Tag Archive: Talent Acquisition

  1. Developing Employee Career Pathing and Ladders

    One of the top reasons good employees leave jobs is because they have few or no opportunities to advance within a company. But this particular pain point can be mitigated by identifying potential avenues through which an employee can grow and integrate as a member of a business. They want to know how their careers fit in with your long-term business plans: the extension and development of employee career pathing and ladders is a crucial factor in retention, engagement, and ultimately business growth.

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  2. Placing Pre-Employment Assessments Early in the Hiring Process

    Pre-Hire Assessments find the candidate that is more productive with the right skills for the job while lowering attrition

    Hiring someone who is a poor organizational job or culture fit, or lacks the right skills, causes a lot of divisiveness in a workforce, while lowering productivity and increasing attrition. When it happens enough times, or attrition rates remain stuck at higher than 30%, recruiters are usually ordered to do a better job of finding more qualified people, and hiring managers are told to do a better job of selecting people from among the job candidates that make it to final consideration.

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  3. To Stress or Not to Stress: Are Your Employees (Really) Managing Change

    How are your employees managing change & other job-related pressures?

    Organizational development involves numerous change initiatives, but change is difficult for many people. A person may or may not be as adaptable as needed, leading to workplace stress. Some people stress out loud by constantly complaining and falling behind in their work. They are easy to spot. But how do you identify the employees who seemed like a good fit at the time of hire, after a pre-hire assessment was conducted, but experience a consistently high level of stress, even while getting the work done? Any employer who cares about the health and well-being of employees asks this question.

    Some employees are introverts. They quietly work and meet goals, never making a fuss about anything. They have enormous potential, but do not particularly like getting anyone’s attention. There are also people who quietly work and perform well, but their quiet demeanor is enhanced due to the stress they are feeling. They do not complain because they are introverted and avoid conflict, so they endure the stress and find no joy in their work.

    One day, they unexpectedly resign. The employer is taken by surprise and laments the loss of yet another productive, problem-solving and talented employee.

    In job Eustress or workplace Distress?

    Every day, millions of people experience job stress, and it is on the rise. There are numerous organizations doing regular surveys to assess the number of people who experience stress. A Gallup study found that 23 percent of employees always or frequently feel burnout at work, and 44 percent feel burnout at times. The same study also found that people who experience frequent burnout are 2.6 times more likely to quit.

    Burnout is a symptom of too much stress, and workplace stress is due to a variety of factors. The employee may believe the organization’s culture is alienating, the workload unmanageable, the goals impossible to meet or the manager a poor decision-maker.

    stress-not-stress

    The Global Organization for Stress lists a number of stress facts, and they show that stress is a worldwide workforce issue. One statistic says that approximately 80 percent of American workers experience job stress. Stress is a particularly difficult issue to manage because there is good and bad stress.

    Good Stress vs. Bad Stress in the Workplace

    Good stress is called eustress, and in the workplace, it is the result of an event that pushes people outside their comfort zone ” an interesting new assignment, a promotion opportunity, successful interactions with customers, etc. The good physical and psychological stress reaction empowers people, according to various doctors specializing in stress. Eustress leads to people feeling inspired, motivated, resilient and able to meet daily changes.

    Bad stress is called distress. It is the opposite of eustress, so its impacts on people are also opposite. Employees experiencing distress feel overwhelmed. They are more tired than inspired and feel like they are unable to continue meeting job demands.

    Bad Stress in the Workplace usually leads to employees quitting

    In both types of stress, people may continue to be productive, though bad stress usually leads to employees quitting. However, people express stress in different ways, making it more difficult to sort people based on the kind of stress they are experiencing. Some people are always irritable with coworkers, express frustration out loud, frequently call in sick and make it known to peers they are likely to leave the organization. They are obviously experiencing distress and want everyone to know.

    Other people quietly perform their work without making a fuss of any kind. True introverts are much more difficult to discern in terms of stress. Some of them are experiencing eustress, while others are in distress. The introverts in distress are more likely to surprise their employers with a resignation letter.

    Same Work, Same Place, Different Job Stress

    Stress is caused by a number of factors. A recent Korn Ferry survey found that almost two-thirds of 2,000 professionals questioned experience more stress today than they did five years ago, and 16 percent had to quit a job because of stress.

    The causes of stress for all levels of employees include the pressure to master new skills to keep a job and the threat of losing a job due to technology.

    Change is a constant in the modern workplace, so the ability of employees – staff and leaders – to adapt is crucial.

    How well are your employees doing physically and emotionally?

    This leads right back to stress. How well are your employees really doing physically and emotionally when it comes to managing change, new job duties, coworker relationships, goal achievement and the pressures to produce work? You may think an employee is doing well because deadlines are always met, thinks creatively and gets along with others. Considered a likely candidate for promotion, you offer lots of feedback and recognition. It is a complete surprise when the person quits due to stress.

    The employee may have managed job duties well, but was constantly worried, fearful of the next inevitable change, concerned about personal health due to daily work stress and close to burnout. This employee is experiencing bad stress. The person next to him may be thriving in the same workplace environment and embraces stress feelings as motivators. This employee is experiencing eustress. Two employees doing the same work in the same place and for the same manager but experiencing different kinds of stress and no one knew.

    Do You Really Know Your Employees?

    Assessments can provide in-depth knowledge about your employees

    Conducting regular talent assessments is the best way to discern the productive people who are experiencing either type of stress. Assessments are key links between employees and successful organizational development and reduced turnover of the people you want to keep. For example, job simulations can pinpoint the people who are having difficulty adapting to change when they are based on real world scenarios of potential changes in workflow or responsibilities.

    In another example, when change initiatives are initiated, pre-and post-behavioral feedback assessments deliver change data to determine if employees are adapting. Personality tests can even help managers identify the introverts in order to identify ways to improve employee-manager communication, so there are no surprises in the future.

    Never assume you really understand what an employee is experiencing because introverts and people with exceptional self-control can hide their feelings. Assessments offer a way to get more in-depth knowledge of your employees and the different challenges they may be quietly facing each day. They may appear to be managing change well, but are they really? The answer may determine how well your organization manages change programs and processes by retaining the people who can have the greatest positive impact.

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  4. Gen Z is Here and Bringing Implications for Hiring Assessments

    what are Gen Zers thinking and expecting in terms of employers and work?

    They will comprise at least 20% of the workforce by the year 2020

    Here they come ” knocking at your recruiter’s door (so to speak)! Born in 1997 or later, the first group of Gen Z college graduates will soon be ready to start their careers, and projections indicate they will comprise at least 20 percent of the workforce by the year 2020. If you have not considered what Gen Zers are thinking and expecting in terms of employers and work, then you likely have not begun adapting your talent system to recognize their differences and the changes they will bring to your operations. Every element of your talent management process ” recruiting, hiring, developing, managing, engaging, assessing ” needs to take Gen Z into consideration to successfully compete in the labor market.

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  5. HR’s Digital Transformation is Happening: How to Lean In

    Transformation is a funny thing.

    Leading up to crisis, business leaders across the world were talking about transformation. Planning for transformation. Ready to invest trillions in transformation. Until transformation was thrust upon us.

    It’s unfortunate that we lost control of the timeline, but the upside is, transformation – namely, digital transformation – is happening. Right in front of our eyes. And we’re realizing, as leaders from the NBA, Nextdoor, United Health, and more pointed out in a Bersin webinar, we didn’t need multi-year initiatives to get it done.

    Tripti Jha, Global Head of People Solutions at Novartis summed it up well, saying, “We had a two year roll out for Microsoft Teams that was accelerated to two weeks.”

    So here we are. Being transformed in ways we did and didn’t plan for, and accomplishing impressive feats in record time.

    In HR, things were already digital.

    Applicant tracking, learning management, payroll, benefits (the list goes on). The focus at the onset of 2020 was digitizing “the experience.” In other words, designing processes and tools that not only make HR more efficient, but create connective tissue between HR, employees, and potential employees.

    While most things that were important at the beginning of the year pale in comparison to a global pandemic, this hasn’t changed. In fact, being forced apart has brought more attention to the experiences and interactions between us.

    Learning and development experiences still matter. Hiring experiences still matter. What’s changed is our collective comfort level and reliance on technology to deliver these experiences.

    Pre-crisis, digital experiences were on the rise for many reasons. They’re fast, cost-efficient, and give employees direct access to the information they need, eliminating much of HR’s administrative hangover. All good things, and HR teams were eager to move in that direction. But crisis forced everyone into “early adoption.”

    Digital experiences are no longer nice to have.

    They’re must-haves, as companies fundamentally shift their work environments and people practices in a post-coronavirus world.

    Meanwhile, talent acquisition teams are facing the challenge of a lifetime, having to hire in an unemployment market that rivals the Great Depression. As companies build back their workforces, they’ll be flooded with applications, making it impossible to follow a process that was designed for hiring in a low unemployment market.

    That’s why companies are modeling a new process – and new strategy – around digital hiring.

    Digital hiring is here to stay.

    Recruiting teams have been sourcing, reviewing resumes, and assessing candidates online for years. But most aren’t equipped for digital interviewing or digital onboarding.

    To effectively hire in a future where remote work is the norm, recruiting efforts are lean, and teams are assembled by skill set and compatibility, not physical location, companies need a complete digital hiring process, not a partial one. Just as important is the ability to connect everyone, including candidates, interviewers, and hiring managers in one seamless experience from start to finish.

    This is what’s required to get hiring “up to speed” with HR transformation and the strategy that business leaders are building for the future.

    Ready to make your move?

    Outmatch’s digital hiring solutions remove barriers and make it possible for companies to:

    If this sounds like the direction your business is headed in, we invite to try our digital hiring platform, which includes full access to our online assessment + video interviewing software.

  6. Why You Should Hire Employees Who Self-Manage

    benefits of having employees that can self-manage

    Have you ever stopped to really consider what you mean when you say, “I want to hire great employees’ Does “great” mean hardworking, collaborative, goal oriented or career-aspiring? The answer could be all of the above, but an important missing trait on the list is the “ability to self-manage.”

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  7. Contact Center Employees are Brand Ambassadors Building Customer Loyalty

    how to hire call center employees that excel at providing an exceptional customer experience

    It used to be that the quality of product and services was the primary customer focus, but today you can add another factor of equal importance ” a great customer experience. Just as the word “experience” implies, people want to feel good about their interactions with the business from beginning to end. They want quality, consistency, attention to details, and a company that has an honest and reliable brand reputation. Bottom line: They want to connect with employees who are brand ambassadors and take their job seriously.

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  9. How to Make Remote Work a Strategy, Not a Crisis Response

    Remember life before COVID-19? Sometimes it feels like a decade ago. If the amount of change over the past few months seems, for lack of a better term, unprecedented, that’s because it is, particularly with regard to the impact on the workplace.

    Seemingly overnight, office closures forced employers to piece together impromptu work from home policies, while employees scrambled to set up home offices (or a laptop at the kitchen table) without much notice.

    Ironically, many of the remote work tools that kept organizations going during the crisis had been around for years. Some, for decades. Despite having the ability to support a remote workforce from a technology standpoint, most employers remained fully committed to physical office locations. In fact, research from March 2020 showed that only 7% of U.S. workers had the option to work from home regularly.

    That number is likely to increase, especially as companies follow Twitter’s lead in allowing employees to work from home forever. The World Economic Forum writes, “COVID-19 may yet do what years of advocacy failed to: Make telework a benefit available to more than a relative handful of U.S. workers.” 

    Whether that possibility is exciting or disruptive to your business, the wheels are already in motion. Here are some additional stats to consider:

    • 56% of U.S. workers hold a job that is compatible (at least partially) with remote work.
    • 25-30% of the workforce will be working at home on a multiple days a week by the end of 2021.
    • 80% of employees want to work from home at least some of the time and 1/3 would take a pay cut to do so.

    For these reasons, employers need to need to start thinking about making their move sooner rather than later, building the business case, allocating resources, and rethinking their approach to hiring. Here are some factors that will help shape your remote work strategy.

    Return on investment 

    Let’s start with the practical piece of the puzzle: the business case. As Fast Company explained, before COVID-19, many companies maintained their physical offices for security reasons. Those that handle sensitive data couldn’t send their employees to work from home without setting up the infrastructure needed to protect the business.

    Now, having implemented at least temporary solutions to shore up the organization, there’s less of a reason to go back to the way things were. On top of that, early reports show that remote employees are spending three hours more per day online than they were before the pandemic. The idea of lower costs combined with the potential for higher productivity makes it unlikely that employers as a whole will return to the office.

    Instead, a good portion will opt to maintain the new status quo. This means turning temporary solutions into permanent ones that will support employees and the organization long term.

    Expanded global reach

    As the remote work model becomes permanent, talent teams need to start thinking about next steps. What makes a good remote employee? Are the right people in the right roles today, or will teams be re-organized? What are hiring needs going forward?

    In answering these questions, new opportunities become apparent. No longer are teams or new talent confined a 25-mile radius. Now the organization can think – and hire – globally. That opens up a world of possibilities from a recruiting perspective, but one that will also need to be satisfied remotely.

    Everything from sourcing and screening to interviewing and onboarding will become part of a digital hiring process, one that connects candidates and hiring teams anywhere in the world. This streamlined virtual experience will replace the need to travel in, shakes hands, and awkwardly parade around the office.

    Competitive employer brand

    Working from home has long been seen as a perk for interested employees, especially those seeking more work-life balance. Much like employers have “seen the light” in how well a remote set up can work for the organization, employees who experienced the benefits of working from home during the pandemic are less inclined to restart their commute.

    Having weathered the storm and worked out the kinks, remote employers will become increasingly attractive to candidates in the months and years to come. Embracing remote work communicates nimbleness and resilience on the part of the organization, showing its ability to move past self-imposed limitations to create a more flexible and sustainable model – one that instills trust in its workforce. Pretty good value proposition, no?

    For some, going remote might not have been the plan. And staying remote might not be either. But as this year has proven, and as the famous Mike Tyson quote goes, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

    It’s how organizations react and adapt that matters in the long run.