Resources
Recruiting
3 min read
The Benefits of Hiring International Employees
It wasn’t that long ago it was rare for any but large, multinational corporations to hiring international employees. Now, with domestic labors in short supply and remote work the norm, even smaller employers are looking to a global market to fill vacancies. While nowhere nearly as commonplace as hiring overseas contractors, hiring international employees is becoming more so every day. And why not? By hiring international employees companies benefits by sourcing talent from a global pool, almost guaranteed they’ll find candidates with exactly the specialized skills they want. That might be reason enough to hire internationally, but G2.com, the technology and software peer review site, lists four other benefits of hiring international employees: Gaining a competitive edge because of the diversity of culture and experience. Increased problem-solving prowess due to the variety of perspectives and problem-solving approach. Greater productivity as a result of having workers across multiple time zones. Opening new markets. Growth, diversity, and innovation, says WeHireGlobally, a global PEO (professional employer organization), are the primary reasons for hiring international employees. As U.S. businesses have discovered the advantages of sourcing talent globally, they’ve also discovered that hiring international employees can involve a maze of legal requirements and regulations. Even in the EU where there is some standardization, each country has its own set of hiring and employment rules. A September update of labor laws and regulations across the globe by the international business legal firm Eversheds-Sutherland runs to more than 70 pages. There’s also the challenge of sourcing and vetting candidates. Steps to Hire Internationally Indeed.com, the global recruitment marketplace, says the first steps to hiring international employees are to clearly define the role, the requirements and whether it’s a temporary job or permanent, full or part-time. The six-step guide to global hiring is an overview, providing employers a broad sense of the challenges involved in hiring international employees. So important are the preliminaries, that it’s only after touching on the importance of meeting the legal requirements of each country and those of the U.S. does Indeed mention developing recruiting and onboarding plans. A more detailed discussion of how to evaluate remote international candidates by the global PEO firm Safeguard Global offers advice about the differences in hiring international employees. The firm cautions, “With many cultural differences in resume style and work style to account for, extra care must be taken when assessing a foreign worker at a distance.” Amon the suggestions the Safeguard Global article makes is to have candidates record video responses to interview questions and to insist on skills testing. The latter is especially important because training and mentoring remote workers is difficult. For that reason, “Skill related tests can help you determine if someone already has most, if not all, of the experience and academic training required to excel in a certain position.” Employers can avoid the difficulties and limit the risks of the do-it-yourself approach to hiring international employees by working with a local employment agency or with a global PEO that provides recruitment services. International Hiring Vendors Describing what a global PEO does, Craig Dempsey, found and managing director of a Latin America PEO, says, “A PEO will hire and manage staff on your behalf in the foreign country via a co-employment model.” In that way, the services of a global PEO are just like those of domestic PEOs. G2 has a list of global PEOs, some of which also have U.S. operations. Many are members of the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations. While a global PEO will handle all the details of employment management including hiring international employees, a local agency offers highly specialized recruitment services. As Global Expansion, a PEO itself, explains, “As the recruitment agency will be local, they will speak the local language and understand the job market better.” There’s also a new crop of vendors that specialize in international payroll. These companies have established business entities in various countries across the world to allow employers anywhere to pay them. Companies in this space include, Deel, Oyster HR and Remote.com. This approach is best for employers already experienced in hiring international employees and willing and able to deal with the legal regulations and tax issues. Even with multiple options for hiring international employees, “sourcing great hires across borders can be challenging at the best of times,” writes Julie Torres in Forbes. “Employers shouldn’t have to go it alone.” Contribution by John Zappe
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Human Resources
3 min read
Companies Plan Biggest Salary Increase In Years
Beset by rising inflation and hiring difficulty, companies are poised to give workers the largest salary increase in 14 years. The Conference Board is projecting an average salary increase of 3.9% for 2022, the largest since a similar hike in 2008. “Faster growth in wages for new hires and accelerating inflation are the main causes of the jump in salary increase budgets in recent months,” said Gad Levanon, the Conference Board’s vice president for labor markets, in an announcing the results this month. The forecast comes from a survey last month of 240 compensation executives at the nation’s largest companies. They were asked what they were budgeting and what they were projecting for salary increases in the coming year. Six months ago, they reported planning for a 3% average rise. But as the labor shortage continued to worsen, businesses were forced to boost new hire pay to attract workers. The most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows job openings went from a seasonally adjusted 6.4 million in January to 10.1 million in October. In the two decades the Bureau has tracked job openings, only the 10.7 million openings recorded in July was higher. At the same time, unemployment has plunged from a pandemic high of 14.2% in April 2020 to 4.0% in November. Salary Increases To Remain at High Levels Saying “It is likely that severe labor shortages will continue through 2022,” Levanon anticipates that, “Overall wage growth is likely to remain well above four percent. Wages for new hires, and workers in blue-collar and manual services jobs will grow faster than average.” In addition, with no sign of a slowdown in inflation, Levanon predicts cost-of-living adjustments will increase. “In this environment, the upward momentum for salary increase budgets is likely to continue into early 2022.” Mercer, a global human resources consulting firm, estimates a more modest salary increase of 3.5%. Like the Conference Board, Mercer, too, upped its estimate from an August survey when the salary increase came in at 3.3%. Even that forecast, the result of surveying some 950 employers in October, may turn out to be low, Mercer suggests. “The reality is that these numbers may still change, particularly with the economic uncertainty surrounding Omicron.” “Pressures have continued to mount over the past several months with both inflation and quit rates being at 20-year highs. This has resulted in many employers taking a harder look at compensation plans for 2022.” Bonuses and Merit Pay Increases to Remain And, in fact, Mercer found that the percentage of employers increasing their merit pay budgets by 3.5% or more doubled since August, going from 13% to 27%. The percentage of employers increasing their bonus payouts by 10% or more is 24% higher than in 2020. With the labor shortage and rising inflation, Mercer says “employee expectations are still running high… the tough reality is, at the moment, most employees would likely have no trouble finding a new role – and likely command a premium for job switching.” To limit attrition and be competitive when recruiting workers, Mercer advises employers to: Prioritize their hourly workforce – “Our research has shown that this is the segment of the workforce driving the continued attrition in the workforce — and wages are moving fast.” Address gaps in merit pay – “Organizations should ensure that their merit budgets are sufficient enough to close gaps in competitiveness — and also ensure that the budget is distributed where it’s most needed.” More than pay – “While pay matters, a lot, in many cases it’s when the broader employee experience falls short that employees will start to shop their options.” One other survey, this one from Empsight International, found the average salary increase to be 3.7% with half of the responding companies budgeding more than 3.5% and half less. 2022 Salary Predictions Emspight forecast merit pay increases to average 3.25%. Here, half of the 122 responding companies budgeted less than 3% and half budgeting more. Commenting on 2022 salary increases, Angelo Kostopoulos, CEO of the business data and survey development firm Akron Inc., told The Washington Post, “Companies now see inflation as something they’re going to have to deal with for the next several years. If you combine that with the Great Resignation, plus a heavy focus on technology and related skills, I think that’s where a lot of your overall budget planning increases are coming from.” Contributions by John Zappe
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Human Resources
2 min read
Mental Health Benefits Are a Recruiting Edge
Well before the Covid pandemic, the importance of mental health benefits was becoming apparent to both employers and workers. Employers expanded coverage and began offering stress reduction and access to mental health counselor and other programs as part of the growing focus on workplace wellness. Still, as late as 2019, mental health benefits were only just moving from perk to benefit, as an article on the Society for Human Resource Management website said. Now, mental health benefits have gone from “from a nice-to-have to a true business imperative,” write two CEOs in the Harvard Business Review. Citing data from surveys conducted in 2019 before Covid and again in 2021, the authors report a rise in mental health related attrition, especially among millennial and Gen Z workers. Mental Health Challenges Among Employees The pandemic, the authors observe, has exacerbated stresses of all types. “Mental health challenges are now the norm among employees across all organizational levels.” Employers have responded by improving and broadening their mental health programs. Reporting on how businesses responded to the mental health impacts of the pandemic, the Kaiser Family Foundation said, “The social and economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have placed an unprecedented level of stress on people all over the world. Many employers took steps to assist employees and family members facing these stresses.” In a survey of companies with more than 50 workers, the Foundation found that 39% have made changes to their mental health benefits since the start of the pandemic. Among firms with more than 200 employees, 49% made improvements: 5% increased coverage for out-of-network services 8% waived or reduce the cost to employees for these services 17% developed new resources such as an EAP program. By far the most popular change was to expand access to mental health and substance abuse services: 36% of business under 200 employees and 43% of larger ones added new services such as telehealth and direct access to counselors. Mental Health Benefits Often Limited These resources, most often through online mental health providers, supplement the often limited coverage in typical employer health plan. For example, Learn to Live is an online provider that uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help employees with anxiety, depression and some other mental health issues. Clinicians conduct live coaching sessions and access is 24/7. Another online service, Talkspace matches users with licensed mental health workers for therapy, medication, assessment and healthy living support. Citi, Lionsgate and the LPGA are among the company’s customers. Lyra Health works with companies like eBay and Morgan Stanley offering a broad range of mental health services. Employees can work online or in-person with a therapist. Therapists are also available to work with individuals and groups of employees on-sire. Coaching for short-term support, medication and supportive mental health tools are also available. Since Covid, the numbers of employees using mental health benefits has increased by double-digit percentages. The Kaiser survey found that overall, companies have seen a 12% increase in the number of workers taking advantage of these services. At companies with more than 1,000 employees, 38% more workers are taking advantage of the mental health benefits their employer provides. Despite the attention employers are giving to mental health benefits, workers say it’s not enough. An October Calm for Business survey of 3,000 full-time workers found 40% feel their employer hasn’t done enough to support their mental health. Ironically, workers are hesitant about taking advantage of even the simplest of self-care. The Calm survey found three-quarters didn’t take a metal health or sick day in the last month even though they knew they should have. With just a little encouragement from management, 78% said they’d find time during the workday to take a mental health break. Perhaps the most telling point for employers is the importance of mental health benefits in recruiting: 76% of workers in the Calm survey said metal health benefits are one of the critical factors they consider in evaluating a new job. Contributions by John Zappe
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Human Resources
2 min read
Employee Burnout Is on the Rise
Workers are feeling more burned out than they have in years and the Covid pandemic is why. A survey by the job search site Indeed.com of 1,500 workers found 52% of them reporting feelings of burnout. That’s up from 43% in a similar survey in January 2020, two months before Covid caused the shutdown of most businesses worldwide. In October, a broader survey by the American Psychological Association found a third of all Americans feel so stressed by the pandemic they sometimes struggle to make even the simplest of decisions. “Pandemic stress is contributing to widespread mental exhaustion, negative health impacts and unhealthy behavior changes — a pattern that will become increasingly challenging to correct the longer it persists,” said Arthur C. Evans, Jr., the organization’s CEO. Difficulty making decisions, along with a loss of motivation, a higher level of irritability, tiredness, difficulty concentrating and other behavior changes are all among the classic symptoms of employee burnout. Employees Feeling the Stress The World Health Organization describes employee burnout as a “syndrome” characterized by: “Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and Reduced professional efficacy.” While research and personal experience tells us we all have feelings of job stress from time to time, Covid has made employee burnout worse. Two-thirds of workers in the Indeed survey blame the pandemic for worsened those feelings. Over the years, research by Gallup, Deloitte and others found that lack of recognition and management support, consistently long hours and an unmanageable workload were the leading causes of employee burnout. Those same reasons – especially feeling overworked — are behind the stress employees are feeling now. Concerns over health (25%) and finances (33%) are adding to it, according to the Indeed survey. Employee Burnout Syndrome Those working remotely are more likely than their counterparts working onsite to feel Covid’s effect on employee burnout more strongly. 38% of remote workers says burnout has worsened since the pandemic, compared to 28% of those who worn onsite. One reason for the difference could be that those working from home have a harder time stepping away from work. While both virtual and onsite workers report putting in longer hours, 61% of those working remotely say they find it more difficult than ever to unplug from work. Among onsite workers, 53% find it harder to unplug when they leave the office. And regardless of whether they work remotely or onsite, if they have access to office communications on their phones, 8-in-10 say they’re more likely to work after hours. No employer can afford to ignore the impact of employee burnout. The World Economic Forum a few years ago estimated the cost of burnout at $335 billion globally. Stanford researchers put the cost of workplace stress on the U.S. healthcare system at $190 billion. Gallup estimates burned out, disengaged workers cost companies $3,400 out of every $10,000 in lost productivity, absenteeism, retention and medical expenses. Employers can reduce employee burnout by emphasizing the importance of work-life balance and backing that up by limiting after hours work and encouraging employees to take time off. Better than a third of workers told Indeed that more time off, greater flexibility in scheduling and remote work would all help ease employee burnout. Gallup detailed a more comprehensive approach in Employee Burnout: Causes and Cures. The report proposes three broad strategies for companies: Emphasize wellbeing in the company culture; educate manager to identify signs of burnout and equip them to prevent it, and improve the employee experience. Echoing the Gallup recommendations, Indeed concludes its report with this advice for employers: “Awareness of the employee experience can help you develop an action plan to mitigate feelings of burnout, prevent costly churn and protect workers from burnout in a post-pandemic future.” Contribution by John Zappe
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Blind
2 min read
Employer Review Sites
There are a growing number of employer review sites now operating online. Glassdoor was the first of course, and today this space is dominated by them and Indeed which also has tens of thousands of company reviews mixed with their job content. As the job search has taken on a more consumer like experience, employer reviews have become an offshoot of this trend. But that hasn’t stopped other players from entering the market. A number of sites that target women like FairyGodBoss have reviews and a new employer review site, JobSage launched last month. Here’s how they describe themselves; “As a third party, we’re able to maintain employee anonymity and provide a safe space for employees to share with honesty. Moreover, employees can provide their demographic information, which gives jobseekers more context into these insights. Combined, this approach lets us create authentic, accessible conversations about what it is really like to work somewhere.” Are employer review sites good for candidates? Employers have been known to game them by offering incentives for employees to post positive reviews. Glassdoor has been accused by some employers of keeping up bad reviews for a ransom unless you pay them. Sometimes they budge sometimes they dont. A past company I worked for tried to get a scathing post about the CEO removed but they refused to take it down. I’ve heard through the recruiting grapevine that some posts can be removed but you’d better have a good reason to do so. Like with many online review sites, job seekers should take these posts with a grain of salt. Some reviews can be outdated as time goes by and some may focus on certain departments at a company. But if you are looking to join in a different area, the working conditions might be a little better. The main worry from an employer standpoint is that negative reviews discourage people from applying and tarnish your employer brand. That’s why recruitment marketers need to take a proactive approach with these platform in order to better manage your reputation among candidates. You must constantly monitor these sites in order to flag potential false posts and well as respond to candidates which sites like Glassdoor allow you to do. List of employer review sites As I mentioned Indeed and Glassdoor lead the pack but here’s the other platforms you should be aware of that take job seeker reviews. FairyGodBoss: reviews for the female perspective. This platform helps women get jobs where they are “treated fairly”, paid the same as men and appreciated in their work. Comparably: known for providing detailed info of a company’s culture, compensation, and employee sentiment. Their salary data is contributed anonymously. Kununu: Online since 2007, kununu gives job seekers an inside look into companies *before* they work there through company reviews, and allow all employees to contribute to the greater community by sharing their real work-life experiences. Blind: known for its anonymous reviews, users must verify their company address in order to join and their review and posts are completely anonymous. They bill the platform as the “anonymous community app for the workplace. Our vision in creating this space was to break down professional barriers and hierarchy.” CareerBliss: this is a traditional job site plus company reviews which number over 700,000 according to the company. They also claim 4 million salary comparisons to review. JobSage: the newest review site on the market that launched in late 2021, they focus on inclusion, growth, compensation, purpose, focus and flexibility in their reviews. InHerSight: another female focused site where women can rate and review their experience at companies and can get matched to a job at a company that shares their values. The site collects data on 18 key metrics—both formal policies and “soft” policies—that matter most to working women, including flexible work hours, maternity and adoptive leave, family growth support (e.g., child care and lactation rooms), salary satisfaction, mentoring, management opportunities for women, and women in leadership positions. Employer review sites are here to stay but their influence may be waning over the use of social media in general. An employee is more likely at this point to complain about their job on a platform like TikTok for example.
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Human Resources
3 min read
Reskilling Your Employees
What does it say about an organization when the employees are more pessimistic about their chances to find a new job within their current company? According to the Career Mobility Outlook recently published by Ranstad RiseSmart, workers are unsure of or don’t know how they can advance their skills internally. That’s bad news for people who want to learn more. According to the report; These findings are in direct contrast with employer sentiment, which found that 95% of organizations are looking to hire, including promoting from within, to fill existing job openings: 68.4% of employers are optimistic about filling open roles with current employees, down 11% from Q2. By contrast, only one third (30.3%) of employees said they are likely to opt for an internal job change, while those who were likely to make an external job change dropped even further to one-fifth (20.6%) of all respondents, indicating that the pace of “The Great Resignation” of employees leaving their jobs for external opportunities may be slowing. This conundrum is why you are seeing more applicant tracking systems improve their internal job boards for their existing employees. The “reskilling” of the workplace needs to become a bigger priority for C-suite leaders. Employers and Employees Not Aligned on Reskilling Sometimes referred to as ‘upskilling’, reskilling means teaching your employees new skills so they can take on a new role inside your organization. Ranstad’s report says only forty-three percent (43%) of workers are optimistic about finding new roles internally. Thats down 10% from the previous quarter. Internal talent teams seem to do a poor job of promoting these roles inside company walls. Employees are also doubtful their manager will let them move anyway so that is another obstacle in the way. Employees see skepticism about their about the ability to find internal positions but in the report, employers “overwhelmingly said they plan to fill existing job openings through internal mobility, with 71% of employers saying they plan to fill 10-50% of open jobs internally, a percentage that is relatively unchanged since the first quarter of 2021.” The “Career Mobility Outlook” report also shows some major disconnects exist between employees and employers regarding reskilling and career path development. 73.5% of employers believe they are offering their employees such internal opportunities. However, only 52.3% of employees agree with this sentiment. This disconnect is even larger within specific industries, such as financial services. “Individuals are telling us that they want to learn new skills to be able to grow and develop their careers, and businesses want to train their employees so they can advance within the company. But for some reason, they can’t get on the same page,” said Dan Davenport, CEO at Randstad RiseSmart. “Our goal is to help organizations and their workers realize that they both want the same thing and provide them with the career coaching expertise and tools to build agile workforces that benefit individuals and the organization.” Benefits of Reskilling Investing in your people through reskilling has a number of benefits that can’t be ignored. Especially in the tight labor that exists today. In the short term you save time and money but in the long term you can strengthen your brand as a great place to work while increasing retention. 1. Reskilling Reduces Hiring Costs Before you can hire you have to advertise, source, interview and more. That process is expensive and takes time. When you initiate reskilling for your workforce you can avoid those expenses and long time horizons. Thus you free up other recruiting resources to focus on more important projects. 2. Reskilling Boosts Talent Attraction Companies that invest in their employees are ones that people want to work. Wouldn’t you like to be a ‘company of choice’ among potential job seekers? Reskilling shows candidates that you value them and that always moves the needle when it comes to talent attraction. Workers who can learn will tell their friends and your employer brand will become more attractive once reskilling is in place. Make it part of your company culture. 3. Reskilling Equals Retention Those employees who feel valued will stay longer and in a world where job hopping is rampant that’s a good thing for employers. As the pandemic starts to fade, most job seekers want more out of their lives including what they do for a living. Recognizing that fact will only make your company better at talent acquisition in this new era. In conclusion, your company’s reskilling effort will be most effective if your team embraces a learning culture. It has to start from the top down. Will it take time to build this out? Yes but I don’t think today’s employers have a choice. The war for talent is in full effect and shows no signs of letting up.
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Human Resources
2 min read
Soft Skills In the Workplace
Soft skills in the workplace have become as important as technical skills, and many employers say they’d hire and promote someone with excellent communication skill over a more technically abled candidate whose soft skills don’t measure up. “Having the right experience and technical skills for a job is not enough,” says Emmett McGrath, president of the staffing and outsourcing company Yoh. “Job candidates also need to fit in culturally and have non-technical skills in order to success.” A survey Yoh commissioned found 75% of the 2,000 respondents would hire a candidate with soft skills even if they had less than the desired experience or qualifications. Importance of Soft Skills That echoes the importance recruiters place on soft skills in the workplace, according to Linkedin’s Global Talent Trends 2019. 92% of 5,000 talent professionals across 35 countries said soft skills “matter as much or more than hard skills when they hire, and 80% say they’re increasingly important to company success.” It’s not just white collar workers who benefit from have strong soft skills in the workplace. A research team led by Namrata Kala, MIT Sloan economics professor, conducted a year-long soft skills training program at a garment manufacturing factory. Eight months after it ended, productivity improvement and gains from quicker problem solving and better attendance returned 250% on the investment in training. Though surveys and employers often use different names or labels for the same types of soft skills, they all agree on the core important soft skills in the workplace: Communication, both listening as well as speaking and often writing Teamwork, collaboration, cooperation all mean the same: the ability to work smoothly with others. Adaptability. Employers want workers who can adjust quickly to changing circumstances and who can figure out how to that. Creativity is the ability to think of better or unique ways to solve problems or improve efficiency; out of the box thinking. Interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence. Both are used to describe the ability to get along with people and understand them on an emotional level. Since Covid, employers are placing an even greater emphasis on adaptability and resilience, adding them to the list of the more important skills in the workplace. A Lever report said the pandemic, which forced companies to make changes overnight, made adaptability even more prized than it was in the past. Communication Skills Most Wanted Good communication skills, long a recruiting priority, are still one of the top skills employers want. Companies also seek creative thinkers and workers with good emotional intelligence, skills that LinkedIn tells us are in short supply, but high demand. While all surveys agree on the importance of soft skills in the workplace, as a group, managers are most invested in improving their soft skills and learning new ones. A survey of learning and development professionals and managers discovered that managers spend 30% more time than the average employee learning soft skills. That survey also found two-thirds of Gen Z workers spent more learning last year than they did in the past and their rate of participation in learning was higher than every other worker age group. Much of their emphasis was on learning hard skills, compared to older workers who were more focused on improving their soft skills. That may be a consequence of age. Younger workers have simply had less job experience and time to learn technical skills and expand their range. Yet, as Tanya Staples, VP of product and content for LinkedIn Learning, says, “Companies today want employees that can solve difficult challenges and dream up creative and innovative ideas that technologies cannot replicate.” Contribution by John Zappe
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Human Resources
3 min read
Microlearning Is Just In Time Learning
If you needed to add a video to your business presentation you wouldn’t sign-up for a course on PowerPoint. You’d search for a “how to” online to learn just what you needed to accomplish the task. That’s the difference between traditional corporate training programs and what’s come to be called microlearning. Microlearning is the delivery of task-relevant learning in small bites. It’s been growing as a tool of corporate trainers since the late 1990s. But it wasn’t until just a few years ago that it took off, as learning and development professionals recognized its value in giving workers just the information they needed – and no more — when they needed it. What is Microlearning? It’s “a way of teaching and delivering content to learners in small, specific bursts,” as the Society for Human Resource Management describes microlearning. It makes learning more meaningful because it is “just in time.” And studies that began emerging in the mid-2010s showed microlearning improved retention. Corporate trainers have long been frustrated by the twin challenge of getting workers to retain what they’ve learned in instructor-led training sessions, and convincing managers to free-up workers for training and reinforcement. Research about retention confirms the fundamentals of Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve: We begin forgetting what we’re taught within minutes of learning it. So routine reinforcement is needed. But getting managers to give up workers for even an hour, let alone half-day training is a constant battle. Meanwhle, trainers also have to contend with a diminishing worker attention span. Pointing to a Microsoft finding that the human attention span is now shorter than a goldfish’s, a team of researchers found that “microlearning becomes more and more important because it emphasizes short learning duration.” They maintain the internet and the ready availability of data “affects how people view their time and how they learn.” “In the workplace, people are used to have information at their fingertips, finding the answers they need within minutes. This has dramatically changed people’s expectations of workplace learning,” they write. Microlearning solves these problems. By leveraging the internet and the near ubiquitous availability of desktops and portable devices, corporate L&D teams are making short bits of information readily available. In a survey conducted three years ago, the Association for Talent Development found “four in five respondents use microlearning at their organizations to reinforce or supplement formal training. Microlearning also was used as a just-in-time learning tool by 75 percent of participants.” If that survey were conducted today, the numbers would undoubtedly be significantly higher. The Covid shutdowns and the subsequent limit on gatherings propelled microlearning from trend to established practice. Socially Distant Microlearning “COVID-19 has forced workers to learn in a socially distanced and often remote environment, making instructor-led training (ILT) less popular,” says a blog post on Topyx, a vendor of corporate learning technology. “The COVID-19 pandemic did what competition and the productivity race could not—it tipped the scales towards blended learning and corporate training instead of instructor-led education,” says another blog post. An article in Industry Training magazine says 2020 “broke traditional corporate training” by placing resource constraints on companies and causing workers to be more reluctant than ever “to take on anything outside of their normal job activities. “Forward-thinking L&D professionals are adapting to this environment by implementing just-in-time training strategies.” As valuable as microlearning is, it shouldn’t be thought of as a replacement for other types of learning, including instructor-led training. Consider it another tool in the L&D toolbox – a powerful one for sure, but not a replacement. In the book Microlearning: Short and Sweet, authors and learning experts Karl M. Kapp and Robyn A. Defelice, caution that microlearning “Is not always the best solution for learning needs because not all of what individuals need to know to be successful can be taught through microlearning strategies.” Yet, as the demand for worker training continues to grow, microlearning will play an increasingly important role. In 2022, more companies will embrace microlearning techniques, creating short instructional videos and leveraging other technologies like AR and VR. By one estimate, the market for microlearning content will grow by almost 14% in the next two years, topping $2.7 billion. Looking ahead, Finance Digest says, “agile, flexible microlearning holds the key to extracting the full potential out of our workforces.” Contribution by John Zappe
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Recruiting Trends
2 min read
Remote Hiring Is Replacing the In-Person Interview
Until Covid, remote hiring was about as common as remote workers. That’s not to say it was rare, but it was far from mainstream. Startups and companies with virtual workers would hire remotely, but most other companies still insisted on in-person interviews. Covid changed all that. When businesses were forced to go all virtual, so did their hiring. A survey in April of 2020, a month after the nationwide shutdown of all but essential businesses, found 43% of hiring managers had reduced in-person interviews; 25% had eliminated them entirely. They had to hire remotely, turned to telephone and video for interviews and increasing their use of assessments and reference checks. So soon after the shutdown it was impossible to tell what effect remote hiring would eventually have. But there were some hints. Though 41% of managers said hiring had become slower, 38% said it was faster; 21% said it was much faster. The survey found the latter group used significantly more remote hiring methods than those whose turnaround times were slower or unchanged. There was one other telling point in that early survey: there was a 50/50 split between hiring managers who wanted to return to how hiring was done before Covid and those who wanted to continue to hire remotely. Remote Hiring More Efficient Months later, a new survey bore out what the earlier survey hinted at: remote hiring made the process less challenging and more efficient. “Across the board, hiring professionals find that the work of talent acquisition and talent management is less challenging than it was [in 2019],” said the report, The State of Hiring in a Year of Crisis. As recruiters and hiring managers have discovered, remote hiring has definite advantages over the traditional, in-person process. A survey conducted just a few months ago found 93% of employers plan to continue using virtual interviews in the future. By large margins, the 1,100 talent acquisition professionals across a broad range of industries and business sizes, said remote hiring was speedier (74%) and easier to manage the process from start to finish (79%). Over three-quarters believe virtual hiring has improved the candidate experience. Candidates, too, find remote hiring less intimidating (37%); 45% appreciate not having to travel for the interview and the same percentage like that they can interview from anywhere. No surprise then that Peg Buchenroth, a SVP with the staffing and recruitment firm Addison Group, says, “Virtual interviews are not going away.” “Virtual interviewing will remain an option for talent acquisition, she told the Society for Human Resource Management, But as the SHRM article notes, remote hiring has limitations. Limits of Remote Hiring “In-person interviews offer a higher level of engagement. You can read body language better and get a better sense of someone’s interpersonal skills,” Buchenroth pointed out. “For roles that require strong social skills, such as client-facing or senior leadership positions, employers may want to meet candidates face-to-face.” For that reason, talent acquisition professionals expect companies to adopt a hybrid hiring process. Jobs requiring in-person interaction, such as in retail or hospitality or that demand close collaboration among an on-site team will still have a fact-to-face component. Remote hiring tools including phone screens, video interviews, assessments and, when relevant, skills testing may be used to narrow the applicant pool, but the final step will be an in-person interview. Entirely remote hiring will be reserved for jobs to be performed remotely. And this is a category of work that is expanding rapidly. Better than 4-in-10 workers could potentially do their job remotely, says the World Economic Forum which predicts a “significant expansion of remote work.” The issue for companies is no longer whether to include remote hiring as part of their talent acquisition process, but how and specifically what tools to use, says Eric Friedman, chairman and CEO of a skills assessment provider writing. “The challenge is selecting and consolidating the right tools to deliver a sustainable and effective remote talent acquisition model.” Contribution by John Zappe
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