Human Resources (4)
Human Resources
Employee Benefits Packages Being Challenged
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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Human Resources
How to Use Talent Assessment Tools
In the fierce competition for talent today, companies are turning to talent assessment tools to give them a leg up in hiring and promoting workers who not only have the skills for the job, but who will also be a good fit. Recruiters use talent assessment tools to test the extent of a job candidate’s know-how, learn their work style and see if their personality is a good match for the company culture. These tools help predict a candidate’s performance in the job, providing both recruiters and hiring managers greater insight into a candidate than a resume and interview alone can. Recruiting may be the best-known use of talent assessment tools, but it’s far from the only way these tools help companies made smarter workforce decisions. A report by the Society for Human resource Management says machine learning and artificial intelligence have broadened the reach of the newest talent assessment tools. Beside hiring, SHRM says these tools today are used to “evaluate current employees for different roles, identify employees with high leadership potential, compare talent within an organization against industry or geographical benchmarks, understand talent strengths and gaps, and develop employees’ long-term value.” The SHRM practice report details a dozen different types of assessments beginning with the more common and familiar job knowledge and personality tests to such specialized ones as writing and physical fitness, which, the report explains, “require candidates to perform actual work tasks to determine whether they can meet the physical requirements of a job.” 5 Types of Talent Assessments The most widely used assessments fall into four or five broad categories: skills specific to the job, personality and behavior, cognitive which covers critical thinking and communication, and integrity, which is just what it sounds like. There are talent assessment tools designed to test each of these areas. Many are intended for specific job types. A Google search for “talent assessment tools for customer service representative” turns up dozens, with several specific to individual industries. The hospitality industry alone has multiple generic talent assessment tools available, while most of the largest hotel groups have their own customized tools Before deciding what talent assessment tools to use SHRM says, “The first step in selecting an assessment tool is to understand what the target job or role requires the employee to do by conducting a job analysis that focuses on identifying critical work activities and/or competencies.” This may seem obvious, yet as the example illustrates there are any number of different types of customer service jobs. Generic talent assessment tools abound, however their predictive value for a specific job and industry will be limited. Knowing not just the broad job category, but what the specific role entails and how it’s to be performed is essential to selecting the right talent assessment tool. The next steps in choosing the right tool, as the SHRM report explains, is to determine the validity of the test and its potential for adversely and unfairly impacting protected groups such as those over 40, minorities and women. In addition, how will those being tested react? And, of course, what’s the cost? Talent Assessment Validity SHRM’s practice guide goes into detail about each of these decision points. Briefly, what you need to consider are: Validity: Does the test reliably predict performance? Criterion validity is the relationship between scores on the test and actual business outcomes. Content validity means that what the assessment tests for is directly relevant to the job or the desired behaviors. Adverse impact: Consider whether the test leads to a disproportionate hiring of a majority group versus the minority group. Says SHRM, “If an assessment produces an adverse impact, the only way to defend its use is by showing that it is a valid predictor of performance and that alternative measures are not feasible.” Candidate reaction: Especially in pre-hiring assessments, the test-taker reaction is critical. A negative experience can be expensive to the company, causing it not only to lose the job applicant, but others swayed by reviews posted online. Test-takers have a more positive reaction to talent assessment tests that measure work behavior via simulations and work samples versus abstract and hypothetical multiple-choice tests. Costs: Off-the-shelf talent assessment tools will cost less than those built specifically for a company or job. Technology has reduced the overall cost substantially. Most tests are talent online with scoring and ranking automated. There are many excellent, valid assessments available today for nearly ever industry and job. Whether customized or off-the-shelf, talent assessment tools can help recruiters and managers – and individual employees themselves — make better, more informed workforce and career decisions. ### Contribution by John Zappe ###
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Human Resources
The Importance of Employee Perks
Not that long ago employee perks were those extra benefits employers gave their workers. Retailers give workers a discount on store merchandise. Airlines grant free or deeply discounted airfare to their employees. In restaurants, the employee perks include free food and leftovers. Undoubtedly, in the past some job seekers were attracted to an industry or a company because of these types of employee perks. Rarely, though, were they a job’s selling point. Workers signed on because of the compensation, the type of work, and the medical, dental and retirement benefits. That started to change with the rise of the tech industry. Companies began providing free food, installed foosball and ping-pong tables and on-site workout rooms. As the competition for workers grew ever more intense, tech professionals came to expect these employee perks. Companies then began offering more meaningful and more popular perks such as paid time off and paid family leave, flexible schedules and even unlimited vacation. Today, companies that don’t offer at least some of these employee perks find themselves at a disadvantage in the war for talent. Yet companies are going beyond those employee perks to offer a broad and unexpected range of employee perks. Ben & Jerry’s (and many other companies) allow workers to bring their pet. Oracle provides on-site dry cleaning, auto detailing and oil changes. Abbot and Fidelity Investments and others provide help paying off student loans. Airbnb gives its workers $2,000 to stay at any one of its listings in the world. The five most popular employee perks, according to a survey by benefits provider Unum, are paid time off, flexible and remote work, paid family leave, fitness or wellness incentives and personal financial planning. Employers mostly agree. The Society for Human Resource Management found well over half the HR professionals in a recent survey saying family friendly benefits, wellness, flexible work and paid leave were extremely or very important to them and their workers. Insurance benefits such as medical, dental, vision and disability are so important and so much a part of a compensation package that few workers think of them as nice to have perks. A Fractly survey published in the Harvard Business Review, found that 88% of workers would give at least some consideration to accepting a lower paying offer if the medical benefits were better. These employee perks have become table stakes in the competition for workers, which may be why 90% of the employers in the SHRM survey consider health care benefits very or extremely important. But as the SHRM and Unum surveys show, other employee perks are growing in importance. The Covid experience of working from home convinced many workers that’s a perk to be highly valued. The global business consultancy McKinsey found that before the Covid shutdown, 62% of employees preferred working on-site. When the firm conducted the survey again last December and January, only 37% wanted to return to an office; 63% preferred working in the office two or three days a week (a hybrid work model) or working remotely full-time. Forcing workers to return to working on-site full time will lead some employees to quit, McKinsey’s survey found. 12% said they would be “very likely” to find another job; 16% said they were “likely” to. Driven in part by the pandemic, which prompted so many workers to reassess what’s most important to them, and by the years’ long difficulty in hiring workers, the employee perks offered by employers continues to grow. Melanie Tinto, CHRO at the global financial technology company WEX told HRExecutive last spring that businesses are revaluating their employee perks to focus on those that support and enhance worker wellbeing. “The pandemic has shown me that flexibility is impacting every part of the way we work, and our benefits packages are going to need to be just as flexible going forward.” Written by John Zappe
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Human Resources
HR Job Requirements: Business Knowledge
What does it take to get a job in human resources? What are the HR job requirements? Surprisingly, there are many paths to landing a career in HR. Unlike other professions where a college degree in the practice area is almost obligatory, HR job requirements vary widely the Society for Human Resource Management tells us. “There’s not a clear path because HR’s so broad,” Catherine Preim, an HR manager, says in a SHRM article about landing an entry-level HR job. Though HR job requirements depend greatly on how a company views the human resources function, the one nearly unanimous requirement is a college degree, but not necessarily in human resources. A degree in a related field such as business, industrial-occupational psychology or finance may open more doors, especially when accompanied by classes or a minor in HR. What You Need to Land an HR Job Besides a degree, HR job requirements typically include work experience. An internship or two is usually enough for an entry-level HR job. For higher-level positions, on-the-job experience as an HR generalist or assistant is required. The exception is for HR specialist roles as in compensation, benefits or talent acquisition. Even then, “a talent specialist with a generalist rotation is far more valuable,” says Marc Effron, founder and president of The Talent Strategy Group, an HR consultancy. HR job requirements for managers and certainly for directors give the edge to those HR professionals with an advanced degree. There’s little evidence that a PhD is helpful. A master’s degree is. And it’s even more helpful in landing an HR leadership role if that master’s is in a business discipline. “Increasingly the trait that determines who gets promoted is a demonstrated, intimate knowledge of the business,” write HR consultants Michelle Vitus and Patty Woolcock. Notes HR consultant Sarah Daren, “You don’t need to know everything about running a business, but HR has its hand in every department in an organization. Having a working knowledge of how a business is run can really help you to be more effective in human resources.” Top HR Job Requirements The HR job requirements for a manager position will also want 3-5 years of HR experience. Indeed.com, the world’s largest recruitment marketplace, says some companies prefer a candidate with management experience. That could come from being a team lead or lower-level supervisor. Among the other HR job requirements for managers, according to Indeed, are the ability to communicate and listen well, leadership and a strong grasp of basic employment law. An advanced degree is not always necessary for this first-level management position. The next step is HR director. At a modest sized company, the HR director is the top people manager, usually reporting to a vice president, often in finance. For a director, as for an HR VP or a CHRO, an advanced degree is one of the key HR job requirements. Some smaller companies will promote an experienced and effective manager with only a four-year degree into the director role. But to move to a larger organization, an advanced degree should be considered a necessity. For the top HR jobs, not only is broad and extensive experience in human resources necessary so is astute business acumen and the ability to think strategically about the role of talent to improve business outcomes. “HR leaders coming up through the ranks these days are more commercially minded, not just tuned into talent management but business strategy as well,” says executive search leader Mark Oppenheimer. Speaking with HRCI, the Human Resources Certification Institute, Denise Caleb, executive vice president and chief transformation officer at Talent Plus said, “It is critical that HR professionals advance their business acumen, as well as teach and demonstrate to the business how to best care for their employees, who will in turn better service their customers, clients and/or patients.” Adds Effron, who places senior HR leaders, in today’s HR job requirements, “There’s strong demand for the type of strategic, influential, practical talent leader that creates a true difference in the business.” Written by John Zappe
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Human Resources
Annual Reviews Aren’t Worth the Effort
The season of good cheer and annual reviews is fast approaching. And that may be the last time you see those two phrases in the same sentence. No one ever looked forward to the annual review ritual. Not managers – 95% of them are dissatisfied with the way they are conducted; 58% say they serve no purpose. Not HR professionals – 90% believe them inaccurate. Nor employees — 87% find them ineffective; 55% say they have no effect on performance. Even CEOs agree. Only 6% think performance appraisals are useful. Since so few believe the annual review process is effective or serves a valuable purpose, why do so many companies still conduct them? The short answer is because they always have. Annual Reviews Need a Reboot Formal performance reviews began with the military for promotion purposes. Business adopted the concept, tying raises to worker performance. Since annual raises most often took effect in January, performance reviews became an end-of-year ritual. Once nearly ubiquitous, in the last decade companies have been rapidly abandoning the annual review. In 2016, Work Human found 82% of employers conducted annual reviews. By 2019, that percent was barely a majority at 54%. Over the last 20 years, and especially since Adobe became the first large company to give up on the annual review, corporate leaders have come to accept they aren’t just ineffective in improving performance, they too often have the opposite effect. Studies show even supposedly positive rankings can have a demoralizing effect. Among the myriad of reasons why the annual review is falling out of favor, the most obvious is that they deal with past performance, surprising employees who learn for the first time in November or December the work they’ve done all year long is not as good as they thought. Megan Krause, director of content at the performance marketing firm Investis Digital, told the Society of Human Resource Management, “I’ve found annual reviews to be, by nature, one-sided and nerve-wracking for the employee. Their pattern is typically, ‘Here, let me review everything about you and your work performance for the last 12 months. We have one hour.’” Annual Reviews are Prone to Bias Because most of us have trouble remembering what we did last week let alone 10 months ago, the ratings and evaluations in annual reviews rarely reflect an entire year’s efforts. This recency bias causes managers to give undue emphasis to performance in the last few months, which may undervalue or overvalue an employee’s actual contribution. An article in the Harvard Business Review puts it this way: “With their heavy emphasis on financial rewards and punishments and their end-of-year structure, [annual reviews] hold people accountable for past behavior at the expense of improving current performance and grooming talent for the future, both of which are critical for organizations’ long-term survival.” Annual reviews are also prone to another type of bias. Management consultant Marcus Buckingham says the “Idiosyncratic Rater Effect” influences the annual review ratings to such a large extent that the process effectively is more about the manager than the employee. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, leadership expert Samuel A. Culbert said that despite the appearance a numerical rating scale is objective, “In almost every instance what’s being ‘measured’ has less to do with what an individual was focusing on in attempting to perform competently and more to do with a checklist expert’s assumptions about what competent people do.” Despite their shortcomings, few propose eliminating performance reviews completely. Instead, most HR leaders and management experts now embrace more frequent “check-in” meetings between managers and workers. Adobe replaced the annual review in 2012 with quarterly check-ins that allow both manager and employee to give feedback, discuss expectations and plan future development. Deloitte, Accenture, Microsoft, GE and dozens of other companies followed suit, substituting formal monthly or quarterly meetings as well as more frequent check-ins; Deloitte insists on weekly check-ins. The results of what is sometimes called “continuous feedback” are generally positive. WorkHuman found that at companies where check-ins and feedback meetings are held at least monthly, three-quarters of workers are engaged. With weekly check-ins, 47% are highly engaged. The transition, as Gallup notes, isn’t necessarily easy or without problems. Managers need to be trained in how to conduct effective one-on-one meetings. It’s also not enough to provide feedback. Managers must be able to mentor and coach their team, helping each member achieve the goals they set in these check-ins. “It can be challenging for some managers to transition to this new style of management, and moreover the continuous style of performance review requires more time and energy from managers long-term,” says the HR technology company Cornerstone. Though “No evaluation system can create great managers and engage employees on its own,” says Gallup. But, better than the annual review, “They lay the foundation for a great conversation.” Written by John Zappe
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Human Resources
The Role of the HR Business Partner
You’ve heard the term HR business partner. You may even have that role at your company. But what is an HR business partner does and how is the role different from other HR professionals? The Society for Human Resource Management describes an HR business partner as “responsible for aligning business objectives with employees and management in designated business units.” A simpler definition comes from SHRM columnist and HR author Martin Yate who says an HR business partner is “a senior individual contributor who supports and collaborates with one or more of the organization’s managers.” Where other HR professionals handle all manner of administrative tasks like compensation, benefits administration and company policies, an HR business partner is tasked with helping individual departments and their leaders and supervisors with managing and developing their team to best achieve the business goals of the company. The role combines a high degree of strategic thinking with the ability to craft and implement solutions to talent management challenges. An HR business partner doesn’t have a supervisory role, instead works collaboratively with managers, coaching them and providing performance management advice. They also evaluate skills, anticipate future needs and help to retain and hire the best talent. What do HR Business Partners Do? In some ways the role is similar to what HR generalists and managers do. There is overlap, especially in smaller organizations where generalists wear multiple hats. The difference is that HR generalist and managers spend most of their time focused on operational matters and managing the HR staff. Business professor and HR thought leader first suggested what became the HR business partner in his 1997 book Human Resource Champions. He argued that human resources has four roles: Administrative Expert; Employee Champion; Change Agent; Strategic Partner. An individual might fill just one role, more often they would fill multiple roles. At the time, HR was still emerging from its “personnel office” past. The notion of being a strategic partner to the company and more directly to individual units and managers was innovative and appealing. Large organizations took the suggestions literally, creating the business partner role, supported by HR specialists in a center of excellence and service centers to handle administrative matters. Ten years after the book was published, Ulrich wrote in HR Magazine that “Being a business partner may be achieved in many HR roles.” He explained, “Instead of measuring process (for example, how many leaders received 40 hours of training), business partners are encouraged to measure results (for example, the impact of the training on business performance).” Since that article was published, Ulrich says the role of HR business partner has evolved so much it should now be thought of as HR business partner 2.0. He list 13 “pivots” in the job. For example, in describing who HR’s customers are, he says, “HR stakeholders have evolved from internal (employees, line managers, organization) to external (customers, investors, community).” Ulrich’s pivots can be seen in organizations of all sizes. Even in smaller organizations the HR generalists recognize the need to take a holistic view of the company’s needs. HR’s Reliance on Business Partners Large organizations have expanded their reliance on HR business partners, though many, as a McKinsey analysis found, still “get dragged into transactional and operational issues. In large measure, this occurs because most HRBPs retain some operational role.” To achieve the strategic influence and success Ulrich first proposed more than 20 years, HR business partners need to access all the tools of an HR professional and have the business acumen to understand financial reports and balance sheets, market challenges and customer needs. McKinsey, a global business consultancy, proposes renaming the job “Talent Value Leader” to emphasize the “different set of responsibilities and accountabilities.” Whether they’re a talent value leader or HR business partner, McKinsey concludes that the job today must “blend talent, business and financial experience to be able to identify which talent levers can yield the most business value.” John Zappe Reporting
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Human Resources
The Good and Bad of Counteroffers
As the competition for talent grows more intense, companies are focusing – or should — as much effort on retaining their best people as they are on recruiting. One of the tools they’re using is the counteroffer. When a valued employee announces they’re leaving for a new job, two-thirds of hiring managers admit to making a counteroffer to get them to stay, according to a survey by the job search firm LiveCareer. They do that recognizing a counteroffer won’t keep the employee long-term – the majority of workers leave within two years anyway. “In my experience counteroffers don’t work 95% of the time,” Jenny McCauley says in an article in the Harvard Business Review. “And when they do work it’s usually only for the short term — someone who wanted to leave is eventually going to leave anyway, “ adds McCauley who’s worked in HR at JPMorgan Chase and Hilton Hotels and was SVP of administration at Southwestern Energy when the article was published. Yet as the article notes, 80% of HR leaders and almost the same percentage of senior business executives say there are times to extend and accept a counteroffer. The question is when to offer one and when should an employee accept one and stay. There are definite pros and cons to weigh. Visier, an HR data analytics company, not surprisingly, says HR and hiring managers should take an analytical approach to deciding whether to make a counteroffer. With 75% of employees in the LiveCareer survey reporting that money – on average a 20% pay hike – was the top reason for accepting a new job, Visier suggests companies begin their counteroffer decision-making with compensation. How does the employee’s comp compare to their peers and the employee group? Do they perform at a higher level? It’s also useful to see how the person compares to others working at a similar level but in different functions. “This comparison helps you determine how well she is being compensated within her existing pay band,” says Visier. The next step is to assess the employee’s value to the company. Top performers are universally more productive than their peers. How much more productive depends on the job, but studies put the floor at about 40% to over 400%. If the individual is a strong performer, what is their future value? The Visier formula takes into account the employee’s tenure at the company and their growth potential. This is something of a balancing act between rising star with a short tenure, untested by adversity, and a longer tenured, steady performer who may have reached their peak. In addition, the effect on the team, the work unit and the company as a whole has to be considered. Research shows that it can cost anywhere from 1x to 3x salary to replace a worker in a significant, white-collar or professional role. This takes into account the recruiting and training cost, the effect on the team that has to cover the work, as well as the loss productivity until the new hire is up to speed. If the new job offer is from a competitor, the impact is easily far greater. Even when the analysis points to a counteroffer, many HR professionals and hiring managers say they’re a bad idea. Almost a third in the LiveCareer survey said counteroffers hurt morale and create trust issues with the employee – if they were willing to leave once, they’ll do it again. Nor, say 45%, is it a long-term retention solution. As it turns out, there’s a good deal of evidence to support that. The survey found 57% of employees who accepted a counteroffer were gone in two years; 17% left in less than one. An HR executive told the Society for Human Resources Management, “Our theory is that anyone who can get another job can also get more money. And if we’re pushed into making promises about future promotions to keep someone on board, it gets to be real messy, and I have to wonder about that employee’s commitment.” For some of the same reasons, employees should think long and hard before accepting a counteroffer. Nearly a quarter of senior executives in a survey by global executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles advised turning down a counteroffer. 40% said accepting one would adversely affect their career. A counteroffer with a pay bump may be tempting, but more often there were other reasons behind the decision to consider another job. The LiveCareer survey found 62% of workers left because the new job was a better overall fit. More than 4 out of 10 said it offered a better career path, better work assignments and because they simply desired a change.. Just as employers should take an objective look before making a counteroffer, employees should do the same. In the end, 45% of all counteroffers are turned down.
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Human Resources
What‘s an Intake Meeting?
Every talent acquisition professional knows that one of the most important steps to a successful recruitment campaign – maybe even the most important – is the intake meeting. Why? Because intake meetings accelerate the hiring process by aligning the hiring manager and recruiter on the requirements of the job and the type of candidate that will make the best hire. Yet 55% of organizations don’t require an intake meeting. Many of these are smaller employers where recruiters may have dozens of jobs to fill and lack the training to understand the importance of an intake meeting. Yet these are the very organizations where intake meetings can have the biggest impact in filling jobs quickly. What is an intake meeting? It’s the first step in the hiring process. It’s when the recruiter and hiring manager get together to discuss the skills needed to do the job and the background and experience the manager most wants. Dig Deeper on Intake Meetings But an intake meeting is more than a review of the job description. At an intake meeting the recruiter will dig deeper to understand what the “must haves” are in a candidate, as well as the “nice to haves.” The recruiter will also seek to discover the type of personality and temperament that will make a hire a good fit with the team, the organizational culture and the manager’s leadership style. One of the most important parts of an intake meeting is managing expectations. A CareerBuilder survey found that 20% of the time hiring managers have unrealistic expectations and compensation ranges that are out of sync with the market. Without an intake meeting, there might be little chance of even recognizing these disconnects, let alone resolving them. And that almost guarantees a lengthy search time, candidates that disappoint and an unhappy relationship between hiring manager and recruiter. “It’s important in setting the hiring manager’s expectations for who’s out there and what they’ll require in terms of pay and benefits,” says Rosemary Haefner, CareerBuilder’s former chief human resources officer. Preparing for Intake Meetings Coming to intake meetings prepared with data showing what competitors are paying for the same job and what the talent pipeline is like will help bring a hiring manager’s expectations in line with market reality. Having this kind of data also demonstrates the recruiter is on top of the talent market, which will make it easier to gain acceptance by the hiring manager of other recommendations. Intake meetings themselves are more like a question and answer session or an interview than a free-wheeling discussion. To keep these meetings focused and productive recruiters come prepared with a series of questions covering the nature of the job, the specifics of comp, work schedule, responsibilities, skills, both technical and so-called soft skills, start date, the number of candidates and interviews, and so on. Once these details are covered, the questions should be about fit. There’s no point bringing in candidates who check all the technical and skills boxes, only to find their personality isn’t a good fit with the team. Questions here go to management style, the need for collaboration and teamwork, opportunities and what the manager considers success. There’s no shortage of guides answering the question of what is an intake meeting and explaining how to conduct one. The questions they offer – and there are intake meeting templates available online – may differ in the specifics, however they all agree on the importance of holding an intake meeting before beginning the search for candidates. Hiring managers may be reluctant to take the time to meet. Others may be doubtful of their value. But they’ll come to be believers when they see the results: candidates that more precisely meet their requirements and their expectations, resulting in making better hires in less time. ### John Zappe Reporting ###
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Best Practices for Managing Remote Employees
As more and more companies embrace hybrid work, they’re finding managing remote workers requires more than good communication and collaboration tools. Maintaining the company culture is at least as big a challenge, say business leaders. Employees add training and career development to the list. The experience over the last 18 months has taught us much about effectively managing remote workers. Managers have learned that teams can be as productive – or more so – working remotely, which is an important part of trust, an essential part of successfully managing remote workers. In fact, trust is one of the nine tips the research and advisory firm Gartner offers for managing remote workers. “Managers may be concerned and even frustrated to lose the constant visibility they once had into their employees, but don’t respond by micromanaging,” cautions Gartner. In our list here of some best practices tips for managing remote workers, we put trust first. Its importance can’t be overrated and not just for those working remotely. It is fundamental to building a strong relationship between manager and employee and manager and team whether onsite or working remotely. From multiple sources, we’ve collected the best practices and tips and condensed them into top five with trust being #1. Managing Remote Tip: Communicate in multiple ways It doesn’t matter how you do it – sophisticated tools make it easier –staying in regular contact with your remote workers is critical. Tailor the method of communication to the nature of the message. A tool like Slack is ideal for short and quick notes and reminders. Email is best for longer messages, updates, detailed instructions for a project and the like. Choose video calls for team meetings and regular one-on-ones, but don’t just make them all business. Encourage remote workers to share personal stories – water cooler talk – to build camaraderie and strengthen interpersonal relationships. McKinsey, a global business consultancy, says, “Videoconferencing, which, compared with audio, improves the ability for participants to show understanding, anticipate responses, provide nonverbal information, enhance verbal descriptions, manage pauses, and express attitudes.” Managing Remote Tip: Set clear expectations early and often Even when an entire team works together in an office, misunderstandings and ambiguity about expectations, assignments and policies occur. Remote work only compounds the problem. Setting clear expectations, communicating them regularly, ensuring everyone has heard and understands what they are and getting their buy-in avoids confusion, disagreements or worse. “There will be questions,” a business executive tells the Society for Human Resource Management. “Be accessible and provide clarity on priorities, milestones, performance goals and more. Outline each team member’s availability and ensure you can reach them when needed.” Managing Remote Tip: Build relationships; be transparent This requires good and frequent communication, but goes a step further. With an onsite team a manager will get to know their family, their hobbies and how they spent their weekend just by being around them and hearing people talk. Managing remote workers requires a deliberate effort to learn those details, which are so much a part of building personal relationships. Just as team meetings should intentionally include small talk, every conversation with a remote employee should include this kind of personal connection. Individuals may feel awkward about intentionally sharing even such benign details as their plans for the weekend, so jump start the conversation by sharing first. Set up a Slack or other communication channel for team chit-chat and contribute to it. With members scattered across multiple time zones, rotate the starting time of all-hands calls. Never schedule them solely for your convenience. Be as transparent as possible. Treat each member of the team equally. If there’s company news to share, inform everyone at the same time. Honest and regular feedback is even more important for remote workers who lack the visible and subtle cues of onsite workers. Feedback should be via scheduled one-on-ones as well as employee-driven performance conversations. In these conversations discuss career development and opportunities for training and stretch-assignments. Regular feedback and recognition play an important role in managing remote workers as it lets them know where they stand and how they’re doing. Managing RemoteTip: Recognition is essential Recognize workers and their contributions publicly. Some managers make “brags and praise” a part of every meeting, giving workers a chance to point out their own successes and to call out their colleagues for their efforts. Gartner says, “Effective recognition not only motivates the recipient, but serves as a strong signal to other employees of behaviors they should emulate.” It reinforces the team and organization culture and, as studies and research have demonstrated, consistent recognition improves engagement. In General If these tips sound familiar, they should be. They are the fundamentals of all good management. Managing remote workers amplifies their importance. The lack of personal and often impromptu face-to-face interactions amongst co-workers can easily create feelings of isolation and disengagement if managers aren’t proactive in nurturing a feeling of belonging and team. Especially for hybrid teams, where some work remotely and others are present in the office, it may be easier to assign a plum project to a worker you see every day. That signals to those working remotely that you play favorites and their career prospects are dimmed because they aren’t present. Leaders therefore need to always be aware there’s truth in the old adage that “out of sight is out of mind” and consciously work to stay in touch with their remote workers and treat them equally. Managing remote workers does take greater skill and a different style of leadership. Not every manager is a good fit for leading a remote team. Those who are and those who invest the time and training to learn how, find the successes and satisfaction are every bit the equal of leading a team you can see. ### John Zappe contribution ###
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Emissary is a candidate engagement platform built to empower recruiters with efficient, modern communication tools that work in harmony with other recruiting solutions.
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