grouped agents with poor productivity into a single team. The agents’ productivity plummeted even further because even their manager knew that this group of agents was “the unsuccessful one.” Even nonverbal signs of communication set those expectations to the agents (such as being put in the group in the first place).

Otherwise said, employees (or applicants) will fulfill the expectations and their results will match the expectations from their leader, manager, or recruiter.

Believe in your people

In the end, people do what they believe they’re expected to do.

So believe in your people and have high expectations for them. You can further boost their performance by:

• Creating a safe environment where they can grow
• Pushing them to set goals that are audacious, but yet realistic
• Providing them with as many learning opportunities as possible
• Helping them grow by giving encouraging feedback (and doing it often)

Because if you follow these tips, you may find the same kind of employee engagement and retention numbers as that of Mindvalley. And not only can you use the Pygmalion effect in the workplace to retain top talent— you can use it to attract top talent.

Millennials want to work in an environment where they’re expected to be better, grow, and succeed. And with just a little bit of effort, your organization can be that place. You can break the ice by giving your employees flexible work hours – a way of showing trust and confidence in them.

And keep going from there. Rosenthal would agree and support that strategy.

The post Why you need the Pygmalion effect in your workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But their job didn’t change, and the pandemic continued for too long, and now, no one wants to come back to the office. Just what do you do about salaries now that the employee can choose their own cost of living?

Since salary is top of mind for many active and potential jobseekers, it’s an important discussion.

So, let’s look at the options you have as an employer when considering salary structure:

Option 1: Ignore location when considering salaries

Historically, all salaries were local because everything was local. Your clients lived next door, and you couldn’t charge more than they could pay. Today, whether you are in manufacturing or app building, your clients could be anywhere across the globe.

So, it makes little sense to determine a salary based on where someone lives when their labor brings revenue from elsewhere. (There are, of course, strictly location-based jobs: plumbers, retail workers, dentists, etc.) But even a manufacturing plant could be supplying products for New York City just as easily as it supplies products for Nebraska.

With these thoughts in mind, you calculate salaries based on the value the person brings to the company – regardless of where they sit. Whether in an office or from home, it’s all about value.

This can be difficult to calculate – with a salesperson, it’s easy: it’s a percentage of how much they sell. It can also be easy for a manufacturing plant – how much product do they produce? But what about your HR person? Your IT person?

While good people in these positions bring value to the company, that value can be hard to calculate. Just how much money does your HR person save you by ensuring your company complies with employment laws? The answer could literally be millions. But, no one calculates it that way.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do too much fancy math to figure this out. Take your current salaries and advertise new positions based on those salaries. If qualified people apply, great! You’ve found the right compensation. If only unqualified people apply, bump it up. If you get 100 overqualified people applying, you’re probably offering too much.

Option 2: Location is everything

Google said they would vary salaries based on location as part of their return-to-work program. If you stay in California, you’ll make more money than if you relocate to Texas.

You can buy a much bigger house in Texas for a lot less money than your tiny San Francisco apartment, so people are pretty okay with that.

But, what if you currently operate out of Texas and say, “Everyone who wants to can work from home!” and then someone moves to San Francisco? Most companies will balk at increasing a salary when someone moves. It’s worth noting that Google’s headquarters are in a costly location (San Francisco) so they save money by following this plan.

Towns that have been inundated with big-city refugees are tired of watching their housing prices soar as big-salaried Californians snap up properties. It can be devastating for local groups.

Option 3: Think hybrid

The best solution is a hybrid one: you need to consider both location and national salaries for jobs – especially those in high demand that can be done remotely. While it may not seem fiscally responsible to pay more than you absolutely have to, the Great Resignation means that you may have a hard time keeping people if you’re not willing to be on the high end of compensation market rates.

People who need to be onsite – either full time or a couple of days a week – will need to live close by and you can look towards more localized salaries. People who can literally live anywhere won’t want to take a lower salary just because they’ve moved away.

Be very clear about your salaries when hiring. And be honest about remote working opportunities. Candidates don’t like the bait-and-switch technique where you advertise the position as “remote” but then switch that to in-office or even hybrid.

And, as far as keeping costs down, remember, if an employee is working 100% remotely, you don’t need to pay for space for that employee. You’re saving money on office costs – pay that forward in the form of higher salaries.

Shifting salaries, shifting locations

This may all become a moot point as local market rates start to disappear – at least for jobs that can be done remotely. Even if you require your accountant to work onsite, you may find that you’ll have to pay the same amount as someone in a wealthier area would. Right now, salaries are changing, and we’ll see how it plays out.

And while people clamor loudly for remote work opportunities, there is no guarantee that those preferences are fixed. When it’s just you and your spouse working from home, it can be pleasant. Add three kids and a dog, and you just might look forward to the office every day.

Related: What about salary transparency? See Suzanne’s take on that as well.

And people are moving – from California, Illinois, and New York (among others) to Idaho, Florida and Texas. As things shift around, the most important thing is for you to pay attention. If you struggle to hire or retain staff, you’ll need to change how you do things. If you’re open with your salary ranges and working conditions and get plenty of applicants, you’re doing it right.

Remember, if you wait to adjust until some expert tells you what you should do, you’re too late. And that may mean paying based on location and it may mean paying on skills only. You’ll have to pay attention and get ahead accordingly.

The post Salary based on location versus pay for value: which is better? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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How taboos change

Can you recommend a therapist? Have you had therapy?

Those questions would have been shocking and rude in previous times, but Gen Z has no problem talking about mental health and seeking therapy or medication. How did this happen?

Very Well Mind theorizes, “Gen Z has grown up in a world where it’s normal and considered natural to get treatment for psychological problems. They don’t know any different, and so they don’t attach any bad feelings to speaking about it.”

Gen Z alone doesn’t deserve the credit for being open – it was also the hard work of previous generations that worked to remove stigmas around discussing mental health. The result is a generation with the ability to talk about these things openly.

We are with salary now where we were 30 years ago with mental health. People are starting to talk about it – in fact, a Glassdoor survey finds 70% of employees across seven countries say salary transparency is a good thing.

It’s still a taboo for many, though. People are working hard to change that, though.

New laws around salaries

Some of these taboos around pay transparency are being broken by state legislatures. For instance, Colorado and New York City both have laws requiring salary ranges on job postings. Companies worked around the Colorado law by advertising in their job ads that remote employees could work in any state but Colorado – because they didn’t want to share salary information.

New York City’s law didn’t go into effect until May 15, 2022. Even then, with so many big companies already located there, it’s not likely to prevent companies from going the Colorado company route and offering remote positions in the Big Apple.

Twenty-two states have bans on asking job candidates to produce their salary histories. That may seem like a step backward for salary transparency, but the opposite is true: when companies can’t rely on a person’s previous salary they have to create their own salary around market rates. Knowing previous salaries helped employers to maintain disparate pay and gave companies strong reasons to not want people to speak about it.

For example, if Bianca was making $40,000 at her last job and Dimitri was earning $50,000 at his last job, and you offer them both a 10-percent increase, you can pat yourself on the back and say you’re fair. But, deep down, you know that is not fair.

By not allowing employers to know previous salaries, they are more likely to offer a reasonable wage to both. Without that salary gap, they are less inclined to care if Bianca and Dimitri compare salaries.

Employees have the right to talk salaries

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in the United States protects the rights of employees to talk about their salaries with their coworkers. This is called “concerted activity,” and the National Labor Relations Board doesn’t look kindly on companies that punish employees from talking about it.

That doesn’t stop companies from attempting to ban salary discussions. Even big names like Apple and Google get nervous when employees discuss salaries. But talk you can – just perhaps not on company servers.

With the ease that people can share information now, it seems more and more likely that these outlier spreadsheets will become the norm.

People leading the pay transparency shift

Alison Green, who writes the Ask a Manager Blog, asks people to share their salaries. The result is a sortable spreadsheet with 24,000 responses that can help you determine your own market worth.

Also, the Global Editor of Business Insider, Nicholas Carlson, announced a new project to help demystify salaries:

Insider is launching a series that demystifies people's salaries, and we need your help https://t.co/lsaYePUyEz

— Nicholas Carlson (@nichcarlson) January 25, 2022

But, when asked to share his own salary, he balked, responding:

“Fun question! I’d rather not say publicly for lots of practical reasons I’m sure you can imagine. This feels a little wimpy but also prudent. I think I would submit it to some third party I could trust to keep it anonymous and average it with other people in roles like mine.”

What is your salary, Nich?

— Becky Peterson (@beckpeterson) January 25, 2022

We do, it seems, want everyone else to go first. I’ll tell you my salary if you tell me yours, but you better go first!

Well, somebody needs to go first.

How is recruiting and hiring affected?

People push back on companies that won’t share salary ranges up front. With many areas facing a labor shortage, quality candidates won’t waste their time on companies that won’t open up about salaries – whether up front or early in the recruitment process.

Even if you’re not hiring in Colorado or NYC, you will increase your candidate pool by being honest – unless your salaries are too low.

Plus, it saves everyone time and effort if you speak up first. It also cuts down on the potential for discrimination and bias.

Recruiter Mercedes Johnson found out the hard way how people won’t stand for hidden salaries that result in underpaying people. She wrote a Facebook post that stated:

“I just offered a candidate $85,000 for a job that had a budget of 130K. I offered her that because that’s what she asked for & I personally don’t have the bandwidth to give lessons on salary negotiation. Here’s the lesson: ALWAYS ASK FOR THE SALARY YOU WANT (DESERVE), no matter how large you think it might be. You never know how much money a company has to work with. #BeConfident”

The response was not “Oh yes; I should negotiate better,” but instead went on the offensive against Johnson. In short – the candidate shouldn’t have to be confident in negotiations. Rather, the onus should be on the company to be upfront about the pay for a job.

There are 2 types of ppl in this world smh pic.twitter.com/dlHA3rXJWB

— COURT-COURT (@TE_AMO_COURT) January 29, 2022

Johnson learned her lesson – and was let go from her role – but companies that try to keep salaries hush-hush may find themselves on the wrong side of Twitter or /r/antiwork. It’s not a nice place to be.

Let’s all be open about how much we’re being paid for a job. You tell me yours, and I’ll let you know mine.

The post Salary transparency: Good thing for employees – and employers? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And there’s a lot of work to be done yet. One of Amy’s core objectives going into 2022 is to maintain employee retention and engagement while at the same time tripling the size of the business throughout the year.

In her words: “We’re going to have some enormous growth.”

In the midst of all of that is keeping her team members – both current and future – motivated.

This means, she says, “investing in all of our people to ensure that our culture is one that everybody’s super excited to be a part of and where they can grow their careers and do some of the best work of their lives, and have a lot of fun in the process.”

Doing that in a high-volume tech hiring space is a big undertaking – but she’s succeeding in the venture with a combination of expertise and street smarts.

On surviving the Big Quit

One of the significant developments of 2021 is, of course, the Great Resignation in the United States. Quit rates in the country are at an unprecedented high – reaching as high as 3% of the total working population with upwards of four million workers handing in their notice every month from July 2021 to November 2021.

Add to that an increasingly loud voice among younger workers about their disillusion with current work culture – so succinctly and blatantly on display in Reddit’s Antiwork community (which employers do need to pay attention to).

While obvious, this does signal a clear shift in the talent market. The onus is no longer on candidates to prove their worth to an employer; it’s now on the employer to position themselves as a place where people want to work. So, the question bears asking: what’s the employee value proposition that you can offer to make your job opportunity more attractive to a prospective employee?

For Amy, that value prop includes the working environment that you’re creating for them.

“I think the trend in 2022 is that people are going to look for companies that want to invest in them,” Amy says. “They’re going to look for companies that are flexible and aren’t going to require that they go into an office that they don’t want to go into, that will continue to afford them the flexibility that they’ve all grown to appreciate.”

And this isn’t going to end anytime soon. In fact, it marks a paradigm shift that employers need to adapt to. The Great Discontent report released in mid-2021 shows that flexible work options is high up the list of things that candidates value in a job, with 37.5% of US workers saying it’s one value proposition that would attract them to a new opportunity.

And SMBs that think about their employees first are the ones that’ll get ahead in the new talent game, says Amy.

“Companies are starting to realize how important engagement and investment is in their people,” she explains. “And those are the companies that are winning. And so if you were to talk to those companies, they would probably report lower than market averages in terms of loss. And the reason is because they have the formula. They understand what they need to do.”

Amy does offer a caveat – this needs to be done in a way that supports both ends of the equation.

“[Employers] have to create a trusting environment and a supportive environment and still be able to drive productivity and all the things that are core and critical to the business in an effective way. So I realize that there’s a balancing act here. Employers want to be able to maximize the return from the people.”

There’s tangible proof of the ROI in all this. A 2017 Gallup study finds that highly engaged employees lead to a 17% increase in company productivity, and 24% less turnover in companies in high-turnover sectors.

Amy doubles down on that message – because of that clear ROI, companies need to put in the work to meet those new expectations in the talent market.

“[That’s the] balancing act for 2022 that people really have to figure out.”

On investing in your workers

So how exactly do you ‘invest’ in your people? One area surging in popularity in 2022 is learning and development. In a survey commissioned by Workable and TalentLMS, 91% of tech workers want more learning opportunities from their current employers and 58% cited “skills development” as one criteria in choosing who they want to work for. It’s also a top motivator for tech employees.

And there are other ways to attract and engage employees – Amy shares a few more with us.

The value of connection

Amy stressed several times the importance of ensuring that workers feel connected to the company, whether that’s in a remote environment or otherwise.

“First of all, you have a full-time person dedicated to building the community, whether it’s different activities, whether it’s different communication strategies; there’s a number of different things that have to happen in order for that to be done effectively.”

We’re humans after all – the sense of community in the workplace can be a powerful thing.

The value of compensation

In the above-mentioned Great Discontent worker survey, 63% of workers cited salary as the reason why they’re looking elsewhere for a new job – and 62% say it’s the top factor in their decision to move to a new job.

It’s clear: companies must think about compensation in their value proposition.

“I do think you have to pay people competitively for the market, for their job. And so if you’re underpaying people and you’ve gotten away with it so far, you probably won’t continue to get away with it because people are starting to realize what they’re worth because of how hot the market is.”

This doesn’t mean giving raises across the board, she cautions. It’s more about fair market value.

“You have to pay people what the market suggests they’re worth or they’ll find a company that will.”

The value of people

Ultimately, whether it’s salary, learning & development, or connectivity, what people officers need to be thinking about is the ‘people’ factor. Employees are people too.

“If you’re treating people the way they want to be treated and they feel connected to your mission and connected to the business, they aren’t leaving. People that are leaving because they don’t feel connected. They don’t feel appreciated and they feel like there’s better opportunities for them.”

When your employees take pride in what they do and feel part of a larger mission, that can be even more motivating than a straight-up higher salary – if you’re one SMB that may be challenged in your ability to offer higher wages, this can be a good workaround.

On proactively sourcing candidates

Now, let’s get to the other challenge of the Great Resignation – the dwindling number of candidates that we’re seeing in our Hiring Pulse data and elsewhere. When you take a month’s candidates per hire and compare it with the average CPH of the previous three months, there was a negative trend in that data every single month in 2021:

It’s doubly a challenge for companies like the one Amy works at when high-volume hiring is part of the overall company strategy.

“We don’t have much of an employer brand [because] the company’s only three years old. And so our lower candidate pipeline, I would attribute to not having a strong employer brand because we’re a new company.”

But that means the work is cut out for Relay Payment’s recruitment team, which has resorted to fresh strategies to bring new candidates into the hiring process under Amy’s leadership – at high volume too.

“We get a lot of hires from referrals. I would say 30% of our hires in 2021 were referral-based,” Amy says, adding that they offer bonuses to team members who have successfully referred a candidate who ultimately gets hired.

The lack of a strong, recognizable employer brand is a challenge facing many SMBs, and Amy is well aware of that. She has ways to get around that.

“Our recruiters have had to work really hard to source candidates proactively because people don’t know us well enough to have a big application pipeline.”

So how do you do that? A ton of stuff, says Amy, who cites LinkedIn Recruiter – which she admits is expensive – as a tool to get the word out about a job, and external recruiters when they need to make a niche hire or when time is of the essence. Searching for candidates in Google using related keywords is also an effective strategy.

On growing the team that grows teams

But that’s a lot of work, of course. Amy has a solution for that: Hire more recruiters.

“I actually just doubled the size of my recruiting team in the last week,” she says. “I hired my first dedicated recruiter last summer. I hired a second recruiter in October [2021] and I just hired two [in early January 2022] that will start [in February]. So I’ve gone from one recruiter to four in like eight months.”

The reason being – if you have more team members dedicated to the specific goals in recruitment, you’ll draw more applicants for your open roles.

“The volume of people that you’ve got building your brand and sourcing and building pipelines will also help generate an enormous amount of activity as compared to having fewer people.”

“The volume of people that you’ve got building your brand and sourcing and building pipelines will also help generate an enormous amount of activity as compared to having fewer people.”

Anyone in sales and marketing will understand Amy’s thinking process here. If you want to see increased conversions (i.e. hires), you not only have to bring in the right kind of candidate via referrals and online search – you also have to bring in more candidates.

“For us, it’s about bigger pipelines. We want bigger top of funnel. So how do you invest to get your top of funnel big enough, such that if you have 90 of a specific type of role that you want to hire in a year? [This] is what we’re doing with our AE team. We’re going to add 90 AEs [in 2022].”

And even with the candidates-per-hire metric steadily dropping month over month in 2021 and 2022, any SMB worth their salt – including Relay Payments – will want to have a healthy selection of candidates for any given role. Amy is vividly aware of that.

“If you do the math to back into 90 hires, what do you need your funnel to be? It’s gotta be enormous.”

That’s hiring and retention at scale in Amy’s world. What’s yours? Share your workplace story with us and you may see it get published!

The post Hiring at scale in tech for 2022: A top CPO shares her tips appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

It’s not just that flexible work has benefits – it’s a highly desired, and in many cases, much-needed component of work. If you, as an employer, can realistically offer this option – especially flexible schedules – your value proposition can only grow in the eyes of candidates who have a wealth of choices at their disposal. You may even find that the Great Resignation and the much-bewailed candidate shortage are things that don’t even apply to you.

If you don’t offer flexible work, especially if you could, the consequences could be considerable. Consider the backlash against Apple in their initial drive to move back to an in-person working environment. Employees left in droves for other options, and the media coverage was fierce and uncompromising.

This can’t reflect well on their reputation as an employer. A return to office has its merits – and in some cases, requirements – but in many cases, businesses have the technology and wherewithal to make it work. Employees themselves have shown that it can work as well.

The second lesson is that for workers, an outstanding brand reputation such as Apple’s doesn’t even matter that much (more on that below). Rather, people simply want the option to work flexibly.

We’re going to see more of this misalignment of priorities between employees and their employers – going forward. When we asked respondents about the current situation in regards to remote/hybrid work at their place of employment, more than half (52.8%) say their employer introduced it during the pandemic and will (or probably will) return to on-location work once things stabilize.

The same disconnect applies to flexible work schedules as well, with 43.8% saying flexible work schedules were introduced during the pandemic and will (or probably will) go back to set schedules when things return to ‘normal’ – whenever that may be, or whatever that may be.

There’s a clear divide between employees and employers in work setups. Many employees like remote work and especially love flexible schedules. Many even need one or both. And a good portion of employers aren’t adapting to that new reality – the stigma against flexible work doesn’t help much, either.

With such a resounding voice in our dataset valuing flexible work, consider establishing it as a permanent strategy where possible if you want to attract new talent and retain your existing employee base. Your success as a company may depend on it.

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It’s not just that flexible work has benefits – it’s a highly desired, and in many cases, much-needed component of work. If you, as an employer, can realistically offer this option – especially flexible schedules – your profile as a desired place to work will grow in the eyes of people looking for new work. In short, it’s a significant value prop in your arsenal.

And if you don’t offer flexible work, especially if you could, the consequences could be considerable. Consider the backlash against Apple in their initial drive to move back to an in-person working environment. Employees left in droves for other options, and the media coverage was fierce and uncompromising. This can’t reflect well on Apple’s reputation as an employer.

Sure, a return to office has its merits – and in some cases, requirements – but in many cases, businesses have the technology and wherewithal to make it work. What’s more, the many employees who kept working in a remote fashion from the onset of the pandemic to today have proven that they know how to do it.

The second lesson is that for workers, an outstanding brand reputation such as Apple’s doesn’t even matter that much (more on that below). Rather, people simply want the option to work flexibly.

“My company is unlikely to allow any home workers when restrictions end and it gives me great concern. I want to be able to work flexibly and from home at least occasionally.”

We’re going to see more of this kind of situation – a misalignment of priorities between employees and their employers – going forward. When we asked respondents about the current situation in regards to remote/hybrid work at their place of employment, 44.7% say their employer introduced remote or hybrid work during the pandemic and will (or probably will) return to on-location work once things stabilize.

The same discrepancy in expectations goes for flexible work schedules as well, with 46.8% saying flexible work schedules were introduced during the pandemic and will (or probably will) go back to set schedules when things return to ‘normal’. (Side note: ‘normal’ may not even be a reality anymore.)

This marks a vast chasm between employees and employers. Many employees like remote work and especially love flexible schedules. Many even need one or both. And a good portion of employers aren’t adapting to that new reality – the stigma against flexible work doesn’t help much, either.

“I think most office workers are able to work as productively, if not more so, than in an office environment. Bosses, who usually aren’t very good, don’t think that’s possible.”

With such a resounding voice in our dataset valuing flexible work, consider establishing it as a permanent strategy where possible if you want to attract new talent and retain your existing employee base. Your success as a company may depend on it.

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However, just knowing this is not helpful. You need to solve this. Simply put, you need qualified candidates now to fill up those positions – and fast.

But first, let’s look at a few possible reasons behind the shrinking CPH metric in these times.

Why are good candidates so few and far between?

According to seasoned recruiters, here are the major reasons why you are not getting suitable candidates, or why they are dropping out:

• The job post fails to deliver the intended message to the candidates
• The job posts are not posted on the right channels
• You are not leveraging new and emerging talent sourcing trends, like social media campaigns and passive candidate outreach
• Your search team is struggling with a lack of tools and resources
• You are not utilizing the innovative new strategies of talent search
• Candidates are more selective in applying for openings
• Lack of sync between what the employer is looking for and what the candidate wants in a job
• Other factors, like weak culture, benefits, and employer brand

Logically, we can say that if we can eliminate these reasons behind the scarcity of candidates, we will see improvements in our hiring results.

So, how can we rise above the roadblocks and get an abundance of great candidates?

5 ways to find good candidates

Follow these tried and tested strategies to get a flood of qualified candidates:

1. Create clear and high-intent job descriptions

Create your job descriptions and job announcements with as much precision as possible. It’s more about adding the “right” information, not the “most” information.

Workable has job description templates on almost every job that you might need to fill out. These templates are organized according to industries and job types.

A way of showing empathy directly in the job description is to address the major concerns about work-life balance and company culture that many candidates have today. On top of that, show that you have a development plan for the newly hired employees – tech workers, for instance, highly value this.

It should be apparent from the job posting that they can gain something from working with you. If they just want to be paid well, they have that opportunity in many places. But what gets you ahead is if you value them as a person and you’re interested in helping them in their career arc.

2. Pursue passive candidates

You need an active recruitment team that vigorously searches out passive candidates.

Passive candidates are candidates who are not actively looking for a new job but would consider switching given the right offer. In fact, 37% of US workers are passive candidates.

You never know the opportunity you have to offer might make a lot of the talent rethink their career trajectory.

If you come up with an inclusive package and reach the right candidates, hiring can be made easier.

You just need the right strategy and tools.

Here’s an email template that you can customize for reaching out to passive candidates:

Subject: Open [Position Title] role at [Company Name]

Hi [Candidate Name],

I am [Your Name], [Your Job Title], at [Company Name]. I saw your profile on [LinkedIn, Github, Behance, etc.] while searching for candidates for the open role of [Position Title]. (**Link to job posting here.)

Based on your extensive expertise on [key skill/s], I believe you would be an excellent fit for the job, and I would love to know more about your interests and career goals.

Would you be available for a quick chat anytime this week or the next? Just let me know your availability, and we can set up a call.

Looking forward to meeting you soon.

Thank you,

[Your Name]

[Signature]

3. Got LinkedIn? Fine! But where else?

Okay, so you are posting your JD on LinkedIn, Indeed, and other places, and you are also getting quite a few applications. But guess what? None of them is quite the match you are looking for.

What more can you do? Diversify your options.

Consider the following:

• Industry-specific job boards
• Exploring remote job boards
• Leveraging the freelance workforce

You can also try reaching out to recruiters outside of your current network to share and collaborate on talent database enrichment – that’s one way of thinking outside of the box.

Here’s a template email for reaching out to recruiters that you can customize as per your needs:

Subject: Potential collaboration for an expanded candidate pool

Hi [Name],

I am [Your Name], [Your Job Title], at [Company Name]. I found you on LinkedIn while searching for fellow recruiters working in the [industry/sector name]. Given the talent crunch we are experiencing, I thought of reaching out to you in the hopes of forging a mutually beneficial collaboration.

I would love to talk with you about the possibility of sharing our talent pools so that we can hire faster and more effectively.

Would you be available for a quick chat anytime this week or next? Just let me know your availability, and we can set up a call.

Looking forward to meeting you soon.

Thank you,

[Your Name]

[Signature]

On the other hand, the job market has sprouted up a different sort of recruiter – the reverse recruiter. They work directly for jobseekers and help them find their dream roles. They network and find open positions on behalf of jobseekers and help them apply for the position.

Creating and building connections with these professionals can be mutually beneficial. They can help you if they have a jobseeker with the skills you need.

4. Build savvy and empathetic recruitment processes

The whole recruitment process needs to show a certain savvy and empathy.

Today’s candidates have seen workplaces and will know what kind of environment it is. So it’s important to put your best foot forward and ensure a great candidate experience.

From the way you message to how the information is being disseminated to the candidates will show them that you care for the professional partnership that you are about to embark on.

More importantly, emotional empathy should always remain as a guiding light. Even sharing an interview preparation guidebook – such as this video interview guide – as a gesture of care after setting up the interview date can show that you support their growth.

5. Take advantage of recruiter tools and resources

Acquiring knowledge and information can be tricky. Sometimes, we simply don’t know what we don’t know and what we are missing out for not having that piece of knowledge or information.

Take, for example, the Boolean search strings while searching for candidates. This simple piece of knowledge can be so powerful.

Yet another point in case would be technologies like the mobile hiring app and recruitment email automation that can immensely help with productivity and time management.

New tools, strategies, and resources continue to emerge, and when you’re in the hiring business, you need to be on the lookout for new developments. Be agile. Be nimble. Don’t hesitate to introduce new things in your work processes.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Yes, finding and retaining the right candidates might have become more challenging than ever before. However, the new avenues of talent sourcing are also emerging rapidly.

All you have to do is keep an open mind to the new and emerging tools and techniques, try out different things, and above all, know where and how to get in front of your potential candidates.

We hope the above tips, ideas, and suggestions will help you get through this talent crunch gracefully.

Liz Hogan is the Content Outreach Manager and a CPRW at Find My Profession. She regularly shares her advice on job search strategies. She is also passionate about volunteering and learning new languages.

The post Can’t find good candidates? Here are 5 ways to get on top of that appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here, in a nutshell, are the rulings on each case:

In Biden v Missouri, the Supreme Court held that the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) does have the authority to require all health care workers at institutions that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding to get COVID-19 vaccinations, unless they get medical or religious exemptions. If they fail to do either, then they could be fired.

Perhaps the more talked-about case, National Federation of Businesses et al v Department of Labor, Occupational, Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) et al, led to the opposite conclusion. The OSHA mandate required that employers with at least 100 employees had to require their employees to either receive COVID-19 vaccines or test weekly and wear masks.

Why such diametrically opposite rulings for such similar mandates? It all came down to whether the entity in question had the authority to mandate the vaccine. Regarding the OSHA mandate, the Court ruled OSHA did not have the authority, because, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (which created the OSH-Administration) “empowers the Secretary [of Labor] to set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures.”

The Court further reasoned that “Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most … COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases.”

Therefore, per the Court’s reasoning, the OSHA mandate would “significantly expand” OSHA’s authority beyond the limits set by Congress in the OSH-Act.

While multiple states argued that DHHS did not have the scope to issue such a mandate, the Court noted that “healthcare facilities that wish to participate in Medicare and Medicaid have always been obligated to satisfy a host of conditions that address the safe and effective provision of healthcare, not simply sound accounting.”

How then, does the US Department of Health and Human Services have the authority to issue and enforce a similar mandate? In this case, the Court cited funding requirements. The hospitals in question receive Medicare and/or Medicaid funding. The DHHS has always had authority to set conditions both for funding and for “the safe and effective provision of healthcare”.

So what do you do as an employer now?

What do these rulings mean for employers? Unless your business is a hospital receiving Medicare or Medicaid funding, the ruling in that case (Biden v Missouri) will have no impact.

Similarly, if your business has fewer than 100 employees, neither ruling impacts your business.

If you are an employer with more than 100 employees, then your business is no longer subject to the OSH-Admin mandate.

That does not mean that you do not have an obligation to take reasonable steps to protect your employees from COVID exposure. Vaccination or other safety protocols might well be necessary to achieve those ends, in which case you might still be obligated to take the same measures, but OSHA will have to jump through more hoops if it wants to take action against your company on that basis.

Need more support? Check out our mandatory vaccination and workplace safety policy template, which is free for you to use and customize for your own organization.

Janette S. Levey, ‘The Employer’s Lawyer’, has over 20 years of legal experience, more than 10 of which she has spent in Employment Law. She is licensed in NJ and NY and also works with employers anywhere in the country on any federal employment law issues to ensure that employers are in the best position possible to avoid litigation, audits, employee relations problems, and the attendant, often exorbitant costs. Feel free to visit Janette’s website or to contact Janette by email, janette@janetteleveylaw.com or phone, 732-902-0728. 

The post US Supreme Court’s mixed ruling on vaccine mandates: What do you do now? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Embrace transparency

For those of us who started our careers twenty or more years ago, we remember when you couldn’t simply go to a search engine and type in ‘recruiter jobs London’ and see 29.6 million results. You couldn’t find and track salary information or read reviews that showed life behind closed doors. The world of work was fairly opaque.

All this changed with the explosion of the Internet and the 2008 global financial crisis. People flooded online, using sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to share, connect and look for work. With the Internet came transparency, and the shift from the company being in charge to the employee being in control of their destiny.

And now? In 2022, companies can no longer arrogantly think, ‘be grateful to work for us’. Instead, leaders should be grateful that people choose to work for them.

This employee power has led to many initiatives that have been the focus of HR in recent years in the hope of retaining talent. These include employee engagement, DEIB, mental health, flexible and hybrid working, and more.

The companies who have not become people-first are the ones that fear The Great Resignation or, more aptly, The Great Reassessment. They cannot throw open the door, because people wouldn’t choose them.

Get radically transparent

No company is perfect, and it’s not realistic for people to even expect that. But people do look for leaders who are honest, approachable, confident, reflective, open to learning, caring and trusting of their people.

Future employees also look for the impact the company is making, and if this is something they want to be part of. Look around at the companies that have thrived through the pandemic, and you’ll find great leadership qualities to emulate and missions that are clearly defined.

Plus, ​​according to research from Gartner, organizations that deliver on their employee value proposition can decrease annual employee turnover by nearly 70% and increase the commitment from new starters by up to 30%, so it makes business sense.

Moreover, Gartner’s research finds a well-thought-out EVP can reap dividends in the candidate attraction process – when candidates view an EVP as attractive, companies can reduce their compensation premium by half, and reach 50% deeper into the talent market.

So take your great EVP and share it online, far and wide. How do you do that? Try these three strategies for starters:

1. Compelling human stories

In my book The Robot-Proof Recruiter, marketer Bennet Sung explained the value of using human stories like this.

“Persuading candidates to come and work for you is one of the most complex story tells that anyone has to engage with. Unlike products, which have a tangible list of features, selling your values, mission, culture, team and manager (employment brand) is much more experiential and personally different for each candidate. This storytelling requires finding a way for a candidate to virtually experience the employment brand and that could be via a wide range of channels including hiring manager videos, employee videos, reputation sites, and so on.”

“Unlike products, which have a tangible list of features, selling your values, mission, culture, team and manager (employment brand) is much more experiential and personally different for each candidate.”

Over the course of 2021, you may have noticed that hiring recruiters became incredibly difficult, and not every company or agency can compete on price. Take not-for-profit recruitment agency, Radical Recruit, as an example; they exist to bridge the gap between disadvantaged job seekers and the world of work.

Radical Recruit cannot compete on salary and yet amazing recruiters choose to join them. Why? Because they share their human stories on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. You will see videos and posts from their leader, Emma Freivogel, from the team who genuinely love the impact they are making, and from the people they support. They are not perfect, but they are an open book for people to opt into.

 

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 2. Non-monetary incentives

Consider what you can offer that doesn’t involve reaching into your pocket. Can you offer equity or true flexibility, for example? Or offer bikes, electric cars and other incentives via a salary sacrifice scheme?

Chatting with fellow Workable contributor, Suzanne Lucas, about this dilemma, she proffered the 4-day working week. Not revolutionary – there’s even a how-to implement post here – but it is effectively a 20% pay increase. Just by changing your hours, you could attract new people on the same salary rather than having to offer an increase.

Plus, by getting into the trend early, your current employees will not only love it, they’ll struggle to find another employer doing the same so you’ll increase retention.

But Suzanne also warns that you must not offer a 4-day working week and still expect people to respond or even attend meetings on their day off. In my work, I have seen these kinds of leaky boundaries lead to all sorts of problems, including reduced employee engagement and bad reviews impending future hiring. Be sure to agree to and stick to a set of parameters with your employees and new joiners, so it is easy to manage and morale stays high.

3. Ask your people for ideas

You are not alone. You already have a team of people working for you who would be happy to get involved. Often though, they don’t understand how challenging the finances are or that, perhaps, you have barely paid yourself during the pandemic, until you tell them.

Sometimes the simplest things are the most effective. A great example is seen in the Ministry of Defence in the UK. By encouraging employees to share new job vacancies with the women they knew, they saw an increase in the number of applications, job offers and accepted offers by women, even in traditionally male-dominated roles.

So even though asking for help can raise all manner of feelings from fear to shame – especially as the company leader – your people will love your vulnerability and appreciate your trust. They will also have plenty of suggestions. After all, they choose to work with you; maximize it!

In summary, while it’s high up the list for many, money isn’t the only reason people will choose your company. Take advantage of the free tools available that let you open the door to your business.

Let people see it, warts and all. Share your employees’ stories, your mission, and your successes – and even your failures and lessons learned. Get creative, get everyone involved, and watch the difference it will make to your recruitment, even in this market!

The post Can’t afford to pay more? Be radically transparent with candidates appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s look at the 11 main takeaways:

1. The shakeup of the work environment
2. We’re social animals; we have needs
3. Surviving the Big Quit
4. Healthy minds and bodies mean healthy outputs
5. Look for the silver lining in all of this
6. Think about your employees first
7. Technology will pave the way ahead
8. Work be nimble, work be quick
9. Increase your range of motion
10. Don’t be a manager – be a leader
11. Change in hiring strategy

1. The shakeup of the work environment

Early in the pandemic, we learned via the New World of Work survey that more than 70% consider the shift to remote work to be the biggest paradigm shift as a result of COVID-19. So, it’s really no surprise that one of the biggest lessons of 2021 according to SMB employers continues in this vein: the shift to hybrid, remote, and asynchronous work.

But the real challenge is found in the logistics and feasibility of this shift.

CEO Amy Wampler of Indiana-based HVAC firm Spartan Mechanical found that a hybrid structure was the best way to go for her company, but remained skeptical that a completely remote environment could work.

“I believe that man is a social animal – and does require a level of human interaction rather than slaving behind on a screen.”

Because of that, Amy wants her employees to get the full hybrid experience.

“Therefore, I intend to introduce an efficient hybrid working model, where rotations of staff will be done in order to make sure that all employees get a taste of both types of situations!”

Giving employees a choice

Meanwhile, Lovebox founder and CEO Jean Gregoire is giving employees the choice of where they want to work.

“Right now, 5 of our employees are permanently teleworking from Lyon, Brest, Sydney, Paris, and Barcelonnette while the rest of the team is in Grenoble, France. The Grenoble team members have a comfortable office they can go to, but for the moment there is no obligation.”

But as the top boss at his tech-driven international love note messenger service, Jean does subscribe to Amy’s dictum that there needs to be some in-person exchange.

“We are thinking about setting up one or two mandatory days on site (for those who live near the office) to facilitate exchanges between the different divisions. This is a subject that is being discussed collectively to make sure it does not become a burden for anyone.”

Ultimately, he did find that his employees are happiest when given the choice of how and where they want to work.

The connectivity challenges of hybrid

On the other hand, founder Eden Cheng of software company PeopleFinderFree in Singapore found hybrid to be her top challenge of 2021, due to the management challenges.

“I discovered that managing both in-office and remote teams is a job that requires a significant amount of emotional intelligence, as it’s all about the ability to successfully build interpersonal connections and maintain them.”

It’s something that Eden’s especially mindful of with so many employees quitting during the Great Resignation.

“This meant making an effort to connect with each staff member on a more individual level through frequent dialogue, in order to ensure that they are satisfied with their current work environment and that they have what they need to deliver on the results.”

VP Logan Mallory also considers hybrid to be the biggest challenge faced at Motivosity, a company that helps employees stay engaged both in office and remotely.

“We had to find the right methods of communication to ensure that no one was ever left out of the loop due to their choice of working location,” says Logan, “as well as making sure that we had frequent enough check-ins with our employees.”

Remote work struggles – even now

Devin Schumacher of SEO agency SERP points to the lack of experience of workers in a remote working environment, calling it a relatively new concept for many and therefore the value isn’t readily evident for them.

He says his company, which is fully remote, bears the responsibility to ensure success in remote work.

“I help my new hires grasp the long-term employment possibilities at my company through extensive onboarding procedures and coaching sessions. My goal is to emphasize the full potential of remote work. I explain the handsome compensation package, offer competitive company benefits, and, of course, reassure new hires that they’ll have several career growth opportunities.”

There is a unique value in working from home, however, says CEO Nicholas Vasiliou of health supplement product company BioHealth Nutrition:

“While working at home you often have to find your own solutions, so employees are constantly in a state of innovating whether they realize it or not. Our biggest goal is to further recognize and reward employees because we realize these efforts are not easy.”

Mark Pierce, the CEO of Cloud Peak Law Group in Wyoming, points to added nuances in remote management.

“It took a bit of time to find the right balance of checking in with employees so that they didn’t feel over-managed or like they were being ignored.”

Time is of the essence

One significant challenge of remote work is teams working across different time zones, noted Stefan Ateljevic of PlayToday, an online gambling resource center.

“I think we struggled most with combining asynchronous and synchronous types of communication between team members, in order to function seamlessly.”

That was one lesson tech CEO Nate Tsang wishes he had learned earlier so he could have gotten ahead of the challenges associated with asynchronous work.

“I’d like to have started the conversation around asynchronous work sooner. There was a bit of hesitancy to move away from the 9-5 synchronous model of work, where everyone’s online at the same time of day, more or less,” says Nate, who runs WallStreetZen, a stock research and analysis site.

“Employees know which parts of their work need to be handled this way, but deciding what kinds of work can be staggered is often a process of discovery. You have to be looking for asynchronous opportunities to make them a reality.”

2. We’re social animals; we have needs

Amy at Spartan Mechanical pointed to the importance of social interaction – and we found that many SMB employers would agree.

For instance, Zoku International Co-Founder Hans Meyer in Amsterdam found from his research that the future of work needs human connection.

“Companies must facilitate in-person employee relationships in 2022 in order to keep individual talent and teams engaged, aligned and productive in this new era of remote work.”

This was also John Gardner’s lesson from 2021. He’s co-founder and CEO of Kickoff, a remote personal training platform based out of New York.

“[It’s] the importance of engaging our employees and using strategies to increase effective communication, share company culture and boost employee productivity despite the remoteness of the work.”

John shared one of his company’s tactics to ensure engagement.

“We started implementing a strategy where we create fitness challenges on social media. Each month, one of our trainers starts a fitness challenge video where they choreograph fitness movements to a video. The challenge is that the next person who does the challenge has to add on an extra movement, so the faster you participate, the less you do!”

He found this tactic worked, too.

“The videos are a lot of fun, people and teams do them together when they can and it really encourages employee productivity as well as shares a positive, fun environment and culture at the company.“

3. Surviving the Big Quit

If the mindset of employers could be summed up in one phrase, it would be from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, where one of the Wild Things exclaims to a departing Max: “Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!”

That’s the spirit in the Big Quit environment, where employee retention is lauded as one of the biggest accomplishments of 2021 for many SMB employers.

Sally Stevens of FastPeopleSearch.io in Los Angeles is one of those employers – even going so far as to learn from others in the same situation.

“To think of it, the employee retention challenges faced by other companies have been big lessons for our business. We’ve had to change a lot in order to retain our employees. Ending the year with most of the employees we started with is certainly a success for us.”

It was a hard lesson for Sally’s small business, however.

“Lacking an adequate number of hands when you’re growing the business may be debilitating in many instances. That period almost crippled us. We had to hold back on some facets of our scaling process because we simply couldn’t find someone to deal with it.”

Show them you love them

Jeff Johnson, a real estate agent and acquisition manager at Simple Homebuyers in Maryland, resorted to tangible measures to retain employees in his company.

“We had to give out weekly bonuses, paid time off and subscriptions to mental wellness applications. This helped us manage and retain our existing talent.”

“We had to give out weekly bonuses, paid time off and subscriptions to mental wellness applications. This helped us manage and retain our existing talent.”

Steve Anevski’s own experience was not so much mitigation of turnover as it was actual improvement of retention – and this was a result of initiatives implemented prior to 2021.

“In 2021, my biggest accomplishment was increasing my company’s retention rate by a whopping 15%! Throughout 2019 and 2020, the rate was hovering between 70 and 75%, which I felt was relatively low and needed significant improvement. I worked on this and introduced a few attractive perks and benefits in late 2020 to great effect. Throughout 2021, my retention rates remained firmly between 85 and 90%.”

And in his work as CEO and co-founder of staffing platform Upshift, Steve says you have to really think about what your employees expect – and go higher than that.

“My biggest learning from 2021 in terms of employee retention is that if you go above and beyond in meeting the expectations of your employees, they’ll become more loyal to your company. It’s not just the financial rewards that compel employees to stay at an organization; they also seek non-monetary rewards like appreciation, autonomy and career advancement.”

And if the tangible parts of all this cost a lot of money, that’s fine, says CEO and founder Nick Drewe of WeThrift, an e-commerce and coupon site based in California. That’s because the ROI is obvious.

“Overall, it doesn’t matter if I get a bit generous with salaries and company benefits because employee retention still costs less than training new hires,” Nick explains. “They also produce better output. Better quality management ensures that my customers get the service they deserve.”

Keep your workers front of mind

Stefan at PlayToday also pointed to retention as his company’s biggest win in 2021, and that was because they adjusted the working model to be more employee-first.

”We followed their inputs and requests and made sure to make their workday as seamless as possible. This is how we opted for hybrid work and flexible schedules, but also included some perks such as childcare and home office stipends.”

And Logan at Motivosity points to the importance of a healthy, thriving, and inspiring work culture as the reason for his company’s 10% turnover rate.

“Every single one of the employees who left did so on good terms,” he says. “We attribute this to the fact that we truly live our workplace values and make our company a place where everyone is respected, employees are recognized and rewarded for their accomplishments, and flexibility is the norm.”

4. Healthy minds and bodies mean healthy outputs

Ahmed Mir, founder and editor of the self-proclaimed online coffee mecca Sip Coffee House, says one of his biggest plans for 2022 would be to emphasize a healthy interest and curiosity in work – but that overall health always comes first.

“I want my team to be comfortable enough to come to me whenever they feel overwhelmed so that we can find a solution that works for everyone. Nowadays, people often feel the need to overwork themselves, especially those who are working remotely, and I want to help ease them out of that mindset as productivity and the quality of work increases immensely when the people working on them are happy and healthy.”

Rather than looking at the raw math of employee retention as his company’s biggest accomplishment in 2021, co-owner Dan Barrett of Pacific Precious Metals pointed to mental health in employees that enables them to “work efficiently without pressure”.

Dan, who operates a chain of precious metal stores in and around San Francisco, says his biggest challenge “lay in the unpreparedness of the employees to take on challenges and the inability of many to contribute owing to their mental health.”

Gabriel Dungan of Charlotte, NC-based sleep company ViscoSoft aligns his employee health with his company’s product.

“As a company that sells sleep products, we have always encouraged people to take their sleep and self-care seriously, but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that we truly realized how important this was for our team as well. This could be anything from weekly check-ins with members of your team, or even a team-wide virtual yoga class.”

5. Look for the silver lining in all of this

Albert Einstein once said: “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.”

That was also the mindset for many SMB employers throughout 2021.

Kamyar K.S., the CEO of business consultancy World Consulting Group in Florida, found that the skills gap faced by his business was an opportunity to try something new – such as offering more training and skills development for existing employees rather than simply trying to find new workers.

“In turn, that leads to a bigger pool of candidates with relevant skills and makes it easier for us to find them.*”

Nate at WallStreetZen ensures that new workforce additions have benefits beyond just backfill.

“We want to make sure additions to our workforce really create opportunities for other staff members. If it’s just about reducing workloads and taking tasks off someone’s plate then we can do that more quickly and easily with freelancers,” says Nate.

“When we need new know-how and outside experience to augment a team, that’s when you hire. Knowing the difference is tricky but it’s something we’re trying to improve.”

Dan, meanwhile, says he would have emphasized skills development in his existing worker base if he could do the year over again.

“If I had the chance to meet with my team in 2020, I’d have trained them into becoming a multi-skilled workforce. In addition, I’d have taught them resilience, fearlessness, and the ability to take on change.”

6. Think about your employees first

Notice a trend in what contributes to employee retention? Exactly – it’s the greater emphasis on employee well-being through benefits, compensation, development, and all the other stuff.

NY-based CEO Alex Mastin of the DIY barista resource site, Home Grounds, highlighted the importance of that.

“Try to provide your workers with opportunities for growth,” Alex says. “If they’re happy in their job and they know there are opportunities for advancement, they’re going to be more likely to stay with you.*”

CEO Mike Nemeroff of custom apparel brand Rush Order Tees in Philadelphia will take that employee-first mindset as well going into the next year.

“We’ve been working on a new strategy to help employees feel their importance and that they are the most important asset of our business and it has been working great so far.”

Get them involved

A two-way communication street is at the core of that strategy.

“This is by encouraging employees to share their opinion, propose new strategies and innovative ideas that can help improve the business,” Mike says. “Every month, we invite employees to come up with a new idea or a strategy that can improve our workflow and post it anonymously. During the month, we share these ideas and everyone in the company votes for the idea they think is best.”

And there’s incentive in it as well.

“Whoever wins is in charge of leading a team to implement their idea and give it a shot. This allows employees to feel trusted to be given a chance and trust that the company and employers believe in their skills regardless of their age, position, gender or experience.”

Lisa Richards, CEO and creator of The Candida Diet, which supports individuals with candida, is in the same boat and also plans to invest tangible resources to boost the experience of her team.

“Happy employees contribute to a company’s resilience and adaptability,” she says. “For this reason, a bigger portion of our annual budget will now be going towards maximizing employee satisfaction. It’s also important to ensure that the resources provided are compatible with the direct needs of the employees, so that they have the biggest impact on employee satisfaction, retention, and employee experience.”

Show confidence in your people

Michael Knight is co-founder and top marketing boss at business incorporation service Incorporation Insight in Salt Lake City. His 2022 will also include greater flexibility and a more employee-centric work model because, he says, there are clear benefits.

“An organization that is steadfast in prioritizing its employees’ satisfaction through generous and guilt-free PTOs and complimentary assisted access to mental healthcare is the goal.”

“An organization that is steadfast in prioritizing its employees’ satisfaction through generous and guilt-free PTOs and complimentary assisted access to mental healthcare is the goal.”

Jared Stern, who heads a team of 20 employees at Uplift Legal Funding in Santa Monica, California, also knows the value of employees in a business, highlighting their well-being as crucial.

“Employees are the linchpins of any organization,” says Jared, whose company provides legal loan services to clients. “We have braved through the past year, as we had committed employees. We want that to continue for us. We are taking all measures from our side to ensure they are prepared to tackle any adversity.”

Nate looked at output to identify opportunities to standardize and streamline the work his employees put in – with employee experience front of mind.

“We got serious about data productivity tracking for staff in early 2021. By mid-year we had a much stronger sense of where the gaps were and how to use automations, outsourcing, and freelancers to fill in the slack. Amid highs and lows, lulls and busy periods, our full-time staff have been able to remain steady and avoid burnout. That’s been a huge accomplishment, especially given the state of the world.”

Find out what they need and want

Meanwhile, Nicholas isn’t just taking initiative or planning strategy for employee happiness at BioHealth Nutrition. He’s also asking what employees themselves want.

“We’re currently conducting a survey about our work culture, team structure, and other company initiatives. We will accumulate all of the feedback at the end of the month and share a report with updates we plan to implement in 2022,” Nicholas says.

“We want employees to know that we take their feedback seriously and that their happiness is a priority. It’s really important for companies to embrace this mentality now if they haven’t already.”

Childcare was one of the biggest concerns voiced by employees throughout the pandemic, and Marina Vaamonde heard that as well from most of her employees at HouseCashin, an off-market house marketplace in Houston, Texas.

“Working parents are struggling to find decent and affordable childcare and need my help with it. Without childcare, the labor force will struggle because people will be forced to choose between working and quitting their jobs and staying home.”

7. Technology will pave the way ahead

Digital transformation was a significant development during the pandemic, with the shift to remote requiring more technology to succeed. But there’s more, says Kamyar at World Consulting Group.

“If you’re meeting with members of your team right now in terms of planning your workforce for 2022, this is the time to consider the impact of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation on what will be left for humans to do.”

Kamyar’s not concerned about the so-called rise of the machines, suggesting that it be embraced rather than feared.

“You can’t stop technology. It’s going to happen anyway. What you can do is prepare for it by planning for the time when your company won’t need as many human workers,” says Kamyar.

“What are the jobs that will be replaced? Will they all be replaced? What new positions will emerge? How do you train your workers of the future? How do you prepare them to stay ahead of the curve and avoid being replaced by a computer or a robot or an algorithm? You have to ask these questions now, not wait until 2027 — that’s too late.”

Nicholas highlights the importance of skills development in the workplace to accommodate the trend towards greater digital capabilities.

“Technology use is prime, and people need the internet more than ever. So, getting familiar with the new work approaches is key to success.”

“Technology use is prime, and people need the internet more than ever. So, getting familiar with the new work approaches is key to success.”

But finding the right tech to meet collaboration needs in the digital-first world was the single biggest challenge cited by Ruben Gamez, CEO and founder of SignWell, a B2B SaaS tech company helping businesses with contracts and legally binding e-signatures.

“Initially, we were experimenting with different tools,” says Ruben, who manages a team of 10 employees out of Portland, Oregon. “This led to scattered data. We then used one common tool to integrate all processes. It was very challenging to find the right tool.”

Challenge or not, Michael at Incorporation Insight says tech is core to his business going forward.

“Adopting more updated automation is also an objective that can potentially increase our efficiency both productivity-wise and operating cost-wise.”

And HR will be part of that

And this isn’t just the case for overall business operations and workforce management, according to Lynda Farley, the co-founder of reverse phone number lookup service NumLooker. While AI became accessible in 2021, she says, 2022 onwards will see a lot more of that in HR specifically.

“From 2022 onwards, there will be an increased adoption rate in social HR platforms. The reason for this development is the loss of trust between humans and machines. I’m not saying that AI will become our parents, but it can definitely help us in some aspects of our life. By 2022, there will be a lot more to come as a part of the digital revolution.”

8. Work be nimble, work be quick

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen,” said Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

That quote definitely holds true for the last couple of years especially for SMBs who have had to adapt regularly to a seemingly relentless barrage of unexpected developments during pandemic times.

CEO Ian Sells is clear on the importance of nimbility, as one of the biggest lessons at coupon/cash-back website RebateKey over the last two years.

“What we’ve learned from 2020 is to learn to be flexible and continuously adapt our processes based on what works,” says Ian, who heads up a team of just under 25 workers working full- and part-time, as well as per-project, in Wyoming. “Do not be afraid of changes and transitions.”

And there’s opportunity in that, Ian points out.

“Our team has experienced a lot of transitions and have done well not only to adapt to changes but to thrive in them. Scaling is always difficult, but is a crucial and necessary step for the continuous growth of any business.”

Flexibility took place in a different form for Gregory Rozdeba, president of digital insurance brokerage Dundas Life in Toronto. He called the COVID-affected year the most challenging of his managerial career, having to let go of a leadership team member.

Instead of having to go through that again, Gregory took on a different strategy – including moving some functions to remote and freelance.

And this includes employees too

A more agile approach also means encouraging more adaptability in employees – including tackling sudden and steep learning curves, says Dave Ericksen, the founder of WaterZen.

“Due to the crisis that the pandemic brought, a lot of our best performers were given additional responsibilities to help keep operations going,” says Dave.

That ultimately had a silver lining for his Utah-based company, which promotes awareness and shares information on accessibility to drinking water.

“Later, we discovered that some of them were more fit for their new responsibilities,” he says. “We’re changing our employee structure to give these gifted employees a role and title fit for their skills.”

Prime your people for success

Adjusting onboarding and training processes both for new hires and current employees was the biggest challenge of 2021, especially due to the volatility of the environment, says Gabriel at ViscoSoft.

“The pandemic required a lot of sudden pivots, so consistency in overall operations was kind of thrown out the window. You had to be malleable and adaptable. Because of these, developing any sort of training for your employees was very challenging,” he explains.

“You want to set up new hires for success by clarifying roles and encouraging relationship development, but when a company is dealing with constant shifts and transitions that can be very difficult.”

And forget about thinking back and looking forward, says Jared at Uplift Legal Funding.

“The biggest learning from 2021 was to be in the moment. We made grand plans in 2020, only to watch them fail. We have learned to become more agile and dynamic. We intend to make plans, but we have also known how to pick ourselves up if things go south. We are planning to continue the same in 2022.”

“The biggest learning from 2021 was to be in the moment. We made grand plans in 2020, only to watch them fail. We have learned to become more agile and dynamic. We intend to make plans, but we have also known how to pick ourselves up if things go south. We are planning to continue the same in 2022.”

And that mindset – with teamwork – can get us through it all, he adds.

“I’d say, here’s a chance to think on our feet. Let’s try to be more open-minded and adaptive. Let’s also remember to stick it out for each other. That’s the only way we will get through this madness.”

9. Increase your range of motion

Gregory at Dundas Life pointed to the diversity that comes with the global talent market as a huge bonus for companies.

“Diversity and inclusion is one critical insight in 2022 to manage an employee base. Companies worldwide should learn to diversify their employee retention this year as a workforce with unique skills is invaluable. It makes the potential of growth for each employee scalable, and they can learn new skills from their peers along the way.”

As CEO of secure e-sign service CocoSign, Stephen Curry also found the value of having workers from different decades was a crucial lesson picked up from 2020 and 2021.

“You’re able to capitalize on their unique experiences in different decades and accurately gauge the sorts of issues they’ll help you overcome in whatever decade you’re trying to make your mark,” Stephen says.

It all comes down to experience.

“Say, for example, an eighties employee helps you run a successful business in the nineties. That’s good. But if a fifties employee helps you run a successful business in 2022, that’s even better, because fifties employees have been through all this once before, so they’ll help you steer away from the mistakes of the past and point out things that worked best for them during the first time around.”

Paul Sherman is CMO at auto warranty service Olive, which employs more than 50 people in Chicago. He learned the value of age diversity the hard way.

“Many of my team members retired early in 2020 and 2021. While many companies tend to be ageist and prefer younger employees, I lost a wealth of experience and wisdom through the retirement of these workers.”

10. Don’t be a manager – be a leader

SMBs also took a long hard look at employee management styles, again as a result of developments during the pandemic.

Eden at PeopleFinderFree suggests breaking down the traditional structure of top-down leadership, saying it’s part of “preparing for a long-term eventuality”.

“From a leadership standpoint, it will be best to just get rid of hierarchical structures and instead, focus on implementing multidisciplinary and autonomous teams that are able to operate without micromanagement. In other words, place more of an emphasis on shifting your current management responsibilities and distributing them throughout the organization.”

Gabriel wishes he and his team had taken on a more collaborative approach to work.

“The pandemic has meant having to make constant decisions without really being able to predict the outcome. Having a collaborative and supportive team not only makes for a fantastic workplace culture, but makes those difficult decisions much easier.” Gabriel says. “Remember, there is a way for employees to have autonomy over their work, while still working closely and collaborating with others.”

And the irony is that Gabriel sees this as a top-down initiative.

”I would tell myself that as a leader, it is up to me to set the precedent. A collaborative workplace needs to be fostered.”

”I would tell myself that as a leader, it is up to me to set the precedent. A collaborative workplace needs to be fostered.”

And empathy has huge, huge value

Meanwhile, one of the biggest lessons from 2020 for Sally of FastPeopleSearch.io was the need for empathetic leadership in the workplace – it’s something that can’t be overlooked.

”Quite often, business leaders get lost in the hustle and forfeit the personal connection between them and the employees. This plays a huge role in lowering team morale and decreasing productivity within the workplace.”

Being empathetic also makes her a better manager and enables her to bring more out of her workers.

“Practicing empathetic leadership over the past year has taught me valuable lessons in soft-skill management, and how employee morale plays a crucial role in creating a vibrant culture within the workplace.”

11. Change in hiring strategy

One of the big developments of 2021 is, of course, the Great Resignation. Quit rates are through the roof – and companies have had to adapt quickly to the sudden onslaught of vacancies and need for backfills.

This meant an update in hiring strategy for many businesses, including CEO Dragos Badea of Yarooms, a hybrid work management software.

Dragos’ plan? “Hire for all positions as early as possible, as we’re going to be experiencing a bit of a shortage of qualified personnel!”

The reason being, as the adage goes, ‘done is better than perfect.’

“Even if you hire a specialist that might be working at 50% capacity initially,” says Dragos, “just having more hands on deck when opportunity comes knocking is incredibly valuable.”

Christiaan Huynen’s hiring approach as the CEO of DesignBro is similar.

“Hiring a perfect candidate is like finding a needle in a haystack. Oftentimes, the closest thing that you can find to a needle is a bobby pin and you just have to go with it. Try to keep the candidate pool small and set a technical interview as a prerequisite to avoid unnecessary traffic.”

But there’s a danger in quick backfill for stopgap purposes, as Dave at Waterzen learned.

“One of the biggest challenges we’re going to be facing in 2022 is getting rid of pandemic hires,” says Dave. “The labor supply shortage caused us to hire people who weren’t the best for the job. We were in need of employees and hired those that just fit the bill. In 2022, when the shortage will finally end, we’ll have to let go of staff who cannot meet expectations and rehire for those roles.”

Add new channels to the pipeline

One potential solution is internal mobility, according to Ian at RebateKey.

“We’ve scaled so much as a company this year and required new roles to be filled. However, instead of hiring an outsider, we opted to look for potential applicants from stellar members from our current team, who have at least some working knowledge, interest, and bandwidth to take on new roles.”

Ian, incidentally, also turned to less traditional methods of finding talent when looking outside of his organization.

“Instead of the known job boards, we’ve ventured into using Slack and Discord groups, and more importantly FB niched groups. These places are teeming with potential. Many applicants do not want to use regular job boards because they lowball employees, not to mention having very high competition.”

Jared also turned to these channels as a solution.

“Our single biggest accomplishment was recruiting new employees using social media as one of our primary recruitment channels. We’ve heard about social media recruiting as a strategy, but we were skeptical if it would work. Using multiple channels on a trial and error basis has been the quickest way to employ a diverse pool of talent.”

And Paul at Olive went directly to the source of new talent.

“Our biggest achievement was to partner with the marketing department of a local university. This partnership creates a pipeline of talent from the university by creating internships and permanent positions for graduating students with marketing degrees. This way, we’re less vulnerable to the labor market shocks like those we see with the Great Resignation.”

A deluge of talent

Dan Barba, who provides writing and editing services at DanBarba.com, had the opposite problem – that of too many candidates.

“When I posted job openings throughout 2021, it wasn’t uncommon for me to receive multiple hundreds of applications from people looking for freelance work. With so many applications to sift through, these hiring rounds would take up a lot of my time and pull me away from revenue generating activities,” he says.

And he had a solution: giving candidates the opportunity to screen themselves in or out.

“Through the lens of hiring and human resources, my biggest accomplishment was finding a way to make these applicants ‘pre-qualify’; in other words, making sure that only the top 1% of the talent pool apply.”

To do this, Dan rewrote the job copy he was using.

“My first version was too vague in terms of expectations and day-to-day responsibilities, so I focused on going into greater detail and getting clear on the skills and experience that candidates must have before applying. I didn’t list desirables, just must-haves and deal breakers.”

“My first version was too vague in terms of expectations and day-to-day responsibilities, so I focused on going into greater detail and getting clear on the skills and experience that candidates must have before applying. I didn’t list desirables, just must-haves and deal breakers.”

And it made a difference.

“By giving applicants this kind of context, they were better equipped to evaluate their own ability against the standards that I laid out. As a result, the quality of my hires shot up in Q4, as did their rate of output and productivity.”

Glen Bhimani owns and operates BPS Security, a security firm in San Antonio, Texas. He also pointed to the importance of a well-crafted job ad.

“I have found that thinking through the kind of person we want to hire and crafting job postings that appeal to that kind of person is extremely effective in cutting down the time we have to spend searching for guards,” says Glen, whose firm employs just under 30 employees.

“Different people respond well to different kinds of English [and other languages], so designing a job posting inside the communication style of our ideal employee helps raise the success rate of job postings.”

The digitization of hiring

One huge aspect of recruitment is the incorporation of tech into the process, says Michael.

“Technology played a significant role in helping us efficiently screen candidates and onboard new members without being physically present. It was another milestone to now permanently integrate advanced tech into our hiring process in place of our traditional recruitment practices.”

Jeff at Simple Homebuyers pointed to changes in his recruitment process as his single biggest achievement of 2021.

“Many companies take years to change how they recruit talent, but we were forced to do it overnight. Budget constraints made it hard for us to retain current employees, so we opted to recruit talent worldwide, proving to be significantly cheaper.”

And yes, tech supported this.

“[That] included virtual interviews, global recruitment, and asynchronous working hours. This proved to be vital as we had access to talent worldwide.”

Technology also benefited Logan at Motivosity, who found an innovative solution in identifying the potential of a candidate for a job.

“A hiring hack that’s been helpful for us is: Asking candidates to record an introductory video in lieu of a cover letter. This helps us see a candidate’s personality, and it allows them to share more about themselves than they’d be able to just by writing a cover letter. It also helps us weed out candidates who haven’t fully read the job application.”

You know what to do going into 2022

There you have it. Myriad challenges of 2020 and 2021 being overcome with innovative solutions and strategies – that’s the spirit of entrepreneurship.

And it’s always good to have a well-thought-out strategy going into 2022, but leaving room for quick pivots in that strategy as needed, because who knows what might happen.

Want to share your own story of what you’ve learned over the last couple of years and what you think will happen in 2022? We want to hear it – and share it with our millions of readers. Submit your pitch and you may see your name – and your company’s – in lights!

The post Employers’ top wins and lessons of 2021 – and what they’re planning for 2022 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Most helpful when building a case for a hiring solution

This one’s easy. You want to get the smoothest, baddest applicant tracking software in the land, but your boss is too embroiled in their own processes to take notice. You know what makes them sit up and take notice? If you present them the value of an ATS in their own language – which usually is in monetary terms.

So, our piece on how to calculate the ROI of an ATS comes in hugely helpful here. Pull out the old calculator, get a pen and paper, and start crunching those numbers!

Read now: How to calculate the ROI of an ATS

2. The most informative for driving DEI where it matters

Awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion shot into the stratosphere in mid-2020 and it’s still top of mind for many employers worldwide. But we have two major messages when it comes to DEI: first, there’s a difference between D, E, and I, and second, you don’t “win” at diversity just because you’ve managed to achieve it throughout your company.

Rather, you need to attain diversity in leadership. There’s a glaring imbalance in diversity numbers in leadership when compared with overall diversity, and that needs to be improved on if real progress is to be made. And if you’re not getting buy-in from your leaders, you can convince them that it makes good business sense to do so. This infographic gives you everything on all of the above, and more.

Check out our infographic: Diversity in leadership: Why it matters and what you can do

3. The most audacious piece of content

We’ve been talking (and writing, and video-ing) about the future of work for a long time now. We’ve discussed remote work, flexible schedules, gender parity, salaries, global talent markets, candidate discontentment, talent shortages, and a lot more.
‘
But one topic really tickled our fancy (and yours, too, if you’re accustomed to a standard Monday-Friday work week) – the four-day work week. The Chief Growth Officer at Service Direct shared their first-hand account of how the company tried an alternating four-day work week as an experiment, and found it hugely successful.

Read now: Implementing an alternating four-day workweek: how & why

4. The most comprehensive (and timely) study

This one is a no-brainer to us. Out of all the blog posts, infographics, videos, etc. that we’ve produced throughout 2021, two 6,000-word survey reports published in September really stand out. They’re the result of two in-depth surveys to better understand what matters to workers in a job – one for the United States and one for the United Kingdom.

If you’re an employer looking to understand what candidates really want so you can attract more of them to your company, grab a cup of coffee (or beer – we won’t tell anyone), and have a read.

Read the US report: The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (US)

Read the UK report: The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (UK)

5. The best for geeking out on hiring data

We know that hiring benchmarks are important to our audience, especially in these wacky times where nothing feels normal anymore. So we developed a new way to look at hiring trends because month-over-month and especially year-over-year data doesn’t make sense anymore considering the volatility of the labor market.

The result of that new methodology is the Hiring Pulse, which was launched in September. It’s a monthly series of data-packed insights so you can see where hiring is going, be it based on industry, function, location, or overall.

Read the latest: The Hiring Pulse

6. The most insightful and commandeering

A big contributor to our content in 2021 is the Evil HR Lady, Suzanne Lucas. A veteran in the HR space who now can speak from direct experience, her sharp to-the-point tone is popular with our audience.

One message we want to drive home is that in this rapidly evolving talent marketplace, the onus is on employers to adapt to this new environment if they want to attract candidates. Suzanne drove that point home with her piece on how the rules of talent engagement are changing.

Read now: The rules of talent engagement are changing: What’s new now?

7. The most inspirational content of the year

The Evil HR Lady isn’t the only contributor we saw in our content in 2021. In February, world-renowned talent management expert Josh Bersin joined us for what turned out to be the most-attended virtual event we’ve hosted all year.

The webinar, titled Step Into the Future with Josh Bersin, led off with one of our favorite descriptions of the tumultuous work world: “We’re entering an effervescent time.” It’s a refreshingly optimistic delivery on all the things that HR can look forward to, and left many in our audience smiling during these tough times.

Check out the webinar:

Check out the podcast:

And if you don’t have the the time, we’ve compiled the top 10 takeaways into a blog post for you.

Read more: Josh Bersin’s recruiting and HR trends for the future

8. Most popular Tutorial

A list like this can’t simply be left to our judgement of what we think is our best and most helpful hiring resource because, well, our judgement alone can’t always be trusted (we’re human, after all). We also need to look at the raw numbers too – for instance, the title of most-read tutorial of the year goes to (drum roll): the top HR interview questions!

It is what it says: the top 10 interview questions asked in the HR interview – which would mostly be at the screening stage of the hiring process. It’s a very nuts-and-bolts piece which delivers – which is probably why it’s number one in terms of popularity for the year.

Read now: HR interview questions: The top 10 questions asked in the HR interview

9. Most popular Stories & Insights

Our Better Hiring site also includes thought leadership and insights in the hiring world. Which means it would make sense to share the top hiring resource from our Stories & Insights section as well. Again, it’s something that’s very top of mind for recruiters in our audience: the most common recruiting challenges and what you can do to overcome them.

What’s great about this piece is how cut-and-dried it is. It lays out very neatly the top challenges that recruiters are dealing with (especially right now), and shares actionable solutions which can be valuable for an overworked, tired audience that’s just looking to get the job done so they can sleep at night.

Read now: The most common recruiting challenges and how to overcome them

10. Most popular video(s)

We noted above that the Josh Bersin webinar was the most impactful in terms of attendance – but what was the most popular video hiring resource of the year? Well, we’re going to cheat and share two, because they’re so different in terms of tone and purpose and both deserve their moment in the spotlight.

First, our customer case study featuring Cytora, an insurance startup in London, and their story of how they accelerated hiring from 20 to 60 employees in just 2.5 years:

And second, an expert-led video tutorial on how to build up your DEI initiative, from someone who does it as a full-time job:

Both videos saw immense reach throughout 2021 and continue to be popular today.

What’s your top hiring resource of 2021?

A list like this would be remiss if we didn’t ask our audience directly: what do you think is the top hiring resource we’ve created all year? We want to know. Send us an email to content@workable.com with “Hiring resources” in the subject heading, and tell us why you liked it so much and what else you’d like to see from us going into 2022.

And without further ado, wishing you the best for 2022!

The post Top 10 hiring resources to help you hire in 2022 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The real question is, if you want to attract top talent with high potential, should salaries be included in the job description?

As an embedded recruitment firm, the ACELR8 team works with a wide range of clients from a variety of industries. Despite this variety, there are many common themes that play a big part in creating a solid hiring strategy. One of the most well-worn paths is the discussion on salaries.

Should salaries be mentioned in job descriptions? Should it come up only in the interview stage?

Or, should they be not mentioned at all until the job offer stage?

It’s a hot-button topic right now and you’re looking for answers. To learn more, ACELR8 polled its talented team of recruiters to find those answers for you:

A third of our recruiters maintain that salaries should be shared only later in the hiring process, while twice as many believed the opposite.

To learn more, ACELR8’s Head of Marketing, Milda Skladaityte, posted the same question on LinkedIn. Here, things were a little different.

Out of 582 votes, an overwhelming majority of 91% wanted to see the salary in the job description.

This is an interesting finding, because it shows that there are completely opposing views on the market. At first, this may seem off the mark, but when you look at the reasons why, the issue becomes a lot clearer.

So, we spoke with Sara Bent, the recruitment lead at Hotjar, to learn more about Hotjar’s opinion on disclosing salaries.

“When I first started with Hotjar, I set us up with a Glassdoor account. The interview reviews that came through on it quickly highlighted one main area causing a negative candidate experience,” Sara explained.

“With candidates who we wanted to move forward with beyond the initial application stage, we’d email them to ask about their minimum compensation expectations. Our intention with this was to be sure that we would only move forward with candidates who fit within our compensation banding; we wouldn’t want to waste a candidate’s time if we knew we couldn’t match their expectations.

The Glassdoor reviews, though, made it clear that a lot of candidates felt we were doing this to ‘lowball’ them – plus these extra emails could add days to a candidate’s recruitment journey.”

That conclusion motivated Sara to be more open about salaries in job ads. And the response was quick and favorable.

“So, based on candidate feedback and guided by our own core value of building trust with transparency, we made the decision to immediately start posting all compensation ranges onto job descriptions. If we use the Glassdoor reviews as a measure of success, this change did seem to immediately make a positive difference to our candidates’ experience.”

Salaries are a tough topic to negotiate and discuss, and it’s often easy to scare away or disincline candidates. What Sara found, though, was that asking for feedback and adjusting processes to suit the candidate’s expectations was a quick, insightful, and easy step to take.

To learn more about people’s reasonings behind salaries and job descriptions, we asked our recruiters more questions. Let’s start with why many recruiters believe salaries should be disclosed in job descriptions.

Salaries in job ads: the argument for

Another recruiter made it clear – it’s about being transparent.

“I believe that transparency in hiring is the most important value. I believe that if we are hiding the salary, we know we pay less than we should or we are not transparent internally. Also, it may be that people in the company earn less than we are now offering to the new candidates.”

Transparency is a vital aspect of a well-run business. If everyone is on the same page and respects each other, the culture of the company will undoubtedly improve.

By disclosing the salary at the very beginning of the process, you start off on the right track – by creating trust. As said above, this not only allows the potential hire to understand their financial position, it can also give current employees an insight into the salary structure of the company.

This, in turn, mitigates any risk for attrition.

Moving with the times

Another important factor to take into consideration is that approaches and attitudes to disclosing salaries have changed considerably in recent years.

Another recruiter, Jonathan, explains:

“It’s something of an archaic taboo in my view,” Jonathan says. “Pay is often tied in with feelings of self-worth, so to openly discuss it manifests as either an ego boost or feeling undervalued.”

Candidates are also at a major disadvantage when it comes to salary disclosure, he adds.

“What has happened is people no longer have any real grasp of salary banding from industry to industry or role to role. The only people who know what the correct salary expectations broadly are, are recruiters. People generally have no idea whether they are under or overpaid…who can they compare to?”

And opening up that discussion from the get-go can make significant positive differences – not just for the individual candidate but overall benefits as well.

“If salaries, stock options, etc. were openly disclosed, people would then have a critical piece of intelligence required to make important career decisions. We would all be able to clearly see what is happening in the marketplace. It would also oust any disparities on account of gender, age, race or religion.”

These are some excellent points that lead to a much larger issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion. By creating a more transparent salary structure, everyone, including outside candidates, gets a better understanding of their financial self-worth.

In all, disclosing salary expectations allows for a level playing field and a transparent hiring process that ensures that time is not wasted and equal opportunities, both internally and externally, can be achieved.

Let’s look at the counter-argument. While disclosing salary does save time at the outset, but there are many eye-opening implications from our recruiters.

Salaries in job ads: the argument against

“I think companies have much more than a salary to offer … a remote-work policy, stock option, different benefits,” says another recruiter in the network. “It’s a complicated topic because I also see a potential benefit in having the salary on the job description.”

The modern company has to offer more than just a good salary. Remote-first working, equity options, and a whole host of other benefits can be just as important to potential hires.

For example, an early-stage startup will often not be able to compete with an established company for talent due to its lack of resources. However, incentives such as equity, bonuses, and remote work can level the playing field. Disclosing the salary may skew the candidate’s impression of the full value of the position.

Another recruiter shared three reasons why disclosing the salary may be problematic:

1. The salary can put people off of applying if it is too low or below current salaries. Then, the company also gets a reputation in the market for underpaying.
2. It can encourage juniors or unqualified people to apply to more senior roles if they are attracted just by salary and the bands are too high.
3. It can run into situations at the end of a process if you offer 80k but the candidate sees the band pays up to 90k.

Overall, disclosing the salary puts the ball in the court of the candidate. It can lead to a glut of unsuitable candidates applying for the role, can affect the reputation of the company, and can also make closing the deal significantly more difficult.

Competitive issues

Another issue that may arise is that competing companies will see your offered salary and now know the benchmark for out-offering you.

Yet, while disclosing all your cards early in the game certainly gives the other players an advantage, it also avoids spending time on candidates who are unsuitable for the role.

There is also the issue of under-offering. If a company discloses their salary offer in the job description and it is much lower than the expected amount desired by the client, they won’t bother applying for the job.

In all of these situations, it’s important to remember to take things on a case-by-case basis. Every employer is different, and one rule does not apply to all. Take the time to understand what your company really needs, and approach the salary dilemma from there.

The issue of salary trends

The other aspect of the salary issue comes into what we’ve discussed previously: salary trends are changing fast.

2020 and 2021 have been two of the most paradigm-shifting years in hiring trends, communication methods, and work environments. A large population of the world had to change their work habits, and so they have become used to a certain style of employment.

Now, many people are leaving old jobs which do not adhere to their desired lifestyle, creating a boom in candidates and employers vying for position. This has led to a wide series of changes, including in the world of salaries and salary estimates. Again, we asked recruiters what they thought.

To the future: salary trends in 2022

“Aside from a competitive salary, companies need to offer competitive benefits to stay ahead,” says one recruiter. “These can include remote work, hybrid, flexi-work, company equity, family days/additional sick days, mental health days, remote office set-up allowance, learning and development budget and room for career growth.”

As above, salary is not the one carrot which you can use to lure a great candidate into your company. After COVID, people have higher expectations for work-life balance and the availability of remote work – this is documented along with the importance of compensation in the Great Discontent study released in September 2021.

By creating a progressive offering and work environment, you can attract exceptional talent that is looking for those freedoms and benefits.

Another issue in regards to the shift of work to remote is the issue of salaries. Hiring has gone global – EU-based candidates that would recently have had no chance of getting a role with a German company, for instance, can now count on being considered.

One recruiter explains:

“A thing I have noticed is that as remote work soars, candidates who are working remotely for San Francisco/Silicon Valley start-ups are getting paid San Francisco salaries and they then will expect this level of compensation in Europe.”

Now, when you’re hiring, you have the entire globe as a talent pool. This issue is only going to become more widespread as time goes on. The world is more interconnected than ever before, and it is up to you to learn how to adjust your hiring strategy to counteract this.

Learn more about the global talent market in our podcast or read about it here.

Choose wisely

In the end, the choice of whether to disclose the salary or not is up to you and your hiring team. But, hopefully, this article has helped to shed some light on the pros and cons of each situation.

A high salary posting can certainly attract excellent candidates, but it’s important to ensure you can foot the bill when it comes to the offer stage. Additionally, the only way of maintaining this appraisal is to create a transparent salary structure throughout your company. This avoids issues of unfair pay, employee morale problems, and general miscommunication.

When it comes to keeping your cards close and not mentioning the salary, make sure that you are supplementing that with another attractor important to candidates. Excellent candidates will only respond to well-thought-out and attractive job descriptions. Promote your company values and ambitions to entice top talent into the application process before they even think of the salary.

Again, in the modern world of recruitment, salary is not everything; other benefits can become even more important to candidates – especially issues such as remote working or flexible hours.

Take the time to really understand the job position – who is the ideal candidate? Will they respond better to a high salary or company equity? Are there other benefits which haven’t been considered yet?

The world of recruitment is dynamically changing, and it’s important for each company to take a deep, introspective look at how they want to hire. Jobs descriptions need to be more than just salary postings now. Although, statistically, it may seem as though the public wants to make sure salaries stay present.

Above all: stay transparent, don’t overpromise, and remember to keep an open mind.

Lewis Mc Cahill is the Content Marketing Manager for ACELR8. With over half a decade of experience, he has worked with a range of major brands and upcoming startups alike. With ACELR8, he is helping push the Embedded Recruitment Model forward with the help of the rest of the marketing team.

The post Should you include salary in a job description? Let’s talk! appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Jobs in retail and healthcare are most at risk for high turnover due to the high demands and stress of working throughout the pandemic that caused irrevocable damage to employee loyalty. The tech industry also saw high turnover rates due to burnout, but they also had more competitive remote work options to turn to.

While it is typical for younger employees to have a higher rate of job turnover, that has recently shifted to employees aged 30-45 years old with an increase in resignations in this group by over 20% between 2020 and 2021. The US Great Discontent survey report also finds that employees in this group are more likely to be passively open to new opportunities than other age groups.

Younger employees are less mobile due to lack of job security while Boomers and Gen Xers are more content with their current employment.

Employers should perform their own self-audit to determine what is causing employees to resign if it does not fall under these more obvious categories.

Certain benefits such as working from home have become a premium in the job market due to the pandemic. As the appeal of juggling two workspaces fades, hybrid jobs do not inspire as much employee loyalty as fully remote jobs – 58% versus 73% employee loyalty. Considering desirable benefits that will inspire loyalty will be necessary to avoid costly high-turnover rates.

The cost of high employee turnover

The cost to replace an employee in terms of marketing the position, paying recruiters, interviewing, relocation costs, signing bonuses, and training the replacement comes to about 33% of an employee’s annual salary according to a retention report by the Work Institute.

It will also take time before the new hire is productive – in other words, the time to ramp, as Workable CFO Craig DiForte describes it – and this factors in lost revenue. These hiring costs can add up when one in three hires leave a company in their first two years and is why it is most beneficial to emphasize best practices for employee retention.

An unfortunate hidden cost of high turnover is that the workload falls on the remaining employees who must pick up the slack until the new hire is up to speed. This can be damaging to staff morale which makes it important to add incentives for those loyal workers who remain before they become resentful.

How to improve employee loyalty and retention

For the employees who remain loyal it is important to recognize when they go above and beyond their job description, especially for those who are responsible for training new hires and picking up the slack. Workers who feel appreciated by their supervisors – and are well-compensated – are more likely to stay. This, again, is confirmed in the Great Discontent survey, with two-thirds of US workers saying they need to make more money as a reason why they’re looking elsewhere.

One proactive solution is to incorporate team-building exercises because keeping employees happy translates to higher productivity which is the ultimate goal. Employers will need to make time in their schedule to be accessible and communicate with their team either at work or at more relaxed employee excursions like going to a sporting event, playing mini-golf, or participating in an escape room experience.

There are other ways to make employees happy that do not cost anything. Some workers simply desire career mobility and transparency about how they can grow in their roles at work. Providing job training and a clear path to career advancement are important to keeping loyal employees – 47% of survey respondents reported that feeling stagnant in their roles was the main reason for looking for a new job that had more opportunities for growth and fulfilment.

Hiring and recruiting strategies

Hiring a new employee is an investment and it is important to establish honest job expectations from the start to guarantee that you do not end up wasting each other’s time – not to mention the money involved in training a new hire.

Employers should carefully craft their job description to reflect their company values and should not shy away from explaining the job role in detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Ip3mLOjOs&ab_channel=Workable

Future interviews and training should reinforce these ideas so there is no confusion regarding expectations.

It can also be helpful to advertise the fun company culture in job advertisements since workers who are leaving due to burnout may be seeking a better work environment.

It is not enough just to be fun right now because the pandemic is still a serious issue affecting job searches. Offering healthcare benefits is more important to employees than ever due to the pandemic and putting onerous restrictions on when benefits go into effect can deter applications.

Advertising initiatives for mental health resources can be a useful selling point as well and should not be overlooked. Social isolation from remote work is one of the downsides despite its popularity and proactively addressing it instead of ignoring the problem that so many are now facing can be a marketable feature for your employer brand.

Visibility is the key to future-proofing your business

The first step to creating a targeted retention program is to establish greater visibility into the root causes of turnover. This may also involve having uncomfortable conversations with employees that have chosen to resign by performing exit interviews. Ultimately, this data will empower your business to attract leading industry talent, retain loyal employees, and reduce turnover costs.

The post How do you overcome the Big Quit as an employer? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As industrial/organizational psychologists with years of experience in the military and in corporate hiring and co-editors of the recent book, Military Veteran Employment: A Guide to the Data-Driven Leader, we are here to offer new ideas and suggestions to take your veteran hiring and recruiting to the next level.

First, some good news: research shows that many companies talk about hiring veterans. However, not many companies are putting their words into action when it comes to a research-informed approach to hiring veterans. Even fewer companies are executing programs targeted at veterans – the smaller the company, the less that they are doing.

For example, in a survey of employers by the Edelman global communications firm, only 23% of employers said that they saw veterans as strategic assets for their companies and only a little more than two out of five (43%) said that they are receiving enough veteran applications.

Here are some suggestions to improve your veteran hiring efforts, whether you are just getting started or already have a robust dedicated effort in place.

1. Update your job descriptions
2. Look at vets’ transferable skills
3. Track your hiring pipeline data
4. Learn about the military’s culture, values, and language
5. Capitalize on veterans’ networks
6. Utilize your customer support team
7. Don’t overlook military spouses
8. Focus on retention as well

1. Update your job descriptions

Focus on experiences and competences and avoid listing years in a position or certificates or diplomas as requirements or qualifications for the role. Many veterans may lack academic degrees or formal certificates but have nevertheless gained the relevant experience and skills that you need.

For instance, ask yourself why your job descriptions dictate a master’s degree or six years of experience? Are these critical to the position or do they merely serve as a signal of what you want to see in candidates?

Take the time to re-think who can do the job and break the job down into the absolutely required critical constituent knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies, and then list these in your ads.

Not only will this help with your veteran hiring efforts, but it will benefit your hiring members of other populations that may not have the formal education but do have the right skills.

2. Look at vets’ transferable skills

About half of military members want to leave their military occupation and do something different in the civilian world. The RAND Corporation has conducted extensive research on the transferability of military skills and new ways to connect military occupations with civilian ones.

RAND’s work highlights that employers should not assume that an infantryman is only qualified to be a cop because the prior service member carried guns. Many infantrymen have become successful computer technicians, salespeople, managers, and even comedy writers.

Learn to see past an applicant’s military occupation to their skills and experiences and learn how your company can utilize these in different occupations.

3. Track your hiring pipeline data

Monitor your candidates at every stage to identify where you lose or gain veterans throughout your talent pipeline. Look at the demographic make-up (including veteran status) at each stage of hiring to see if there is a fall-off at a certain stage.

For instance, do you get enough veterans applying? Are your recruiters sourcing veterans? Do you have a sufficient percentage at each step but then their percentage decreases because of the interview?

Find out what your numbers look like so that you can address the area where the shortfall begins.

4. Learn about the military’s culture, values, and language

If you understand the culture, values, and language of the military – and share that knowledge with your business leaders and hiring managers – you’ll more effectively engage your military veterans. Research from the Center for a New American Security shows companies that make the effort to understand and honor the military culture and military family experiences do a better job of recruiting and retaining their veteran employees.

Make sure your recruiters who work with veterans understand the military – and if you have veterans in your company, see if they want to serve as recruiters, brand champions, or want to advise your company on its efforts.

5. Capitalize on veterans’ networks

Word of mouth will be your most effective tool for recruiting and retaining veterans. Veterans have learned to trust comments from other veterans and military members.

A pro-veteran web page or brochure – with flags and pictures of soldiers – will mean nothing to a veteran if they have heard negative comments about your company from current veteran employees. Make sure you deal honestly with veterans, respect the military and its culture, take care of military families, and utilize their skills well.

Also, encourage your current veteran employees to share their experiences with other veterans who might be interested in working for your company. For example, JPMorgan Chase & Co. created a series of videos where existing employees explain how they use their military skills in their jobs. Here’s one of those videos.

https://youtu.be/FEEH9nM65uA

6. Utilize your customer support team

Your reputation as a company can influence your brand as an employer. Create a military-focused customer support team (made up of veterans or military spouses) and train other agents to recognize nuanced military terms and offer extensions on payment or other special treatment for military family customers.

If a military spouse mentions that they may have difficulty paying a bill because of a PCS (in military terms, a permanent change of station or relocation) or because the spouse has been deployed overseas, have the call transferred to your military team. These agents will be able to speak to them in the right ‘language’ with proper contextual understanding and offer extensions or other special handling.

When the military member starts looking for employment, the spouse that received payment extensions or other special handling will have a positive feeling about the company and will recommend them as a good place to work.

Building a positive brand and employee value proposition is important for all companies and even more important when working within the military and veteran communities.

7. Don’t overlook military spouses

Veterans will understand that companies that take care of military families will be good places to consider for their own employment. We also suggest being inclusive of spouses of currently serving members of the military and veterans – often termed “military spouses”.

Military spouses are a well-educated and often under-utilized talent population that frequently relies on tight military community networks to find employment and support due to the demands of a military lifestyle.

Make an effort to hire and retain military spouses by understanding that the gaps in their resumes may be caused by frequent moves for their spouse’s career and that their experience may not be reflected in a traditional resume or standard metrics. And, to help spouses who move frequently with their families, offer remote or distributed work options where possible.

8. Focus on retention as well

Many companies have learned how to hire veterans, but few can successfully retain veterans in their companies. Data from LinkedIn demonstrates that while veterans may have higher turnover than non-veterans during their first year of employment, the rate drops to less than that of non-veterans once they stay for more than a year. In fact, overall, they stay 8.3% longer in their initial place of employment than non-veterans do.

Here are some suggestions to improve retention:

Provide a sense of purpose or mission.

Many veterans self-select into the military because they want to serve something greater than themselves. The need to support a mission doesn’t end when they take the uniform off.

Provide your veteran employees with a new mission or purpose and fulfill this innate need for them. Communicate your company’s mission to your employees so each employee can see their direct “line of sight” to fulfilling that mission. Leadership should not only communicate this vision but help each employee see how they personally drive it as leaders.

Understand that veterans have finely honed “BS” detectors

Be open and transparent with your veteran employees. Don’t try to couch the truth or avoid difficult conversations – especially since veterans are skillful at identifying lack of transparency after their time in the military and will be carrying that over into the civilian world.

Being accustomed to a strong culture of leadership and development, veterans are used to direct feedback, to hearing bad news directly, and adapting quickly to fix the situation.

Provide frequent and regular feedback

Military members do not wait around for an annual performance review. Service members are used to having formal “After Action Reviews” after every operation and informal check-ins or “azimuth checks” regularly. Take care with your veteran employees to provide informal feedback regularly.

A rich well of talent

Veterans are a vastly undertapped resource in our society – and a rich well of skill to fill those important roles in your organization. These ideas will help you ensure your veteran hiring and retention programs will be highly successful. Good luck!

Kristin N. Saboe, Ph.D. is an Army veteran, nationally recognized leader, award-winning psychologist, public speaker, and strategist. While an officer and Research Psychologist in the Army, she deployed to Afghanistan and served as a staff officer at the Pentagon. Her writing, research, and community involvement focuses on veteran and military spouse employment, human performance optimization, leadership, and well-being in both military and civilian settings.

Nathan D. Ainspan, Ph.D., has researched, written, and spoken extensively about military-civilian transitions and veterans’ civilian employment. He is currently the Senior Research Psychologist with the Military-Civilian Transition Office (MCTO) at the Department of Defense. His work focuses on improving civilian employment opportunities for returning service members and the psychosocial benefits that employment provides to wounded warriors and injured veterans.

More reading: How to hire veterans

The post 8 new techniques to hire and retain military veterans appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The employer posts the job, you apply, beg for a job, and then, if lucky, the employer will offer you the job. If you’re brave, you can negotiate the salary up a bit, but it’s pretty much a take-it-or-leave-it situation.

Job interviews were like dog-and-pony shows where candidates tried to impress judges, and the judges didn’t feel obligated to try to impress the candidate.

During this time, you saw a lot of ghosting – on the employer’s part. Come in for two, three, five interviews… and then silence. And that was just how it was. It was wrong then, but everyone knew to expect it.

The booming economy in the pre-pandemic days and then the pandemic itself turned all these rules on their heads. Here is how it is now.

The new rules of talent engagement

If you are hiring or looking for a job, you need to know how to play the game. Here are the new rules.

1. Job descriptions are marketing documents
2. Salary comes first
3. Candidates are interviewing you
4. Lack of flexibility makes it harder to hire
5. Everyone is ghosting
6. Candidates won’t play the long interview game

1. Job descriptions are marketing documents

The labor shortage means companies compete for the best candidate. Your job descriptions need to be well written and focus on the critical aspects of the job. Just as recruiters can reject an applicant in seven seconds or less, job candidates can breeze through job postings.

Make sure your job postings:

• Use good formatting to draw eyes to key points
• Stay away from jargon (fast-paced, exciting environment is a red flag to today’s candidates)
• List the top responsibilities only. Long lists get you rejected as nit-picky.

Related: Why Maslow thinks your job ads suck

2. Salary comes first

Several states banned recruiters and hiring managers from asking about previous salaries, which means you can’t get an advantage by asking for a current and past paycheck size.

But that doesn’t mean money is taboo – in fact, candidates want to know the salary budget for the job. Colorado even requires companies to post their salary and benefit information in the job posting.

Candidates don’t like wasting their time interviewing or even applying for jobs where the salary is unknown. Plus, salary is still king when it comes to job decisions, according to September’s Great Discontent survey.

Putting a salary in your job description, or discuss it on the initial phone screen, and you’ll get a lot further. Some candidates will refuse to go on without this knowledge.

3. Candidates are interviewing you

It’s no longer a beauty pageant but a date. The candidate wants to know about your business, management style, and benefits. Candidates expect to have conversations rather than have you interrogate them.

This is a benefit to all parties – after all, you want to hire someone who wants to be into the job, not just a warm bod.

And keep in mind, candidates feel like they have more options, so they will carefully consider your answers as much as you consider theirs.

4. Hiring now requires flexibility

Seventy-two percent of people prefer a hybrid situation, where they can come into the office sometimes and work from home occasionally. While there are plenty of jobs that must be done onsite (dentist, grocery store clerk, janitor, etc.), there are plenty of jobs that can offer options.

Not offering a work-from-home or hybrid option for most white-collar jobs will reduce the number of people interested in your position. People worked from home during the pandemic, liked it or hated it, and now want to control that aspect of their lives.

Including flexibility information in the job posting can help you attract candidates.

Related: One in three US workers value remote work – and three in five value flexible hours. Learn more in our Great Discontent survey report.

5. Everyone is ghosting

It used to be just recruiters and hiring managers that ghosted candidates; now, it’s candidates ghosting interviewers. While this is terrible manners regardless of who does it, you can hardly blame candidates who now feel they have the upper hand. Recruiters treated them poorly for years, and now it’s payback time.

However, the ghosting doesn’t end at the interview stage. Candidates can accept job offers and yet not show up on the first scheduled day or leave after a couple of weeks without saying a word. You may not feel secure in your new hire until several months have passed.

6. Candidates won’t play the long interview game

Many candidates are no longer willing to go through six rounds of interviews plus a presentation when pursuing a job. They will jump to a company that can decide after one or two rounds of interviews. Some companies are even doing on-the-spot job offers.

Adjusting to the new reality

Change is hard for everyone, but candidates jumped at the opportunity to have more power in the hiring relationship. You need to train your recruiters and hiring managers in this new reality.

Shorten your time to hire

It may be a struggle for a company that traditionally has long interview processes or hides salary information until the offer stage. Still, if you continue on this path, you risk losing out on the best (or any) candidates.

Stay on top of salary trends

You also need to keep an eye on market-rate salaries. Things change rapidly. You may think that the fast-food restaurant’s increasing pay doesn’t affect your business, but when unskilled labor jobs start increasing their pay, you’ll find people expect more money for more skilled jobs. No company operates in a vacuum. Salaries can change rapidly across the system.

Don’t hold out for the unicorn

You also cannot afford the perfect candidate to drop out of the applicant tracking system. The labor shortage is a real thing, and you may need to settle.

But, don’t worry – hiring someone who isn’t perfectly equipped to carry out the job means you have the opportunity to train the new employee according to your desires. In other words, you can create your own unicorn – you don’t need to find one.

It’s not a revolution – it’s an evolution

You don’t have to start completely over with your hiring processes. Many things remain the same – you’ll still screen resumes, interview candidates, and make job offers. You’ll just need to do it all a bit faster and a bit more openly.

Be upfront about salary and benefits and keep to a tight timeline. Otherwise, your competitors will race ahead of you in the war for talent.

The post The rules of talent engagement are changing: What’s new now? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We all wear rose-colored glasses at times, and when we’re looking for a new job we want to believe everything we’re hearing and seeing: opportunities for promotion, professional development, and work/life balance are often embellished in the recruitment cycle. And we eagerly accept this on face value – we want to believe we’re test-driving a Mercedes.

Read more on the importance of authentic recruitment marketing.

What’s wrong with corporate values?

Almost every company has a set of values that adorn its office walls. There’s much talk of the culture these values underpin, and their virtues are extolled in annual reports and investor briefings. There’s just one problem: it’s rare that these aspirational values actually align with the reality of the company’s culture.

Most often, corporate values are developed to describe the way an organization would like its employees to behave, not how they actually behave. They describe a desirable future state that we should aspire to, yet the leaders of the organization pay little attention to the values day-to-day, and certainly make no attempt to build the culture that they imply.

There’s nothing wrong with having a set of corporate values that describe a desired future state. But to implement a constructive culture that embodies that state, the company’s leaders would have to agree, communicate, and enforce a minimum acceptable standard of behavior and performance.

It’s common for leaders to lose sight of the values when the pressing issues of the day dominate their attention. But, unfortunately, it’s also common for them to speak about the company as if the values are representative of reality – they overstate the role that corporate values play in the running of the business.

Overselling the opportunity

When you’re hiring someone new, you want to showcase your organization in the best possible light, and it’s easy to oversell the opportunity to a prospective employee. You have to remember that your potential hires are quite vulnerable and impressionable during this process. They wouldn’t have applied for the job unless they wanted it, and they’re looking for positive validation: You want the job? Well we want you for the job!

You’ll often find plenty of evidence to support your claims of grandeur, because the board and the CEO create brand collateral to showcase the company in its best light. Many companies produce brochureware to extoll the virtues of their corporate values, the strategic plan, and the positive culture that the leadership has created (oh, and our people are our greatest asset, right!?)

But it doesn’t serve anyone’s interests to bring people into the organization, only for them to become disgruntled and disillusioned when the stark reality sets in.

The Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

As CEO of a major energy business Australia, competition for high quality people was sometimes fierce: but we weren’t in a sexy industry where the best and brightest young graduates lined up each day to fight their way through the crowd and hand us their résumés.

So we decided to take a more methodical approach, and put some serious effort into understanding how to sell the benefits of the organization, without overselling them. This became known as our employee value proposition (EVP).

We started with two key questions:

1. What’s the difference in perception between someone with little knowledge of the company, and someone who has worked here for some time?; and
2. How can we best convey that to prospective employees so that we showcase the organization’s benefits accurately, and enable them to make an informed decision about joining?

In this research, we took time to capture people’s perceptions at different stages of the recruitment process. We surveyed those who had just applied for the job to capture their impressions of the company based on the scant information in the public domain. We surveyed them again at the end of the interview process, whether they were offered the role or not. And for those who chose to join the company, we surveyed them again at various stages during their first six months.

From this, we managed to identify how people’s perceptions changed from the relative ignorance of a first-time applicant to the experience of a person who had ‘lived the dream’ for long enough to form a sensible opinion.

Once armed with this knowledge, we were able to develop our EVP. The main objective was to increase our chances of attracting the best candidates for any role, while at the same time avoiding costly hiring mistakes. But the EVP also became a reminder for everyone in the business about the positive aspects of working for the company, in a way that was both positive and authentic.

Developing an employee value proposition will allow you to accurately and honestly communicate your company’s values and culture to internal and external stakeholders alike.

Where should you start?

Not every company is able to invest the necessary time and effort into developing an EVP. But there are some simple steps you can take to ensure your company’s benefits are represented accurately to anyone who happens to ask.

Start by identifying the gaps. It’s important to understand and articulate the reality of the company culture, as opposed to the aspirational corporate values. People need to know where the company is now, where it’s heading, and what you’re doing to take it there.

Words are cheap, and if leaders don’t focus on driving change every day, the company becomes stagnant. So don’t fret about the gap in the corporate values – just take whatever steps you need to ensure that gap is being reduced every day, as you lead your team to a higher standard of behavior and performance.

Martin G. Moore is the founder of Your CEO Mentor and author of No Bullsh!t Leadership and host of the No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast. His purpose is to improve the quality of leaders globally through practical, real world leadership content. For more information, please visit www.martingmoore.com.

The post Do your corporate values reflect reality? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The Big Quit is upon us – and many workers are citing burnout as a factor in why they’re done with the current system. This means the onus is on employers to think about a healthier workplace – not just physically, but mentally as well – if they want to attract and retain employees.

In this episode, learn from a panel of experts on how top brands – including Hubspot, Ten Percent Happier, and Hologra – are fostering a mentally healthy workplace in order to win and retain top talent.

The post Podcast episode #14: Mental Health at work — fostering a healthier workplace culture appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Instead of firing them, help your employee remain a productive team member by following these seven tips.

1. Discuss outpatient treatment

Many people with addictions require inpatient treatment. That means they live at the treatment center, which makes it difficult to continue working.

However, people with milder addictions and strong support systems at home may qualify for outpatient treatment. In outpatient treatment, a person regularly attends a treatment center while living at home. They can then schedule their treatment sessions around their work schedule.

Encourage your employees to ask their doctors whether they qualify for outpatient treatment.

2. Set up an Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a work-based program that helps employees cope with addictions and other personal issues that affect their job performance. It provides free, confidential resources such as education, assessments, counseling, and referrals to support groups.

These services can help your employees navigate the challenges of working during treatment. They’re usually available via phone, e-mail, video chat, or online chat.

Most employers operate EAPs through third-party providers. To find a provider, search online EAP directories, such as this one. You can also ask fellow employers for referrals.

3. Provide accommodations

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers must provide reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, including addiction.

An accommodation is a change to a job or work environment that helps a person with a disability complete the job’s essential functions. Common accommodations for people with addictions include:

• more frequent breaks
• special break locations
• support animals
• weekly meetings to determine whether the accommodations are working

Accommodations can help your employees feel more calm and productive as they balance work with addiction treatment.

4. Offer a more flexible work schedule

When you provide a more flexible work schedule, employees won’t miss out on therapy appointments, support groups, or other important services that boost their overall well-being and productivity.

As a bonus, flexible work schedules decrease stress. Stress often causes a person with addiction to relapse (start using drugs again).

Before your employees start addiction treatment, ask if they’ll need any adjustments to their work schedules. Hold regular meetings to ensure their current schedule is effective for both your employee and the company.

5. Encourage self-care

As mentioned above, stress is a common cause of relapse. That’s why you should create a workplace that promotes self-care and relaxation.

For example, you could designate a quiet area of the office for meditation and mindfulness. The area may include features such as:

• dim lighting
• soothing artwork
• a comfortable couch
• yoga mats or prayer mats
• peaceful music

Employees with addictions can come to this area when faced with cravings or other stressful emotions.

To further reduce stress, remind employees to take full lunch breaks and avoid taking work home on weekends (unless they find the extra work helps keep their minds off drugs).

You can also encourage self-care by reminding employees to:

• get at least eight hours of sleep per night
• eat a well-balanced diet with plenty of vegetables, fruits, and other nutritious foods
• exercise regularly

6. Reduce stigma

Like other mental health conditions, drug addiction attracts a large amount of stigma. Other people in your office may judge an employee with addiction as lazy or weak. This type of judgment can cause stress, which increases the risk of relapse.

To help your employee stay calm and productive during treatment, create a stigma-free workplace. For instance, you could hold mandatory meetings that explain how addiction is a disease rather than a moral failing.

Also, tell your staff to avoid stigmatizing language like “addict” or “junkie.” They should instead use person-first, non-judgmental language such as “a person with addiction.”

7. Discuss medical leave

If your employee needs inpatient treatment, remind them that they can take medical leave.

If your company has at least 50 employees, you’re probably covered by the Family and Medical Leave ACT (FMLA). This Act provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for medical reasons, including addiction treatment.

To qualify for FMLA leave, your employee must have worked for your company for at least 12 months and at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months before taking leave.

If your company isn’t covered by FMLA, it might be covered by your state’s family and medical leave laws.

Aside from medical leave, your employees can also take time off for treatment using their Paid Time Off (PTO).

Once your employee completes treatment, facilitate a smooth transition back to work by encouraging frequent, open communication. Also, point your employee to resources such as the EAP when necessary.

Amy Matton is a content writer for Ark Behavioral Health. She strives to reduce the stigma surrounding addiction and other mental health conditions.

The post Employees with addiction: 7 tips to retain them during treatment appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And the Great Discontent survey carried out by Workable in June 2021 points to the disparity in current working situation between the genders, with those identifying as female far more likely to be not working (26% vs. 15.3%) or working part-time (17.7% vs. 8.6%) than males in the United States.

The World Economic Forum also reported similar data:

What does that say about how our workplaces are doing in supporting working mothers?

We’ll let TopResume’s report answer that:

“Women have had to navigate the stress and time-management challenges of taking on the role of teacher and child-care provider while attempting to work or find work during quarantine. All of these factors together have led to what economists are calling the world’s first ‘she-cession’ – a women-led economic downturn.”

To gain further insight, we sat down with TopResume’s career expert Amanda Augustine – herself a working mom – for a conversation about this. Clearly, employers need to up their game if they want to be part of changing things for the better.

The plight of the working mother

The mother of a five-year-old boy with special needs, Amanda’s own personal and professional load is further stressed by the fact that she has a husband who works long hours as an essential worker. And, she says, women feel they have to take all that on – more so than men.

“I think for the working mother in general, we’ve grown up hearing, ‘You can do anything’, and we’ve somehow translated that over time into ‘You should do everything,’” says Amanda. “And there’s a lot of extra responsibility and weight and stress we put on ourselves.”

And that commitment to a full-time workload also ate into Amanda’s daily schedule. Before the pandemic, she commuted into New York City for work three times a week, translating into three hours of commuting each day. This meant less time with her son all around.

“I only saw my son for two hours a day on the weekdays. I was gone well before he was awake. And I came home, picked him up from daycare and I got two hours before he had to be in bed.”

The sacrifice and the stigma

Work has long been an unmovable pillar around which we mold other parts of our lives. It’s created a situation where working mothers worry that if they make concessions in the workplace – such as arriving late or leaving early because they need to drop off or pick up their kids at school or the daycare, it impacts their career arc.

“[Those] suddenly become issues where they have to be navigated around fears that you’re not going to be put up for the promotion, or you’re not going to get the raise,” Amanda explains.

“And because whether, you know, whether [working mothers think] correctly or not, they’re going to assume that it’s either not feasible or that they’re concerned that other priorities will take over, which is just… it’s unfair.”

There’s also a proximity bias in the workplace that makes things even more difficult for working mothers forced to make amends in their schedule to accommodate demands on the home front.

“There’s this false assumption by managers that the people they see working in the office are more productive than the ones that they don’t see.”

It’s not COVID’s fault

These problems facing working mothers aren’t rooted in the pandemic. Rather, the pandemic simply exposed – and exacerbated – the problems that have long existed in the system.

“Many of us were already underwater before the pandemic and the pandemic was that last straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Amanda. “It pushed on all those little cracks and just made them that, that more obvious.”

That’s why working mothers are leaving the workforce in droves – if they can – because they’ve given up on the possibility of a much-needed balance between work and home life.

“Women aren’t going to just show up and sacrifice everything,” says Amanda, emphasizing that this is a situation faced by fathers as well.

“For some people, it’s a re-evaluation of their priorities. Many are assuming that they’re not going to find a job that’s going to allow them to still keep some of these things [remote work, etc.] that were actually the silver linings of the pandemic.”

That 69% statistic points to this new reality.

“What’s happening now is that people are [saying], ‘Do we really need that income? Can we get by without it? I’m going to hold out until there’s something that really makes sense and is a good fit. I’m not rushing back to the workplace, because I want to see what happens.’”

It’s a crisis, but it’s an opportunity

We’re already seeing a recruitment crisis – as indicated by the staggering numbers of job openings, higher than the number of unemployed, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This exodus of working mothers presents an added challenge for recruiters already facing depleted talent pools.

“[Many] recruiters I hear from and talk to are just saying, ‘We can’t fill these positions. We can’t get people in the door what’s going on here.’”

And it’s not that these are not good opportunities. These are “white collar, corporate, good paying jobs”, Amanda adds.

“A good portion of your normal labor force or, you know, is not looking right now. And so you’re missing out on a lot of that.”

But there’s good news. They’ll come back – if the conditions are right.

“Many of them would probably come back [if] they’d be able to still bring in that money or do what they love, but in a more balanced fashion where they don’t feel as though they’re slightly underperforming in every aspect of their lives.”

That’s where greater support of working mothers is needed in the workplace. Forcing your employees to find a balance between work and home actually hurts at both ends. Something always has to give.

“If you’re feeling really great as a mom, you feel like you’re probably not the star employee that day. And if you’re really rocking it at work, chances are, you’re not feeling like you’re getting a gold star from your kids that day.

“And you know, it’d be nice if that wasn’t necessarily the feeling all the time.”

The need for flexible schedules

So how do you build an environment that supports working mothers? Obviously not every company can do everything – but you can start by looking at the things you can do that don’t drastically impact your bottom line. The first objective is to build up your support system that you can offer to a potential employee. Have a strategy that enables mothers to thrive in every area – both at home and at work.

One way to do that is introduce greater flexibility in work – a lesson we all learned from the pandemic, as shown in our New World of Work survey report in August 2020 which found that 71.1% of respondents see remote work and distributed teams as one of the biggest paradigm shifts coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amanda agrees.

“More jobs are becoming location agnostic. This giant work-from-home experiment has been successful for a lot of organizations,” she explains.

“There are a lot of employees that I know of while they were still working, moved across the country, just decided they’re like, ‘You know what? I don’t want this cost of living. And if I can work anywhere, I’m going to do it.’ A lot of people are relocating.”

She points to her own company as an example.

“That’s why we’re not really going back to one central office. [It’s] because they saw it worked and they started hiring people all across the country.”

Another thing Amanda’s employer is doing right in supporting working mothers is leaving the responsibility of scheduling to employees.

“Are you getting your work done? Then we don’t care when you’re logging in and logging out. Are you there when you need to be for a meeting? Great. As long as you’re producing, no one cares.

“If you have to run out in the middle of the day to grab your kid or, you know, take them to the appointment or pick them up from daycare, as long as you’re getting your work done and you’re on when you need to be on for the very important meetings, nobody’s going to look twice and think there’s anything wrong.”

Employers can step up their game

And that’s a mindset which needs to be adopted by employers if they want to attract – and retain – workers. That’s especially when it comes to working mothers, who benefit more from this than other professionals.

“Working mothers [see this] more as a necessity or a requirement as opposed to an extra benefit.”

You can step up your policies supporting working mothers if you’re looking to attract them to your company, especially if you don’t have the luxury of moving to a permanently remote or flexible working system.

Amanda suggests looking at your maternity leave policy, and looking at other ways you can help ease the demand that a working parent faces.

“Are you providing either stipends for daycare or are you providing onsite daycare or services? Do you have a service that you keep on retainer that your employees can call if they need help securing a last-minute babysitter because someone’s ill or something like that? Those services do exist.”

Be leaders by example

While these and other programs and policies are a great first step for employers, it’s not enough, says Amanda. It also comes down to the mentality of your organization – and from the very top.

“It also has to come through in your communication. [Are you] a company that truly values and embraces and supports the working parent or various different lifestyles and is able to adapt?”

Personal experience plays a factor as well, she adds, recalling an anecdote from a friend who expressed that she couldn’t wait for her CEO and his wife to have a kid because “he doesn’t get it today”.

Instead, get ahead of that situation, with executive leadership setting the tone for a truly inclusive working environment.

Amanda described an experience before our interview where she was in a meeting with one of her own executives.

“She was sitting on her patio and she goes, ‘This may be my only moment of vitamin D all day, because I don’t know when my son gets home from daycare, if it’s going to be an outside or inside day’.”

That was a strong message from leadership. The result was that Amanda – and likely her other colleagues – now felt empowered to be able to do the same.

“I would have never considered that before, until I saw somebody a couple of rungs up for me doing it and it being perfectly OK, and not making a big deal about it.”

So pay attention, managers, directors, and executives.

“If you’re going to offer those benefits to your team, take them. If you’re encouraging them to take time off, you have to take a few days off too.”

This is a wakeup call – will you answer?

“There were a lot of awful things that came [in the pandemic], but I have to say for me, there were some definite silver linings. It has a lot to do with getting a better sense of what is a healthy work-life balance and what I want. But […] for many people out there, I think it’s a wakeup call.”

You can answer that call by updating your policies and employee management strategy to accommodate and support working mothers, and you’ll find that you attract the very best candidates to your company.

“It would be really nice if, if we could change that narrative and put systems in place that helped to support a new narrative out there,” Amanda says.

Don’t wait for others to set the standard – you can lead the charge. Be part of the solution.

Amanda Augustine is a well-recognized expert in career advancement, ranging from developing one’s professional brand to acing that next interview. She’s the resident career expert for TopResume, the world’s largest resume-writing service, as well as a certified professional resume writer (CPRW) and certified professional career coach (CPCC).

The post Supporting working mothers: it’s now time for a new narrative appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s start with why: The workforce was not immune to the migration patterns of the pandemic. Affording everyone the time to re-examine anything, from a life’s purpose to a day-to-day routine, the lockdown was a time of mass decision-making.

The ‘Great Resignation’ then earned its name as professionals across all industries shed their pre-pandemic roles. Increased turnover became one of an employer’s many costs. But in a normal economy, one worker’s loss would be another worker’s gain – roles would fill about as quickly as they’re given up. Now, employers have made it clear: there’s a disconnect between the post-COVID candidate and the roles at hand.

A look at the numbers

Talent and employers are passing each other like two ships in the night. This past March, US employers added a seasonally adjusted 916,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate reached a new pandemic low of 6%. Still, recruitment campaigns are flopping, candidates are in short supply, and professionals continue to change paths across virtually all sectors.

Conversely, LinkedIn data shows that professionals in the United States added over 110,000 volunteer activities to their profiles monthly since the inception of the pandemic. That’s a near 250% increase since 2017.

And the boom of ESG-focused investing has come from retail investors as much as it’s come from institutional activity; new investors are showing a large interest in green bonds, and 56% of households with more than $100,000 to invest are showing an overwhelming preference for impact investments.

These numbers quantify an important COVID change: purpose-driven living has become a full-time occupation. Professionals want ESG values represented and upheld across all segments of their life, including and especially the team with whom they focus their working talent.

A tight ESG labor market

Before the pandemic, BlackRock reported that many of their high-profile investors planned to double their allocations into sustainable products over the next five years. A subsequent report announced that one-fifth of those investors felt the pandemic had accelerated their plans to do so.

That early influx of capital led to a job boom in the ESG space, attracting the market’s best talent.

Already, the wave of behavioral change is evident across industries. Companies are under pressure to adopt new standards and regulations for ESG operations and sustainable investing in order to source investment capital and satisfy stakeholders. ESG is the new workplace normal, and will soon be a standard workforce strategy rather than basic value proposition.

Re-imagining the post-COVID EVP

Employers need new tactics to differentiate their employee value proposition (or EVP for short). Introducing tangible ESG as a workforce strategy is an important place to begin. The large-scale purpose and impact of the company is important. But the day-to-day initiatives, policies, and campaigns are important places in which employees feel those social values reflected.

Consider the actions of industry giants throughout the pandemic:

• Apple increased their matching gift donations to a 2:1 ratio, surpassing $15 million in the early months to support COVID-response efforts on a local and global scale
• Facebook committed to matching $10 million in charitable gifts by the public, in addition to their existing policy for employees and retirees
• Google upped their match cap to a significant $20,000 per employee.

The scale of these actions reflects the size of these corporations, but small and mid-sized businesses can instill the same corporate practices with the same effect. Regardless of magnitude, these decisions made by industry giants reflect what they’ve noticed among their employee culture: social involvement and purpose-driven impact is an important part of employee satisfaction, competitive recruitment, and top talent retention.

Hilton: A case study in workplace happiness

At the end of 2020, Fortune released its list of the 100 best companies to work for based on self-reported workplace happiness of employees. The top 25 companies are similar to 2019, with a few exceptions, including Hilton. A newcomer to the top 25, Hilton climbed all the way to #1. Let’s consider their pandemic response.

Notably, Hilton partnered with American Express to donate one million hotel room nights across the U.S. for frontline workers. In addition, the company made a $1 million contribution to the World Central Kitchen, providing healthy, fresh meals for healthcare providers.

Their Hilton Effect Foundation Grants provided an additional $1 million in community response efforts. Meanwhile, their success in cutting their environmental footprint in half and doubling their social impact investments worldwide led them to be named the global industry leader in sustainability for the second year in a row.

It is the case that the Hilton team was able to impart a significantly positive impact on many communities throughout COVID-19. But it’s also the case that those social initiatives occupied a large part of the company mission, meaning that those goals were a constant part of an employee’s day-to-day responsibilities.

The sequential earning of both titles, ’global leader in sustainability’ and ‘best place to work,’ is no coincidence. But it is perhaps the day-to-day experience of striving for environmental and social impact, rather than the final culmination of the effort, that makes the Hilton work experience so fulfilling. In terms of ESG as a workforce strategy, it’s a model to look up to.

It’s about good intentions

Again, it’s not the scale of the initiative, but the intention behind it: purposeful ESG as a workforce strategy needs to be top of mind to attract and keep the best performing talent in the industry. Offering the time or financial resources that allow employees to volunteer in their own communities is another way for small or medium size businesses to achieve the same effect.

Similarly, smaller sized corporations can create social-oriented projects that allow each team member to contribute their expertise toward community impact. For example:

• Pay a web designer to create an order platform for a local food bank
• Offer senior executives days off to mentor younger professionals in the field
• Work in a standard donation amount into an employee’s salary to go toward the organization of their choosing

These are other ways to bring ESG aims closer to the day-to-day operations.

Post-COVID recruitment needs to center on similar questions. What opportunities are we providing for employees to bring their social awareness, environmental commitment, and global concerns into the workplace? The lines between home and work have blurred. With them, the demarcation between work purpose and life purpose has faded.

Employers that can offer a work culture that’s fulfilling, purpose-driven, and ESG-oriented will see their efforts rewarded in the prospective candidates and existing employees alike, and the post-COVID workplace will change for the better the way all real change takes place – from the ground up.

Tara Milburn is the Founder and CEO of Ethical Swag, a sustainable branding company that makes it easy for HR professionals to offer personalized promotional products that they can stand behind. Certified as a B-Corporation, Ethical Swag has been audited to the highest global standard for sustainability.

The post ESG as a workforce strategy: post-COVID attraction and retention appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The number of workers who quit their jobs in the month of April alone was the highest it’s ever been since this metric started being recorded about 20 years ago; nearly 4 million people quit, pushing the quits rate to 2.7% of those employed.

Hence the terminology: The Great Resignation, coined and foretold by a Texas A&M professor in May 2021.

So what can employers do, now that this massive talent migration is fully underway?

The first step is to change old ways of thinking: your biggest obstacle is not a shortage of talent, but a widespread shift in job candidates’ motivations. You need to evolve your employer brand using new employee value proposition examples.

Talent shortage vs. evolving candidate motivations

Even before the pandemic, the concept of a “talent shortage” has largely gotten the blame for why it’s so difficult to hire skilled workers. This is still true; a recent global study showed that nearly seven in 10 (69%) of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring.

But that’s not the full picture.

Yes, there is some level of talent shortage, but candidates have also evolved in what they expect from a job. Many don’t want to simply “go back to normal” and have decided they’d rather pursue something else. So, companies hiring in this labor market aren’t just competing against each other, they’re also competing against:

• early retirement
• the gig economy
• self-run businesses
• unemployment benefits
• a search for a new environment
• prioritization of a flexible schedule to be with loved ones

How should companies use this information?

Well, if your company wants to attract candidates in this labor market, you should be thinking about how you can directly address these new candidate motivations. Although salary, perks and benefits understandably are top of mind for candidates, there are many ways where you can further evolve your employer brand.

That’s especially when your budget doesn’t allow for higher salaries or you have difficulty competing with Amazon, Google, or any other competitive employer for talent.

What that all boils down to is evolving your employee value proposition (EVP) so that working at your company actually contributes to – rather than competes with – the life they’re trying to make for themselves.

These four employee value proposition examples can help you evolve your employer brand so that working at your company is attractive to today’s talent:

1. Offer true work flexibility – in location and schedule

The ultimate dream for most employees is to work anywhere they want and whenever they want, doing work that offers fulfillment and growth. What’s ideal about this type of setup is it gives employees the autonomy and freedom they want and need in their day-to-day lives, while also being able to do work that feels purposeful. This is part of the employee value proposition at companies who are already or have shifted to remote-first.

However, for a great number of employers, this isn’t a desirable or feasible option. They’re not willing to let go of the very real benefits that regular in-person, in-office work brings to culture, collaboration, and unity around a common purpose for the whole organization.

If your company is decidedly not going to go fully remote, here are some ways to get as close to that level of flexibility as possible. This will make a world of difference in helping you attract (and keep) the talent you need.

• Offer employees the option to work from home at least a few days of the week
• Let employees choose what days of the week they’d work remotely vs. in the office
• Allow employees to shift their daily work hours around to when they prefer (e.g. starting and ending early)

2. Have a mission that goes beyond ‘the work’

Younger workers have always paid attention to what a company stands for as they look for a job and that interest has become even more pronounced, especially in these recent years of social and political unrest.

What these candidates are really striving for is to find work that means something and stands for something. This means company values that go beyond making a profit. These could include:

• backing BLM/LGBTQ movements
• establishing environmental equity
• building up societies
• supporting mental health and wellness

The list goes on. Candidates today are driven towards employers who have a clearly defined vision and values that are actually lived and felt among current team members.

Remember, though, that you can’t just pick a popular cause and slap that on all of your recruiting materials as your new mission. That isn’t genuine and candidates will see right through that. What you can and should do is talk to your current employees and do some internal introspection and brainstorming as a team as to how the work that you do helps make the world better.

Aside from your actual day-to-day work, you could also introduce:

• paid volunteer days
• charitable donations and company matching
• team fundraising events.

Workable’s mission and vision are a great example of an employee value proposition: the entire organization is driven toward helping great companies and great talent find each other. It’s a very people-driven concept and it attracts candidates who love the idea of supporting it.

3. Foster genuine employee connections

While talent today overwhelmingly prefers remote work over going back to the office five days a week – and many big-name companies feel the same – there’s one aspect about office life that’s still important to them: connecting with other members of their team in a meaningful way.

Just think of all of the different ways employees connect with each other organically throughout a work day when in the same physical workspace:

• seeing each other daily face-to-face
• catching up over a snack or drink break
• real-time in-person meetings
• lunch-time banter
• mini-celebrations in the desk aisles

And so many other impromptu moments. In this shift to remote work, that’s what employees today are missing.

Even though “employee events” isn’t on their job search list, companies who prioritize employee connection in their company culture (especially while remote) will attract more talent than those who don’t.

For example, some companies fly everyone together into a really cool location once a year and call it their annual kickoff or team retreat – including Workable. Many also hold regular all-day events for things like team bonding, new hire orientation, and strategy sessions.

Making time for employee connection in these ways is huge for building morale, and people have something exciting to look forward to doing together. It’s one of the most powerful employee value proposition examples you can implement at your company.

4. Offer programs to support work-life integration

If your company is letting go of some or all of your office spaces in favor of remote or hybrid work, you haven’t actually eliminated the office – you’ve simply shifted “the office” into employees’ homes. The name of the game is then no longer about employees’ work-life balance, but work-life integration.

Learn how SmartBug CEO Ryan Malone manages work-life integration at his company – which has been fully remote since its inception in the late 2000s.

Knowing that this is the new way, supporting your employees’ work-life integration will be a huge differentiator for retaining and attracting talent today. To do that, it’s all about helping employees create a fluid and healthy environment where both their personal life and work life can co-exist and not constantly compete for their attention.

It also means addressing the additional financial burden many employees are taking on due to working from their own homes, such as caregiving costs, internet bills, and paying for technology to help their time management.

Here are some programs you’ll see most commonly these days among companies who prioritize healthy work-life integration:

• one-time or recurring home office stipends to cover all equipment needs
• subsidized food delivery or monthly flexible meal stipends
• monthly cellphone and technology reimbursement for ongoing tech needs
• wellness apps or a monthly flexible wellness stipend
• backup childcare, caregiving support, and general family stipends that support all types of families

Get ready: evolve your EVP

Even though signs of the Great Resignation, or the “turnover tsunami”, was identified way back in February, none of us could have known how massive the impact would actually be.

These four employee value proposition examples are just to get you started. It’s ultimately up to you as an employer to show how quickly you can move and how nimble you can be in addressing this evolving talent market – by also evolving yourself and what you’re really offering your people.

The post 4 employee value proposition examples to survive the Great Resignation appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Jump straight into the podcast or check out the transcription here.

As a practiced expert in global talent management, Tony had a lot to say. Here are the top takeaways from our conversation:

Make the commitment, then make it work

Virgin mogul Richard Branson once said: ”If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”

Tony would agree when it applies to the global talent market.

“My first tip here is to really focus on what’s really important, which is finding the best talent no matter where they are,” he says. “And worry later about these obstacles or these barriers that prevent you from hiring that talent.

Why? Because it makes sense

And forget whether your services are global or local. It makes a lot of sense to hire globally, because your talent market is much broader.

“If you were to say a startup in San Francisco or a startup in London, and you want to hire locally, what are the chances [that] the best talent will be in a 20-mile radius from your office? It’s like 0.1%,” Tony says.

“So how can you explain statistically that this is a good strategy for talent acquisition, where over 99% of the great talent is elsewhere?”

He points to hubs of engineering in areas such as Eastern Europe and Latin America that have a much higher representation of highly talented developers who specialize in specific coding languages – all of which presents an opportunity for smart companies who tap into the global hiring market.

Talent distribution aside, Tony points to other benefits:

1) Local connectivity makes better EX

There are huge benefits in the new reality of living where we work and working where we live – especially for the employee.

Tony shares his own example.

“Now my identity is work but it’s also family. I spend more time with my children, with my partner,” he says of his work-life integration. “It’s my community as well.”

He talks about an elderly neighbor in the small French village where he lives and works. “He can’t walk very well. And his chimney broke in the middle of the winter and he needed somebody to take him to the store, buy something to come and fix the chimney. So he called me at 2 in the afternoon, and I had a 45-minute gap in my schedule.

“So I was able to go and bring him to the store and build it. And I felt more connected to him.”

And what does that mean for the new working environment?

“If I was in the office,” Tony explains, ”I would have missed that opportunity to help him out. And so I feel much more connected to my local community. So that’s good news for the world. And that’s good news for people.”

And when employees feel more connected to their families and communities even when on the job, they’ll be happier. That speaks volumes for overall employee engagement (EX) and experience.

2) Remote can outperform office

Tony says that, if executed properly, a remote-work environment can actually be more productive and engaged than the alternative.

“For instance, a virtual environment requires you to share leadership more, so essentially because everybody is in different locations and the leader cannot do everything like they used to do in the office, then suddenly you have an opportunity for other leaders to come in and fill that gap. So it becomes a great place to grow leaders faster in the business.”

It’s not just about collective leadership. Remote also fosters a more equitable and democratic working environment that brings the best out of people.

“The best ideas win,” Tony says. ”[W]hen you used to work in an office and you go to a meeting room and usually the loudest person in the room monopolizes the discussion, but you have maybe this introverted, brilliant person on the side [and] they’re not sharing their ideas.”

And now, working online across locations, there’s a more collaborative spirit via a shared document where everyone is able to bring something to the proverbial table, and have a conversation, Tony says.

“The role of the leader is really to be aware of these superpowers and create an environment that actually facilitates and fosters these benefits.”

3) There are social and environmental benefits

There’s an added intangible that can speak volumes for your employer brand: the social impact that your organization has as a remote-first organization.

“If you remove the barriers to cross-border employment and enable companies to really tap into the global talent pool, you can reduce brain drain, which is really one of the major impacts of wealth distribution issues in the world.”

There’s also an environmental impact as well.

“Think about it; every year, we’re pouring the equivalent of four New York Cities in terms of concrete on planet Earth. And in many cities, it’s not a more livable condition.”

He notes the example of Delhi, where workers lose an average of seven hours of life expectancy due to the air pollution.

“I think the pandemic enabled us to realize that actually we are past that tipping point of sustainability of cities. And, I hope that the world will reverse that trend now that actually it’s not a necessity to be in the office to get the job done, at least for knowledge workers.”

Global talent market best practices

Convinced? Tony now has some best practices for you when executing on a global talent market strategy.

1) Ensure equal opportunity and experience

When you have a distributed team, you need to align your company success with your employee success, Tony says. This ties into employee experience, which can differ across locations.

Tony shares the example of a contact center in India that worked night shifts to accommodate the US market.

“There’s something we don’t really talk about … this lifestyle disparity when it comes to working from anywhere. [A]s a leader of an organization, my recommendation is to create an environment and a culture that gives everybody an equal opportunity, no matter where they are.”

Balance out the opportunities

Also, when hiring for more senior positions in tech, you’ll also find that talent is more concentrated to specific locations. For example, Tony says, senior talent has been focused in the Western world in the last 30 years.

And that can lead to further imbalances when it comes to opportunity within a company.

“[It’s important] that you think about how you develop the younger talent that come from emerging economies and giving them the opportunity to grow with your company and with the opportunity,” Tony says, “so we can start building the next generation of tech leaders from all over the world and not necessarily focused or centered around certain technology hubs in the world, such as the Silicon Valley, or London, or China.”

This also applies to the overall nature of remote work, where it comes naturally to some and more of a challenge to others – again a recipe for imbalance and unequal experiences across teams.

“There are certain trainings [where] you can upskill your talent force on remote work. You can teach your team how to behave, how to be productive, how to take care of themselves so that they don’t burn out.”

Focus on the results

To ensure equal opportunity and growth across locations, Tony also recommends shifting to a results-driven model.

“We’ve seen companies that have this obsession with output rather than input. Essentially we don’t care how [many] hours you put in to get the job done, as long as you have clear goals and you’re delivering on your goals,” he says.

“That goes a long way to create a culture where there’s a high degree of trust in order for anybody, anywhere they are, to grow in and develop in your company.”

2) Establish a strong company culture

The reality of working across locations – and especially, across cultures – is that there will be some inconsistencies as colleagues of different backgrounds collaborate on projects. There are ways around that, however – and the first big takeaway from Tony is that a strong company culture is essential if you want to overcome these challenges.

In short – the collective vision can be very powerful. But, Tony says, it doesn’t happen on its own.

“My experience having led two companies in the last 10, 12 years is that [there] are people from all over the world. Company culture definitely trumps country culture. … But you have to manage it. It’s not like by default this is going to happen.

“So you need to really be clear about how you create a strong company culture that actually is stronger than in local cultural specificities.”

Learn how Belgium-based startup ProxyClick built a great company culture that unifies and inspires its employees.

3) Standardize and prescribe a virtual working system

Working in a remote working environment means you need to actively build trust among colleagues. In a physical workplace, Tony says, trust grows naturally, but in a virtual environment, you have to work at it.

He shares the example of working with his product team. Syncing in real time is needed to align on ideas around product development, but an equally strong element of building a strong virtual work culture is in carrying out the actual work as a team.

“[At Oyster], we call them ‘tools and the rules’,” says Tony, adding that while you can get away with lack of clarity if you’re working together in the same office, that’s not the case when working across time zones, cultures and backgrounds.

“You have to be very prescriptive of how you work together. What tools do you use? When do you use them? What different meetings do you have?” Tony says.

And this system can’t be dictated top-down. It needs to be mutually built across the team.

“And you, as a team manager, have to be the best remote worker in your team to show the example for your team that this is something that everybody needs to buy into, and it gets reinforced.”

4) Know how job attractors differ across cultures

Building a strong employer brand is essential to candidate attraction, of course. But that becomes a unique challenge when sourcing and attracting talent in different locations.

Tony agrees, sharing a hypothetical example of a person named Mary in Nigeria, who has the option to work at a local bank for a contract and the best benefits in the area.

“You want to be able to match that, you want to be able to understand what ‘good’ looks like in country X, and then extend a generous offer to that employee,” Tony says.

He adds the value of job security for someone like Mary.

“That goes to first hiring them as a full-time employee rather than a contractor, so that you can reduce their anxiety and provide them with the ability of having a stable job and a stable income. And then supplement that with whatever local benefits Mary expects to see from a top employer in that country.”

Benefits will be different as well

Tony then talks about other countries that put more weight on certain benefits, such as the United States where health insurance is an absolute must-have. In France, on the other hand, the expectation is more about restaurant vouchers, with health insurance more complementary rather than a core benefit.

In other countries still, health benefits are a non-issue because of a universal health care system.

There are also other elements at play in a global talent market, Tony says.

“[Maybe] there is a fear of cultural differences. Maybe people in that country think differently than people in that country. There are administrative and legal and tax challenges that companies have to go through. […] So every country is different and you have to navigate that.”

Adapt and thrive in the global talent market

“The war on talent is going distributed,” Tony says. “The companies that have thought about how to enable a strong culture, how to enable a distributed workforce to grow and develop – they are the ones that are going to attract the best and the brightest talents in the world. And there’s no going back on this.”

Employees have that expectation as well, and Tony says employers need to pay close attention to that.

“Employees are asking for an extra degree of freedom, which is location. [They] want to be able to live wherever they want to live,” he says.

“That’s hard for companies to manage if they want to go back to an office-only culture, because talent will go to wherever they have more freedom and that’s assuming equal pay and equal benefits.”

Tony adds that 1.5 billion knowledge workers will be entering the workforce in the next 10 years. He says this is the biggest labor democratic shift since the Industrial Revolution.

“We have that opportunity now as a world to rethink what work is and make it more sustainable and more focused on bringing that opportunity to people no matter where they are.”

Ultimately, the global talent market is about people and quality of life.

“We want to have a future where people have a choice in where they want to live. And they don’t necessarily have to live in the city. It becomes a choice if they decide to want to live in a city, but if they decide not to, they shouldn’t be forced to be living in a crowded space. And that’s the world that we want to portray [at Oyster].”

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Leaders must think about the employee experience in the same way they do the customer experience. In order to create win-win scenarios, they must become truly inclusive leaders, and listen to the diverse voices inside their organizations and take time to understand what’s important to them in order to unlock valuable insights that will inform future successes.

Bridge the gap between office and home

As the world reopens, competitive advantages will need to be leveraged in order for organizations to bounce back quickly. Creative problem-solving, innovative thinking, and seamless collaboration across teams will help them authentically communicate in a voice as diverse as their audience. All of this requires a different approach to leadership in the new world of work.

Before the pandemic, leaders focused on how their employees performed in the office. It took a global pandemic to break the disconnect between work and home life and give people permission to bring their authentic selves to work. Video conferencing calls have allowed us to witness how our colleagues interact with family, pets, or an inconvenient parcel delivery during an important meeting. In this way, we are now better able to empathize with each other and build trust within our teams.

Leaders now need to embrace this opportunity to lead the whole person in order to help both their teams and organizations achieve more.

Why managers need to lead the whole person

Employees look to leaders for guidance to help them overcome challenges. A caring leader understands that they will get more from their team by building relationships with those they lead. But to do this, they also know that they need to look beyond performance reviews and life inside the workplace. To lead the whole person, leaders must consider the mind, body, spirit, and emotions of those they lead.

By investing the time to see the world through your employees’ eyes, rewards can be unlocked via increased performance across your organization. But before you can lead the whole person, you need to build a safe space where every employee can feel comfortable sharing their fears, questions, and concerns without judgment.

There are many ways in which you can build a culture of listening. You can empower teams to create open forums like roundtables or coffee hours to connect at a deeper level with their people.

Whole-person leadership in the hiring process

It doesn’t matter if you are working in a B2C or B2B environment. We are all in the people-to-people business. Every organization must be as diverse as its audience to thrive and survive in an increasingly competitive environment. These changes also demand a different approach to recruitment.

The ROI of a diverse workforce that ensures everyone feels included and a sense of belonging will transform your culture and pave the way for your future success. By contrast, departmental silos and HR technology that feels dehumanizing to prospective candidates looking to join your team will stop any progress in its tracks.

Whole-person leadership is also critical in the hiring process, especially when recruiting new managers. If we fail to communicate trust and authenticity and set those expectations as we advance, leaders won’t like the reflection of themselves that they see. The bottom line is that employees that aren’t growing feel unappreciated and don’t feel safe or mimic the poor behavior of a bad leader will quickly result in low morale and a toxic culture.

Phil Cohen, founder and president of Cohen Architectural Woodworking, addressed the leader’s responsibility to lead the whole person with me: “We have to be cognizant that people present with their own unique lenses based upon their background. We take that in when we bring them in as an employee. They don’t just leave that at the door.”

The understanding that there’s a gap in perception between how the employer perceives the employee experience it offers compared to the employee feedback they receive is just the first of many stages of your journey of continuous improvement. Leading the whole person is not a scalable concept. It is building individual relationships with our people and paying close attention to the details of their lives.

We can now work from anywhere and everywhere. How we define the workplace has completely changed in just one year. From the recruitment and onboarding process to managing the entire employee experience, it’s time for a caring leadership style to bridge the gap and empower managers to lead the whole person.

Heather R. Younger — author of The Art of Caring Leadership — is an international speaker, consultant, adjunct organizational leadership professor, and facilitator who has earned her reputation as “The Employee Whisperer.” As a champion for positive change in workplaces, communities, and our world at large, Heather founded Employee Fanatix, a leading employee engagement and leadership development consulting and training firm, to inspire others by teaching the kind of caring leadership that drives real business results.

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So, why learn how to use video in hiring? As Elena Valentine of Skillscout.com says in a conversation with Workable at LinkedIn Live, “It’s how we learn. We are visual learners, and that’s from a biological standpoint. There really is an art and science to why video works. We retain 65% of what we see and hear versus what we read. 80% of our brains are dedicated to processing visuals.”

Not only are we visual animals – we also live in a world where video is king.

“This is a YouTube generation. And if you think that we’re going to YouTube to learn how to braid our hair and get tours of the White House and everything else, we are absolutely going to YouTube [to learn] about jobs, plain and simple.”

Elena points to the pandemic as forcing us “to start to think differently about how we’re showcasing jobs, people, environments. [We’ve] really had to flip it into high gear when it comes to the value of video.”

You can ‘see’ employee testimonial videos

Using video in your hiring process also helps candidates visualize the day-to-day of a job more than a job description ever could.

That’s especially the case with specific roles, Elena says. She recounts SAC Wireless, a client who wanted to show the day-to-day work of their cellphone tower workers – who often operate hundreds of feet up in the air. They were struggling with employees leaving soon after starting.

“[New employees] go up for the first time, realize just how frighteningly scared they were of heights and then quit,“ Elena says, adding that this would happen even after recruiters were clear about that part of the work in interviews.

This meant producing a video depicting exactly what the work would entail, involving the POV of workers from the top of towers in a series of employee testimonial videos.

“This is going to be your world,” Elena says in describing the intended message in the video. “Rest assured we keep it safe. We have a culture of safety and a team that really supports you, but this is the work.”

The result?

“They significantly reduced their turnover because of an entire brand campaign and their video went viral.”

The connectivity of video

While video can’t ever replace the full hiring process, says Elena, it can help enrich the applicant pool you have for a job opening. You’ll have a more invested group of candidates who are actively interested in the specific position and not just slinging resumes at every job opportunity.

This can lessen the time and work involved in sifting through the applications you get for a role, Elena adds.

“Rather than the 500 candidates that you got, a lot of them who may not be a good fit or on the cusp, you’re getting candidates who are saying, ‘I’ve watched this video, I see the challenge, and I’m still willing to apply.’”

How to use video in the hiring process

Great, you’re on board. You’re ready to get crackin’. But making employer branding videos can get complex at times.

So we picked up some lessons from Elena, who’s been doing this for a long time as the CEO of Skillscout. Here are six best practices on how to use video in the hiring process, from her LinkedIn Live session with Workable.

1. Don’t overthink it

First, don’t overthink it. “There’s no wrong or immediate right way to do video. … That’s the thing that people have to get over,” Elena says, quipping about the unrealistic expectations that a recruiter or hiring manager must have a Hollywood-sized budget or possess filmmaking skills to rival Martin Scorsese.

On the contrary, it’s more about finding that important balance between authenticity and brand, Elena says.

“You can actually do this in a way that still is quality, still as authentic, but also reaches a level of consistency that marketing and others would be okay with sharing publicly.”

2. Think about quality over quantity

Although it’s nice to have numerous candidates applying for a job so you have the luxury to choose, that’s the wrong approach, suggests Elena.

“The question should be, ‘Are we getting the right eyeballs on these videos?’” she says. “It has less to do with the metrics of; ‘We’ve had 50,000 people [see this video].’”

Instead, ask yourself: “Did the right 10 people in our application process who are kick-ass engineers see this video? And did they understand exactly what we could offer them?” Elena suggests. That’s where the key differentiator is.

3. Think about the ‘recruitment funnel’

A core tenet of sales and marketing strategy is the “funnel” It’s described in so many different ways. Ultimately, you can think about it in three stages. First is“top of funnel”, the moment where your audience becomes aware of you. Further down is “middle of funnel”; where your audience now knows you and wants to get a little deeper into the specifics. Finally, there’s “bottom of funnel”; in other words, the stage where your audience makes a decision based on what they’ve learned.

Workable’s EMEA VP Rob Long describes it as a “pragmatic recruitment framework”, in which he takes a page from the pragmatic marketing framework.

Elena speaks a lot about that in understanding how to use video in the hiring process. “You can build a series of videos to engage the varying levels of interests that a candidate has in the role or in your company. At the very top of the funnel is that introductory video.”

She explains: “We are just here to create a level of brand awareness and interest. Maybe this is a company that does really great stuff, but no one’s ever heard of them before.”

Once the candidate is interested, you can get right into the details of the job itself.

“When we’re on the job post, which is, ‘All right, I’m a shoe designer, and at this point I’m looking to understand, do I want to be a shoe designer at Nike or do I want to be a shoe designer at Adidas?’”

That’s where employee testimonial videos can come in incredibly useful, she adds.

“There’s some pretty specific stories of, ‘All right, now that I’m getting an understanding of the culture, what is it really like to work in these specific roles at these specific companies?’”

4. Be specific – and keep it short

No one likes a long, rambling video that doesn’t properly inform the candidate on what they want or need to know. This especially holds true when you’re looking to engage busy candidates applying for several jobs in a single day.

That’s why, when understanding how to use video in the hiring process, you must keep your videos concrete and tight.

“[You] want to think about the role itself,” says Elena. “Who are the folks that they might be working with or that department? The second is going to be show, not tell, which clearly the medium of video allows us to do that.”

Elena reminds us that it’s important to keep it contained.

“About 90 seconds is typically the sweet spot, especially given social media and the ways people are able to peruse.”

5. Be honest – warts and all

There’s a reality about work that can’t be ignored – sometimes, it does suck.

“We cannot put lipstick on a pig,” says Elena. “This has to be a balance both of what the opportunity is and also what the challenges are going to be, because candidates are going to smell a stock video, a stock photo, a stock feeling and emotion from a mile away.”

It’s tempting to gloss over the negatives, but candidates will appreciate honesty.

“They recognize that our jobs aren’t perfect, and if you could be the first one to tell that to them and they don’t have to find that out on the first day of the job or the first 90 days on the job, even better. They will respect you more for it.”

Elena explains that this is top of mind for her and Skillscout, especially when it comes to younger candidates.

“This isn’t just about showing the sunshines and rainbows of a role. We all know that there are sucky parts of all jobs and we need to be about as upfront about that as possible when it comes to this.”

There’s a practical aspect to it too – enriching the talent pool with candidates who really do want the role.

“We want to give candidates an opportunity to self-screen in or self-screen out. And it’s perfectly okay if a candidate is going to self screen out as result of this, because we’re not here to waste their time. We’re also not here to waste ours.”

Workable’s CEO Nikos Moraitakis himself follows this code on describing life at Workable: “It involves doing a lot of things that you would rather not be doing, but down the line, there may be something in it that may improve the way a lot of people work.”

Read more about why it pays to be authentic in your recruitment marketing strategy.

6. Good questions mean great answers

Your videos will ultimately feature your current employees, and you want them to share some of the more interesting aspects of their work. That means you’re interviewing them – and when you do that, don’t just ask them to describe their day at work. Throw some interesting questions at your employees that they will be excited to answer.

For instance, ask them to describe the surprises they had when they first started at the job, says Elena.

Elena suggests a few other questions you can ask:

• “What is it about your work that you’re most proud of?”
• “What is it about your work that people would be surprised to know about?”
• “What makes you stay? What makes you come back every day?”

And her personal favorite: “What makes your heart sing?”

“It really gets fascinating from a layperson’s point of view to say, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize that this much effort, et cetera, goes into creating this one piece of cereal,’” says Elena.

Video attracts the real-life stars

Video really is another tool in your recruitment marketing playbook. Learning how to use video in the hiring process – including in the careers page, the video interview, and even outright employer brand promotion – can really show off the job and the work environment in action in ways that static words on a screen or paper can never do.

And it’s about keeping up with the times, adds Elena.

“In today’s day and age, the way that we communicate our culture, our brand, the way that we get people interested in our role and the right people interested in our company is through video.”

The post How to use video in the hiring process: 6 tips from an expert appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

You’re also surfing online, consuming interesting stuff, and at one point, you’re looking at a company’s website and thinking, “These folks look pretty cool. I like what they’re doing. I wonder if they’re in the market for someone like me.”

So that’s when you gravitate to their careers page. It’s one thing to want to work at a company because you like their product or service, or they specialize in your area of expertise, but it’s another thing to want to work at a company because they seem like an amazing place to work and they feel like an amazing fit for you.

Careers page best practices for your employer brand

As an HR professional and employer, that’s why you need to double down on your careers page best practices. Here are seven core elements you need to think about when building a careers page that will attract the attention of even the most seasoned (and jaded) jobseekers:

1. Add employee testimonials

When you shop online, do you look at the reviews before making a purchasing decision? Have you ever bought something or watched a movie/TV show because a friend or family recommended it? The answer to both is likely “yes”.

The same thinking applies for your careers page. Candidates often read up on company reviews on Glassdoor or Indeed when thinking about applying for a job. If you include a few friendly employee testimonials in your careers page, it’ll make an impact on their impression of you.

Workable’s own careers page has several high-quality testimonials from employees who have worked at Workable for years. They’re outlined nicely in our first example of careers page best practices.

Screenshot: https://apply.workable.com/careers/

2. Put your “About Us” at the very top

You want candidates who want to work for you. One way of motivating them is telling them up front who you are and what you’re all about. An aspiring programmer looking to play a role in disrupting the existing framework of their industry won’t necessarily apply for a developer job at a traditional financial institution, but will jump through hoops for an opportunity in a cool fintech startup.

Likewise, a seasoned programmer looking for more stability and predictability in their working environment will be more interested in a role at a legacy organization with tried-and-true workflow systems.

Don’t make your candidates look for that information. Put it right in front of them, right on the page itself, and right at the very top.

GetResponse does exactly this, with two short, punchy paragraphs above the fold detailing who they are and what they do, in just 65 words. Sixty-five words! That gives the candidate all they need to know to make a quick decision on whether to apply for a role with this marketing SaaS company.

Screenshot: https://apply.workable.com/getresponse/

3. Add your company’s mission, vision and values

A widely-publicized Glassdoor survey in 2019 found that a company’s mission and culture are valued more than compensation for many candidates. Plus, the vast majority of jobseekers take mission and culture into account when applying for a job.

As the lines between work and home continue to blur after the paradigm-shifting events of 2020, it’s become more important than ever for candidates that their prospective employer’s vision and values align with their own. So, including your company’s mission, vision and values in your careers page will not only help candidates decide if you’re the right fit for them, but also attract candidates who are personally motivated to play an active role in your overall mission.

That can be a powerful differentiator beyond the elements of candidate attraction such as salary, benefits, work flexibility, and other standard perks.

Soho House & Co.’s careers page includes their mission and values with special emphasis on what they describe as the “guiding principles” that drive them. By listing five simple, yet powerful, values – curiosity, inclusivity, connection, passion, respect – they make it clear who they are, the kind of team that they are, and what they’re committed to as an organization.

Screenshot: https://careers.sohohouse.com/

4. Include details about benefits and perks

Yes, benefits and perks are powerful attractors for candidates when applying for a job. Candidates want to know what they’re getting out of the job on top of the standard salary. There are numerous kinds of benefits, including insurance, paid time off, work flexibility and location, bonuses and awards, training programs, and even company getaways and free lunches.

Be sure to include a breakdown of the important benefits and perks your company offers that set you apart from the next employer. Again, Workable does this in its own careers page.

Screenshot: http://careers.workable.com

5. Add photo and video elements

Candidates can be skeptical about what you’re telling them – and they have every right to be. You’re marketing to them, after all. To get around that initial skepticism, add a touch of authenticity with photos and videos in your page.

These can be straight-up employee testimonials, a statement from the CEO, a day in the life of one team in your company, or a demonstration of your product or service in action. Anything that can give the candidate a visual dive into what it would be like to work for you.

Every company is comprised of individuals working together – photos, videos and any other visual element can be powerful tools to convey that personality to your candidates.

TrueLayer does this masterfully. The fintech organization balances out the very professional photos with organic images. Scrolling down, you run across themes important to candidates – in this case, how the company operates in this COVID-19 environment, and images of teams not only working, but interacting socially.

They’ve also supplemented that with links to design and engineering principles as written by their own employees – offering added insight into what kind of people work there and how they approach the work. Check out the fifth of our seven careers page best practices in action:

Screenshot: https://apply.workable.com/truelayer/

Meanwhile, investment software startup Stockbit embeds this video on their careers page near the bottom, which makes for a more immersive experience.

6. Keep a consistent brand and message

You’ve heard of marketing. How about recruitment marketing? A core element of that is maintaining a consistent brand and message anywhere your audience interacts with your company – in this case, your candidates. That includes your application setup, your interview and scheduling processes, and of course, your careers page.

In fact, your careers page is a core element of candidate attraction. It’s one of the first things a candidate looks at when they come to your site. If your careers page is clunky, has conflicting messages or is inconsistent overall, you need to fix that.

Your brand and message is not just in the language. It’s also in the visual elements – are you using brand colors in your careers page? Is your logo prominently featured? Are the headlines short and snappy and, again, in your company’s official font and colors? Is the text itself tight and concise and informative?

All of those are important. You are marketing yourself as an employer to candidates.

Again, Soho House & Co. presents a great example of a careers page that’s consistent in brand and tone throughout.

7. Ensure a high-quality, eye-catching design

Take two companies’ careers pages, both with all of the above information neatly laid out in front of you. Both companies are also exactly the same in every other way – in their product and service, their location, their benefits and perks, and so on.

The only difference? One company has listed all their information in dry sans-serif font, heavy on the text which makes candidates’ eyes dry out as they read. The other company has eye-catching design that will make an impression even on tired jobseekers, and is designed to guide attention to the important parts in a way that feels natural to the candidate.

Stockbit’s careers page is eye-catching and very scrollable. They’ve taken all of the above careers page best practices and assembled it all into an appealing layout that’s easy on the eye and gives the candidate a quick overview of the company they’re about to apply to.

Careers page best practices for the win

Having an advanced careers page with thoughtful design, digestible information, visual elements, employee testimonials and mission, vision & values is a core element of your overall recruitment marketing strategy. It’s not just about putting your best brand forward – you’re also doing your candidates a favor by making it easier for them to learn about who you are. That level of candidate attraction speaks volumes for your employer brand.

Want to see more great examples? Check out these 10 great careers page examples, and why we love them.

The post 7 careers page best practices to boost your employer brand appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

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Check out our biggest product updates this quarter in a quick, 5-minute video. 

Product releases

Candidate surveys: Measure your brand reputation or gain a better understanding of candidate demographics with candidate surveys. Tailor questions to meet your company’s needs, help teams identify areas of improvement and report on results. Candidate surveys will be gradually rolled out to all Core, Growth and Premier plans over the next few weeks.

Branded careers pages: Updated formatting and branding options make it even easier for you to create a beautifully branded careers page.

• Customize your favicon
• Rich text formatting
• Background image placement
• Logo size configuration

Video Interviews: Workable now supports the option to include your own welcome video and video questions to help you personalize the candidate experience.

Advanced referrals: More customizable options are now available for advanced referrals. 

• Notifications: adjust default email settings for referral users 
• Limit jobs in the portal to internal applications or referrals only
• Add custom questions for referral submission

Hiring plan: You can now edit and update custom requisition fields, add new options, and disable existing options in your hiring plan.

Mobile app: We’ve made it even easier for you to track jobs and candidates, right on your phone. Our newly redesigned home screen helps you find the info you need, fast. Download through the App Store or on Google Play.

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Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

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Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

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If you aren’t collecting that information regularly, it’s time to reconsider that choice – you cannot see the bigger picture without your candidates’ point of view. They experience your hiring process first-hand and can readily share your strategy’s pros and cons. Plus, candidates will often share their experiences via public forums such as Glassdoor and Indeed, as well as throughout their professional networks. That’s why it’s critical to take their feedback into serious consideration, before your reputation as an employer is harmed via a poor candidate experience.

Candidate surveys: what can you track – and how?

In this section, you’ll find some key hiring areas you can monitor and improve using candidate surveys. You can tailor these aspects and survey questions according to your business goals and needs. Keep those surveys anonymous, so that job applicants feel more secure and willing to share their honest opinions with you.

1. Candidate experience

We’re starting with the broader category which includes the majority of the aforementioned: Candidate experience. With candidate experience surveys, you can retrieve information regarding each recruiting phase, such as the application process, interviews, and assessment stage. You can combine close-ended with open-ended questions, or ask candidates to evaluate procedures using a Likert scale.

Here’s a small sample of questions you can include:

• What would you recommend to make our hiring process better in the future?
• On a scale from 1 to 5, how hard was the assessment you completed?
• How clear were the job responsibilities to you before and after the interview?

It’s critical to have a standardized hiring process with clear goals and guidelines for both interviewers and hiring managers. The results will enable you to spot the flaws and adjust them accordingly. For example, if the majority of candidates for a specific role reported that the required assessment was hard and time-consuming, consider replacing it with another tool that takes less time to complete and measures skills more accurately.

2. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Companies are increasingly understanding the significance of diverse hiring and inclusivity in the workplace. According to a recent Workable survey on DEI at work, 56.1% of respondents said that they actively aim to improve diverse recruiting in the future, compared to 20% who said they don’t.

In the same survey, 64.8% of the recipients reported they want to achieve diversity throughout the entire company. To succeed in this, understanding the demographics of your candidates is a crucial factor. Here are some data you could collect from your applicants, suggested by Multiverse’s Inclusion and Diversity Lead, Siobhan Randell:

• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Neurodiversity
• Disability
• Education
• Socio-economic background
• Dependents and caring responsibilities

If you find out that you attract applicants from similar backgrounds and with identical traits based on those data, try to figure out why this happens. Maybe you need to tweak the messages – e.g. your vision and mission statements – you share with potential candidates, or post your ads on more diverse job boards.

3. Employer brand

Candidates inform themselves about a company’s culture through numerous channels. They can reach out to your current employees, scroll through Glassdoor or Indeed, search your social media, or talk to others in their professional network. How can you ensure that the perception candidates form about your business is accurate and valid – and remains positive?

Again, candidate surveys can help you know your brand positioning in the competitive market. You can analyze what applicants and candidates think about your company culture and brand and examine how you could boost positive awareness in the future. Here are some questions you could ask:

• Did you know about our company before you applied?
• Was our company culture clear to you during the hiring process?
• Name any benefits/perks that are missing from our scheme that you find valuable.

Overall, this information will enable you to revisit your employer brand and clarify the grey-zone areas that can confuse candidates. For example, let’s imagine that you’ve recently been through a company culture shift. Even though you’ve introduced remote work in your benefit plan, you may learn that candidates were not informed properly about this change.

So, how can you act upon it, with the minimum possible cost? You can consider adding this detail in the job description or your careers page. This way, you’ll attract more suitable candidates next time.

Prevention is better than cure

Overall, collecting feedback from candidates can be game-changing. You’ll be able to spot the flaws in your hiring process before word-of-mouth affects you in a negative way. When candidates understand that their experience and feedback matters to you as an employer and that you want to keep growing in this area, they think better of you.

Finally, avoid using these data just to resolve short-term crises as they occur – instead, utilize them to actively reform your long-term recruitment strategy. For instance, if you see negative comments about your interviewing process online, on Twitter or Glassdoor, responding with an empathetic manner to people who’ve complained is one short-term solution to regain trust. However, if you neglect revisiting the interviewing process, then you’re neglecting the long-term benefits of a fully standardized – and fully tracked – recruitment process.

The post How to level up your hiring strategy through anonymous candidate surveys appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• Who is responsible for DEI leadership in the workplace?
• Who started the conversation on DEI at work?
• Who is actually doing the work in DEI?

So… who should be responsible for DEI?

Those at the executive or director / manager level are less likely to say that those at their own job level should take on DEI leadership at 22%, compared with 28.8% of those in entry-level or individual contributor positions.

Those in higher-level positions (18.9%) are also more likely than those in entry-level or individual contributor positions (14.3%) to say that a dedicated DEI manager / committee / task force should be responsible for general DEI leadership in their company.

When looking at overall responses, while two out of five respondents (38.6%) say that everyone is responsible for seeing increased diversity, equity and inclusion in their organization, 26.3% say that executives and management should be responsible. Another 15.9% say it should be led by a dedicated DEI committee, DEI task force or DEI manager.

There are two ways to look at this: first, it could be the tendency to say, yes, it needs to happen, but the actual work should be owned by someone else, or it could be that employees are looking to their leaders to set direction and define the culture of the company.

Ultimately, though, when looking at the very low numbers of those who say no one should be responsible, it’s safe to suggest that our respondents wholly believe we’re in it together and that someone should absolutely take ownership of initiatives to ensure DEI progress. However, we shouldn’t ignore that striking discrepancy between higher-level responses and staff-level responses in terms of DEI leadership.

Who started the conversation on DEI?

Our data clearly shows that the call for greater DEI throughout an organization is being acknowledged at the decision-making level, with formal action items being established in many cases. As for who started that conversation on DEI in the first place, 47.4% of respondents say executives and management initiated it, compared with 15.5% who say it was non-HR employees who prompted that conversation.

When breaking down the numbers by industry, there are differences. We found that 58.5% of those in Manufacturing and 61.3% of those in HR / Recruiting say executives and management ultimately started that conversation – significantly higher than the 47.4% of all respondents who responded the same as stated above.

Of those in IT / Technology / SaaS, 25% say HR representatives initiated the conversation, compared with 16.5% overall, while one quarter (24.5%) of those in Healthcare say they didn’t know, compared with 17.9% overall. Education (7.1%) and Manufacturing (7.5%) are more likely to say their customers initiated the conversation, compared with just 2.7% overall.

That is, of course, not to say that customer opinion isn’t important – it is. It’s possible that DEI is viewed through an internal lens (DEI in the employee base) as opposed to a customer-facing lens (DEI in product / service). There are, however, overlaps – the customer-facing component of your workforce can influence buying habits in both positive and negative ways.

Male versus female answers also turn up interesting findings in terms of DEI leadership. Those who identify as male are more likely to say executives and management started the conversation (46% vs. 40%). Those who identify as female are more likely to say that HR representatives (17.1% vs. 16.7% overall) or that non-HR employees (16.7% vs. 9.6% overall) started that conversation.

Who’s actually doing the work in DEI?

Ultimately, when asked who is actually tasked with executing on DEI initiatives, nearly one quarter (23.9%) say Human Resources owns that area – compared with 11.6% who say HR should be responsible (as indicated above).

“Our HR [department] drives initiatives, supported by the executive team. [At] the same time, we have an employee resource group that serves as a I&D [inclusion and diversity] committee, which brainstorms / discusses / evaluates ideas monthly. We are also training our managers and relying on them to act upon our goals during hires, promotion cycles, etc.”

We also asked respondents directly if they are tasked with executing on DEI initiatives in their own work capacity. Overall, 61.6% say yes. Again, the numbers differ when breaking that down by gender identity, with 66% of females answering “Yes” compared with 57.4% of males.

Those who identify as a minority in both their work and local communities also disproportionally answered “Yes” at 65.6%, compared with 61.6% overall.

This indicates that the work of informing and educating others on DEI is disproportionately borne by females and minorities.

We hope you find our survey results on DEI at work to be helpful to you both professionally and personally. Any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or direct email (with “DEI report” in the subject heading). We want to hear from you!

Check out the other excerpts from our survey report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

1. DEI at work: It’s time to take a deep dive
2. What does DEI mean for you and your business?
3. Is there meaningful progress in DEI? Depends on who you ask
5. Your DEI strategic plan: The road is fraught with hurdles
6. What are your top DEI initiatives for the workplace?
7. Your DEI recruitment strategy: What are your action items?
8. Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

The post DEI leadership – and who’s actually doing the work? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

If you’re wondering what DEI means to you and others, Fadjanie’s insight is the answer. DEI means a lot to people right now.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• What does DEI mean to businesses right now?
• When did DEI become important for businesses?
• Why is DEI important to businesses?
• How much progress has been made in DEI at work?
• How important is DEI to people on a personal level?

What DEI means to you: The moral imperative

When asked about the current state of DEI in their company, the vast majority of those in our survey cited an active level of interest in DEI, with nearly two-third of respondents (63% combined) saying they have some initiatives in place or that DEI is a permanent part of their company’s overall mission / vision / values. An additional 17.6% say there is interest in their company, and that it’s just a matter of when or how to do it.

In terms of DEI strategy planning, two-thirds of respondents (64.1%) say the DEI strategy in their company either started before 2020 or had always been a part of their company strategy.

But is DEI becoming more important in the workplace? Yes, it is. DEI means more now to businesses than before. An additional 18.3% say they started considering DEI in 2020, and 5.3% say DEI will be a consideration going forward – meaning nearly one quarter of respondents in total (23.6%) are now taking note of DEI where they weren’t prior to 2020.

“We had DEI as a consideration […] years ago, however, this did not extend beyond hiring. Starting [in 2020], we have made top executive changes and are putting in significant effort to make sure that DEI is not only in numbers but that all employees will have an equitable experience at the company.”

We found that the number-one motivator in considering DEI as part of a company’s overall strategy is – as Fadjanie suggests – moral obligation, with 50.6% of all respondents picking that as one of their company’s top three reasons for considering DEI.

Closely following are employee expectations at 47.6% and talent attraction, engagement and retention (also 47.6%). What does DEI mean in the workplace right now? With the “right thing to do” and employee / talent opinions driving change and progress, it means a groundswell of support for having a DEI strategy in your business.

“We have just put some initiatives in place, specifically around racial diversity in response to the [Black Lives Matter] movement.”

Just one in 10 respondents ticked the “compliance” box (10.1%), and one in five selected the “business benefits” box (21.7%). This suggests that many companies have progressed far beyond both as a motivator for having a DEI strategy – and far more now because ‘it’s the right thing to do’ in response to an amplified call for progress in DEI.

Moreover, DEI is no longer simply an initiative – it is now becoming a permanent strategy for many businesses.

“This started with a walk-out of the company that was organized by an anonymous group of employees, but included a large group of employees.”

Personal motivation

Our survey dataset also confirms a significant personal interest in diversity, equity and inclusion. When we asked respondents if DEI means a lot to them personally, 69.9% answered “Yes, and it always has been”. An additional 23.1% answered “Yes, and it became more important to me [in 2020]”. This means a combined 93% of respondents say it’s now important at a personal level.

The responses differ significantly by gender, however. A combined 96.6% of those who identify as female say it has always been personally important to them or became more important this year, compared with 87.7% of those who identify as male and 93%% of all respondents.

While only eight out of 788 respondents in our survey identified as “Other” – two as gender-fluid and four as non-binary – seven did say it has always been important, with just one “No” answer.

The discrepancy in gender is even more striking when looking at non-prioritization of DEI: A full 12.3% of males say it isn’t personally important to them, compared with just 3.3% of females.

The numbers also differ when breaking down answers by whether a respondent identifies as a minority or not. Three quarters (74%) of those who identify as a minority in any category say DEI has always been a personally important topic for them, compared with 69.9% overall, while 8.6% of non-minorities say it isn’t personally important to them, compared with 7% overall.

Progress depends on who you ask

DEI means something to employers too – but that’s a matter of perspective. When we asked respondents if they feel their company is making meaningful progress in DEI – a clear majority (73.4%) answered “Yes”.

However, again, there are significant differences when breaking down the respondents across specific demographics. First, 71.4% of females think their company is making meaningful progress, compared with 77% of males who feel the same way.

The dataset also finds 71.1% of those who identify as a minority in both their work and home communities think their company is making meaningful progress, compared with 74.6% of those who didn’t identify as a minority.

We also identified differences in answers when breaking responses down by industry. Those in Accounting / Finance are much more likely to answer “Yes” at 85.2%, while those in Business / Consulting Services (67.9%) and HR / Recruiting (67.7%) are less likely to answer “Yes” than overall.

Despite all these discrepancies, there’s a majority of support for DEI in the workplace and that holds significant weight for companies in considering DEI as a priority. DEI means something. This signals an organic amplification in the voice supporting DEI initiatives – in other words, it’s a democratically driven decision led by people.

“DEI helps people to be themselves in the workplace and truly is important for overall productivity outcomes. People can perform better when they can be themselves.”

We hope you find our survey results on DEI at work to be helpful to you both professionally and personally. Any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or direct email (with “DEI report” in the subject heading). We want to hear from you!

Check out the other excerpts from our survey report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

1. DEI at work: It’s time to take a deep dive
3. Is there meaningful progress in DEI? Depends on who you ask
4. DEI leadership – and who’s actually doing the work?
5. Your DEI strategic plan: The road is fraught with hurdles
6. What are your top DEI initiatives for the workplace?
7. Your DEI recruitment strategy: What are your action items?
8. Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

The post What does DEI mean to you and your business? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Out of many insights, we’re highlighting four major themes for you:

1. The democratic driver

The prioritization of DEI in the workplace is largely a response to an amplified call for action from the grassroots level – especially employees. 63% of respondents cite DEI as a priority in their organization.

2. We talk, but can we walk?

While the voice for DEI in the workplace is clear and largely unified, there are disconnects in who should be leading it and how. For instance, 28.8% of those in entry-level / individual contributor jobs think executives, directors and managers should own DEI progress – compared with 22% of the latter who think the same.

3. The gender division

There are stark differences in responses between respondents based on gender identity – particularly in terms of personal opinion and perceived progress. For example, 96.7% of females say DEI is personally important to them, while 12.3% of males say it isn’t.

4. Talent pool isn’t broad enough

For many, talent availability is a major limiter in diversifying a workforce. Nearly half (48.3%) of those in Manufacturing cite lack of talent diversity in their industry is a major challenge.

The biggest lesson we’re picking up – and we’re sharing this in the report in depth – is that DEI seems largely intangible at first, but once you get into the particulars, it’s as actionable as any other business strategy. Plus, there are clear benefits in doing so, in terms of employee engagement, employer branding, candidate attraction, and yes, the bottom line.

Moreover, when half of the respondents in our survey say that having DEI in their business strategy is the “right thing to do”. It’s no longer about merely ticking off the boxes – it’s about growing and evolving as a society. The DEI road map may not be etched in stone, but it’s clearer than it was before.

Within all the division and disparity in our society, there’s a drive to evolve. In these trying times, we’re trying to be better. This survey report offers insights and lessons on how we can get there.

Yours in unity,

Nikos Moraitakis
CEO, Workable

The post Announcing our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion survey report appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

These days, the line between work life and home life is increasingly blurred by the shift to remote work and an intense social and political environment worldwide (Black Lives Matter, Brexit, the pandemic itself) that ultimately spill over into the workplace, impacting engagement and productivity.

You, as an employer and HR practitioner, need to help your employees. Why? Well, for one, they expect this from you. 75% of Gen Z and half of Millennial employees have left work for mental health reasons according to one study – and turnover is expensive. Untreated mental health costs the US economy $200 billion, according to another study. And untreated depression costs employers an average of $9,450 per employee per year, says a third.

An informal Workable poll on LinkedIn in November 2020 found that 62% of employees say their company doesn’t offer mental health support as part of its benefits:

Finally – the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report highlights workplace wellbeing as a leading priority in workplace transformation according to employees. That stands in stark contrast to executives, who listed that as only the second-to-last priority in a list of outcomes. The report states: “executives who deprioritize wellbeing as a goal of work transformation are missing a huge opportunity.”

So, as a business, you’re not only morally obliged to support your employees through this deep dark winter – it also makes business sense to do so.

Seven tips for workplace mental health

So, we’re sharing seven insights from the SMB and HR communities to help you and your employees get through this long, difficult winter before the days become brighter and vaccinations start to roll out to more and more people going into 2021. Here they are, all with the end goal of maintaining and even boosting your workplace mental health:

1. Establish an open-door policy

Because mental health can be a sensitive topic – and stigmatized in many cases – many employees are afraid to approach their managers or even human resources to seek support. In fact, one study found that 50% of employees feel “very uncomfortable” discussing mental health with a current or prospective employer, compared with 10% who said the same about discussing it with a friend or family member.

This means you need to open the door for your employees and help them feel comfortable stepping forward with their problem, says Stephen Light, a certified stress management coach and co-owner of Colorado-based Nolah Mattress:

“Ideally, employees should have no apprehensions in sharing their problems with managers and supervisors, primarily if it affects their work performance.”

He found that not only did it help in terms of work performance – it also boosted company morale.

“We noticed that not only did the open-door policy improve the overall mental health of reorganization, but it also developed the relationships of managers and their subordinates. Through their one-on-one conversations, employees’ trust in their managers grew, which established a connection beyond the leader-follow set-up.”

Rick Hoskins, founder of air filter company Filter King in Alabama, also has an open-door strategy in his workplace mental health policy, and that applies to all leaders and managers in his organization as part of a formal setup.

“This means that employees are welcome to come to talk at any point, professionally or personally, without judgement or fear of losing their job,” says Rick.

Note: Download our workplace mental health policy template and customize to your specifications. 

2. Train your managers and employees

To have a truly successful workplace mental health policy, you need to create a holistically supportive work environment in which employees can thrive. That means training and empowering your employees so they’re best set for success.

Matt Bertram, CEO of EWR Digital, makes sure this happens in his Houston-based SEO marketing agency.

“We started a wellness support strategy in September. The aim of our strategy is to empower our employees to take better care of themselves and become more resilient.”

He also took aims to ensure managers followed suit.

“Our managers have been directed to openly show empathy and vulnerability towards our employees. We regularly ask our employees how they are. We find out how they are taking care of their mental health and encourage everyone to share what’s working for them.”

3. Don’t just talk the talk – walk the walk

Making a statement for workplace mental health is noble, but in many cases, it’s not enough; that’s simply performative action as opposed to proactive action, according to Inclucive and Allyship founder and DEI consultant Chikere Igbokwe. You need to step up and implement procedures and activities that your employees can willingly participate in.

One way of doing so is establishing a physically healthy work environment as well as a mentally healthy one. Uphold the spirit of the Latin phrase: Mens sana in corpore sano, loosely translated to English as: “A healthy body means a healthy mind”. While physical health of course is not the sole means of maintaining mental health, it’s helpful and actionable, and creating a work environment that promotes this can be hugely beneficial.

Matt speaks to this as well: “Our employees are directed to prioritize their health and family. We allow for flexibility at work to allow employees to balance work activities with home and wellness responsibilities. Healthy habits like exercise, sleep, nutrition, meditation, and time with loved ones are encouraged.”

There’s more you can do in addition to promoting and enabling healthy habits. CEO Aylon Steinhart’s San Francisco-based vegan ice cream company Eclipse Foods introduced tech tools as part of its mental health policy:

“We have recently added wellness apps such as Headspace to our benefits package to give our employees more tools they may need to get through these tough times.”

Those still working in the office – and those about to return as we head out of the pandemic – can provide healthier, cheaper snacking options in the kitchen. Ethan Taub, CEO of an “online mall” for financial services, Goalry.com, did this in his office in Newport Beach, California:

“One simple practice which I think helps the mental and physical wellbeing is introducing free fruit stations within the office. It helps with snacking but the vitamins have a positive impact on the mind, therefore making your workers more productive whilst helping them with their health.”

When his company went virtual, he took it to another level:

“As things have been more difficult this year, our staff have actually been receiving free fruit hampers directly to their front door on a weekly basis. It helps us to stay in touch with one another but also look after our mental and physical well being through these little gift baskets.“

4. Encourage camaraderie and collaboration

When the days get shorter and shorter and the weather outside gets worse and worse – particularly in northern climes – people will spend more time indoors. Stay-at-home advisories and lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, plus numerous days working out of the home with little to no socialization can take its toll on workplace mental health.

When there isn’t a space for organic interaction between colleagues, you’ll need to step up and establish that environment – even virtually – to keep that spirit alive.

Aylon has taken the steps to make sure that camaraderie and collaboration continue to thrive despite working entirely online:

“From daily team check-ins to weekly virtual happy hours, it’s important that our employees see one another not just as coworkers but as real people who are going through this pandemic with one another,” Aylon says. “We are each other’s support system in these unparalleled times.”

Matt at EWR Digital also points to the collective company goal – including its deeper meaning – as a key to keeping employees motivated.

“We strengthen our group connections by cultivating a shared sense of purpose. Employees are helped to find meaning in their work and understand the importance of their individual contributions. This can make them feel more valued as a part of our team and stave of feelings of isolation or loneliness.”

5. Encourage a positive-thinking environment

The benefits of positive thinking are well documented in science: it helps maintain a strong immune system, reduces anxiety levels, and encourages healthier lifestyles and relationships both at home and in the workplace.

Part of positive thinking comes from within, via new habits such as daily statements of gratification, turning an “impossible” situation into a new and welcome challenge, and even simply smiling more and thinking positively about oneself. But another part of it comes from external sources – people feel more positive if they are appreciated by others.

Ted Sun, the president and CIO of Transcontinental University in Ohio, launched a strategy on empowerment at his school in early November and helped other executives implement the same in their workplace mental health strategy throughout.

“The basis of the strategy is to ensure that people are seen, heard, and feel like they have control,” says Ted. “We’ve implemented this into various systems including performance management systems, motivation systems, and learning systems.”

“Especially as we approached the end of the year, performance management has to be empowering. Hope for a brighter future has to be part of the conversation in the annual reviews.”

Ted adds that this isn’t an individual job – it needs to be a collective effort throughout the company.

“This powerful emotion also has to be in the daily language of all managers within the motivation systems. To do this, managers are getting additional development to master this (part of emotional intelligence development). In the learning systems, employees are getting additional skills to get a sense of control for their future.”

6. Hire a Happiness Coach

When you’re handling a company-wide workplace mental health initiative, someone needs to own that process whether as the leader of a team or as a dedicated director. Brexit Project Managers are commonplace in the United Kingdom, whereas jobs focused on diversity and inclusion are surging, especially in 2020. So why not hire someone to be in charge of increasing workplace morale at your company?

That’s what Rick did in hiring a Happiness Coach when his team shifted to remote work.

“This is a company-wide dedicated employee happiness and wellness coach that was hired from within the current team. […] She is the most empathic of all the staff. Her role is to meet up with the different team members on a regular basis and be available for them to speak with her about their private issues. She conducts 360° surveys so applicable changes can be made in the day-to-day management.”

The benefits of having this in the company led to a much stronger understanding of employee needs and workplace mental health priorities, Rick found:

“Because of this, we were able to understand that people would prefer flexible working hours, and four-day working weeks. This was in the height of the pandemic and completely understandable.”

And of course, once you have that information on hand, you need to carry out on that promise of equipping your employees with what they need in order to do their job well.

7. Track the progress

As in any business, establishing a tracking mechanism is crucial to success when launching a new initiative – be it DEI, a new product release, or expansion into new markets. The executives in your business will of course be interested in the wellbeing of your staff, but if they can have documentation in their hands that point to the real value of what you’re doing, then that’s even better.

This means you need to track your progress in workplace mental health and report on it in a very tangible way.

Ted makes sure to have a tracking mechanism in place as part of the mental health initiative in his workplace.

“All people have emotional intelligence data as we’ve focused on developing the EQ of all staff,” he says. “We regularly track the EQ development with various development activities. Optimism is also another metric we use to ensure people are engaged in a positive way contributing to the ideal outcomes.”

Ted also uses metrics to ensure that people follow through on the promise:

“We have systems in place to hold people accountable to learning and growing their EQ in addition to other intelligences like analytical and systems thinking.”

Rick found that tracking and reporting can be as simple as having a regular cadence in the strategy:

“Having a fixed meeting every six weeks with the Happiness Coach obliges the quieter employees to speak, who often have the best ideas and most hidden emotions. There are others then who are more than happy to have a type of Agony Aunt to vent to.”

A mutually supportive work environment

There is no clear-cut prescription to maintaining workplace mental health throughout the wintertime, particularly during a devastating pandemic and social unrest. However, simply implementing a few of the tips listed above can have a positive impact on your business and on your employees and colleagues, as Matt at EWR Digital found:

“We have an uplift in employee engagement following the implementation of our [wellness support] strategy. This has translated to an increase in productivity across all our projects.”

Rick pointed to a mixture of tangible and intangible benefits to actively supporting employees during 2020:

“I can’t tell you for sure if productivity rose because people had flexible hours, because they were at home, because we have a Happiness Coach, or because of all of the above.

“What I can share with you is that deadlines are being met with ease and there is less of a sense of stress during meetings. We completed year-end goals in August and are able to project higher goals for 2021.”

At the core of it all is this: your employees and your colleagues are human beings, each of whom are experiencing 2020 in different and unique ways. What you can do for them is establish an environment where they can feel safe and supported in the workplace – you want them to want to come to work every day and be their best selves.

Headspace’s 2020 Mental Health Trends report finds that companies and their leaders need to develop a better understanding of their employees’ needs, one of which is more evidence-based mental health tools resources as part of overall support in the workplace. The above-listed tips will be a good first step in getting through the deep dark winter – and beyond.

The post Workplace mental health: Support your employees through the deep dark winter appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In 2020, talent teams were looking for ways to diversify their sourcing channels and methods. With AI Recruiter, we helped customers immediately source 50 passive candidates from outside their existing network for every job.

Many companies faced unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 crisis. Unfortunately, with the pandemic came layoffs and furloughs at many companies. For customers trying to help former employees find a new job, we built Bridge, a tool that connects former employees with employers actively looking for candidates. 

The move to remote work made it harder for candidates to get a feel for company culture, meaning employer branding and careers pages became increasingly important in showcasing your company. With Branded Careers Pages, we help you put your best brand forward: flexible templates and customizable sections are included right in the Workable platform. 

As remote work opportunities increased, companies continued to attract talent globally. With language options, we made it easy for you to localize the entire candidate experience in the languages of your choice, available in English, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish. 

Many HR leaders looked to advance diversity, equity and inclusion as their organizations continued to navigate the new world of work. To address customer requests and needs, Workable released anonymized screening: the ability to anonymize your screening process by hiding details like candidate name, background, and gender. Anonymizing this data in applications can help companies decrease inherent bias and increase inclusivity in their hiring practices.

To help customers connect with candidates more easily, we introduced two premium features: Video Interviews and Texting. Video Interviews streamlines remote screening efforts, helping candidates record responses to interview questions at their convenience. Personalize the experience with a welcome video or pre-record videos with prompts. It’s a flexible process proven to help you screen more candidates, faster. Texting encourages recruiters to message candidates directly from the Workable platform or app and track responses in real time on the candidate timeline, just like with email.

With updates to our hiring plan, you now have the ability to filter by hiring manager, requisition owner and status for more granular reporting. To make company growth simple, we introduced Department Hierarchy. Department Hierarchy offers centralized department management with hierarchical structure, meaning as your company grows, your hiring structure does too. 

Speed up executive sign-off and get candidate signatures faster with updated offer letter templates, approval workflows, e-signatures and more, right within the platform. We take compliance very seriously and make it easy for your teams to stay compliant, adding CCPA to our existing suite of EEO/OFFCP and GDPR features. 

What’s coming in 2021

We’re building out our product roadmap based on customer feedback, market research, and our overall product vision. With that in mind, we wanted to give a sneak peek at what’s to come in 2021.

We will continue our focus on DEI with the release of a native Assessments feature and customizable surveys for candidate experience and diversity metrics. We’ll introduce automation to current communications, meaning you’ll be able to automate emails and text messages based on hiring stages. We’re bringing a slew of enhancements to our current candidate database, and we’ll focus on developing a number of additional features based on your feedback. We’re thrilled for what’s coming in 2021 to Workable, and we hope you are too.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us. 

The post 11 efficiency-boosting releases from Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is inclusion in the workplace?

Inclusion at work refers to an organization’s intended effort and actions to integrate everyone equally in the workplace, no matter their differences. Inclusion initiatives aim to increase psychological safety and the feeling of belonging, and allow everyone to feel accepted and valued.

According to ZeShaan, fostering inclusivity in business is not just the right thing to do – it offers a competitive advantage compared to organizations that don’t have an inclusion plan.

“Inclusivity leads to diversity, leads to innovation, leads to success,” says ZeShaan. “The inclusivity leads to diversity of perspective, which by proxy means you limit your blind spots, which therefore mean that you are able to innovate further, which gives you a competitive advantage.”

He’s quick to point to the positive impact this can have on the bottom line of a business.

“If you have that competitive advantage, you are going to succeed by whatever metric of success your company chooses, whether it’s revenue, whether it’s market share, whatever it might be. Ergo, inclusivity leads to success as well.”

In brief, inclusion of diverse perspectives and characteristics leads to higher performance and innovation, and benefits both organizations and employees. This has been widely documented.

It’s up to business leaders

ZeShaan believes that decision makers play a key role in promoting inclusivity, as they can carry the message across different company levels. In ZeShaan’s own words:

“It’s all well and good having a diverse workforce and having representation and while representation is important, if you’re not actually at the table when decisions are being made and you’re able to not just be at the table – but also articulate and be comfortable sharing that perspective without fear, without retribution, without any negative connotations – then that means that you’re not actually being truly inclusive of diverse perspectives.”

As a team or business leader, you should remember that not all people have access to the same resources. Be aware of this, and explore your own blind spots and unconscious biases, through self-education and reflection.

For example, ZeShaan acknowledges the burden a typical business hierarchy draws to employees from underprivileged backgrounds to climb the business ladder.

“All of the systems that we have in our society from government to education to policing is built on a structure of hierarchy and certain people at the top have that privilege and certain people lower down have to fight tooth and nail, just to make that step up,” ZeShaan says.

“That’s what needs to be dismantled. And that is inclusivity. You’re dismantling that system of hierarchy and actually all things are equal, all people are equal.”

Take real action

Once business and HR leaders define what measures they want to take to foster inclusion while taking organizational needs and characteristics into account, they should communicate the action plan with managers and employees in a simple and digestible way.

“You don’t need to overcomplicate it,” says ZeShaan.

But what you definitely should do is to ensure that your actions are proactive, not just performative.

“Make sure that their [leaders’] actions don’t just support, but supersede their words because it’s incredibly easy to talk the talk right now, because it’s in the current zeitgeist and en vogue to do so,” adds ZeShaan. “Deeds, not words. That’s the important thing. And hold people, hold leaders particularly accountable.”

One way to get closer to your goals is to create a culture of communication. If employees feel psychologically safe and valued, they’ll be more likely to discuss their needs and sort out potential problems with their managers and teammates going forward.

“You’re creating a culture of proactive communication,” adds ZeShaan. “And that’s essentially what it boils down to: People having the environment where they can speak openly, but with tact. Understanding and having empathy and compassion, but then also being tolerant of other perspectives.”

To help employees from underrepresented groups to feel they belong, encourage them to form diversity groups where they can discuss their concerns openly in a safe space. Then, invite the rest of employees to those discussions:

The “remote” challenges to inclusion

When asked how easy it is to promote inclusion in remote workplaces, ZeShaan was a bit skeptical. He believes that as humans we are not built to be remote and isolated. He explains:

“We are made to connect and interact and not primarily through video. But all of those other visual or other senses in terms of body language – even though we don’t notice it, smell and all of these other aspects, these non-verbal cues – we’re missing out on [those]. And actually, this is why it’s been so hard for people because we are fundamentally built to be interconnected social beings, right?”

In a remote workplace, we’re missing out on little moments that create human connection. This makes it harder to detect who might feel left out or disconnected from their team. Not everything is readily visible in a remote setup, including cases of discrimination or employee burnout. That’s why you have to ensure that you can replicate organic interactions and check-ins virtually.

“My role is not just as a leader for you to be able to speak to me but to speak to each other,” says ZeShaan. “To create that platform. Now it might be a weekly stand-up, a Monday morning. It might be on Friday afternoon. We get together for half an hour to check in as a team.”

It’s also worth finding ways to encourage employees to connect with different teams in the workplace. They might find people with characteristics or personalities they identify more with to nurture that feeling of belonging. ZeShaan explains:

“What a lot of people have said is they’re only really spending time with their teams, which is great. But if you have no real interactions with other teams or departments, but when you were in the office you would occasionally have a coffee or you’d go for lunch with some of the team or you’d be in the same place so you have those interactions, you’re becoming more and more isolated even within your company.”

Be flexible and open-minded

Remote work can be very beneficial for employers who want to increase diversity in their business, as they can expand their talent pool across common borders. But will they still be able to ensure inclusion for people from different backgrounds and locations? And can anyone thrive in a remote setting?

To overcome this challenge, ZeShaan suggests that businesses should offer flexible arrangements around remote working. For example, if somebody wants to work hundred percent remotely, you can allow them to and suggest some amendments, such as visiting the office once per quarter, to sync with the team if needed.

“Companies will need to be, again, inclusive of people with diverse perspectives and requirements,” concludes ZeShaan.

Inclusion in the workplace: the road ahead

More and more leaders are starting to realize the significance of inclusivity in our society and workplaces, so it’s best to act now – if you haven’t done so yet. Take ZeShaan’s insights for starters and see how you can tailor them to your own business needs, especially if you’re transitioning to a remote workplace.

As for business leaders, remember how impactful your voice is for employees and set the right tone. You might be surprised at the benefits this brings to your business and bottom line.

The post How leadership and remote work can impact inclusion in the workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The response from candidates and customers alike was overwhelmingly positive but we also heard from customers who wanted more customizable careers pages and options, like: 

1. More branding: Branding options were still limited in the 2019 release. Having only one branding color was challenging for organizations that featured two or three colors in their brand; moreover, typography configuration was a common request, to make the marketing and careers sites more consistent.
2. More content: The available content options were limited: you could add text, images, and videos. Hiring teams found it difficult to compete with custom careers sites’ content-rich sections with testimonials, maps, benefits, and more. 
3. Tracking performance: Τo improve your careers site, you must be able to track how it performs – ideally with your existing web analytics tools. Customers with dedicated recruitment marketing teams were missing a way to measure, analyze, and improve their careers site.
4. Customized URL hosting: For many customers, hosting the careers site under their own custom domain, like jobs.acme.com, instead of the generic apply.workable.com, was a common request to ensure a more consistent candidate experience. 

These challenges led some customers to look for other options to build the careers pages they envisioned. This meant either outsourcing the project to agencies – a long and expensive process – or requesting help from their own engineering and design resources, teams who usually have other high-priority projects to deliver.

Advanced careers pages

Understanding these needs, we designed the next version of our careers pages, enabling recruiting teams to build, update, and improve their careers site without breaking the bank. While maintaining a seamless candidate experience, we shifted our focus to the recruitment marketing team – enabling them to build advanced careers pages within Workable.

Through an intuitive user interface the user can set up the branding (colors and typography) of the careers site, add content components, such as testimonials, office locations on a map, and benefits, and publish with a single click; it is essentially a full-blown website builder tailored to fit a recruitment marketer’s needs.

In terms of product research at Workable, we’re lucky to be able to use our own product as a customer – thus, customer feedback is readily available. Our creative and recruiting teams user tested the product while building our own careers site. This way we had solid qualitative evidence to identify and prioritize the features and the usability improvements, instead of relying on our biases and assumptions. We then continued in short cycles of feedback and development with an open beta program: a group of engaged customers tried our new site builder and elaborated on their experience. Each piece of feedback was evaluated to guide our product development efforts in the way that is most meaningful to our customers.

As of December 10, 2020, advanced careers pages are available on Workable’s Core, Growth and Premier annual plans and the first customers’ careers sites are already live. According to our early product metrics, hiring teams now need less than a week to design, build and publish their careers site for the first time! And, on average, they create a first draft to iterate on in less than an hour. These times are just a fraction of what a custom careers site project (outsourced or internal) usually takes, and a positive sign of what’s to come. We’re excited to see what our customers accomplish with these enhanced employer branding tools. If you’d like to use our advanced careers page builder to efficiently – and cost effectively – reach more and better candidates, get in touch.

The post Introducing Advanced Careers Pages: Showcase your brand appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The Series A crunch may be tough but the talent crunch is brutal. We talk to high-growth startups every day and we keep hearing versions of “compared to recruiting, fundraising was easy”. Just like fundraising, it’s very competitive. It takes time, preparation and selling, and getting it wrong can slow down or kill your startup. It’s the hardest thing to get right. It doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

You need to be a hiring obsessive

Whether it’s two founders talking to an angel investor, a team of 10 making something from nothing, or a high-growth company with 50 staff, team quality is the single best predictor of success. If you can get great people then everything else becomes so much easier.

Growth hacks versus talent hacks

Silicon Valley has figured out how to build great products and turn them into successful business models. Methodologies have emerged like Lean Startup, agile product development and growth hacking. They function as roadmaps for the non-experts and inspire conversation and innovation in those fields. In comparison hiring practices have remained in the dark ages.

Getting from 5 to 50 and beyond

Your first five hires pretty much picked themselves but in getting from 5 to 50 you will need the best tools and analytics, and you will need to be systematic. It’s about more than ping pong tables and bicycle racks. We’ve spent the time to curate the best thinking on everything from employer branding and headhunting to every step in the interview process, whether you’re building a distributed team or you’ve got an office. We’ve thrown in ideas, tricks, talent hacks and real life examples from great companies. The result is this startup hiring guide that offers some structure when hiring for rapid growth from 5 to 50. It’s a starting point. And my aim is to get all of us to talk about hiring.

1. Building an attractive company: Employer branding
2. Always be hiring: developing a hiring process
3. How to write job descriptions
4. What to look for: Hiring for a startup
5. Sourcing 101: Passive candidates
6. Creating an interview process
7. Workplace benefits and compensation
8. Recruiting software and tools
9. Where to post your jobs

1. Building an attractive company: employer branding

Smart companies typically operate in competitive talent markets. This means that the people you’re looking for are likely to be juggling several job offers. Competing for outstanding candidates with the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter might seem like a losing proposition but it’s not.

It can be done but, first, you have to realize that hiring is marketing. We live in what’s called the “age of transparency”. It has never been easier for employees to be able to tell who you are or what working with you would be like. Digital platforms mean that even the youngest companies can affordably showcase why they’re an exciting place to work. There’s more to social media hiring than just tweeting your jobs. Everything you do or say on social media is building your brand.

PRO TIP: Intercom’s blog is a great example of doing marketing and employer branding at the same time.

You’re speaking to two audiences: Customers & talent

In the early days, the way you market your product and the way you think about the problems you’re solving, says a lot about the kind of company that you’re about to build. If you become known for doing interesting things for your customers, you will attract talented and ambitious people. Smart people want to solve interesting problems. They’re not looking for a job, they’re looking for a mission. Smart people want to work with smart people.

Your presence in communities, your reputation, your contribution and ideas represent you. Use blogging, social media and public conversations to keep speaking to your ideal future hires. Signpost your involvement in events and your own content to make it easy for people to find out what you stand for and why you matter.

PRO TIP: Buffer’s focus on transparency led to their Open Salaries initiative which has created huge buzz and awareness of them.

Who the hell are you?

In the beginning were the founders. The early hires in startups don’t have a company reputation to buy into, so usually they’re taking a gamble on joining the founders in their big initiative. When you’re in the early phase, it’s the personal brand of the founders that’s going to be the strongest component. Simple steps like having an engaging personal blog can project why you’re worth working for and what you’re trying to do. Let prospective candidates get to know you.

Even in the early days of a company your employees become your brand and signal what kind of people work there. Chances are you’ve hired people who reflect your company’s brand and values well. Showcase your employees on your website and empower them to talk confidently about your business. Employees attending meetups and events, sharing a video of their home working environment, or just speaking with genuine passion about their jobs are a powerful marketing tool.

Hire people who can build teams

Good people know good people. Hire people who are already networked and know much of the talent you’ll be needing. When you can, go for people with a personal brand. This is also a signal to future hires. Remember, some of your best people will be high-potential junior hires who will grow with the startup. So, always look for those who can nurture and grow your young talent.

PRO TIP: FullContact’s paid-paid vacation initiative offers holiday bonuses to staff who go completely off the grid. Everyone needs to from time to time.

Live in the real world

Don’t just be digital. You’re going to be employing people after all and they congregate at events and around offline communities too. Be an active participant in these ecosystems. An event sponsorship or even a few beers can go a long way. Even as remote work becomes more of a standard in 2020 and beyond, human interaction is highly valued and appreciated.

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2. Always be hiring: developing a hiring process

Networks are king

Ask any startup where most of their hires came from or ask bigger companies where their best people came from and the answer is usually the same: friends, friends of friends or ex-colleagues. It’s all about networks for one simple reason: good people know good people. Part of being a good CEO is building a great network with quality and reach. There are no shortcuts here, it’s real work. The better your network is, the easier your next hire is going to be.

If you don’t know the right person you will at least know someone who does. Remember quality as well as quantity. It’s not just about having thousands of LinkedIn connections (although it can’t hurt). Are you working hard enough to be an authentic member of the community where your talent pool is? If your tech is built with Ruby are you taking part in the relevant meetups and hackathons? Are your developers known for their thought leadership and contribution in your sphere?

Hiring is everyone’s job, especially sourcing

Just as you look for candidates through networks, the best candidates are looking for their next job in the same way. Word of mouth matters. The best recommendation you’re going to get will be when someone you’d like to hire is told by a friend of theirs who is already on your team that your startup is great place to work. If your team is proud of where they work they’ll tell their friends.

What happens when your own network runs out? Keep trying. There will always be someone you haven’t told that you’re hiring. You can go further, take the time to sit with your employees one by one and go through their online networks (LinkedIn is a good example). You’ll find good people and you can get your colleagues to message them then and there. This is a time-consuming process but worth it.

There’s tremendous value in referred employees in the form of greater job satisfaction, higher retention rates, quicker applicant-to-hire conversion – all metrics that ultimately reduce the cost of recruitment, especially when hiring for rapid growth.

PRO TIP: Set up a formal employee referral program in your company, with incentives for your current colleagues. You can even gamify the process to further motivate employees to refer people in their networks.

Get out of your bubble

Your own network can only extend so far and the chances are your colleagues’ networks have a lot of overlap with yours. Plus, there’s the potential for bias – as the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. If you’re hiring friends of friends or former colleagues of existing employees, that’s a potential trap in homogenizing your workforce. Get out of that bubble and speak to new people, ask for introductions from your own network so you can start tapping into adjacent ones.

Learn how a tech sales VP established gender balance in her team in a male-dominated field, by looking outside of the usual candidate resources.

PRO TIP: Sending your developers to the best conferences is a sure fire way to grow your network, as well as encouraging them to spread the word through their online networks where they live and play.

How to do social the right way

If you’ve done most things right so far you’ll start with an audience. This means you have something to bootstrap your social media recruiting effort to. Using social for hiring isn’t just about tweeting jobs and getting your colleagues to retweet. The companies who are most successful at social hiring have built up a relevant audience and target their tweets to influential people in their community. Not all retweets were born equal — you want to be talked about in context. You want influential people in your field talking you up as an authority.

PRO TIP: Netflix put their culture presentation online:

[slideshare id=36216034&doc=netflixorganizationalculture-131001173045-phpapp02-140623172442-phpapp01]

That open presentation promoting Netflix’s Culture of Excellence went viral – clearly boosting their employer brand and reputation.

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3. How to write job descriptions

Don’t go with the flow

Job descriptions could and should sweep candidates off their feet. But all too often, we’re content to lean on the old-fashioned and generic with the result that most job ads are mediocre. We’re guessing you don’t want to be average. You’re not one of those guys looking for superheroes who is too lazy to craft a job description that might actually attract them.

PRO TIP: The first time we came across Medium’s careers page was in Lou Hoffman’s article: The best job descriptions on the planet. Enough said.

Love at first sight

We all know that applicants like to scan. They want to look at an opening and be able to recognize in the blink of an eye if it’s their dream job. Like all busy people they have a thousand things competing for their attention; especially the passive candidates for whom you’re trawling. Make every job description seductive. Start with the job title, keeping in mind that most job boards work like search engines, therefore candidates use keywords to search for jobs.

The about-the-company part

This is your chance to make a good first impression, so start thinking about the distinctive characteristics that make your company special. The type of job description you publish is closely related to who you are as an employer. Give them a glimpse of your company that will charm them into coming to working for you.

PRO TIP: Check out some of our favorite job ads from the Workable job board – each of which can fit different needs in your business.

Candidates need to be able to relate to job descriptions on a personal level. Tell them a story about your company that will make them sit back and picture themselves working with you. Start with an educated guess, with something simple, ask for feedback and then optimize. Ask employees why they enjoy working for your startup. If you have a marketing department lean on them for some content marketing advice. Hiring for rapid growth should not to be done in isolation – it’s a team effort. You’ll need to put in some extra effort but it will pay off.

The about-the-job part

You know that if you go with the flow then your job descriptions will be deathly dull but you’re tempted to do so anyway. Because that’s the way everybody is doing it. But it won’t help your company stand out, it will just add to the mountain of identical job descriptions that grows larger every day.

How are job seekers (let alone the precious, passive ones) supposed to spot that you’re offering a dream gig when it looks like a machine wrote your job description? It’s not necessarily because they’re not well-written, it’s because they’re presented as if they were not written by or for a human being. Do everyone a favor and stick to the important stuff. There are tons of job descriptions out there listing every tiny little task a future employee might perform. That’s not the point.

It’s all about clarity

Start writing job descriptions that build businesses. They will attract the best talent and convert prospects into candidates. How?

• Sell your company and their future in it in an engaging fashion
• Get rid of the boring corporate tone
• Keep it chatty and friendly
• Use words that evoke feelings
• Make them aspire and then act on that desire
• Use “you” or “we’; drop the passive voice

To up the ante you can also add a list of people the future hire will get to work with on a regular basis.

The about-the-requirements part

We’ve covered the basics in our “There’s a difference between what you want and what you need” blog post. If you’ve used Workable, you may have noticed the must-haves and nice-to-haves requirements. Why did we add this feature? To make sure that candidates won’t get excluded from the hiring process just because they clicked “NO” on a secondary skill that is unlikely to be pivotal. Think about what skills would make sense, adding to the equation the fact that they are individuals and not miracle workers. Must-have requirements are the bare minimum: the can’t-live-without list. Nice-to-have requirements are the extras: they belong on the we-can-live-without list.

Jobseekers also have a hierarchy of needs that you need to keep in mind as you craft the perfect job ad. In fact, if Maslow were alive today, here’s what he might think about your job ads.

PRO TIP: Worth looking at KinHR. They might not have a careers page at the moment but this sales job description rocks.

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4. What to look for: Hiring for rapid-growth startups

Punch above your weight

A startup literally is its team in the beginning. These are the people who will signal your ambition and set your limits. So, go for the people you think you can’t get. You’ll be surprised and once you’ve got the first few heroes it will become a lot easier to attract more of them. This is not a luxury. It seems obvious to punch above your weight but a successful startup will continually shift up the weight categories. If you don’t get these people you’ll get stuck.

Hire deliberately

You’re not hiring to fill a job, you’re building a company. Make the first 20 hires deliberately with the future in mind. Don’t hire people just because they’re good in general and available. These kinds of opportunistic or bad hires early on in a startup’s life can sink you. The cost of a pointless hire can be astronomical. That’s money that most startups cannot afford to waste. Beyond the cost of getting it wrong, your first few hires will set the tone for the future. Getting it right will make something that’s intrinsically hard a lot easier.

PRO TIP: Avoid hiring a candidate who badmouths their previous employers and coworkers.

Hire for potential

A successful startup will quickly outgrow everyone’s current skills and roles. If things work out as intended it’s going to grow and morph unpredictably. So will the demands on your employees. One of the most exhausting aspects of startups is this constant evolution, or as some founders call it “keeping up with their own company”. While it can be fairly simple to assess a candidate’s current skills rating their potential is less so.

Look for people coming into their professional prime. The past is a good guide, so take into account lifetime achievements whether they’re jobs, schools or hobbies. With few exceptions, smart, decisive and hard working people usually manage to go to a great school and do well in exams they care about. Look for high achievers.

PRO TIP: Include pre-interview assignments in the hiring process. Those who bother to go the extra mile will prevail.

The culture fit

This can be hard to pin down but it’s almost always important. It has its roots in the unfashionable word “congruence” — the fit between personality and organization. It means that you need to assess people on their behavior, mentality and match to the values of your organization.

PRO TIP: Valve’s Employee Handbook (the production quality, akin to what you would expect from their best marketing material) tells you a lot about who they are and how important this is for them.

But there’s one simple rule: never hire people with a bad attitude. It only takes one to poison an otherwise stellar team. That little problem you noticed in an interview will be magnified one-hundred fold by six months of hard work in a small team. Don’t overlook it. Go for people with an opinion, people who can honestly explain what they like and dislike. The kind of people who believe in missions, values and visions. They care. Those are the people who will be telling the truth when they assure you that they believe in your startup’s vision.

Hire for attitude, train for skills

You have to like a candidate before you hire them. This sounds highly subjective and unfair to them, especially when the context is strictly professional. However, someone’s ability to blend into your team, get along with you on a daily basis and build up some emotional reserves for tough times will ultimately determine their performance.

Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Ferriss can argue all they want about what and how fast a human being can learn but the truth is that certain human traits can’t be acquired beyond a certain stage in life. Focus on the fundamentals: intelligence, personality, diligence. Instead of testing for specific knowledge, check how a prospect reacts when you ask them to do something they haven’t worked on before.

PRO TIP: Carry out behavioral interviews, in addition to the standard ones. Always have a good store of questions.

Look for things you can’t train

You can teach financial management or how to interpret Google Analytics reports, but it’s probably too late to instil manners, ethics or numeracy. Skills and experience are worthless when not put to use. Knowledge is useless when not shared with others. The smaller your business, the more likely you are to be an expert in your field, so transferring those skills to new employees is relatively easy. But you can’t train enthusiasm or a solid work ethic.

According to a LeadershipIQ study, only 11% of the new hires that failed in the first 18 months did so because of deficiencies in technical skills. The majority failed due to lack of motivation, an unwillingness to be coached, or problems with temperament and emotional intelligence.

PRO TIP: Always ask for references. Poor players struggle to provide solid and believable references.

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5. Sourcing 101: Passive candidates

Build a profile

Most people don’t know how to fish for talent that’s not looking for a hook. These elusive prospects are known as passive candidates. Sourcing is the process of finding people who are not overtly looking for a job. Your starting point is to know what you’re pursuing and as much as possible about where you’re likely to find it. Think about what the ideal person looks like. What experience do they need to have? What kind of job are they doing now? Which companies must have good people doing this job? Start building a profile. The key to sourcing is figuring out what you’re pursuing and where it lives.

What is sourcing?

Mature companies: You’re looking for established companies doing a great job at what you’re looking for (eg. selling to SMEs, content marketing). You’re looking for people trained by the best, whose options have vested, who are ready to move on to a new exciting gig.

Vulnerable companies: Startups are volatile. When a company experiences a shakeup, there’s a window of opportunity. Signs to look for include the departure of a leadership figure; ventures which have gone 18 months with no follow-up funding or rumors of layoffs. You’re looking for drift and discontent where the talent works so mine the industry reports (Crunchbase, Mattermark, CBInsights, Owler) and listen to the gossip.

Events: Where do the best people on your shortlist hang out? Think about what kind of events they attend and make sure you’re there – be they virtual gatherings or in person. These settings give you the chance to meet people who you may want to approach in the future. When the time comes you will have less cold calling to do.

Universities: The very best talent are only truly unemployed once in their life: right out of college. Universities have structures that help you identify this top echelon. They’re at careers fairs, on internship programmes, or even doing work experience that contributes course credits.

PRO TIP: Look for companies 6-12 months after a seed funding without followup.

Make a shortlist and lean in

Now that we know what to search for, all these sourcing tools (LinkedIn, TalentBin, GitHub, Sourcing.io, and of course, Workable) actually become useful. Start browsing profiles and make a long-list of prospects. Prioritize people who you can reach out to through your extended network. If you can’t get an intro, then see if you can engage them on social media (Twitter) or engineer a chance meeting.

PRO TIP: Attend startup community meetups, design conventions or hackathons.

A courtship doesn’t begin with leaning in, it starts with people getting to know each other. If you do this well the prospect will have already gotten to know you before the conversation turns to a job offer. These are people you may not hire today, or even one year from now. They may also be the key to introducing you to your best hires in the future.

External recruiters

This is where you turn when you’re short on time or confidence to follow the steps above. They can be a fantastic shortcut. It might look simple but there are a couple of things to bear in mind. Look out for recruiters who have hired for small companies before and have a track record of placement in the role you’re looking for. Most startups use contingent recruiters whom you pay only when they deliver someone you hire (typically one-third of the hire’s annual salary).

The upside is that you only pay for what you get. The downside is that your aim and the recruiter’s aim are not the same. You want to hire great people. They want you to hire someone. This subtle difference can lose you time dealing with uninspiring candidates.

PRO TIP: Pay your recruiter more than they ask for. They’ll think twice before referring the next high-quality candidate to another competitor or well-funded company.

A nod to ethics

You need to be competitive but you also live in a community. Employee poaching can backfire on you, especially when you’re just starting out. Getting the balance right can be as simple as being mindful of basic good manners.

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6. Creating an interview process

One of the biggest mistakes made when hiring for rapid growth in a startup is to think that just because you’re small you don’t need a process. If you think “process” means doing things slowly, think again. Get the right tools, remember to hire as a team and you will stay on track. The selection process is a funnel – you get a lot of applicants, you speak with some of them, you meet a few of them, you hire the one you like best. An efficient filtering process will save you and your candidates time.

Pre-interview questions

This all starts with the pre-interview questions, the questions you ask a candidate when they apply that will help you decide whether to progress with an applicant. Make sure candidates can sensibly weigh themselves against the requirements. Do you know anyone who will say “no” to the requirement “must be hard working”? Neither do we.

PRO TIP: Get candidates to do an assignment or task related to the job as part of the pre-interview.

Pre-interview questions can only get you so far. They weed out the most inappropriate candidates and give you an insight beyond a basic resume. However, a major factor in your hiring decision will be how well a candidate will fit in with your business. It’s personal and you need to get to know the candidates.

Screening assignments / testing

Ever walked in to an interview and known within 30 seconds that the candidate you’re meeting is never going to work out? Sure, most people have been there. The worst thing is that it wastes your time. You can’t just stop the interview after half a minute so you go through the routine and waste an hour of your time. It doesn’t have to be that way. An initial phone call, Skype screening conversation, or asynchronous video interviews will prevent that scenario nine times out of 10. Resumes, pre-screening questions, screens, interviews – we use these techniques to use past performance as an indicator of future success.

But what if you want to better understand how candidates will actually perform in the job you’re hiring them for? One way of finding out is to get candidates to do an assignment or task related to the job – in other words, a skills assessment. Hiring for a customer support associate? Test candidates by getting them to answer some hypothetical customer queries. If you are hiring developers, there are online tools like Codility which can put developers through their paces so you can see exactly how they code.

Interviews

Have a plan. Don’t just ask the same questions over and over. Take the time to know who you are meeting before you walk in. Not just their name and not just the job title of the role they’re interviewing for. Get to know them a little, check their resume and note some questions in advance.

Interviews shouldn’t slavishly follow a script. There are probably some standard questions you want to ask all candidates, such as whether they’re eligible to work in your territory. But these are just hygiene questions – you have to go further. Ask open questions that encourage a discussion, engage with the candidates’ responses and consider follow up questions you want to ask. If it’s boring, it’s not working. There’s nothing worse than the candidate feeling like the interviewer hasn’t read their resume and is just going through the motions: “Tell me about this job, now this job, and now this job…” No one gets much out of this kind of interview.

Interviews work both ways

When you leave an interview you should have a much better understanding of the candidate’s credentials and suitability. Equally, they should leave knowing a lot more about the role and the company. If you’ve screened your shortlist properly then everyone you interview should be a real contender – which means it’s worth selling to candidates in interviews. Chances are you’re going to offer them below market rate if you’re an early stage startup. Generally people don’t like getting paid less so you’d better give them a good reason to be excited.

PRO TIP: Note down personalized questions for candidates before the interview but don’t stick slavishly to the script.

Take a deep breath

If you have a nagging feeling that something isn’t right when you’re making an offer, don’t rush. Take your time to identify where that uneasiness comes from. Talk it through with a colleague. Don’t be afraid to ask a candidate to come for another meeting. Chances are if you have a concern, the candidate will be feeling the same and a quick conversation will iron out any problems. In the long term a bit of caution will pay off.

When you’re hiring for a function where you have little or no personal experience, it can be very hard to assess resumes or know what to ask during interviews. You might want to consider bringing in some outside help. This doesn’t need to be paid help, it could just be a friend or ex-colleague who can help you out with the skills-based aspects of the hiring process.

Keep it challenging

This is where you set the bar and show your rigour and ambition. A challenging interview process is a signal to candidates that your company doesn’t do average. This doesn’t have to mean a drawn-out 15-phase interview – even Google is moving away from the huge number of interviews they put candidates through – but you absolutely should establish a thoughtful pipeline that gives the candidate an opportunity to prove their mettle.

PRO TIP: Level the playing field by posing customer support queries for a tool most people are familiar with or can access easily e.g. Facebook.

Taking references

Not everyone believes references from previous employers are useful way in determining future performance. Candidates are unlikely to provide a reference whom they expect to say negative things about them. And many people don’t want to talk badly about someone so even if your candidate was terrible in a past job their reference won’t tell you.

This is not a reason to ignore references. It’s a reason to work harder at getting them right. Get more references. Successful entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster recommends getting at least five, including people the candidate didn’t propose. If we assume people are smart enough to gather good references, ask yourself: “Are they glowing?” If not, why not? Ask candidates why they chose the referees they did.

PRO TIP: Get at least 5 references and make sure some of them come from people the candidate hasn’t put forward. Read this.

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7. Workplace benefits and compensation

You can’t pay for groceries with equity

You’re not going to compete on salary with Google and Facebook but you need to get survival out of mind. Even your earliest hires ‐ and that includes you, the founder ‐ will need to pay bills. Some startups go to extremes, trying to make their runway last longer. Don’t build your runway on the backs of an exhausted and underpaid team. You objective is not to delay the next round but to get to it in the best possible shape. Here’s a few things you can do to achieve the right balance.

The power of perks

You’re not going to have the swankiest offices but you can make them reflect why people came to work for you. You don’t need a big budget to create a friendly, informal and energetic work space. Our environment helps to shape our mindset and reminds us who we are. Spend the time to make it attractive to your team, even if you can’t initially spend much money. There are many ways to make your company an attractive place to work – even if you’re in an “unsexy” location.

PRO TIP: Buffer’s emphasis on transparency led to their Open Salaries initiative, which has created huge buzz and awareness of them.

Perks are powerful and cost effective. When you take into account tax and deductions a $10 lunch is worth more to your employee than $10 on their salary. But it’s about more than a free lunch. Taking care of peoples’ needs makes them feel taken care of. This pays off handsomely in productivity and morale.

That shouldn’t mean that you neglect traditional benefits. Before you start on the ping pong tables and games consoles make sure everyone has access to health insurance. When people know the basics like health are covered they’re more prepared to live leaner when it comes to salaries.

Compensating risk

Equity compensates risk. It is a form of deferred reward. When deciding whether to join your startup a prospect is looking at what they could earn at market rates for their skills over the same time period and balancing it against a potential future return that should be several multiples of the income they lost out on. It’s mathematics.

All early employees should have a significant amount of equity. This ensures their sense of ownership and mission. A properly structured stock option is also a commitment on the part of the employee. Equity grants usually vest over a period of three to four years and there’s a “cliff period” (typically one year) before a new employee earns their first tranche of shares.

This way, you’re not giving your company away. Instead, you’re binding the core team to your mission for long enough to make meaningful progress. With that in mind, don’t wait till the best people are restless. The best companies also give retention equity packages to fully vested employees. You need to think about this, before your star performers do.

How to research market rates, equity standards

Knowing the going rate for salaries and equity is notoriously difficult. A good place to get a benchmark is AngelList (for startup equity and salaries) or Glassdoor (for market rates). Make sure to compare yourself to similar companies. For each hire, check what’s on offer for jobs they could take so you know what their other options look like.

Especially when it comes to equity, it’s always better to err on the generous side. Rather than being hung up over a 0.1% more or less, think about whether this employee will improve your chance of success by that amount. A good hire will make it worth your while.

PRO TIP: Wealthfront’s Startup Compensation Tool is one of many benchmarks you can use.

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8. Recruiting software and tools

You need tools

We consider an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to be the centerpiece of any effective toolkit – especially when hiring for rapid growth. This is why we built one from scratch and obviously consider it to be the best of its kind. When choosing an ATS, ask yourself how well it integrates with other tools that you’ll need. A good one will integrate or at least play nicely with most of the software we recommend below.

Even then, it helps to know which ones are tops in the market. We’ve compiled for you the 12 best applicant tracking systems to help inform your decision on purchasing an ATS.

Sourcing and referral platforms

TalentBin, Sourcing.io, 3Sourcing and Gild are people aggregators with searchable, often pre-evaluated or classified profiles of people. Professional networks or communities like LinkedIn, GitHub, Dribble, AngelList are good places to do manual sourcing. Zao is one of the best referral platforms we came across. It’s made based on best practices, optimizes matches across all companies’ open jobs, has a gamification layer making it fun to participate and allows extended referrals. Another one to consider is RolePoint.

Online interview systems

Interviewing has gone video and this lets you record video questions, invite candidates to submit their responses so you can review them. Set time limits for responses, pause to take notes, tick the ones that are a perfect match, share if you’re not sure to take a second opinion. Workable’s Video Interviews can set you up for success here – particularly if you’re hiring for rapid growth in a short period of time and need to establish a standardized screening process with minimal breakdown.

Assessment tools

Codility is a niche, engineers-only, database. These guys are loaded with millions of engineers — active and passive. Considering the gap between demand and supply then this app is a treasure trove of prospects and a pretty straightforward tool to use if tech job boards aren’t cutting it. You can browse and filter data, collaborate with your team and do social recruiting too.

Smarterer have revolutionized skills assessment. Just give them 10 questions, 2 minutes and voila! you get a quantified skill. It’s basically a skills testing app but different. All of its test content is crowdsourced from the individuals who take the tests.

SHL has ability and personality tests if you need to test for critical qualities. They only offer science-based assessments and benchmark data.

Weirdly has your cultural fit riddle all figured out. It’s a four-step culture assessing recruitment tool. Define your desired cultural profile, publish the vacancy, watch candidates complete the quiz and select the right kind of weird.

Onboarding & talent management

KinHR is probably the best when it comes to onboarding new hires in a comprehensive and thoughtful way. The new employee signs in and reads about the company and the team they’re going to work with and what tasks they should start working on.

Zenefits is good for payroll and benefits management.

The shift to remote work also means onboarding remotely – such that you’re bringing people on board without them having met anyone on the team in person. Learn some tips and tricks of successful remote onboarding for you and your company.

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9. Where to post your jobs

You know exactly what you’re looking for so what’s your next step? Plaster your ad over every job board out there, right? Wrong. It pays off in time and money to do a little homework. Consider these questions:

• Where does the rest of your industry (in your city or country) post jobs?
• Did you get enough qualified candidates the last time you hit publish on XYZ job board? Did you get any candidates at all?
• Did you get too many candidates, maybe?
• Ask people who already have this type of job, where they first saw it?
• Visit alexa.com to see how popular the job board you are considering is.
• Find out where the audience you want to reach hangs out online
• Study the other job postings on that XYZ job board where you’re thinking of publishing your opening

The job board forest

To facilitate the job board selection process, we brought together a handy list of the top ones (below).

Horizontal

LinkedIn is the leader due to its three-way nature; professional social network/headhunting tool/job board – the biggest of its kind with 760 million members. It enables you to search profiles, pay to post jobs and more besides. With LinkedIn InMail, you can even contact candidates directly.

Indeed is the premier job site globally with 250 million regular visitors. You can post all types of jobs, sponsor the ones from your careers page, pay per click and search resumes.

Craigslist is the site for classifieds. Doesn’t match the traditional job board criteria, is famous for its no-frills user interface but beats everyone for inbound traffic.

Monster is one of the oldest job boards that keeps expanding worldwide. It’s a bit expensive in some countries (unless you post through Workable), has a lot of traffic and loads of resumes and free content.

Careerbuilder operates in the US, Europe, Canada and Asia. CareerBuilder is used by 80 million job applicants and has three million job postings per month.

Stepstone is one of the most successful job boards in Europe.

Beyond automatically distributes postings to niche sites and talent communities based on specific criteria. What’s in it for you? Targeted exposure and more relevant applications.

Tech

StackOverflowCareers is the careers platform of StackOverflow. It’s used by more than 100 million developers and technologists and is the trusted first destination of tech recruiters. If you’re looking for developers, it’s the place to go.

Dice is also a leader in the tech job boards industry. It has a cross-posting network and minimizes unqualified clutter due to its niche nature, with a database of more than nine million members.

Github Jobs taps into developers and engineers by being the place they hang out. Good place to trawl for passive candidates – especially with 50 million developers checking in regularly.

Creative

Behance is where some of the top brands post their creative jobs. It’s also the place where professionals showcase their work enabling you to take a sneak peek before you decide.

Dribbble gives you access to designers’ portfolios and profiles. Workable’s designers are really fond of it. Plus you can post your jobs and connect with top talent.

Authentic Jobs introduces recruiters to creative professionals. Simple and efficient.

Remote & flexible jobs

We Work Remotely is the job board without borders allowing you to narrow down talent without it having to be in the same location as you.

Upwork is free and for freelancers only. If you’re looking for one, check out their well-rounded freelancers’ database.

Flexjobs is free and effective when it comes to flexible jobs job posting. Only applies if you’re in search of part-time, telecommute or freelance employees.

Startups

AngelList ‐ you probably already know it if you’re a startup. Candidates get to apply privately and see salary and equity up front and startups get to access a huge list of developers and designers actively looking for a job. On top of that, it’s free!

Startuply is a free job listing site aimed mainly at small startups, which find it rather difficult to attract engineering talent. Startups can create a detailed company profile to give prospect candidates a sense of what it’d be like working for them. You should definitely give it a shot.

StartUpHire lists hundreds of jobs, but only for venture capital backed companies. It also comes at zero cost and has a widget that enables you to automatically add your open positions to your website

The Muse lets job seekers look behind the curtains of great companies. You can “showcase the heart and soul of your company” in 500 words, videos and photos and then display your job openings.

The post The Startup Hiring Guide: Hiring for rapid growth from 5 to 50 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The modern jobseeker could be spending up to 15 hours a week looking and is just as likely to be using their smartphone as their laptop while doing so. More than half the traffic on Glassdoor, one of the world’s most popular job boards, comes from mobile with the group of 35-44 leading the way. And this is why employers who accept mobile applications are twice as likely to get high quality candidates as those that don’t.

This guide was created so as to give you a quick overview of job posting and help you bring those talented jobseekers to your doorstep. If you know the basics, you can navigate and jump into the topics you want:

1. Choosing the right job title for your open role
2. How to write a job description
3. How to post a job listing
4. Where to post a job for free
5. The best places to post jobs free and paid
6. Specialist job boards
7. How to post to multiple job boards for maximum impact
8. Tips for successful job candidate management

What are the different ways to attract candidates?

There is no magic bullet in recruiting. Instead there’s an exciting variety of channels and the challenge is to get the mix right. The starting point should be a great careers page that showcases what’s good about your company and the roles you’re hiring for. The next step is to take advantage of social media to spread the word that you’re hiring. Get everyone you work with involved with the help of a referral program. Then turn to job boards where there are a host of free options for job posting, as well as premium job boards, which if used right, are worth the money.

How do people collect and review applicants?

Even now some of the smartest companies are still hobbling their recruiting effort by using accounting tools to get it done. Spreadsheets are great for a lot of things. They suck as a hiring tool. Likewise email – which you can’t work without – becomes overwhelming when you’re hiring. The answer can be found in some of the great hiring software solutions that an increasing number of employers are turning to. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), like Workable, are bringing the advantages larger organisations have long enjoyed when hiring and delivering them to smart companies of all sizes.

Do I need to hire a recruiter?

Hiring a recruiter isn’t always necessary but it can be a great shortcut. Here are some important points to bear in mind:

• Look for recruiters who have hired for businesses like your own.
• Look for recruiters who have hired for roles like the one you’re hiring for.

Contingent recruiters, who get paid when they deliver results, have become increasingly popular. The upside is that you only pay for what you get (typically one third of the hire’s annual salary). The downside is the cost and a possible conflict of interest. You want to hire great people. The recruiter gets paid when you hire someone. Bear this in mind.

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1. Choosing the right job title for your open role

Whichever job title you choose for your job advertisement, remember that it will be displayed in job listings, on your own website and in search results. While you might think of a job title one way, your candidates could be busy searching for something else. The answer is to do some research to make sure your title is something a jobseeker would look for on Google or Bing. While a designer might reasonably expect to search using the term “designer”, this won’t help them to find your posting if you’ve used the job title, “graphical ninja”. Clarity of writing comes from clarity of thought.

Tech tricks to inform your choice:

• Go to the job board Indeed to check out the most searched job trends.
• Use the Google Keyword Planner, or if you don’t have an Adwords account one of these free keyword tools.

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2. How to write a job description

First impressions count. For many jobseekers, the job description is where the relationship between employee and employer begins. Should this step turn into a stumble it’s all over very quickly. Job descriptions can alienate, demoralize and intimidate. They can also engage, motivate and inspire. To achieve the latter we need to revolutionize the way we think about this relationship.

We’re starting with a list of tips and tricks on how to write a job description, then we’ll break it down to provide specific guidelines for your company profile, requirements and benefits.

How to write a job description in 10 steps

1. Discuss the role with someone who already does this job, or its nearest equivalent within your organization, and get them to describe their average day.
2. Describe the role using words that feel inviting and evoke an emotional response. Resist the temptation to use jargon, buzzwords or a flat corporate tone.
3. Keep it short (but not too short) or it can become confusing. As a general rule, don’t use more than a half-dozen bullet points and don’t exceed 700 words.
4. Be specific. Vague meaningless prose won’t cut it here. Know your industry and where your company stands. Make sure you’re familiar with the role and what it consists of and spell it out. Add a start date to create a sense of urgency.
5. Think like an applicant. What would make you apply for the job? Is it just perks and benefits or the chance to work with a smart group of people? Perhaps it’s the clear career path, the opportunities to learn and add to your skills, the company’s vision or the way you do things.
6. Help applicants to picture themselves in the role. Share details of the team they could be working with on a regular basis; include quotes or links to social media accounts.
7. Leave out trivial tasks or minor details. It’s all about what’s important in the role.
8. Offer value. It’s not all about how great your company and the job you’re offering is. This is about the potential candidates. Share content that interests and attracts them, talk about knowledge, ideas, and working methods.
9. Don’t write job descriptions in isolation. Talk to other departments to gain their expertise, content writers for wordsmithing, marketing for promotional ideas, designers for smart-looking visuals.
10. Spell-check and proofread. And once you’re done, do it again.

Looking for more? Check out our ultimate and most updated list of how to write a good job description.

Your company versus all the companies out there

To stand out in a crowded market you need to show some personality in your company profile. Your company is a unique combination of people, culture and knowledge, and your target is to attract candidates who share your approach and values. Make a pitch. Tell them the story of where you are, how you got there and where you’re going. Invite your candidates to join you in getting there.

Make it visual; an image of your workplace, a video or a quote from one of your employees offers an inside look at your company. Two-thirds of jobseekers admit to being influenced by the presentation of a job ad. Make yours memorable.

But don’t be self-absorbed. Many ads brag about how special their company is, how they only employ the best. This can come across as boastful, which is a turnoff for some candidates and will make others suspicious or fearful of applying. Brevity is your friend, keep this part to no more than 200 words and focus on your candidate; what’s likely to capture their attention.

This job versus every other job out there

The two most common approaches when writing a job description are to present a detailed list of daily tasks or a vague run-through of responsibilities. Neither will make the role compelling. Focus instead on deliverables and explain how these will contribute to the success of the business.

Here you can use bullet points (not a laundry list) that describe the nature of the work and how the role functions within the broader team. Rather than describing tasks, focus on the type of decisions they’ll be making, who they will be working with and reporting to.

The requirements list

You get what you ask for, so it’s tempting to go all out with a wish list. What you actually need is someone who can do the job and has the potential to grow. Candidates aren’t sitting on a shelf waiting to be picked. Distinguish between what you “want” and what you “need”. Come up with a list of 15 requirements. Read, rethink and cut the list in half.

A good approach is to rank skills by importance and frequency and be clear about it. Treating all skills as equal will demoralize jobseekers. The wrong emphasis could cost you good candidates who are concerned that they lack some skills which could really be picked up with a few hours basic training. Likewise don’t dwell too much on experience. Keep in mind that skills can be learned, people can be trained.

Benefits & perks

Here you can knock yourself out with as many bullet points as your actual benefits deserve. Still, you would be wise to focus on what’s special about your company. Keep in mind that attracting people through perks isn’t the best recruiting strategy. You’re looking for someone to meet the challenge and buy into the company as a whole, not a benefits shopper.

Make it easy to apply

We’ve all come across job ads that require a lot of patience to apply. Sending resumes to email addresses, filling out a bunch of fields with basic personal details or even worse rewriting your entire resume in individual form fields. Don’t be that guy. The candidates’ application experience is important.

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that automatically fills in required fields and offers a simple resume upload is all you need. Screening questions are useful and can weed out poor candidates to save you valuable time. A simple question like “What attracted you to this job?” can say volumes about the candidate. But go easy on open-ended questions that require candidates to write an essay. Multiple choice questions to check on skills and knowledge should be the default.

Worried about starting with a blank page? Try our job description templates, or jump right in and post your job to the best job boards today.

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3. How to post a job listing

You need to create some buzz around the job you’ve just published on your careers page. To do this you want to get your listing noticed by the communities where the passive candidates hang out. Linkedin has scores of groups you can join, mention jobs in or initiate general discussions around the role, your company or the industry.

First things first. Does everyone on staff know you have just listed a new job? Share it across your company. If you don’t have a referral system in place we’d strongly advise you to set one up. Include a social sharing feature and give incentives to your staff to start sharing from their own social accounts.

An alternative is to create your own communities. Smart companies make sure they have created Facebook groups or a Facebook Jobs tab, or even run a Facebook ad campaign, with the sole purpose of attracting potential candidates. Promote your employer brand through these pages and when you post a job you’ll have a talent pool of existing fans. Add as many touch points as possible between you and prospective candidates.

The top job boards

Posting your job on your careers page and social media is not enough. You need job boards. The leading premium job boards in terms of ROI (return on investment) are LinkedIn, Craigslist, Indeed and Monster.

Some job boards, like Indeed, also offer a free option as well as a paid. SimplyHired and Glassdoor offer free postings when you access them through an ATS like Workable. For the most effective places to post your jobs, check out our job board directory, which enables you to choose job boards based on industry, location, and cost (paid versus unpaid).

The best day to post a job

Don’t post your jobs on Friday evening, by Monday they’ll be last week’s news! Instead, wait until Sunday evening or Monday morning and advertise your roles when the candidates are most active.

Most job sites use freshness as a factor in ranking job search results. Plus, the new jobs of the day usually land in email updates and job board front pages, so getting there when the action is happening can get you up to double the candidates you’d receive on a slow day.

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4. Where to post a job for free

To keep costs low, share your job on social media – with a well-thought-out strategy – and harness the power of your best brand advocates: your employees. Wondering where to post jobs for free? Get word-of-mouth referrals for free by having your team share your job descriptions far and wide on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

• Twitter
  Twitter is the most open and transparent of these three social networks. In other words, you don’t have to be a Twitter user to read tweets. Putting your job listing on Twitter is a great way to connect with audiences you don’t already know. Help jobseekers find your listing by using relevant hashtags, such as #jobopening or #joblisting. You can even use industry-specific hashtags, such as #greenjobs, or location-specific hashtags, such as #bostonjobs. This list of hashtags is written for jobseekers but equally useful for recruiters
• Facebook
  Facebook has more users than LinkedIn and Twitter and is by far the most popular social network. It’s designed for personal sharing and the best channel for employer branding. To get the most traction from Facebook, intersperse job listings with photos and videos that feature your corporate culture. If you’re planning to do a lot of recruiting on Facebook, try adding a Jobs Tab to your page. This is a free, effective way to enable your audience to browse all your open jobs on Facebook.
• LinkedIn
  LinkedIn is purely a professional network and a natural fit for recruiters. LinkedIn profiles are formatted much like a resume, with most of the same candidate data—education, work history, technical skills, and some extras, like recommendations and endorsements. This is what makes LinkedIn so effective for sourcing highly specific types of candidates. Although LinkedIn has paid job listings, you can also post an open job as a status update on your company page for free.

Talent pools and the power of referrals

IMPORTANT NOTE: Choose your social media channel based on where your target talent pool is likely to be. Communications professionals in fields like advertising, marketing, and PR, are likely to be active on Twitter. If you’re hiring for construction jobs, Twitter won’t be an effective recruiting channel for you. You’re not limited to these social networks either. For example, if you’re a lifestyle or fashion brand and primarily communicate with your audience through images, Instagram may be your best bet.

Try pairing social media with an employee referral program. This is a warm, efficient way to reach your colleagues’ trusted contacts and make higher quality hires. Referrals are the number one source for hires, and social media provides employees with an easier, more personal way to share open jobs. Increase participation in the referral program with incentives. Gift cards, gadgets, and bonuses are popular, but feel free to get creative.

For example, APAC Customer Services had offered concert tickets as a reward for referrals. It was fun, but also smart, with the concert date functioning as a kind of countdown. When creating a referral program, think about the way your colleagues like to communicate, such as Slack.

Where to collect your candidates

One efficient way to post to job boards is through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). In addition to posting to multiple job boards and social networks with one submission, any applicants from those job boards will automatically be imported into your ATS. Hiring teams can work smarter, not harder, by cutting email and spreadsheets out of the process and storing all their candidate profiles and resumes in a searchable database.

The best ATS options, including Workable, offer you a simple hiring pipeline that makes sense of your recruiting tasks.

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5. The best places to post jobs free and paid

Get more eyes on your job listing today. With one click, post your listing to free job boards like Indeed, SimplyHired and Glassdoor. Workable integrates with numerous top job boards around the world. All you need to do is select the ones you want and we’ll do the rest.

Premium Job Boards

• Indeed
  Indeed is a leader among job boards and is visited by nearly three-quarters of all jobseekers. The site also boasts substantial reach with over 4 million jobs posted directly to Indeed.com. Indeed is also a job search engine that anyone can use for free. It takes jobseekers’ input, such as skills and location and then aggregates all matching jobs from thousands of other websites.
• LinkedIn
  LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network, a powerful sourcing tool and a job board. LinkedIn enables recruiters to create narrow searches for candidates by parameters such as location, job title, industry and more. With more than 722 million users in total, LinkedIn has the largest user base. And they’re growing fast with 172,800 added per day. The site is also visited by a whopping 310m active users a month.
• CareerBuilder
  CareerBuilder is both a job board and a destination for career advice. It operates in the United States, Europe, Canada and Asia and is visited by more than 24 million unique visitors a month. It has 3,200 partner sites in 60 countries. CareerBuilder is used by 80 million job applicants and each month it has 3 million job postings.
• SimplyHired
  SimplyHired, like Indeed, is a job search engine at its core. It is a highly-targeted pay per click job board that gets around 30 million unique visitors per month. SimplyHired is used by 3 million employers. When jobseekers search on SimplyHired, they’re able to discover jobs on the SimplyHired site, mobile app and numerous partner sites.
• ZipRecruiter
  ZipRecruiter is used by over 1 million employers and 7 million active job seekers each month. They offer a speedy way to get candidates by enabling recruiters to post to more than 100 job boards with one click, in addition to having a job board of their own.
• Monster
  Monster enables recruiters to target jobseekers in other countries, as well as through niche sites like Military.com, thousands of newspaper sites and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s a recognized name in job boards, having been around for 25 years. Monster also gets a ton of traffic with more than 926 million monthly unique visitors.
• Portfolium
  Portfolium is a job board and a portfolio site that enables approximately five million students and recent graduates to get their work samples, video clips and skills in front of employers. Hiring college talent is not easy for recruiters but it is especially challenging for small businesses. Portfolium enables any company to look beyond resume keywords and effectively reach and hire college talent with verified skills.
• StackOverflowCareers
  StackOverflowCareers is the careers platform of StackOverflow. It’s used by more than 100 million developers and technologists and is the trusted first destination of tech recruiters. Both employer profiles and developer profiles on this network are designed with the interests of developers in mind. In addition, there’s more for employers and recruiters to look at besides resumes. Recruiters look at code samples and interaction with other users to build a high quality pipeline of talent.

Free Job Boards

• Glassdoor
  Glassdoor offers jobseekers free access to more than 70 million company reviews, interview questions, salary reports and more, all posted anonymously by employees. It allows hiring managers to post jobs free, and is quickly rising in popularity as a job board and recruiting site. Glassdoor enables employers to update their company info, see who is viewing their company profile and respond to reviews. Glassdoor gets 50 million visits monthly
• Trovit
  Trovit is the leading classifieds search engine in Europe and Latin America. They have a presence in 57 countries and are available in more than a dozen languages. Jobs are one of their five major verticals and they partner with thousands of job boards and newspapers to help jobseekers be more efficient in their search. Trovit listings are highly visible as they are visited by 11 million unique users a month.
• JobRapido
  JobRapido is a global job search engine similar to SimplyHired and Indeed. They conduct business in 58 countries with more than a thousand companies, have 85 million registered users and are visited by 35 million monthly users. They’re a frontrunner as far as job aggregators go and continue to expand in Europe and the rest of the world.
• JobInventory
  JobInventory is a job search engine that eschews pay-per-click campaigns for a contributor program. This means that the search results provided to jobseekers are 100% organic. They offer a wide selection as they post jobs from all sources: employers, job boards and classified sites.
• CareerJet
  CareerJet is a job search engine with a worldwide presence. They’re available in 28 languages and source job ads from nearly 60,000 websites around the world. They own and operate two other brands, Opcionempleo for Spanish language markets and Optioncarriere for French language markets.
• Recruit.net
  Recruit.net is the leading search engine for jobs in the Asia Pacific region. Their search technology pulls jobs from corporate web sites, job boards, recruitment agencies, classifieds and more enabling jobseekers to quickly find millions of jobs. They also offer pay-per-click advertising, detailed analytics, and tracking for employers and recruiters. Recruit.net operates 18 localized websites in 6 major languages.

Looking for more? Check out our ultimate and most updated list with the best job boards.

Why you would pay for a job board versus free job boards?

Which job board is right for you and whether you should spend the extra on a paid job boards depends on a few factors:

1. The urgency of the hire – if you need to hire quickly you’re likely to find them faster by putting some money behind a paid or sponsored ad.
2. The type of role – some roles are simply harder to find candidates for. Take for example technology roles and often more senior hires. For this type of role you’ll often need to use a specialist/niche paid job board. The cost of the board will be justified by the quality of candidate it can attract.
3. Your location – if you are based in an area where there is high competition for candidates, a paid job ad can help you stand out from the crowd and make sure you’re speaking to the best people.
4. Ongoing hiring – as free job ads get old they fall down the rankings on job boards as newer jobs take the top spots. Simply reposting the same job on the same job board won’t get it listed back at the top. So if you’re hiring for a particular type of role over a long period of time you’ll keep your job ad fresh and the candidates flowing by paying for a job ad to keep it high on job board search results.
5. Cost control – how much you pay for job ads is completely customizable, especially with pay-per-click (PPC) options. Many job boards have PPC campaigns that you can use to target a highly specific audience. This means that you only pay when interested and suitable candidates view your job listing.

Never forget that a badly written job ad will never attract the best candidates whether you pay for an ad or not. So be sure that your job ad is up to scratch before you start.

So a paid ad is always better?

Not necessarily. There are many jobs where the free job boards can perform very well. Indeed for example is the biggest job board in the world, its free version has a huge amount of candidate traffic and can provide great candidates.

You’ll need to decide which job boards are best for you on a role by role basis and whether paying for a job ad will work out better in the long run.

Try Workable free for 15 days, and see which job boards work for you. Post your job to multiple free job posting sites with one submission, and get discounts on premium listings.

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6. Specialist job boards

Specialist Job Boards, also referred to as niche job boards, trade on quality of candidates over quantity. Many have grown out of successful community sites or evolved into community hubs as well as listings sites. This is an introduction to some of the top job boards in their respective fields — or head straight to our job board directory for the full breakdown.

Industry-specific job boards

TECH AND PROGRAMMING

• StackOverflowCareers
  StackOverflowCareers is the place to go if you’re looking for developers. Some 100 million devs and technologists use it every month.
• Dice
  Dice the other tech job board giant with a database of more than 9 million tech resumes in the US. Has a cross-posting network and minimizes unqualified clutter due to its niche nature.
• Github
  GitHub is a community of 50 million developers but it also has its own small job board. More often used to trawl for passive candidates.

DESIGN

• Dribbble
  Dribbble is a community that gives you access to designers’ portfolios and profiles. Plus you can post your jobs and connect with top talent.
• Behance
  Behance is where some of the top brands post their creative jobs. It’s also the place where 10 million professionals showcase their works enabling you to take a peek before you decide.

HEALTHCARE

• Doximity
  Doximity has attracted almost 75% of US doctors. It’s a professional network and a job board. You could call it a niche version of Linkedin.
• HealthECareers
  HealthEcareers with 6,500 employers and more than 11,000 medical & healthcare jobs posted, this job board is guaranteed to provide you with qualified applicants.

SALES

• Rainmakers
  Rainmakers attracts top performing salespeople, making it a leading sales career site and sales talent community.

RETAIL

• AllRetailJobs
  AllRetailJobs board adds 4,000 resumes per month on their database and has more than 19,000 employers and recruiters using the platform.

HOSPITALITY

• HCareers
  HCareers is the premier job board that covers all hospitality jobs (hotels, restaurants, travel etc).

MEDIA

• Mashable
  Mashable has emerged as a global media company with 45 million monthly visitors and its job board is a go-to for digital talent.

FINANCE & BANKING

• eFinancialCareers
  eFinancial Careers includes jobs in finance, accounting, banking and insurance and has an audience of more than 1m finance professionals.

Job boards for different types of work

FREELANCE/FLEX

• UpWork
  UpWork (previously oDesk) is free and is for freelancers only. If you’re looking for one, check out their well-rounded database of 18 million freelancers.
• FlexJobs
  FlexJobs is free and effective when it comes to flexible jobs. But only if you’re in search of part-time, telecommute or freelance employees.
• WeWorkRemotely
  WeWorkRemotely is the job board without borders allowing you to narrow down talent that doesn’t have to be in the same location as you.

SEASONAL

• Snagajob
  Snagajob is the largest resource for hourly employees. Has 100 million registered job seekers and 700,000 employer locations in the US and Canada.

INTERNSHIP/RECENT GRADS

• Internships.com
  Internships.com is used by more than 80,000 employers that can post and manage their internship jobs for free.
• Looksharp
  Looksharp is made for entry-level jobs and internships.

STARTUPS

• AngelList
  AngelList will be familiar to most startups. More than 100,000 of them use it. Candidates get to apply privately and see salary and equity up front and startups get to access a huge list of developers and designers actively looking for a job. All for free!

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7. How to post to multiple job boards for maximum impact

Recruiting software (like an Applicant Tracking System, or ATS) takes the hassle out of hiring by automating repetitive tasks and enabling you to keep everything you need to do your hiring in one place. Posting your job to multiple job boards and social media sites used to take hours. Now, it can be done in a click. Your recruiting software may even offer discounted or free job listings with specific partner sites.

Get candidates in one place

As candidates apply through job boards, their application data flows directly back into your recruiting software, or Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Your ATS will organize each applicant’s resume and application materials, track how many candidates are applying to each listing and enable you to see how many candidates you’re moving forward in the hiring process. You’ll also be able to discuss candidates with colleagues and keep all their communication on the candidate’s timeline.

How to post jobs that will be seen everywhere

Maximize your reach by using the job board integrations offered by your ATS. Posting to several job boards at once is a great way to get more exposure, and more exposure means more applicants. Automating this task with an ATS saves time but also increases productivity. With an ATS, your hiring team can save hundreds of work hours you’d otherwise lose to filtering a large pool of applicants. This helps you identify top talent faster and focus on the more important work of choosing the best candidate for your job.

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8. Tips for successful job candidate management

You’ve posted your job and applications are rolling in. Now, it’s time to start building a shortlist. Hiring processes vary from company to company, but generally your next steps for job candidates are one-way video interviews, phone screening, assessments, in-person interviews and at the very end, offer and onboarding, or rejection letters.

In the United States the average cost per hire (including direct and indirect costs) is $4,129. (Source: SHRM)

How to collaborate with your hiring team

Close collaboration with your hiring team will result in more efficient processes for candidate management and a hire who fits better. Whether you are an in-house or agency recruiter, it’s a good idea to send regular updates to your clients or hiring team. Using recruiting software means you don’t have to stitch together spreadsheets, email and elaborate filing systems. Some tools provide seamless and customizable collaboration features so that you’re always in the loop.

Methods used to score candidates

Time to rank your candidates. There are different approaches that can be taken here. One way is to simply rank candidates between 1-5 stars based on a few key elements. Some useful things to look for are:

1. Initiative and drive
2. Trend of performance over time
3. Past accomplishments
4. Comparable experience and education
5. Problem-solving and analytical skills

How to move candidates through the process

It can be hard to pick up where you left off while managing multiple hiring pipelines. Use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to easily identify next steps and efficiently move candidates through the different stages of hiring.

The typical stages of the hiring process include “sourced”, “applied”, “phone/video screen” and “in-person/live interview”. The right system will enable you to disqualify candidates from the process or even move a candidate from one hiring pipeline to another for a different job.

Chances are you know this scenario:

You write a job ad then post it to every job board one at a time. Your inbox gets jammed with randomly formatted resumes. You forward the ones you’ve had time to read to colleagues. It gets messy so you try to track it on a spreadsheet. We like spreadsheets, they’re great for all sorts of things like metrics and accounting but they’re useless for hiring.

That’s why we made Workable. A simple and powerful tool designed to help you hire better. Workable helps thousands of SMBs and Enterprises hire better candidates faster. Post to all the best free job boards with one click, share your jobs on social media and get discounts on premium listings. When the applications roll in, Workable keeps them all in one place, where you can browse and decide painlessly. Hiring made simple.

The post The ultimate guide to job posting appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

“I think a lot of organizations are now realizing, they have missed out a whole, big chunk of diversity and inclusion,” says Chikere. “And when they look into their businesses, there is a blatant lack of representation at all levels but especially at mid to senior level – C Suite. So organizations are really sitting up and saying, we need to really address this.”

Data seems to confirm this observation. According to a workplace discrimination survey from by EEOC, 1,889,631 discrimination complaints were filed in the US from 1997 to 2018, and 34% of were related to race, based on an additional report from 2017.

Would those numbers be the same if we educated ourselves more on racial discrimination, diversity and inclusion? How different workplaces would be if we stood up for minorities when needed? Chikere explains how we can become a part of the anti-racism solution, by becoming true allies.

The definition of allies at work

What does being an ally in the workplace mean? Chikere starts with a quick but comprehensive definition:

“An ally is someone who uses their power and privilege to advocate for others. Allies are not members of marginalized groups. Allies support Black, Brown and minority employees, colleagues and friends by understanding what they go through. Allies educate themselves on issues that affect Black, Brown and minority people, speaking out on injustices, educating colleagues, friends and family about being an ally and acknowledging their privilege and being actively anti-racist.”

So how can White employees turn into allies for racial and ethnic minority colleagues? It all starts by acknowledging their heavy loads:

“Allies support and make an effort to better understand the struggle,” Chikere notes. “Allies are powerful voices amongst marginalized ones. And the reason why I say that is more than likely, an ally would have friends and family who look like them, that they can go and talk to about being an ally. And obviously, the key thing is, we need more people to take action and stand up.”

A privileged employee who wishes to make an impact should find the right way to advocate for marginalized groups. Chikere says that the conversation about allyship in the workplace in most cases starts with human resources, team managers or external DEI partners and needs the buy-in of senior leaders. It’s not always easy at first, but this discussion should start as soon as possible. Chikere reminds us:

“If you have minority employees within your organization, talk to them. What do they want? But I think the thing is, not to leave it on the minority employee to lead these initiatives. That is not their job. Their job is not to educate people or lead the initiative.”

The sensitivity of this matter can make those conversations uncomfortable for many, but this is not a sufficient reason to avoid them. We should remember that change happens at the edge of our comfort zones.

How to foster allyship in the workplace

According to Chikere, allyship should start with self-education. Before forming allyship groups, learn what type of struggles and injustices minority groups face at work. This will help you understand their needs and start constructive conversations with them. Chikere explains:

“To be an ally you have to educate yourselves. Listen to Black, Brown and minority colleagues, employees, friends, and voices. Listen to what they have to say. Have conversations with other White people, family, friends, employees, about being an ally and help educate them.”

She also states that to become a good ally you must acknowledge your privilege and be “color brave rather than color blind”. When you realize how privileged you are compared to other people, you’ll feel more obliged to contribute to the change.

It’s also critical to learn other mechanisms that might block the progress, for example, the “bystander effect”, a phenomenon during which people are less likely to address a negative incident, such as an act of racial injustice, if many people witness it at the same time.

One possible explanation on an organizational level is that observers may leave it up to employees of greater authority, with stronger bonds with management to act, and avoid potential conflict. This is an implication that might distract us from being allies and to prevent it, we ought to acknowledge it. Same goes with unconscious biases we might hold against people who look different to us.

Once you accept the blessings of your own privilege and the duty that comes with it to support marginalized groups, it’s time for action. Start by using your exact position to amplify discrimination and make sure to promote racial representantion and inclusion in the organization. For example, if you’re a recruiter, you can start by diversifying your talent pipeline:

“What is stopping you as a recruiter from diversifying your pipeline?” wonders Chikere. “Getting more diverse candidates? Why is it the case that we are hiring the same type of people? That really has got to stop. So I think the key thing is, as an ally, you really have to go out there and educate yourself.”

One way to diversify your talent pool, according to Chikere, is to search for diverse candidates in different places to avoid getting the same type of people. Advertise your jobs through diverse channels, highlight diversity on your website, and teach your hiring team how to avoid biases. These will be proactive approaches to diversity and inclusion.

The difference between performative vs. proactive action

With this suggestion, Chikere makes it clear that being proactive when it comes to allyship and inclusivity is far more beneficial than sticking to performative actions. For example, joining the Blackout Tuesday initiative on social media without introducing any other organizational changes – also known as slacktivism – is performative and not useful in the long run. Chikere clarifies:

“During George Floyd’s murder and the BLM protests, a lot of organizations put out solidarity statements and took to putting up black squares on social media. Great. Amazing. But it’s the case of, what are you doing after that?”

But many businesses decided to go to the proactive direction by introducing drastic changes, such as increasing Black managerial representation or creating DEI advisory boards. These efforts will hopefully serve a long-lasting effect going forward.

Apparently, a leader’s role is crucial in promoting allyship in the workplace. When C-suite level and managers build a psychologically safe environment, minority groups find it easier to express their needs and feel more accepted.

In a nutshell, if you want to become a true ally at work, start by educating yourself more on diversity, equity and inclusion. Learn about racism and injustice and try to empathize with underprivileged groups more. If you are in a leadership position, remember that your responsibility is bigger; as a role model in business, you need to embrace the anti-racism and allyship conversations and solutions at their core.

Below, you’ll find some book suggestions from Allyship BookClub that’ll help you start this meaningful journey:

1. Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify, and Stop Microaggressions by Tiffany Jana and Michael Baran.
2. Why I’m No longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.
3. The Purpose of Power: How we come together when we fall apart by Alicia Garza.
4. White Fragility: Why it’s Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo.
5. How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.

The post Allyship in the workplace: Be color brave, not color blind appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we’re sitting down with Lissa Khan, Recruitment Manager at Weetabix. She’ll break down how to use your careers page to attract talent and put your brand into the spotlight. You’ll also get an early sneak peek into Workable’s new Advanced Careers Pages.

In just 45-minutes, you’ll learn:
– The most important elements of a careers page
– Creative ways to engage and attract talent on your site
– Top features in Workable’s Advanced Careers Pages

The post Advanced Careers Pages: Talent Attraction Made Easy appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Facing new workplace stressors

First of all, let’s see how the pandemic stress affects us both mentally and physically:

According to the video, with COVID-19 spreading around the world, “flight or fight” responses have gradually messed with our brains. Pandemic stress increases fatigue and affects our concentration, planning and decision-making. At the same time, each one of us must adhere to the precautionary measures our employer has introduced to face this crisis, including remote work and physical distancing, which have disrupted our routine.

Remote work

Based on Workable’s recent New World of Work survey on how businesses reacted to this crisis, nearly 60% of respondents said that their businesses went partially or fully remote when the pandemic started. Organizations had to quickly adjust their operations to serve remote work and employees on their behalf to adapt to this new work fashion efficiently.

This added complexity to their lives; not only did employees lose their daily routine and structure, some also faced new types of challenges, such as parenting and working simultaneously or working overtime because work-life boundaries were difficult to establish.

According to a recent research by Telus International, not everyone thrives in this remote work setting; more specifically, four out five of respondents in the United States said that it’s difficult to ‘switch off’ after work, and more than half requested a mental health day since they started working from home as a result of the pandemic.

Physical and social distancing

Working conditions were and still are equally challenging for employees who continued operating onsite, but in different ways. Commuting became stressful as people had to avoid crowded places. At work, in most cases, they had to alter how they operated. Mandatory mask use, regular sanitization and physical distancing measures in shared spaces became mandatory as part of COVID-19 company policies.

Let’s not forget how hectic life became for healthcare professionals who had to fight on the front lines for our society’s health and put their own lives at stake in the process. In other sectors, people had to level up their game, for example, the food or supply chain sectors, and recruit certain roles en masse (e.g. delivery, online customer service) to keep up with the pandemic’s urgency.

Unfortunately, as you know, numerous businesses around the world were forced to resort to layoffs due to unresolveable financial struggles. As a consequence, the rise of unemployment inflamed job insecurity and distress.

Loss of normalcy

Stress and anxiety are not the only emotions we’ve experienced this year. There’s also anger and sadness for everything we were forced to leave behind – our regular daily routine, our work friends, our hobbies, and for the worst, our jobs.

These uncomfortable emotions and uncertainty about the future make us imagine the worst-case scenarios. Being bombarded by negative news every day and unable to control all of our life aspects in such an inhospitable environment, it’s difficult to bounce back and see the positive side. This experience translates into collective grief.

People face the different stages of grief, such as denial and depression, at their own individual paces. And of course, when having to deal with overwhelmingly negative and unprecedented emotions and at the same time continue being productive and creative at work, that’s exhausting.

According to Telus International research mentioned earlier, 80% of remote workers said they would quit their job for a new one that focuses more on employee mental health. Plus, based on another source 50% of millennials and 75% of Gen Zers have left a job due to mental health reasons. As you understand, not having a mental health support system in place can hurt your business in terms of employee turnover, productivity and all those other important metrics.

Workplace stress management: What can your business do?

So how could your business support employee wellbeing in these uncertain times? First of all, you need to fully understand how stressful these times are and accept each employee’s feelings as they are. There’s no room for judgement and negative labeling right now. Compassion and healing should be our primary standpoints.

These simple practices will help you build a workplace stress management plan or improve your existing one.

1. Revisit company policies and benefits

Before starting off, it’s important to think about your current approach to employee mental health. Do you have an employee mental health policy in place? Do you foster a culture of psychological safety and trust when it comes to mental health issues? These questions will help you plan the right initiatives going forward, for example, updating your COVID-19, mental health and remote work policies.

Offering a flexible working hour scheme is essential these days. Many employees are facing various challenges while working from home, especially those who have to take care of family members such as parents. This has put extra weight on their shoulders. Give them the chance to organize their schedule as they wish and allow them some time off during the day to decompress.

As for benefits, if you don’t have data on how successful your existing mental health perks are, you can run a quick employee survey to see what’s already working and what you could improve based on employee needs. For instance, in these weird pandemic days, people might need different types of perks than usual, to accommodate physical distancing measures – so, instead of gym memberships or free office lunches, you could provide virtual yoga classes and restaurants tickets to staff.

Here are a few more benefits that can promote workplace stress management in these strange times:

• Extended sick leaves during the pandemic
• Mental health days
• Access to mental health counseling services
• Online yoga and exercise sessions

2. Provide stress management educational resources

To back up the above and show to employees that their wellbeing matters to you, you could share tips and resources to help them structure their day in an efficient way. For instance, you could send WFH tips or offer free subscriptions to mindfulness meditation apps, such as Headspace or Calm, for stress relief.

If you find a helpful video or article online don’t hesitate to share it with staff through an email. This video from The School of Life is a great example:

Also, you can organize a virtual stress management workshop with mental health counsellors on a company level to educate employees on basic stress management techniques.

By inviting the whole workforce to those initiatives, you’ll show them how important their mental health and wellbeing is for you and that you take action to support them. It’s not just a cool perk or performative practice, but rather a dedicated business priority.

3. Foster a psychologically safe and inclusive culture

Not all employees will communicate their stress issues with their teammates and managers. Even though the level of mental health stigma has dropped in recent years, some people are still afraid of admitting their mental struggles, with a fear of being judged.

But when stressed people suppress their feelings, they may experience a mental breakdown or physical problems. To prevent this, build an inclusive work culture that celebrates everyone’s unique personality with compassion and kindness. Encourage employees to discuss their concerns with their teammates openly and accept their discomfort without trying to fix it – remember that providing a safe space for someone to express is one of the best remedies to cope with stress.

Plus, this year, a new type of stigma surfaced because of the pandemic, towards people with COVID-19 symptoms such as coughing. Over the past few months reactions towards people who feel physically poorly are sometimes suspicious and judgemental. Some people overreact if they sense that somebody has neglected the COVID-19 policies and rules, and or course, are afraid of getting infected themselves.

As an organization, you need to prevent those behaviors and attitudes from entering your work environment: write your COVID-19 company policy and all your related communications with staff in a comprehensive and most importantly empathetic way, emphasizing on employee safety. We shouldn’t treat COVID-19 patients as enemies – we’re literally all in this together.

4. Schedule fun and social time

The abrupt shift to remote work and social-distancing measures led to isolation, both physically and emotionally. Employees cannot socialize as much as they used to with their teammates at the moment, and rely solely on virtual communication to catch up with their work friends and team. Being physically siloed has a negative impact for many and doesn’t allow them to let off some steam, as they would naturally do in a shared working environment, during a coffee break or lunch.

That’s why you should encourage your employees to hop on non-work relevant coffee meetings and chit-chat exactly as they would in the office. You can also organize virtual game activities, such as quizzes, and allow employees to stay bonded and active in these crucial times, in order to release our negative energy.

What a time to be alive…

“Anxiety takes away all the commas and full stops we need to make sense of ourselves,” writes Matt Haig, author and mental health advocate in his book Reasons to Stay Alive. Undoubtedly, this quote is relevant now more than ever. Keeping your spirits up in such an inhospitable setting is a hard job with uncertainty hovering around as a scary ghost.

But keep in mind that overcoming drawbacks is a prerequisite to building resilience. No matter how hard it is to picture this right now, life will get better sooner or later and time will do the rest of the healing. Let’s keep on visualizing this very day.

The post Why you should prioritize workplace stress management during the pandemic appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we’re turning to culture and employer brand leaders to tell us how. They’ll show us how to reboot your employer brand from the inside out. And bring your questions, you’ll have plenty of time to ask the experts.

In just sixty minutes, this webinar will help you:

• Build the foundation of a thriving modern culture
• Measure success and adapt over the first 6 months to a year
• Showcase your work culture and attract great talent

The post How to reboot your employer brand appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

First off, Eftychia stresses that a careers page is a critical part of the overall recruiting marketing strategy of a company. The vast majority of candidates will end up in your careers page during their job application journey.

“The second thing after seeing an open role in a board or another platform is to click to go to the company’s website and look for all the details of the company,” Eftychia says. “After this, they might go to Glassdoor, but overall, the most common step is to visit the careers page.”

Candidates don’t only apply to jobs but to companies, too. They want to know what a company’s values, vision and culture are before expressing their interest for a role. They want to visualize themselves working for you and imagine what their daily work life would be like.

That’s why Eftychia recommends making your careers page as inclusive and transparent as you can, sharing details on the company and the hiring process in an engaging way.

“You want to make the candidates excited,” Eftychia says. “You want them to really like the company.”

What should a careers page include to stand out?

As Eftychia reminds us, a careers page has a huge influence on a candidate’s motivation to apply for a job at your company. Think of it as prime real estate when promoting your company as a potential employer. So, you need to think carefully about what you need to include in a careers page that makes it unique and memorable for a prospective job applicant.

Eftychia recommends three main elements of a careers page that can make it really shine:

1. Share video testimonials

Posting videos with employee testimonials help you interact with prospects indirectly and show them who you really are:

”I would include in the careers page videos from employees talking about what they are doing, talking about their teams and why they like being in this company,” Eftychia says.

Eftychia is a strong believer that videos from executives in a careers page can make a good impression on candidates. No one can describe the company’s vision better than the company’s own leaders. It also makes the company feel more accessible on a personal level. She explains:

“I really like watching CEOs or CTOs being so close to the candidate and letting them know why it’s nice to work in their company or what their vision was when they started this company. It’s not so regular to see videos from executives as they are typically very busy for this, but I would like to see them on the careers page.”

2. Highlight company culture

Eftychia suggested introducing elements of fun activities that take place in the company to highlight the full workplace spirit to potential candidates:

“I would make it [the careers page] colorful and vivid and I would try to transfer the spirit of the company. I would also include activities from employees, even outside work. Like playing soccer, doing a team bonding activity or just having fun.”

For companies that have recently transitioned from shared physical workplaces to remote, Eftychia highlights that it’s worth sharing why they did so and what the future holds for the business to avoid confusion from the candidates’ side.

3. Describe perks and benefits

Efychia also adds that providing clear information about your company in your careers page, like details on the hiring process or company benefits, can also reduce pre-screening time; this could improve your time to hire metrics.

Do you need to share any additional or specific information when your company operates remotely? Eftychia suggests tailoring the careers pages’ content accordingly:

“You can have videos from employees while they are working from home or talking about the experience of remote working – [and] maybe even videos from the People team explaining the policies and benefits that the company has when it comes to remote working.”

How can Workable help? Workable Advanced Careers Pages

People teams usually collaborate with marketing and design departments to put this page together and deliver the best result. The People team often has to update the careers page quickly, like when a team member has retired or departed and needs to be removed from the careers page or details on benefits need to be updated.

But how efficient is this? Syncing with other departments is both time-consuming and inconvenient in those cases – and this doesn’t come without a cost:

“We need to inform the candidates accordingly because, when we start hiring, people may think that we are kind of imbalanced in what we say in the careers page and what we actually do. So it’s good to change everything really quickly.”

Advanced Careers Pages, Workable’s upcoming product release, solves this very issue. It enables recruiters and People Ops specialists to build and edit the company’s careers page easily without needing to bring in tech or design expertise.

Eftychia, who has used Advanced Career Pagers herself to build Workable’s own careers page, confirms:

“It’s very user-friendly. You can add everything you want and you can easily and quickly modify the careers page as needed. It’s pretty clear and it can be very transparent. Candidates may be able to see all the information they would like, in order to proceed to the next step and to be enthusiastic and motivated to join this company.”

With an enhanced careers page editor and templated sections, you can present all the information and content you want in a meaningful way. Add benefits, photos, videos, social media updates and other interactive elements that will help the candidates get to know you – in addition to your current openings, of course.

This doesn’t mean that collaboration with other teams will be completely off the table – that’s up to you to decide.

“You may need some advice from content or from marketing if you need to have some branded photos,” Eftychia explains. “But if there are design rules in the company about what photos to use or which writing style to prefer, then you can work quite independently.”

Plus, if you normally assign your careers page design to an external partner or agency, Advanced Careers Page will prove to be a cost-effective solution for your business in the long run.

How can you track performance with Workable Advanced Careers Pages?

In order to understand how your careers page performs, you have to analyze page visitors’ behavior and how they convert to candidates. With Advanced Careers Pages, you can have access to Google Analytics and Pixel tracking and understand those patterns in depth.

More specifically, you can track the number of visitors to the careers page and compare that with the number of actual applicants, as well as how they’ve interacted with the page – including which videos they’ve watched and what they clicked on. Those can be strong indicators of which elements are working and which elements need improvement.

But according to Eftychia, low visits and conversion rates do not automatically point to an ineffective careers page – maybe something else is missing.

“It [the analytics tool] can help you see how many candidates are applying but the careers page is not to be blamed if candidates are not applying. [It could be] something bigger. [It could be] the employer branding, or a specific situation. It has to do with many things,” Eftychia explains, adding that there can be numerous other factors affecting a candidate’s motivation to apply.”

To sum up, Eftychia believes that a careers page with creative elements and striking storytelling can bring the right candidates to you. With Workable Advanced Careers Pages, you can build a branded careers page and update it as needed without waiting for marketing updates or external resources to do the job – you can manage and master this project yourself within your People team.

The post Tell your brand story using Workable Advanced Career Pages appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we’ll show you how this year’s product releases can help you elevate your employer brand, improve your candidate experience, and allow your team to hire remotely in this new world of work.

The post Tackle 2021 with Workable’s latest product releases appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Is remote permanent or temporary for this role?
• Are you planning to reopen the office?
• How do teammates socialize working from distributed areas?

And this is not an uncommon scenario these days. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, loads of businesses have experienced a culture shift. Transition to remote operations, forced layoffs, new health regulations and company policies – all these events have caused changes in company culture in a flash.

As a result, uncertainty levels rose both for candidates and in many cases employees, too. This frustration can be costly on both sides – increased time to hire, less suitable talent, and reduced candidate engagement are among the big risks you may stumble over.

So what can you do to avoid scaring off stellar candidates and bring great talent to your company’s threshold? First step: update your recruitment marketing efforts – how you promote yourself as an employer to attract future candidates. This way, you’ll secure top talent that fits your new work culture.

Top recruitment marketing tips for company culture changes

It may be difficult to get a head start on this; there’s a lot to take into account when revising your recruitment marketing strategy, especially when the rest of your hiring tasks, such as screening and onboarding are still going strong, and the surrounding environment seems to be in eternal flux. Below, we’ve gathered some recruitment marketing ideas to make things easier for you.

1. Revisit your employer brand

What makes you stand out from other companies in the same industry? How has this changed post-pandemic? How do you think the changes in your business will impact your reputation as an employer?

Once you’ve answered these questions, take steps to ensure your employer branding reflects any changes to your culture. Revisiting your candidate-facing content is your first step to success.

Here are some areas you could focus on:

• Mission and vision: If your company has recently changed the way you work, how has that impacted your mission and vision? Do you need to emphasize aspects of your mission more? Have your goals shifted? Candidates should be aware of what your business goals are and how you’ll try to reach them through your new operations and processes.
• Company policies: Whether that’s updating your employee handbook in-depth or adding a remote work policy to your existing library, make sure you have company policies that reflect the current work environment so that everyone is on the same page.
• Benefits: What types of benefits will fit employee needs in the new work environment? Maybe some of your existing perks aren’t useful anymore and you’ll need to revisit them. For example, instead of free lunches, you could offer restaurant coupons or gift cards to employees who work remotely.

How will you communicate all these changes in company culture through your vision and mission with candidates and employees? Start with your storytelling around your brand. Share new values openly and honestly. How? Through your content, of course.

Related: In this article, you’ll find different ways recruiters interacted with candidates during the pandemic based on their company’s hiring status.

2. Update your job ads

Will job requirements for your open roles be the same going forward? Going back to the remote work example, it’s useful to include previous experience or familiarity with telecommuting in the job specification. Plus, adaptability and problem-solving are ideal skills for remote workers that you want to call attention to.

You could also share other valuable information in the job descriptions to put emphasis on specific matters, as Accenture Greece, a management and technology consulting company, did during the COVID-19 crisis:

“The safety and well-being of our candidates and employees remain our priority. Please note tha the recruitment process for opportunities in Accenture Greece will be conducted only via online formatting during the current period” – From Accenture Greece

With this note, not only did they inform candidates about what to expect regarding the interview format but also made clear that employee wellbeing is a top business priority for them.

3. Increase social media presence

Use your social media platforms to showcase your company culture to potential candidates in a more vivid way. If you’ve recently switched to a virtual workplace, encourage your employees to share bits from their remote workstations and post images from team virtual meetings and activities. You could run internal contests to make it more engaging and fun. For instance, you could arrange small prizes to reward employees with highly engaging posts.

Remember to be creative and transparent. There is no need to oversell, just proudly show who you are. You could also show other initiatives that exhibit your culture and values as Salesforce, a CRM software service, did via Twitter:

Now is the time to act – to reimagine the business of business and to ensure that global economic recovery creates a new normal that betters the planet for all.@SuzanneDiBianca shares lessons learned from COVID-19 on fighting the climate crisis: https://t.co/7B3Nw7vQrY pic.twitter.com/ll5O3vsj9z

— Salesforce (@salesforce) August 26, 2020

4. Invest in your careers page

In the talent attraction war, your careers page is your strongest weapon. A neat and clearly structured career site will help you convert ideal candidates into new teammates.

Apart from including your values, open roles and benefits in text, post interactive content to help people understand what your workplace looks like in a more engaging way. Use video testimonials, images or quotes from employees describing a typical working day. Showcase initiatives that reflect your culture and company priorities as Tech will save us, a learning technology start-up, does in their career site:

Plus, if you’ve recently rearranged your benefits scheme, don’t forget to update your careers page with the new perks and clarify what value they can bring to employees’ professional development and wellbeing.

5. Inform your candidates during screening

When interviewing candidates the majority of them want to know what type of company they’re joining first-hand. First tip for interviewers: Share everything you’re proud of – company initiatives, team activities, positive brand stories, but never promise something you can’t offer. When your new hires realize that you described everyday work-life glossier than it really is, turnover will be around the corner – and this will be a real deal-breaker for your company’s productivity and hiring budget.

Also, if you’ve recently moved to remote this also means that you may need to hire people with different or additional skills than you did before. You may need to evaluate roles differently and consider new interview questions like:

• What do you think will be your biggest challenge working as a remote employee?
• How comfortable will you be working with a distributed team?
• Do you like to work autonomously with limited supervision?
• How easily do you adapt to ambiguity in the workplace?

Listen to their answers carefully; if you spot a red flag – for example, a candidate has never worked remotely before and they seem hesitant about it – be as clear as possible to them and set the right expectations.

6. Monitor Glassdoor reviews

Typically, candidates visit Glassdoor to check employee reviews for a possible future employer. In this platform, employees can anonymously share their full experience working for your business, what your culture is all about and be raw about it. Plus, candidates can freely post how satisfied they were during the screening process and their impressions from interviews. And to put it briefly, Glassdoor could become every company’s biggest enemy or foe.

If you’ve recently been through company culture changes that have affected both candidates and employees, monitor the latest Glassdoor reviews and analyze both positive and negative comments. Based on those data points, you can decide what your next moves should be to boost your employer branding and recruitment marketing (e.g. pick a different assessment tool for future candidates).

This isn’t limited to Glassdoor. You will also want to monitor other employer review sites, such as Indeed and Comparably.

A final wise thought

All the above practices seem tangible and easy to apply, but how often should employers and HR leaders run a “culture test” to see where they stand? In a recent webinar, Codility’s CEO Natalia Panowicz shared her insightful take on the matter:

Company culture changes happen organically and at a faster pace than we think. They do not always take place after big events but rather occur dynamically. That’s why we should pay attention to how it evolves over time. If you inspect it methodically and adjust your recruitment marketing in an appropriate way, you’ll communicate it more effectively with talented professionals and make your employer brand accountable to them.

So now you’re one step closer to finding the right talent for your business. Good for you!

The post How to communicate company culture changes: Recruitment marketing tips appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• When do businesses expect their operations to return to “normal” after COVID-19?
• When do businesses expect their industry to return to “normal” after COVID-19?

The COVID-19 crisis is unpredictable and volatile, making the future hard to plan for. However, our respondents do have to make projections on a return to normalcy so they’re not operating fully in a vacuum in the new world of work.

Post-COVID world

So when do we return to normalcy or at least return to some semblance of stability? We asked that question as it applies to business operations and to the overall industry.

“I have been amazed at how well our team have adapted to working from home. We have all acknowledged that we miss the team interaction, but I really feel we’ve got to know each other more, we’ve had daily calls since the lockdown, which has helped our split-site company. I think it will take time to accept the new normal, but we will get there. … I hope that we take all the learnings we’ve acquired during this lockdown and bring these forward. Our air is clearer, our seas are cleaner, we recognise the importance of being connected after being so isolated for so long, we appreciate the small exercise time we’ve had outdoors. The world will be different, but so much potential to be better too.” – Survey respondent

There was no clear consensus on when there would be a return to normalcy – only that 4-6 months was the most popular answer for both own business operations and for industry. The differences between “business return” and “industry return” were quite marked in the 0-3 month category, with 21.9% of businesses saying they’d return to “normal” within three months compared with 13.5% saying their industry would return to “normal” in the same time frame.

The opposite was true for a return to normalcy within 1-2 years – with just under 10% of respondents seeing their business returning, compared with 16.9% for their industry returning.

When we dissect the “business return to normal” responses by senior-level positions versus entry/mid-level positions, senior-level workers projected a longer road to recovery than their entry/mid-level counterparts. They were also more likely to say their business had already gone back to normal or hadn’t been affected in any way.

But it’s interesting to note that nearly twice as many senior-level as entry/mid-level employees think their business has already returned to normalcy.

Overall, a very small percentage of respondents across the board think it won’t return to normalcy or take longer than two years to do so. The short interpretation of this is that most respondents do think there’s an end date to the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on business and industry. It’s just a matter of when.

“In our industry, it will never return to before COVID-19. We will need to change our focus to marketing to consumers within our own country, province or within driving distance. The visitors from around the world will be minimal.” – Survey respondent

 

“This time shall pass. Social distancing will end. We will all be back to being regular humans again.” – Survey respondent

Conclusion

Our initial goal in the survey was to identify when businesses thought they would return to normalcy after COVID-19 – in short, when the future workplace would arrive. That part of the survey, however, resulted in the most inconclusive findings.

What we learned, instead, is that remote work is clearly the way forward, digitization of processes is the way to enable that shift, and employee engagement is – understandably – a mounting concern in the future workplace.

Also, most of our respondents either have the tech tools to operate in a remote world of work, or are at least aware of or plan to introduce more tools to support that new work environment. The basic know-how of work has not changed; recruiters and hiring teams, for instance, still know how to source, evaluate, hire, and onboard candidates – but they aren’t fully versed on how to do all that in a remote environment.

Finally, the emphasis on the solutions of more meetings, more “coffee dates”, and all-hands to maintain employee engagement in a virtual work world as opposed to new trainings for a new world echoes Einstein’s famous quote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

The remote world of work is here to stay, and there’s a clear willingness to adapt to that new world – at least in the adoption of new technology. But in order to really succeed in this new world of work, we need to loosen up on the traditional operational practices, and start thinking about different solutions and practices so we continue to set ourselves for success. In short: the new world of work requires a new way of thinking.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Chapter 6 on what businesses see in the road ahead 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post A return to normalcy: When will work go back to business as usual? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are the biggest problems in remote work?
• How can businesses overcome remote employee engagement issues?
• How can businesses attract candidates in this new world of work?

Understandably, the current climate marked significant upheaval in many forms – economic, health (mental and physical), social, political, and many others. The shift to remote work is just one of those new developments, but a significant one nonetheless. Everyone’s affected – including in the workplace.

Working in a new remote work environment

When asked what they think will be significant challenges in a remote-first environment, 73.2% of respondents highlighted individual employee engagement and motivation. Team-building and morale (54.7%) are next, followed by team collaboration and logistics (41.1%).

What makes remote employee engagement a major concern? Is it that our respondents are worried that if employees cannot physically see each other at work, can’t have lunch together, or work together in the same space, they’ll start tuning out? Maybe.

In a follow-up question, we asked about the top focal points to ensure remote employee engagement. The responses are predominantly focused on communications and getting synced, with 54.5% of respondents planning more team meetings (virtually) and 52.8% planning to incorporate more communications technologies (chat, video, etc.).

About a third (33.7%) said they plan regular all-hands from top management as one of their top three major focal points going forward. Just 27.8% said they plan remote-work trainings and seminars.

It’s striking that given the overall worries about working remotely, there’s less emphasis placed on upskilling and retraining employees for remote work than there is on connectivity and synchronous work in that same environment.

So, we broke down survey responses to see if there was a difference between remote-work challenges for senior-level management and for those in entry/mid-level positions. Concerns around team collaboration and team building were relatively similar, but we found that productivity is a much bigger concern for senior-level executives (a 15.3-point difference). Individual employee engagement is a greater issue for those in entry/mid-level roles (a 14.5-point difference).

This makes sense. The bottom line (and therefore, productivity) is what keeps senior-level management up at night. Individual employees and managers, on the other hand, are perhaps more concerned about staying motivated in a new, unfamiliar work world. Given that work is often collaborative, it does make sense that increased virtual communications are highlighted as ways to maintain remote employee engagement.

But now that we’re operating in a socially, politically, and economically volatile landscape, there’s more emphasis on engagement than remote-work performance.

A perceived shift in engagement

Employee disengagement is a dominant concern in a post-COVID world for many in our survey – with a full 54.8% including it in their list of top challenges going forward. New logistics (i.e. staggered schedules, virtual meetings, etc.) comes in at a distant second (32.3%).

Respondents who picked “Other” listed lower budgets for financial stability, maintaining company culture, and employee mental health as additional challenges.

We then asked respondents what they felt would become more important or less important in terms of candidate attraction going into the new world of work. They predicted that remote work, flexibility, and work-life balance (81.8%) will become more important in the eyes of candidates than before COVID-19, closely followed job security (79.8%)

Just a third of respondents thought compensation (33.3%) and career opportunity (34.6%) would become more important going forward – although it bears noting that compensation and career opportunity are traditionally high in value, possibly making “more important” a moot point.

Also: these are the opinions of employers and professionals. If one were to ask candidates themselves, the numbers may differ.

A potential insight is that candidates – and employees – will be more concerned about their physical and mental health now more than previously. The ability to determine one’s own hours and workspace is a huge benefit for many in that regard, and can improve remote employee engagement. It’s worth conducting an employee engagement survey to find out what’s at stake in your own business.

“There will be more focus on the person rather than on what the person produces. Companies will start asking why people do what they do before asking them to just do their job.” – Survey respondent

The uncertain economic climate also means job security is predicted to be a huge, huge deal for candidates. Most of our respondents are aware of this going forward – and they’ll need to include assurance of job security in their communications with candidates to attract them.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Chapter 7 to learn more what businesses see in the road ahead 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Remote employee engagement: a new world of work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis on remote work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are businesses planning for the remote work future?
• How important is technology in remote work?

Digital transformation is a long-time buzzword that now means the digitization of information, industries, organizations, and operations. And if remote work is the biggest paradigm shift prompted by COVID-19, remote work technology is the vehicle to make that a smoother transition.

Technology – the great enabler

When we asked respondents what made them able to move to a remote workflow without disruption, more than two thirds (68%) reported it was because they already had the technology for remote workers to do so.

“… industries and businesses are going to adapt to using digital platforms to deliver their work and product. People are adjusting to social distancing and embracing the technology to meet people and make their daily earnings.” – Survey respondent

Of those planning to remote operations or distributed teams, nearly half plan to introduce or increase digital capabilities in that transition – in short, more technology for remote work.

Those in senior-level management prioritized tech adoption in the post-COVID work environment, much more so than those at entry/mid-level. Perhaps executives see tech adoption as a company-wide, internal digital transformation while entry/mid-level employees see it primarily as technology for remote work day-to-day.

“COVID-19 has shown … that weak link [in] being penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to technology adoption. During the shutdown, those who spent on technology were able to be ‘business as usual’ where workforce worked 100% remotely.” – Survey respondent

Those in entry/mid-level employee positions are more concerned about the readiness of their business than those in senior-level management. Also, several custom entries from our respondents indicate the lack of senior-level buy-in.

Some of these differences may indicate potential issues around employee engagement.

“The world of work will be focusing on new technology to make work efficient and boost collaboration in virtual ways, [and] more adaptive to remote working style. The expenses for office rental & travelling will be cut as well, [and] more creative ways in employee engagement events.” – Survey respondent

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 6 on remote employee engagement in the new world of work 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Remote work technology: the road ahead is digital appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How much can companies go remote?
• Why can’t some employees go remote?
• Why can some employees go remote?
• Which industries are good for remote work?
• Which industries aren’t good for remote work?
• What helps employees succeed in a remote workplace?

We’ve established remote work as the number-one disruption going forward. But what will that new remote work world look like, and how feasible is it? We asked those questions in our survey as well.

Shift to remote is doable – to a degree

Two thirds of respondents (64.3%) reported that, of their workforce not already working remote, more than a quarter can move to a virtual environment without disruption. And 15.2% said they’d be able to move their entire workforce to remote.

But that’s just one side of the same coin. The other side is that more than a third (35.7%) of respondents can only move at most one quarter of their current non-remote workforce to a virtual environment without disruption. In other words, a full three quarters or more of their workforce cannot go virtual.

So, what’s stopping them? We asked that, too.

Challenges of remote work

Predictably, the need to be physically present for work is a dominant challenge in shifting to a remote-first environment, particularly for those in healthcare (81.5%) and education (73.9%). Yet, those same sectors didn’t consider adaptability, resilience, and readiness of workers to be a major issue when transitioning to remote-first.

“There is still value in being present. We are a route-based business and some staff must still report to the physical location. We want to avoid creating a disparity between job roles.” – Survey respondent

In the “Other” category, respondents cited logistics, the value of physically being in the same space, and lack of management buy-in as leading factors in the challenges of remote working.

When asked about what does enable them to go remote, a full 69.6% of education workers said they didn’t need to be physically present at work, tops across our four major sectors, while at the same time trailing all other sectors in terms of technological readiness.

One could dive deeper into the “why” of this, but one potential takeaway is that those in education feel they can work remotely if they have the technology to do so. There are myriad reasons for not having the technology, for instance, a digital divide among students, budgetary challenges, or lack of buy-in or support from key stakeholders and users.

What we do know is that many major schools from K-12 to college/university – including in California and at Harvard – are moving to a digital-first curriculum and may even remain so for the foreseeable future. Technology has enabled that to happen.

Perhaps that technology component marks a permanent shift and a major change in a sector that traditionally has required physical presence. We may see similar trends in other sectors.

So – the paradigm shift continues to be remote, and technology helps that shift to happen – but some sectors are not as ready as others.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Challenges of remote work: the tech shall overcome appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How many workers worked remotely before COVID-19?
• How many workers are working remotely during COVID-19?
• How many businesses plan to make the remote workplace permanent?
• What are the biggest paradigm shifts due to COVID-19?
• How do the COVID-19 paradigm shifts differ by industry?

COVID-19 isn’t just a health pandemic – it’s also a social and economic pandemic in that it has significantly impacted how people and businesses operate.

Shift to a remote workplace

The majority of respondents (68%) reported that, prior to the COVID-19 crisis, a quarter or less of their employees worked remotely. Just 11.2% of businesses reported that three quarters or more of their workers operated in a virtual environment before the crisis hit.

And now? A significant portion of respondents (nearly 60%) said at least three quarters of their staff currently operate in a remote working environment.

The stark difference between these two graphs (pre-COVID and current COVID environment) indicates that COVID is a major catalyst in moving to remote, and that this change was very sudden. It also tells us that many companies hit the ground running in that shift – in many cases, literally one day to the next.

Shift to the remote workplace is permanent

When asked about a permanent shift to a remote workplace, 41.3% of respondents said they will move at least some positions to a virtual environment, and an additional 9% said they will be fully remote after COVID. Just over one-fifth (21.9%) said they will not permanently move any positions to remote.

Remote work and distributed teams led by and far in a list of predicted paradigm shifts post-COVID, with a full 71.1% of respondents citing that shift as a new standard. This is well ahead of other options including rules around physical distancing, more tech adoption, and updated workplace design.

“Remote jobs will increase. Companies will adapt to remote working patterns; this will be the new normal even with the invention of a vaccine. As people become used to working from home, meeting physically will be only a matter of necessity.” – Survey respondent

Of those businesses considering a more permanent shift, one-third (33.3%) of respondents said that they plan to move half or more of their workforce to remote going forward. Another 40.8% said they will move 26% to 50% of their workforce to a remote workplace environment.

The difference in the pre-COVID remote work numbers and post-COVID plans – and the large number of businesses who moved some or all their workforce to remote during the crisis itself – tells us that COVID-19 not only is a significant catalyst in shifting to remote, but also heavily impacts future plans around remote work.

Of course, each business has their own unique experience in this shift. Three potential stories are:

• Businesses were already planning to move some of their workforce to a remote environment for a variety of reasons (economics, logistics, engagement, etc.), and COVID-19 merely expedited those plans (for example, Twitter);
• Businesses were considering remote as a possibility, but not as a priority until COVID-19 hit; or
• Businesses did not think remote was feasible or even a good idea, but changed their perspective when forced to operate in that environment by COVID-19.

Numbers differ across industries

Although remote work was the most popularly predicted paradigm shift across all respondents in our survey, those in the healthcare sector say rules around physical distancing (63%) and tech/digital adoption (59.3%) will be as significant as remote work (also 59.3%) as major changes going forward.

And those in education tagged changes in the physical workplace as their second-most popular choice after remote work.

Still, remote work is the clear leader in terms of paradigm shift. This tells us that, regardless of industry, remote work is here to stay.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

Want to read it all in one place? Check out the full report here.

The post COVID-19 big shifts: The workplace will stay remote controlled appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How did businesses respond to the COVID-19 pandemic?
• What were the effects of COVID-19 on business operations?
• How did COVID-19 change hiring?
• And finally: how are businesses planning for a post-COVID future?

Not only was COVID-19’s impact palpable, it was also very tangible and it forced action in many aspects of business. Let’s look at what our respondents did when COVID-19 became a reality for them.

Business response to COVID-19

As is now known, a significant impact of COVID-19 on business was that it triggered a sudden transition to a fully remote working environment where all employees worked from home. Our survey confirmed this – nearly two-thirds (62.6%) of respondents cited going fully remote as one of the actions their business took.

A third (32.3%) of respondents said they moved part of their operations to a remote environment. It bears noting that nearly a third of all respondents work in IT/technology – considered to be one of the most remote-friendly sectors.

A sizable percentage of businesses introduced precautionary measures at their working location (37.9%) and/or reduced capacity at work, if remote was not an option for all workers (18%).

“It’s going to look very different without a doubt. … Personally, I think it will be good for us, we were starting to lose focus of who we were, it was becoming less important to talk to people face to face and more important to stare at phones. … Yes, we will be using technology more in our day-to-day lives due to COVID-19, but now we are focusing more on what’s actually important.”
– Survey respondent

Economic impact

The economic impact of COVID-19 is also significant in our dataset. A full 12% shut down business altogether – albeit temporarily in most cases. All but one in hospitality and 26.1% of those in education shut down. In terms of company size, 21.7% of those in the 1-9 employee-size bracket opted to shut down temporarily, a far higher rate than any of the other size categories.

More than a fifth of our respondents reported that their businesses laid off or furloughed employees. When breaking down by company size, we found those in the 50-99 and 100-499 employee-size brackets were statistically more likely to lay off workers, with percentages choosing this option being 12.3 and 10.6 percentage points more than the percentages of total respondents in those brackets. The opposite was true for those with 10-49 employees, with just 17.1% in that category choosing to lay off or furlough workers, compared with 26.1% of total respondents falling into that size bracket.

And by industry, those in hospitality (62.5%) and manufacturing (50%) were more likely to turn to layoffs and furloughs as an option, whereas those in healthcare (7.4%) and education (4.3%) were far less likely to choose that route.

Changes going forward

When asked about the changes businesses are planning going forward, the response was comprehensive, with all listed options being selected widely. The most popularly selected moves are travel reduction (59.3%) and a shift to remote (56.5%). Closely following are plans to switch to staggered/flexible work schedules (44.9%) and a redesign of the physical working environment (44.1%).

Many of those in the “Other” category stated they aren’t entirely sure yet, with one indicating they want to see how other businesses fared before taking action of their own. Others plan to increase personal protective equipment (PPE), sanitation protocols, and overall employee safety either in the field or in the workplace. One respondent in the business/consulting sector plans to require clients to be tested beforehand.

Most striking is that just 6.2% of respondents stated that nothing is being planned going forward.

Whether it’s layoffs, a shift to remote, or redesigning workplaces, this response tells us that COVID-19 impacted the majority of businesses in our survey, and drastically altered their planning.

“I think that it will change a lot in the world. Adapting as we have gave us knowledge to be more flexible and change to remote working. I think many people will adapt more wellness programs and education.” – Survey respondent

Impact on hiring

COVID-19 was also readily felt in the hiring space. Two-thirds of respondents (65.2%) said they were hiring less during the crisis or had frozen hiring altogether. Just 8.1% said they increased their hiring in response. Although our own survey results don’t reflect it in terms of healthcare hiring, it’s well documented that healthcare, supply chains, telecommunications, and the mortgage industry are sectors that aggressively ramped hiring in the early days of the crisis.

Company size also dictated responses: smaller companies (1-49 employees) and larger, enterprise-sized companies (>1,000 employees) were the most likely to report that they’ve frozen hiring completely, while a full half of companies with 500-999 employees said they were hiring less than planned.

None of the six size categories saw more than 10% of respondents hiring more than planned.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post How businesses responded to COVID-19 – and what they’re planning now appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Obstacles to remote work

In response to the question, “Of your workforce that can’t go remote without disruption to workflow, what’s stopping them?”, logistical challenges and willingness to work from home were common refrains:

• “Not having the space for working at home uninterrupted.” (Marketing, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Some don’t have a great setup at home – some people are struggling emotionally from isolation, WiFi, comfortable workspace, noise, family, living in small spaces.” (Healthcare, Middle East & Africa, Service/Support Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote working is very much a personal thing. The office is a controlled environment. Home is very different for different people.“ (Staffing/Recruiting, UK & Ireland, Recruitment Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “No space at home to work remotely.” (IT/Tech, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “They prefer to work from the offices.” (Education, Multinational, Product VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)
• “They do not want to work remotely.“ (IT/Tech, Multinational, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

The value of being physically together in a workspace also came up:

• “There is still value in being present. We are a route-based business and some staff must still report to the physical location. We want to avoid creating a disparity between job roles.” (Landscaping, US & Canada, Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “Lack of team work experience/stand-ups, spontaneous interactions, etc.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “The fact that we’re solving very tough problems and we believe in people having a chance to discuss how to solve them.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Easier to collaborate in the office.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “We like being together.” (Accounting/Finance, US & Canada, Office Administration Entry Level, <50 FTEs)

And overall lack of buy-in, especially among management, was a major sticking point:

• “We could offer all our team remote working, but it won’t work for us.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Employer not in full support of remote work/flexi-work.” (Accounting/Finance, Middle East & Africa, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Mindset of leaders who cannot trust people working from home.” (Accounting/Finance, Continental Europe, Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Managers not really happy with having people in full remote.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “CEO does not like it.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, self-described sole Talent Manager reporting to CEO, <50 FTEs)
• “Managerial trust.” (Salon, US & Canada, Operations Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Team leads want their teams to be physically in the office saying that it’s more effective.” (Accounting/Finance, Continental Europe, HR Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “CEO opinion on WFH.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)

Hiring challenges during COVID-19

In response to the question, “If your business is continuing to hire during the COVID-19 crisis, what are the top three biggest challenges in filling job positions?”, the following challenges were cited:

• “Candidates unable to apply for visas/permits due to a temporary freeze from certain countries (in this case Switzerland).” (Publishing, Multinational, Recruitment Entry Level, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Difficult to find qualified engineers.” (IT/Tech, Americas, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Small talent pool of profiles we are looking for.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Executive, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Coordinating remotely with hiring teams.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Uncertainty of permanent job location.” (Nonprofit Publishing, US & Canada, IT Support, 100-499 FTEs)
• “People extending their notice periods of termination as mutually beneficial due to economic uncertainty – thus feeding into hiring freeze.” (Education, UK & Ireland, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Restrictions to travel/relocate.” (Gaming, Europe/UK & Ireland, Recruitment individual contributor, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Candidates unwilling/unable to relocate despite generous relocation offers.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Candidates accepting the first offer they get, so we need to be quick. And passive candidates not wanting to change roles for uncertainty and new probationary periods.” (Education, Continental Europe, HR individual contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Candidates not wanting to work at specific sites” (Security, US & Canada, HR Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Unsure if candidates truly want to work for us, or if they are applying due to a layoff and they just want any job.” (Consumer Packaged Goods, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor. 50-99 FTEs)
• “Initially, we had many people looking for positions as they were out of work. As more areas open up in our state, we have seen less availability. Healthcare is very busy.” (Healthcare, US & Canada, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Not being able to hire internationally (can have temp visa holders enter Australia).” (Education, Asia, Recruitment, 1000-4,999 FTEs)
• “Reduced recruitment pool due to border restrictions.” (Science/Research, Oceania, Operations Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

Hiring challenges after COVID-19

In response to the question, “If your business plans to hire in the future after the crisis passes, what do you anticipate to be the three biggest challenges in filling positions?”, diluted talent pools and hiring in a distributed fashion were listed as top challenges:

• “Candidates requesting total remote working options from countries where we don’t operate offices in.” (Publishing, Multinational, Recruitment Entry Level, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Coordinating with hiring teams remotely.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “With an increase of job-seekers, quality of candidates may lower and sifting through ‘qualified’ applicants will be time consuming.” (Facility Management, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “Increased supply of candidates but finding right/good people and not excited by all who present well but are not who they seem.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Recruitment Individual contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Too many candidates for some roles, not enough in others, highly specialized high tech positions may be hard to fill.” (IT/Tech, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Onsite interviews during a slow re-open process.“ (Accounting/Finance, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, US & Canada, <50 FTEs)

Ending quotes from respondents

The most comprehensive responses were reserved for the end, with more than 90 of the 350+ adding their own insights, commentary and opinions on completion of the survey.

The question was as follows:

Any additional thoughts or comments on what you think the world of work will look like after the COVID-19 crisis? No right or wrong answers here – we just want to hear your perspective.

The overall themes were clear as seen in this word cloud generated from the responses.

Even then, the answers were broad, insightful, and varied.

The ‘New Normal’

Many respondents highlighted huge changes going forward, with “new normal” being a popular catchphrase throughout.

• “New normal, more remote work and virtual meetings, less unnecessary face to face activities.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Service/Support Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “More tech/digital adoption; More WFH opportunities: More need for employee engagement and employee monitoring.” (IT/Tech, Asia, Recruitment Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “I think that it will change a lot in the world. Adapting as we have gave us knowledge to be more flexible and change to remote working. I think many people will adapt more wellness programs and education.” (Human Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “The new normal will change definitely our lives especially in work perspectively. We need to follow set of rules, guidelines for you to be able to move on forward.” (Healthcare, UK & Ireland, Service/Support Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Businesses will hire less workforce as they adjust to the new ‘normal’. Some businesses will definitely adopt a virtual platform that will see shift in work schedules. New policies adopted should ensure that the workforce is confident in how the businesses will treat them in psychologically, professionally and financially.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Operations Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “People are adapting to the new normal. That means, industries and businesses are going to adapt to using digital platforms to deliver their work and product. People are adjusting to social distancing and embracing the technology to meet people and make their daily earnings.” (Education, Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote and flexible working will be the new reality.” (IT/Tech, Asia, HR Individual Contributor, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “After COVID-19 crisis, everything will change, industry, leaving environment, job opportunity in market and unemployment will increase.” (Education, Asia, Sales Owner/Executive, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Less social interaction, business travel, longer work hours.” (Energy Commodity, Multinational, HR Owner/Executive, 100-499 FTEs)
• “All of us will need to adapt to the new normal. Travel and work will be planned differently. BCP-DRP will be looked at differently.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Engineering Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote working will be the new normal with great flexibility, greater international opportunities and life balance.” (Fashion, Continental Europe, Service/Support, Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote jobs will increase. Companies will adapt to remote working patterns, this will be the new normal even with the invention of vaccine. As people become used to work from home, meeting physically will be only a matter of necessity.” (Consulting/Business Services, Service/Support Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “In our industry, it will never return to before COVID-19. We will need to change our focus to marketing to consumers within our own country, province or within driving distance. The visitors from around the world will be minimal. This means hospitality won’t be big employers any longer.” (Hospitality, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Company headquarters will transform to be brand builders, places to develop company culture, drink the Kool-Aid, for candidates, employee training/gathering and customers. Think McDonald’s Hamburger University meets Google headquarters.” (Healthcare, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

Some respondents highlighted the lack of clarity about the road ahead:

• “There is no standard to go off of. My company is in tech/software and it is far more about what the competition is doing than what is a good idea for our business and population. A small start-up of 60 is trying to set precedent based off of Twitter going 100% remote. That does not seem reasonable to me.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Everything is still unclear… No visibility of what tomorrow will look like…” (Logistics/Supply Chain, Middle East & Africa, Marketing Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It is a road that has not been walked, i honestly dont know what is ahead, one is only just willing to explore many different strategies, until they find one that works.” (Hospitality, Sales Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “I’m not even sure. It’s scary to think that the covid will never go away and that at any given time you could run into someone who is infected but not showing any symptoms and can infect others.” (Substance Abuse Counseling, US & Canada, Senior Counselor, <50 FTEs)

A few suggested it’ll eventually return to the norm that we always knew:

• “Things will go back to normal, businesses will operate like how they used to.” (Education, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “This time shall pass. Social distancing will end. We will all be back to being regular humans again.” (Telecommunications, US & Canada, Finance VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)

Technology becoming a necessity

The emphasis on tech as part of a company’s business continuity plan (BCP) and disaster recovery plan (DRP) was clear:

• “The world of work will be focusing on new technology to make work efficient and boost collaboration in virtual ways, more adaptive to remote working style, the expenses for office rental, travelling will be cut as well, more creative ways in employee engagement events.” (Healthcare, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Asian work environment was still very much conventional where employees are expected to be in office. Covid-19 has shown the Asian business owners that weak link where they refused to even contemplate a more modern outtake in workplace practice (i.e. have flexi-working arrangement, therefore reduce office space or have office suites), being penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to technology adoption. During the shutdown, those who spent on technology was able to be ‘business as usual’ where workforce worked 100% remotely.” (IT/Tech, Asia, Operations Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It will have to be very flexible and open to new and unprecedented measures in allowing productivity to flow despite the new office norms. There will be a greater need for technology and its various intents and purposes so that operations can still continue despite physical limitations. What humans or live personnel cannot do, technology should cover.” (Staffing/Recruiting, US & Canada, Recruitment Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Technology constantly changing and updating. Need training for new tech that changes constantly. We all work with different ideas and really don’t train to work as a team. It would be helpful if we all worked in a similar manner – using similar styles for best in class work.” (Staffing/Recruiting, US & Canada, Recruitment VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)
• “I think it will be vastly different dependent upon the sector. My company is in the technology sector so I expect there will be minimal disruption to productivity and team engagement (if the past few months are any indication) but other sectors that are not so conversant with technology may have a much more challenging experience in shifting to new models of work.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Innovation cycles in our (conservative – mechanical engineering) will be faster, customers are more used to digital technologies and will ask for that, e.g. IoT.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

Challenges are unique and varied

Managing a business through this time and in the future had challenges specific to industry:

• “Universities’ revenue model has to change. Will people be more inclined to become self-employed?” (Entertainment and Telecommunications, Multinational, HR Individual Contributor, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “Hopefully more UK manufacturing as reliance on manufacturing from abroad has been a huge issue.” (Staffing/Recruiting, UK & Ireland, Recruitment Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Working in a preschool environment, we found it challenging to meet the needs of our families remotely. We were able to deliver a quality educational experience, but families really missed the childcare component of our program. They are not interested in a remote alternative to preschool and would accept it only as an emergency measure.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

Logistics and operations were affected as well:

• “It’s difficult to enforce policies that aren’t government mandated, like mask wearing, to non-employees, such as drivers coming to the warehouse. Then a decision has to be made to refuse that person into the building and potentially delay customer orders? The variety of how much people care on an individual level makes it impossible to modify everyone’s behavior the same way.” (E-commerce/Online Store, US & Canada, Operations Manager/Director, 50-999 FTEs)
• “In our region, we struggle with our labor legislation – more employers are looking at new ways of working and that impacts every aspect of our work , from remote teamwork to sales and customer service, critical cloud infrastructure and security. We need to be 100% focused on keeping our employees safe and serving our customers the best way we can ever be.” (Food Industry, LATAM, HR Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “I guess my only anxieties are: When we partially reopen the office how much everyone will stick to the new rules we’ll need to have about hygiene. When we partially reopen the office if will this impact presenteeism (i.e. my boss has gone in today so I feel I should go in even if I don’t feel safe, or have to take a busy underground train, etc.)” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Overall, adjust of employees to the new normal will be a challenge. As once in the office, most of them will easily forget the distance measures or to continuously wash hands. But looking forward to have operations and sales increase, having Clients confidence.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Sales Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

And sadly for some, the challenges were insurmountable:

• “This is all so sad. Very very unnecessary. I lost my business because of a dishonest political agenda.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It has completely destroyed a business that I have worked 38 yrs to build. I do not see how I am going to be able to stay in business with the new guidelines.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Executive, <50 FTEs)

It’s not just about business

For many, the crisis has a political or social component to it:

• “It feels like the politicization of the pandemic can’t be avoided. if you wear a mask or insist on 6ft distancing, some people treat you differently. this is a much larger issue obviously, but the lack of empathy for immunocompromised/at risk individuals is sad, and it’s hard to empathize for those who think I’m brainwashed by the CDC, WHO, etc.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Service/Support Individual Contributor, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Instead of thinking it is a post-COVID, we need to think that this is the balanced and readily available economy. Gap between rich and poor has to come to a point where both can meet. Only poor feeds the rich.” (Hospitality, Middle East & Africa, Finance Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “More remote working. Increased tech. Increased tracking. Less personal contact. More depression and mental health issues. The phrase ‘New Normal’ was thought up by Communist China. I wish these phrases were not adopted along with assuming everything is all new. Critical thinking is key as is compassion and kindness. Adopting new slogans and so forth sweeps people along but at a cost.” (Consulting/Business Services, multinational, Recruitment Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)

The human factor

People are at the core of the crisis and its impact on business, and many respondents were quick to highlight the changes in how colleagues approached their work – and how that fit into their personal lives:

• “Workers will care a lot more about their loved ones than ever before; work will be secondary…” (Staffing/Recruitment, multinational, Recruitment Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “There will be more focus on the person rather on what the person produces. Companies will start asking why people do what they do before asking them to just do their job.” (Education, LATAM, HR Entry level, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Basically this Covid has made us realize that people can work remotely with the same efficiency and giving extra time to their family as well. So we can keep or introduce a few new policies in our company where each of the employees can get an opportunity to work from home for particular week or days, which will make them more happy as their willing to spend time with their family will be fulfilled during their work.” (IT/Tech, Asia, HR Executive, 50-99 FTEs)
• “On the positive side: People will be more aware of self and growth which will lead career stability and as an organization attrition can be controlled. On the other side: there may not be enough opportunities for those who are laid off – as most of the work would be automated or virtual. We need to create more jobs … that is something which will take time.” (Consulting/Business Services, Asia, Recruitment Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “I have been amazed at how well our team have adapted to working from home. We have all acknowledged that we miss the team interaction, but I really feel we’ve got to know each other more, we’ve had daily calls since the lockdown, which has helped our split site company (some on Isle of Man, rest in London) I think it will take time to accept the new normal, but we will get there. My feelings about travel certainly feel different, I live on the Isle of Man, but travel to London to see our team there, and I don’t feel comfortable being on a busy tube right now, so I think it will all just take time. I hope that we take all the learnings we’ve acquired during this lockdown and bring these forward. Our air is clearer, our seas are cleaner, we recognise the importance of being connected after being so isolated for so long, we appreciate the small exercise time we’ve had outdoors. The world will be different, but so much potential to be better too.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “New life and new way of living is happening now, the most important is to adapt and find the right way to work and to improve.” (Retail, Middle East & Africa, HR, Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “It’s very ambiguous how the world of work will look like after the COVID-19 crisis. What I’d like to see though, is to make adjustments which benefit employees and define new standards which will make employees feel safe. There are so many things going on around us as a covid-19 effect, that make mental health quite fragile. And this is something very crucial we should focus on.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “It’s going to look very different without a doubt. However, we are a resilient species and will adapt to this like we did other situations. Personally, I think it will be good for us, we were starting to lose focus of who we were, it was becoming less important to talk to people face to face and more important to stare at phones. People are now more aware than ever about the importance of family and friends, and less people will take that for granted. Yes, we will be using technology more in our day to day lives due to Covid-19, but now we are focusing more on what’s actually important.” (Mining/Exploration, Oceania, Operations Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

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The majority of respondents were from companies in the 100-499 employee range, in IT/Technology, operating in the United States or Canada, in HR, and at the manager/director level.

Number of full-time employees:

Main industry:

Region of business operation:

Primary function of department:

Job level:

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That’s why on June 25, 2020, we hosted a webinar titled: “Working, hiring and onboarding in the new normal”. Jess Meschino, Workable’s VP of Account Management moderated and the guest speakers were:

• David Vencis – Head of Talent at Drizly
• Natalia Panowicz – CEO at Codility

Here, we present their most insightful takeaways that shed light on the future of hiring – and the future of work in general. Get on board and enjoy!

1. “New normal” – emerging trends and challenges

So what will this new normal look like? First clue: remote work is not going to be just a cool perk anymore – it’s here to stay.

For some remote-first companies this was already the reality, but for those who were hesitant about it, the emergency shift to telecommuting because of COVID-19 proved that remote work is not only feasible – except for jobs where physical presence is required – but also beneficial in many ways.

As Natalia said:

“We quickly discovered that it’s possible to do our best work not from an office, that was a traditional way to go, but we’re actually able to do it from anywhere.”

Greater authenticity

This has given a fresher outlook to the way we collaborate and connect with our teammates. We don’t bring only ourselves virtually to work, but also our dogs, our children, and even our personal home decoration taste:

“Work becomes way more authentic and purposeful to a sense [that] we are able right now to bring our full selves to work”, Natalia said.

But according to David, there are two sides of this coin. Sometimes it may be hard to set boundaries between work and personal life, and together with the consequences of the pandemic, this disruption has put employee wellbeing at risk – and at the center of HR attention, too:

Technology giveth

What was the main contributor to transitioning to a digital workplace so quickly? Second clue: tech and digital solutions played a pivotal part in this shift, and will continue to do so. Virtual screening tools, such as Workable Video Interviews, and other collaboration platforms surely saved our lockdown days:

“If before the pandemic every company was becoming a tech company, right now they were forced to do so overnight, pretty much”, Natalia highlighted.

2. The future of hiring – remote screening and D&I

While one of the direct consequences of COVID-19 in hiring is the so-called ‘abundance of talent’ due to widespread layoffs and increased unemployment, there are longer-term impacts on the application and screening processes –such as the increase in need for empathy when dealing with candidates.

David explained:

“We’ve really been challenging ourselves to really meet the moment of what’s happening and remind ourselves about just how important empathy is with candidates,” he said. “Because if they’re finding themselves unfortunately in the layoff situation, [or] maybe they’ve dealt with the COVID situation personally, if they’re still working at a company there might be uncertainty… I mean we are […] really connected by this all in a human way”.

Natalia – and Codility – is on the same page: “We’re in it [the COVID-19 crisis] as humankind. We’re not in it as employers and employees that much anymore”. That’s exactly why being transparent and respectful with candidates is extremely important these days to gain their trust. Natalia elaborated:

E-hiring on the rise

As mentioned earlier, technology has been life-changing for HR and hiring teams; interviews started taking place fully online, either synchronously – with video-conferencing tools, such as Zoom – and/or asynchronously – with solutions such as Workable Video Interviews. According to David, virtual hiring makes things move faster, as you no longer need to invite someone to your headquarters to meet them:

“Knowing there’s so many great job seekers out there who are so qualified, we’re engaging with people a lot faster,” said David. “As soon as we post a position we’re starting to see people who are a great fit – we’re not waiting a few weeks to need to kind of do sourcing efforts.”

Skill-based assessments ascending

Both speakers agreed that hiring teams should rely more on skill-based assessments to find those candidates who are the best fit for both the role and the company. David elaborated more on how, at Drizly, they do their homework and prepare for each job posting beforehand and what they focus on during screening:

Skill-based assessments can also boost diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace. Natalia talked about introducing blind evaluation techniques in early screening phases to eliminate unconscious biases around gender, ethnicity or appearance:

“We have an anonymous workflow mode where we can actually uncover who the candidate is well past the assessment is done on the core [engineering] skills of that candidate”.

This is a positive change; with remote work on the rise, you’ll be able to hire people from all over the world and diversify your teams more than ever.

3. Remote onboarding – pre-onboarding and new hire engagement

Remote onboarding became a huge challenge for companies during the COVID-19 outbreak, but with the right tech tools and tactical moves they managed to cope.

According to David, to nail your remote onboarding plan you first need to succeed in pre-onboarding – syncing with hiring managers and teams and designing the process step-by-step – and based on data, too.

David walked us through Drizly’s onboarding process and gave tips to make new hires feel instantly part of your team and to show them what your goals and biggest values are.

His bonus tip: conduct a survey – or even a fun quiz – to explore what impact the onboarding had on new employees’ learning:

Natalia added how useful buddy systems are when onboarding new employees to maintain human connection and a sense of camaraderie, especially in a remote environment. This way new hires have someone to reach out to when their manager is not available for questions and support:

“It helps everybody to connect way faster and to [kind of] tactically help them find things out if they need to quicker” Natalia added.

4. Remote management – flexible and empathetic

First signs have shown that a thriving remote work culture is one that promotes flexibility and inclusion. As Natalia explained, we now know that “we can work from anywhere, we can hire people from anywhere and have access to a wider community”.

But how can managers adapt to leading their remote teams in this new flexible, wellbeing-oriented style? First off, leaders should accept this new arrangement and make the most of it. David explained:

“It can be tough for managers. It’s tough for everybody to kind of distance themselves from their work, but I think those things are really important to give people the space they need. We have a flexible unlimited time-off policy so reminding people about taking that time, I think, is also a big part of engagement as well”.

Being more human

They could also benefit from a deeper shift that would allow them to be more vulnerable in front of employees and true ambassadors of psychological safety and empathy in the workplace, said David:

“Emphasizing things like self care and psychological safety, and having managers be more vulnerable as well, I think, can really fuel culture”.

As for everyday practices managers can follow to engage employees, Natalia shared her own insights:

5. Remote benefits – flexible and personalized

Switching to a new world of work, which is also remote, means that some benefits will be temporarily – and in some cases permanently – rendered obsolete. Plus, with many companies shifting to a remote-first culture, HR professionals should build a new benefit scheme from scratch that would be more relevant to employees’ ongoing needs – such as equipment for a home office or health insurance.

David noted that it’s important to individualize benefits as much as we can, keep them flexible and explore what each employee would value the most:

“Some people might need to use that money to pay for a babysitter to free up some of their time during the week because that’s what’s going to set them up to do their best work”.

It matters to candidates

Candidates are increasingly asking whether remote work is still going to be an option – either fully or partially – when the pandemic is over. David explained:

“A lot of people are asking what’s the plan, when do we go back to the office, when does your company go back to the office, is being fully remote something that you’re you’re willing to do as a company? Will I have the option? People are asking about that because that’s just the way we’re working right now, right? Some people want to be in the office and I get that, and some people don’t, and we get that [as well].”

Natalia highlighted how crucial employee wellbeing initiatives and benefits are now and will continue to be to prevent burnout as a consequence of the pandemic:

“There’s so much pressure, there’s so much stress everywhere. boundaries between work and private life are shifting. We have to learn how to adapt to that world“.

Emphasis on employee mental health, flexibility and individualized benefits is important; these trends shouldn’t be forgotten and companies should continue to offer them when the hard days of the pandemic are over.
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The future of hiring is here and now

The COVID-19 crisis is a debilitating time for many – including businesses and workers – but has some silver lining in it, in that it’s prompted paradigm shifts that had been in discussion for a long time – namely, the acceptance of remote work as a norm and a greater emphasis on empathy and inclusion. Change is uncomfortable and as a result, preferably avoided, which means some of these shifts may not have happened – or not as quickly, at least – without COVID-19.

It’s a tough time right now, but if you focus on the good that’s coming out of it in the new world of work – such as greater flexibility, work-life balance, an increased focus on wellbeing, and the introduction of new tech – then perhaps it can be said we’re all headed to a much better place, provided we follow through on the promise.

The post The ‘new normal’: the future of hiring, onboarding and working appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

If you haven’t operated in a remote fashion before and you find it difficult to imagine and designate it, you could kick off by asking these questions:

What makes for a great team culture in a “remote world”? Is it flexibility in working hours and work-life balance? Is it allowing employees to own their workload and act independently?

If you’re in Jasmine’s shoes and you’re searching for ways to build a remote work culture that boosts employee morale and inspires staff to get out of bed in the morning, here are some useful tips to get started.

Remote work culture – tips for HR and business leaders

Whether you’re going partially or fully remotely, first and foremost, you need to craft a good plan. You can start by meeting with your company’s executives and managers to figure out how they imagine this new era to be. If you feel lost, check what your peers are up to; you can look at what other companies are doing and what their executives are saying. When you reach your conclusion, it’s time to think of how you will communicate it with your employees before moving to implementation (e.g. updating the employee handbook, revisit benefits, etc.).

Remember to take it slowly; even when you have too little time – the physical contact restrictions of COVID-19 forced many companies to go remotely at a glance – you need to gradually move towards your end goal: a thriving remote culture.

1. Reimagine your vision and mission

As a good builder, you need to start from the foundations; the company’s vision and mission. Now that remote work is in the game, your employer branding will benefit from a tweak. You can brush it up and reconstruct it by prioritizing the new values you’d like to embrace. Flexibility, adaptability, agility are some of them; no, they’re not just trendy buzzwords, but rather, your main assets to succeed in the remote workplace.

Update your content

Once you’ve spotted these new values, it’s time to sprinkle those throughout your careers page, company description, and overall messaging. If cool office perks – e.g. food supplies, play room – and a more relaxed office life were your “thing”, try to transfer these to the home-office life. For example, you could emphasize your priority to work-life balance, flexible work schedules and discounts for local supermarkets or restaurants and food chains.

The more you work on this new work framework, the more suitable candidates you’ll attract. People who seek remote work opportunities or employees who are familiar with this work arrangement will be able to tell if your culture is supportive and well-structured for that environment.

Remember, proving yourself as a good remote employer is an ongoing process; make sure what you’re saying in your employer branding is compatible with what you’re doing and you’re willing to do. Otherwise you might lose valuable employee points, and those are hard to reclaim.

2. Bridge the new communication gaps

In distributed teams it’s common to have people that operate from different places and across time zones, which means that you only have a few precious hours overlapping with your colleague or manager throughout the day. How can you overcome this communication barrier and work together effectively? First off, you can reinforce asynchronous communication skills in your teams.

Emphasizing asynchronous communication will enable everyone to work based on their workload and availability. When employees receive a colleague’s request, they can process it based on their bandwidth – different rules could apply for urgent matters. Also, employees communicate a lot through writing in a remote environment; so if you need feedback on a project you provide full notes to your teammates and inform them about all the steps you’ve been through.

Bonus: recent research has shown that asynchronous communication has a positive impact on both productivity and performance, so by designing your remote work culture to that direction, both employees and business will benefit in the long run.

Provide the right communication tools

You’re not going to succeed in asynchronous collaboration by yourselves; tech will stand by your side. Find the right collaboration tools that will enable your team to communicate effectively in writing and that enable personal and team organization. To make the right choice, figure out what your business priorities are and search for the appropriate digital tools and platforms that will cover them. For example:

• For project management: Trello, Jira, etc.
• For cloud storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
• For HRIS: BambooHR, Namely, etc.
• For onboarding: Rippling, ClickBoarding, etc.
• For training: TalentLMS, Confluence, etc.
• For timezone management: TimeZone.io

In remote-first companies writing is a huge contributor to tracking or understanding feedback and notes. Not everyone excels in that skill though; to improve in that area, you could offer employees a short training when onboarding them on how to describe their projects efficiently and provide structured feedback.

3.  Redesign your onboarding process

Remote onboarding is a bit different compared to in-office; a common company practice to onboard new remote employees is bringing them to the office for one or two weeks so that they get familiar with the operational processes, who does what, how problems are usually addressed – and to whom.

But what if the company is fully remote and in-office onboarding isn’t an option? For starters, you can craft a remote employee onboarding checklist; try to follow the same steps you would at the office but in a virtual way and find solutions for those steps you cannot easily replicate remotely. For example, now that the IT administrator will not be around to help new employees set up their tech gear, create a clear step-by-step guide to help new employees prepare their equipment sufficiently. You can hand them over guidelines and be available for questions – be sure to include a troubleshooting section!

Fortunately, there are tools that can help you with HR paperwork. Search for an HRIS and an onboarding platform (see the list above) that suit your needs the most and you won’t have to worry about bureaucracy too much when setting a new employee up with payroll, benefits, and the like.

Finally, it’s harder to showcase the company culture to new remote employees. They’ll get hints from everywhere – how you talk during meetings, how responsive you’re in Slack – but they won’t be able to demystify your culture sufficiently. Make it easier for them; build a thorough employee handbook and help them learn your culture’s ins and outs, and set up a regular touchpoint for colleagues new and old to connect – and themes don’t necessarily have to be work-related, either. Which brings us to:

Make it social

How can you replicate the human connection and natural vibes that surface among teammates online? Firstly, if you’re onboarding multiple members at the same time, train them together and create the environment of a hub; they can turn to each other if they have a question or share some thoughts with their peers.

Also, you can introduce buddy systems to help new employees navigate safely through uncertainty. Set some free time slots for virtual face-to-face meetings so that they can easily reach out to you if something pops up. Be supportive and act as an ally; remember how you felt when you were a newbie and see how you could help.

Meetings in the form of a support group can be powerful as well. You can set up a “managerial meeting” to work through pain points related to managing down and managing up. You can also set up groups for working parents who can share tips and tricks on how to navigate life as a full-time mom or dad. Be proactive – set up those meetings and inform the full company that anyone is welcome, and emphasize that these are safe spaces, in the sense that nothing that’s talked about goes outside of these meetings, not even to you.

4. Schedule regular meetings and get-togethers

Live meetings and conferences can still be in your and your employees’ weekly agenda. With platforms such as Google Meet and Zoom, you can tune in with your teammates from anywhere in the world to discuss your projects in-depth or resolve complex issues that arise. If you’re a team leader make sure to spend time with teammates individually and as a team to discuss openly about projects and other work-related issues.

But when working asynchronously or holding virtual meetings solely for business matters, how will employees nurture that extra human bond often gained from a coffee or lunch break together? They still can – encourage them to take those breaks the digital way. They could invite teammates and hop on a coffee break and chat when they feel like it.

Keep it fun

Organizing big events and retreats makes a huge difference with distributed teams. Whether that’s a fun day out or a four-day retreat in a beautiful location, it will improve your team’s bonding and collaboration.

In this video SmartBug CEO Ryan Malone describes the annual summit they organize as a remote-first company and how that boosts their employer brand:

It would also be nice to offer a social committee budget for each individual team for dinners (for example, when onboarding a new team member) or to attend fun activities together. It will boost the team’s morale and cohesion in more ways than you could imagine.

5. Invest in leadership

To thrive as a remote work employer, you should revisit your attitude towards several outdated work practices – for example working 9 to 5. Is that possible for someone operating from home with several distractions throughout the day? Or is it even necessary now? To tackle these challenges start top-down; train your managers first.

If you spot managers being uncomfortable with employees who work remotely, try to explore why. Are they afraid that employees are unproductive just because employees aren’t readily visible sitting at their office desk? As Ryan at SmartBug says, “it’s not really just trust – it’s more like an unfounded fear that something’s not getting done.”

That’s brilliantly parodied in this old Bud Light video:

Instead of having a culture that encourages this sort of “steaming coffee cup” solution from employees, train management on a more result-oriented and asynchronous approach that allows employees to own their workload and learning pace. This then makes it irrelevant whether or not an employee is ‘present’ at their work – you’re now emphasizing output and delivery regardless of location and time.

Again, open communication is key; be available to employees and allow them to reach out to you when they want. One challenge of distributed teams that practice asynchronous collaboration is that you might believe that your manager or your colleague is unavailable and might avoid talking to them, even when you’re in serious trouble. To prevent such conflicts, set clear expectations for such matters beforehand.

One more tip: Encourage managers to have regular check-ins with their teammates, whether that’s a standup or a 1-1 meeting and being empathetic and open-ended in their outreach to them. Be there for your employees and they will be more likely to be there for you, too.

Adopt a growth mindset

In distributed teams with asynchronous communication as the main collaboration style, employees often have to deal with urgent matters independently and resolve complex issues alone. To prompt agility and adaptability – the conditional requirements to thrive in uncertainty – you first have to cultivate a growth mindset and empower employees to see problems as challenges and learning opportunities, not threats.

If leaders endorse a competitive environment that limits this mindset, employees will overstress when they struggle to complete a task – or fail in the process. Since challenges and other types of surprises are common in the workplace, this might trigger anxieties and lead to fatigue or burnout. Instead, having a learning and growth narrative to rely on will boost employee wellbeing and morale.

6. Embrace diversity and inclusion

How can you transfer diversity and inclusion strategies in the virtual workplace? Besides taking active measures to remove unconscious biases in the selection phase, you’ll have to find ways to make your remote workplace as inclusive as you can. Start by showing trust and respect to each employee’s different personality and strengths. For example, some will be more extroverted and talkative during meetings and others will be more introverted, staying silent and writing down their feedback when the meeting has ended.

Operating remotely means that there is going to be backstage that you won’t be able to notice. You can easily spot an employee who always eats isolated in the sitting area but you won’t easily notice who is left out or even mocked online.

To avoid these issues, ask your employees about their experience and their needs; how do they get along with their team? Do they feel like they can ping you when something is wrong? You could also run a survey to understand how inclusive your workplace is, how employees perceive it and what alterations they would suggest.

Promote psychological safety

Do you recall a time when something unfair had happened to you at work but found it really hard to open up about it? It happens to many of us and with the majority of interactions fully online you might never be able to observe a teammate’s disappointed face if they are unwilling to talk it through.

That’s why it’s important to allow your employees to speak up; as long as a comment or opinion is politely and respectfully put, it’s accountable. Feeling that your voice is heard, even when your input is hard to consume, is the only means to have authentic and honest communication. Make sure managers know how to listen to all voices equally – even when their direct reports have only negative things to say.

One step at a time…

It’s no small undertaking. When switching to a remote workplace, there’s a lot to take into consideration. Remember, the culture shift won’t happen overnight. Don’t try to tackle everything at once. Build your plan and take it one step at a time. When everything is settled and results start to show on successful projects and, above all, on people’s relaxed faces during online meetings, you’ll feel proud and cheerful.

So, Jasmine, you’re absolutely right. A carefully built-out plan to facilitate a healthy remote work culture is a huge step in the right direction when you’re switching to virtual operations for the first time.

Final kind reminder: always hunt for your employees’ feedback.

The post How to build a remote work culture from scratch appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.