Resources
Human Resources
2 min read
Soft Skills In the Workplace - Emissary.ai
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 - Emissary.ai
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 - Emissary.ai
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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Recruiting
2 min read
Candidate Experience Management - Emissary.ai
A new study from Phenom has revealed that while many Fortune 500 employers are making strides in attracting, engaging and converting candidates in today’s brutal talent market, there is still significant room to improve the candidate experience with personalization and automation especially driven by AI. Thanks to the pandemic, talent acquisition is now a business priority among the C-suite — especially across industries with high-volume hiring needs — such as healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, retail and transportation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job openings and resignations simultaneously reached highs at the end of March. But instead of using AI to effectively and efficiently scale hiring, the majority of Fortune 500 companies are falling short. In fact, Phenom says 91% scored poorly in this key area. Candidate Experience Breaking Points Here’s what happened when researchers visited the Fortune 500 career sites; Only 10% had an intuitive job search and application process Only 1% communicated application status beyond initial confirmation 89% did not display recently viewed jobs 88% did not present job recommendations based on browsing history 87% did not use a recruitment chatbot 73% lacked a job cart or favorites function to save jobs 88% did not send applicants a satisfaction survey How Employers Can Improve the Candidate Experience Simplify search and apply. Requiring three or more clicks to apply for a job is a major roadblock for candidates. The longer it takes for a candidate to find and apply to a relevant job, the greater the chance they will abandon the process and look elsewhere. One recommendation is for companies to equip their career sites with the ability to provide relevant suggested jobs based on a candidate’s keywords, skills, experience and location. Create hyper-personalization. Candidates are used to superior tailored experiences in their consumer lives. If finding a job that matches what they want is difficult, they are quick to move on. Dynamic AI personalization is one way companies can automatically match a candidate’s preferences, experience, skills and location with best-fit job openings — and surface content for candidates as they move through their own unique end-to-end talent journey across multiple channels. Automate communication. Job seekers want to know where they stand in the screening and interview scheduling process. Failure to communicate status details jeopardizes employer brand and acceptance rates. Using conversational AI chatbots, text and email campaigns are a few ways companies can automate individualized communications to keep job seekers engaged while differentiating their brand. “Hiring, developing and retaining talent isn’t just an HR priority — it is a business priority. Companies must differentiate themselves by the experiences they provide to their candidates and their employees to sustain,” said Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co-founder of Phenom. “This benchmark report provides industry-specific insights and actionable recommendations for using automation and personalization to earn and keep top talent.” How AI & Automation Helps All Talent Experiences At a time when there’s never been more pressure for recruiters to fill open roles, AI and automation enables a quick, efficient hiring process that serves up best-fit jobs to candidates — and best-fit candidates to recruiters — while optimizing omnichannel communication that nurture talent communities. Not only do job seekers appreciate a streamlined, personalized experience, but with efficiency at the core, recruiters and hiring managers benefit from decreased time to fill and better long-term fits. Employees are no exception. The same hyper-personalized candidate experience should extend to internal talent, who may be looking to move within their current company. By making relevant open roles and development opportunities visible, actionable and attainable, companies stand a better chance at retaining them. AI-powered talent marketplaces automate the process for an employee experience that unifies all key stakeholders: internal candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Data like this is key to improving your hiring processes and attracting more talent. I hope that you take these findings and use them to improve your own candidate experience management. Otherwise the talent you seek will go elsewhere.
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3 min read
Communication and the Candidate Experience - Emissary.ai
It is an interesting time in the employment market. With open positions outnumbering active jobseekers, organizations are looking at ways to stand out as employers of choice. As organizations look to reimagine talent acquisition, candidate experience is emerging as a competitive differentiator. While some may argue that candidate experience has always been key to attracting and hiring talent, the pandemic and resulting changes in candidate behavior have made candidate experience even more important for organizations. Unfortunately, in the quest to automate the recruiting process, the candidate experience is often a casualty. A recent survey found that only one percent of the companies communicated the status of the application to the candidate using email, text, etc. beyond the automated initial email confirming submission. As humans, we crave social connection. It is no secret that candidates want better communication from their recruiters. The challenge is delivering personalized communication at scale. And that’s where text recruiting software comes into the play. Improving the Candidate Experience with Communications: Is Text Recruiting the Answer? The consumerization of technology over this past decade has played a major role in shaping candidate expectations. When candidates have access to instant feedback and communication in their private lives, they expect the same level of personalization and thoughtfulness when applying for jobs. While communication and feedback remain an integral part of the candidate experience, recruiters struggle to respond to each applicant due to a variety of reasons – high applicant volume, understaffed recruitment teams, high-time and effort requirements, etc. Technology solutions like Emmissary.ai offer a powerful solution for talent acquisition teams looking to improve their candidate experience. At its core, text recruiting uses short messaging service (SMS) to inform applicants about open positions, communicate with them, and keep them engaged through the application processes. Text recruiting makes even more sense when you consider the fact that nearly 90% of candidates today use a mobile device to search for jobs. And these people actually read text messages. Research suggests that 90% of the recipients read a text message within the first three minutes of receiving it. Texting is clearly one of the most effective ways to engage with active and passive candidates.[image_with_animation image_url=”9944″ animation=”Fade In” hover_animation=”none” alignment=”” border_radius=”none” box_shadow=”none” image_loading=”default” max_width=”100%” max_width_mobile=”default” img_link=”https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world”] 5 Ways Text Recruiting Improves the Candidates Experience Timely feedback: Are you still waiting to hear from that company you applied to in 2019? You’re not alone – nearly 99% of companies fail to communicate with their candidates on the status of their application. Text recruiting software helps recruiters send out automated updates that keep candidates informed about their application status. Omnichannel communication: Candidates land on jobsites or jobs from various platforms – social media, job boards, newsletters, and forwards/shares. Text recruiting tools allow recruiters to connect and engage with candidates wherever they are through direct messaging. Provides better contextual information: Larger recruiting teams often spend a significant amount of time just validating candidate information – multiple recruiters may ask similar questions to the candidate. This leads to a fragmented experience. Text recruiting software has a central record of candidate communications that provides recruiters with all the context they need to have more meaningful conversations with candidates. Drive personalization at scale: Text recruiting platforms offer the best marketing technology has to offer. Recruiters can segment candidates and send out highly personalized and targeted communication to inspire applications or improve engagement. Streamline workflows: The best text recruiting platforms integrate with leading ATS, HCM, and other HR solutions, allowing recruitment teams to streamline their workflows without duplicating efforts and improving team productivity. 3 Best Practices for Candidate Communication Despite the promise of text recruiting, over 65% of companies still don’t have a formal strategy in place to leverage bulk messaging. If you’re looking to add text recruiting to your HR tech stack, you may want to keep these best practices in mind to maximize impact: Keep your messages short and to the point: While mobile phones have done wonders for communication, they are also notorious for shortening our attention spans. Try to keep your messages shorter than or equal to 160 characters. However, we recommend avoiding abbreviations or SMS slang like gr8, ttyl, and brb. Use more characters if you must. Include a CTA: What action do you want your candidate/s to take after they read your message? Include a clear CTA – apply, visit our career site, call me for more details etc. in your text message. Be patient: Text recruiting is asynchronous, and it is very likely that candidates are texting you from work or may be busy. Don’t pressurize your candidates to respond – this might come across as pushy or aggressive. Conclusion Text recruiting addresses a very real pain-point for both candidates and recruiters – instant and accessible feedback. While there is no substitute for in-person communication, text recruiting is the next best thing. You can experiment with use-cases ranging from cold messaging to engagement and nurture campaigns, and even text interviewing. As the world of work transitions to a remote, location agnostic experience, text recruiting is perhaps the most powerful tool at recruiters’ disposal to attract, connect, and engage with candidates wherever they are.
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3 min read
The 5 Rules of Text Messages for Remote Workplaces - Emissary.ai
With more people working remotely, communication conventions have also undergone a sea change. Tools like Slack, Teams, and Zoom have become an integral part of most organizations. As organizations look to foster a remote culture the communication tool stack is expanding. From staples like Slack and Zoom, companies are increasingly leveraging text messaging to complement existing solutions. Text messaging has emerged as a crucial solution to fill the gaps left by conventional remote work apps – informal feedback, interview prep, team building and more. Consider the fact that employees spent on average about 56 minutes on their cell phones before the pandemic, and it quickly becomes clear why text messaging is one of the best ways to convey important, time-sensitive information. However, in the era of back-to-back video calls and incessant IM pings, cognitive overload is becoming increasingly common. This risks important communication being swept under a pile of emails, chats, and messages. So, what is the best way to use texting to cut through the clutter and maximize impact? 5 Golden Rules of Texting with Remote Employees One of the reasons why text messages continue to remain the most effective communication tool is that they boast a 98% read rate. At a time when employee attention is elusive (read: digital overload), text messages offer a simple and inexpensive way for organizations to get important communication across. To keep those numbers high, here are our five golden rules for communicating with remote employees via text: 1. Establish Communication Conventions While most organizations have let the unsaid rules of digital communication dictate how employees use emails, IMs, and other collaboration software, texting must be handled with caution. Organizations need to clearly document how and when text messages are to be used. From the organizational/managerial side, text messages should only be used to convey certain types of information – policy updates (with a CTA to read the email), emergencies/alerts, HR updates, rewards and recognition, informal feedback, shift scheduling, expense and accounting, etc. While this is not an exhaustive list of use-cases for texting, you could use these pointers as guidelines to establish communication conventions. 2. Establish and Respect Boundaries Work-life boundaries are hard to discern, particularly with a remote workforce. To succeed with text messages as a communication tool, organizations must recognize the fact that employee cell phone numbers are a private channel to their lives. Which means if you send out an SMS blast just when your employees are sitting down for dinner with their families, you are risking trust erosion. Like most things culture, communication conventions also flow top down. Give your team uninterrupted time away from work. Resist the urge to send out SMS’ at odd hours to avoid making your employees feel like they need to be available around the clock. Remember, healthy boundaries build trust. 3. Avoid Using Texts as a Substitute for Meetings “That meeting could’ve been an email,” is one of the most common workplace sentiments today. However, in the age of remote work, face time is crucial. And overcommunication doesn’t hurt. Avoid using texts as an alternative to meetings. Need to provide feedback? Schedule a video call. While text messages are incredibly effective, they fail to capture the nuances of in-person or face-to-face communication. As humans we’re subconsciously primed to decipher body language, tone, and expressions to fill in the missing bits of communication context. Texting is not a proxy for human relationships at the workplace. 4. Language Keep in mind that for most employees texting is reserved for family and friends, so, texting slang (c u l8r, ttyl, xoxo, etc.) can easily permeate into workplace messaging. It is important that you document the language rules for workplace texting with your employees. Basic best practices like re reading messages before sending should be communicated to all employees. Texting slang could potentially become a compliance/legal nightmare for employers and leaders. 5. Send Consolidated Messages Due to the informal nature of text messaging, many people approach it as spoken conversation in written form. While this practice is perfectly acceptable on IMs, it may deliver a broken and disjointed experience when used in SMS. A series of separate messages can be disorienting and annoying. [image_with_animation image_url=”9947″ animation=”Fade In” hover_animation=”none” alignment=”” border_radius=”none” box_shadow=”none” image_loading=”default” max_width=”100%” max_width_mobile=”default” img_link=”https://www.getapp.com/resources/business-chat-etiquette-rules-for-small-business/”]While the series of messages on the left will likely stress and distract the recipient, the single message on the right is much less likely to cause a disturbance. Unlike IMs, text messages don’t have “typing…” status, so it is likely that the sender may get confused when receiving a string of messages. Next Steps: Use the Right Tools to Perfect Your Text Game The rules listed above can help you create a successful text messaging strategy, and help reduce distractions and digital burnout due to an “always on” remote work environment But knowing what messaging solution meets your business needs is crucial. Check out how Emissary can help. Schedule a demo to learn how to establish and succeed with your messaging strategy.
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Recruiting Trends
3 min read
Workforce Trends for 2022 - Emissary.ai
To say the nature of work is changing is the understatement of the year. Who could have predicted the way the workforce is trending these days with remote work, vaccination mandates and a host of other changes affecting the American worker. According to ADP, the HR payroll company, the transformation of the global workforce accelerated in 2021, driven by the continued impact of the pandemic and strains on businesses amid record labor shortages and shifting worker priorities. It’s a strain felt worldwide. ADP Research Institute found that 64% of the global workforce was negatively impacted by COVID-19, including 28% who lost a job, were furloughed, or were temporarily laid off, and 23% who took a pay cut. These labor market shifts have led workers to reprioritize their needs, further redefining how and where work gets done. As a result, employers face added pressure to adjust to emerging talent demands. To help businesses navigate forward, ADP shares the biggest drivers behind work’s evolution in 2022. “The world of work has been in a constant state of motion,” said Don Weinstein, corporate vice president of global product and technology at ADP. “The needs of the global workforce are evolving in tandem with technology, and the result is transformational. Amid all the change, one common thread has only grown stronger: people power performance. To support and empower their people, employers are rooting their decision-making in data and leveraging those insights to better understand their employees’ needs and what drives their productivity. This increased visibility is fostering a stronger sense of connection and paving the way for greater growth and innovation ahead.” 4 Trends for the 2022 Workforce The Dispersed/Hybrid Workforce As employers explore on-site, fully remote and hybrid workplace models, they will look for new opportunities to increase employee visibility and better understand the needs of a dispersed workforce. According to ADP Research Institute’s “People at Work: A Global Workforce View” study, within a year, COVID-19 has significantly impacted workers’ locations. In fact, three quarters (75%) of the global workforce made changes or plan to change how or where they live, with that percentage even greater (85%) among Generation Z. Additionally, ADP surveyed small and midsized U.S. employers and found 66 percent have a hybrid work model in place. To foster connection in the absence of physical proximity, people data will shed insight into the ebbs and flows of engagement and performance, helping managers pull the right levers to support a high-performing remote or hybrid team. This new dynamic built on mutual trust will help drive employee engagement and performance. ADP Research Institute found that U.S. employees who have trust in both their teammates and their team leader are seven times more likely to feel Strongly Connected to their organization. Mission Driven Workplace Culture As employers look for ways to drive inclusion amidst new work models, connection will become a measurement of workforce culture. ADP Research Institute found that U.S. workers who feel they are Strongly Connected to their employer are 75 times more likely to be Fully Engaged than those who do not feel connected. With connection driving engagement, employers will need to heighten their focus on their people and reflect on the larger purpose that unites their workforce. Workforce flexibility will stretch beyond perceived limits and employers will embrace people-centered initiatives to build a workplace where everyone can thrive. Diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies will additionally evolve to drive true, measurable progress. ADP data shows more than 50 percent of companies that leveraged ADP DataCloud’s DEI analytics capabilities have taken action and realized positive impact on their DEI measures. Better Data Will Power Decision Makers With employees remaining remote and hybrid, operational and compliance considerations will grow, adding to an already complex regulatory environment. In fact, ADP’s HR Survey Series with HR Outsourcing found nearly 20 percent of U.S. companies with 25 to 99 employees admit they are currently facing challenges with compliance and regulatory issues, which may increase as regulations change. To navigate forward, leaders will rely more heavily on real-time data to tackle compliance proactively and guide decision-making. Quality data will be key in providing businesses with the confidence they need to act. As an example, to better manage return to the workplace policies including vaccination tracking and testing, employers are turning to timely people data. Through its ADP Return to Workplace mobile solution, ADP reports workers have completed more than three million health status surveys since the tool’s launch. Digitization Will Change the Employee Experience As business models evolve amid global shifts, businesses will turn to technology to drive efficiency and expand capabilities by eliminating task work and refocusing efforts on strategic growth initiatives. According to ADP data, monthly users of its ADP Mobile Solutions app increased over 25% from last year as workers leverage self-service tools, helping to remove administrative tasks from HR practitioners’ plates, enabling them to focus more on their people. This digitalization will benefit both employers and employees, as employees seek greater flexibility and control in their employee experience. ADP believes also that a surge in skills-based hiring will drive innovation further. Their research institute’s “People at Work: A Global Workforce View” study found more than one-in-four workers (28%) report having taken on a new role or changing role due to pandemic labor market shifts. The number increases to 36% for Generation Z workers. Following a period during which employees were forced to reskill, people will continue to prioritize their skills and pursue opportunities to apply their unique strengths. To accelerate performance, employers will need to focus on those individual strengths and provide opportunities for employees to develop new skills or embark on a new career trajectory with more opportunity for growth. Additionally, employers will also rely on helpful technologies like machine learning to identify workers with the right skills in unique places, such as pools of former applicants who previously applied for other roles.
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Human Resources
2 min read
Employee Benefits Packages Being Challenged - Emissary.ai
With the quit rate at record highs and employers struggling to find and retain talent, many organizations say it’s nearly impossible to offer enough benefits to satisfy their employees. According to a new survey from The Harris Poll published by Express Employment Professionals, nearly 1 in 3 companies that have experienced an increase in employee turnover this year (32%) point to better perks offered elsewhere (e.g., Summer Fridays, unlimited vacation days) as the reason for the higher turnover, which increased from the second half of 2020 (26%). Almost 1 in 5 companies report some of the biggest hiring difficulties their company will face over the next twelve months are that their pay is not competitive (18%) and/or their benefits are not competitive (17%). However businesses seem to realize the importance of competitive pay as the majority (63%) expect the average wage at their company will increase in 2021, while 28% expect no change to wages. Notably, the proportion expecting wage increases has been steadily growing over the past year (52% in the first half of 2020, 58% in the second half of 2020 and 63% in the first half of 2021). Further, 43% of companies expect their employee benefit packages to increase in 2021 as compared to 2020, and around half (49%) expect their benefits to stay about the same. “Competitive pay and employee benefits have never been more important,” said Greg Sulentic, Express franchise owner in Lincoln, Nebraska. “It’s not about pulling people into the workforce; it’s about stealing employees from your competitors. Staffing recruiters often feel like sports agents trying to put the best offer out there just to pull a welder or CNC operator from their current job to ours. Hourly wage rules all, but sign-on or retention bonuses can be a draw.” As to what extra perks businesses are using to entice workers, Sulentic says it’s all about time off and travel. No limit on paid time off, true “forced” sabbaticals of month-long vacations or vacations paid for by the company. Flexibility for employees is something more leaders need to offer. In Michigan for example, Express franchise owner Reggie Kaji has some clients paying employees for a full 40-hour workweek, but they only work 34 hours. “It’s shocking considering this would have been absolutely unheard of in the past,” he said. “We also have another client offering bonuses of $1,000 per quarter for retention and good attendance. “Turnover is happening across the board for compensation purposes, not benefits, but actual pay. Honestly, it’s the ‘Wild Wild West.’ I really don’t see the tight labor market cooling down for at least a year.” Sulentic also doesn’t see much hope on the horizon for labor shortages and competition to ease up as long as employees are unavailable. “Labor participation is remarkably low, and we don’t anticipate a major improvement,” he said. “People are just not coming back into the workforce.” For the overall health of the economy, we need those who are on the sidelines to rejoin the labor force and the sooner, the better, Express CEO Bill Stoller said. “It’s a job seekers’ market right now, and when you find the right candidate, businesses should be prepared to make them an employment offer as soon as possible,” Stoller said. “Any delay and you risk losing top talent altogether.” Competitive pay is just part of the solution, employee benefits packages need to be boosted and adjusted much more quickly to avoid an increase in turnover.
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Recruiting
2 min read
Job Application Process Still Frustrating Candidates - Emissary.ai
Despite employers complaining about a lack of applicants, a big reason why appears to be their frustrating job application processes. InFlight Corporation, maker of the employee experience platform, recently announced a new study of the job application process and related opportunities for improvement. The findings reveal significant gaps between the expense of attracting a candidate and diminishing engagement due to friction in the online application process. They “mystery shopped” the career sites of Fortune 500 companies, using the search term “software developer,” a hard-to-fill role that is consistent across all organizations. The process started on Google, where nearly 70 percent of all job searches commence and followed the number of clicks it took from the first click of “Apply Now” through the application submitted confirmation page. InFlight’s Founder and CEO, James La Brash, said, “When it comes to the candidate experience, the promise of a quick and easy apply process starts with the ‘Apply Now’ button. The reality is quite different: Our research shows that two-thirds of candidates are made to click ‘Apply Now’ three or more times, and an average of 51 clicks are required to get through an application, which is time consuming and undermines the desired outcome.” Given the recruitment marketing expenditure involved in attracting qualified talent – especially in a highly competitive labor market – having unnecessary roadblocks in place is counterintuitive and creates friction in the apply flow. The job application process is often a rapid barrage of questions, fields and clicks that candidates need to navigate to advance through the process. Additionally, as soon as a candidate starts the apply process, InFlight learned that 48 percent of the Fortune 500 are sharing brand positioning with their applicant tracking system’s logo, creating confusion on the part of the candidate as to where their information is going. In addition to the discovery that “Apply Now” experience is far from prompt, the research uncovered a disconnect between the people who are designing the experience and the people who buy and configure the technology. Expecting to see a stronger correlation between employer branding and application experience quality, it was apparent that the candidate experience suffered in the process. Even when organizations were savvy about including recruitment marketing visual brand elements, the corresponding technology experience wasn’t configured to support positive impact and high application completion rates. La Brash concluded, “Designing and executing a quantitative study of your company’s apply flow is a complicated undertaking. Many organizations have pieced together in-house and external systems to achieve their intended goals without considering the overall quality of the candidate experience. With so much competition for workers, organizations cannot afford to have systems that provide a candidate experience that undermines their talent attraction goals.” It is remarkable that in 2021 we are still talking about frustrating the candidates with unnecessary clicks and barriers when it comes to the apply process. Leaders need to demand better from their HR tech staff when it comes to implementing any kind of software that touches the candidate experience. They need to hire more usability experts that bring a candidate focused mindset to the implementation. Any employer that doesn’t take the apply process seriously is putting themselves at risk of not filling roles quickly enough. “Easy Apply” should become the norm in our industry, not the exception.
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