Category: HR Strategy

Think Brand Doesn’t Play a Role in the Hiring Process? Think Again.

In today’s world of online expansion, many aspects of business success have changed dramatically, influencing the way companies compete with each other, connect with their customers, and even make sales. Companies have had to adjust their priorities, setting their online presence and customer experience at a much higher bar. It isn’t far-fetched to say that brand image is a major source of life blood to a company, playing a massive role in attracting new customers and filling the pipeline. 

These days, customers have access to an immense amount of information about your brand, from reviews of products to price comparisons between your competitors. People trust each other’s online reviews nearly as much as they trust personal recommendations. More than half of consumers will only purchase from a company with a star rating of four or more. It’s up to your business to stay ahead of the curve and ensure that what’s being said about it online is beneficial to the company.   

There are countless B2B services based on this idea. Marketing agencies, website developers, customer outreach teams, and data analysists all working to build and maintain a healthy brand image. But there’s a whole part of building a brand image that isn’t talked about nearly enough: employee and candidate experience.  

Everyone matters 

It goes without saying that what people say about you online matters. But when was the last time you checked to see how candidate–friendly your hiring processes are? Have you ever looked up employee reviews of your company on sites like Glassdoor? What about internal surveys to gauge the employee onboarding experience?   

Unfortunately, candidates are often the last priority on the long list of people companies are worried about. But this is a mistake, especially now when the employment rate is at a record high. Companies have to compete with each other for talent and stand out as a preferred place of employment to potential candidates. And anyone who comes in contact with your company has the potential to influence your brand image through online reviews. 

So how do you make sure your candidates (whether or not they become employees) walk away feeling good about their experience with your company? 

Call them back 

A common mistake that many businesses make is failing to communicate with candidates. Making sure to call them back, whether or not they’re getting an interview or moving to the next step in the application process, isn’t just polite, it’s respectful.  

If someone has taken the time out of their day to apply to work at your company, they deserve the two minutes it will take to call and acknowledge their effort. Remember, everyone who interacts with your company should have a positive experience. They may be a future customer, or reviewer, or even a candidate for a different position. Treating them with respect by taking the time to call them back and tell them where they are in the process is paramount to ensuring they walk away having had a good experience.  

Be transparent 

An informed candidate is a higher quality candidate. Think about it. If a candidate has to jump through hoops to submit their resume, or doesn’t know if the position is offering the salary they need, or can’t easily find the job description, they’re going to be frustrated at best. 

Being transparent about everything from the application process to the starting salary and benefits allows candidates to ensure they aren’t wasting their time applying for a job they don’t want, or that isn’t right for them. If you provide them with clear expectations around how they will move through the process, you remove confusion and increase ease. It’s better for them, and you.

Be Timely  

Just because someone is applying to work for you doesn’t mean you should prioritize your time over theirs. More often than not, candidates are already employed and have to take time out of their workday to come to an interview. So it’s costing them money and/or time to arrive for an interview. Make sure your interview process reflects your understanding of the time and effort needed on their end. Don’t show up late or cancel last minute.   

Additionally, companies often make the mistake of thinking their candidates are only in competition with each other, when in fact, your company is in competition for the best candidate. Don’t make the mistake of waiting too long before reaching out to them. Or you’ll lose them to a company that beat you to them. Plus, there’s nothing worse than to be left hanging. Let them know whether or not they got the job or are being moved to the next round. Even if you call to let them know they didn’t make the cut, at least they won’t be left wondering.  

Take the opportunity 

Every time your company interacts with someone, you have an opportunity to make a positive impact on your brand image. Each person who walks away from your company is a potential brand ambassador, customer, or reviewer. If your company is really about creating a positive experience, then every interaction, internal and external, should play into those values.  

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by grki

The Critical Role HR Plays in Business Success

HR plays an integral part of any organization. The roles of these professionals include much more than recruiting new employees; they also develop strategies geared towards productivity, training, and employee engagement. For the most part, a company’s human resource department oversees and helps facilitate a large portion of business operations. 

HR responsibilities are often comprised of behind-the-scenes work and are not always viewed as playing such a key role in the success of a business. Yet it’s this department that is dedicated to finding people with the right talents, skills, values, and attitudes to get the day-to-day responsibilities taken care of. They’re responsible for ensuring that once you find the right people, they get to work in an environment that’s welcoming, inspiring, and productive. 

Without HR doing this necessary legwork, how would a business exist?Following are four critical HR functions that contribute to business’s success.  

Recruiting and hiring 

Finding the right people to fulfill job responsibilities is not an easy task and companies that fail to see the complexity of the process often end up losing money. Hiring is a big project for just one new or replacement position. When you have ongoing hiring needs, it can be a full time job itself.  

Of course, when there’s an open position, hiring managers want it filled ASAP. It makes sense, but it puts tremendous pressure on HR to not only get it done, but get it done well. It’s difficult and time consuming to sort through the applications, looking for the most talented people who will be competent in the job role.   

And when you find the people with the right skills, you have to continue sorting through during the interviews to find people who will be a good fit with the company culture. A good skill fit does not equate to a good culture fit. And a poor match between employee and company culture can spell disaster. Not only will the employee not be happy, everyone around them will feel it as well. One employee who doesn’t fit the culture well can disrupt the whole company.   

Poor hiring choices can result in lost revenue from lost productivity due to unnecessary distractions, the potential loss of other employees who are negatively impacted, and the expense of having to search again and replace the ill-fitting employee. And these are just the revenue issues, not even mentioning the other HR nightmares (social, emotional, reputational, legal)  that come from a bad hire! 

All in all, there’s a lot to gain and a lot to lose with hiring and it’s in HR’s hands to make sure the process is done successfully. Whew!  

Training and development  

HR has the responsibility to ensure that employees are skilled and working as efficiently as possible. This starts from the very beginning of the new relationship with the onboarding process and continues throughout their lifecycle with the company.  

Conducting ongoing job performance assessments and identifying skill gaps for their teams is a critical role that hiring managers play. This information then gets rolled up to HR to help find the training resources to raise the skill level of the team.   

Company productivity, quality standards, and employee safety are all dependent on keeping staff trained with the knowledge and skills needed to perform their roles at the highest level.   

Employee engagement 

One of the most common reasons for employee turnover is dissatisfaction in a job. So, once again, we turn to HR to help identify the issues and provide the solutions.  

Employees who feel connected to the company, their supervisor, and their teammates are much happier and engaged in the work they do. The culture fit is back as a critical element, and so is the fit for the job. Doing work they enjoy with people they enjoy makes for a happy work day.  

Most people want to excel at their job, and when they receive the necessary direction and feedback about the work they’re doing, they’re much more likely to feel engaged. It’s really hard to do a job without feedback and without coaching help along the way.   

Supervisors may not feel comfortable giving this constructive feedback. But on the flip side, employees are not likely comfortable doing a job blindly and having to wait for an annual performance review to get some nuggets of retrospective advice. While HR may participate in some of these conversations with employees, most importantly, their role is to train supervisors to have these ongoing, constructive coaching/feedback conversations themselves.  

As important as the constructive feedback is, recognition plays an important part of the employee engagement equation! Employees who receive recognition for hard work and accomplishments feel valued and are more productive as a result. So HR to the rescue again, finding ways to keep a pulse on the organization, acknowledge achievements, and encourage and nurture a positive rapport with employees.  

Building a positive environment 

The work environment is critical! Not only does HR need to ensure they’re hiring for the right cultural fit from the beginning, but they need to ensure the environment stays positive and productive all year round.  

This starts from the very beginning with candidates and new hires alike, conveying the importance of contributing to a positive environment. The goal should be to create a pleasant work environment where everyone feels appreciated and works together as a team.  

Through documentation, ongoing discussion, and even training sessions for  company values, ethics, and policies, HR emphasizes the importance of having a positive, respectful environment. Not only does this create a safe environment for the employees on the team, but it protects and enhances the company reputation, as well.

The HR department is always developing new strategies to increase performance, find and retain great employees, keep everyone happy, and ensure the budget is met. HR professionals could say this is only a fraction of what they do, and they certainly wouldn’t be wrong! 

HR is incredibly valuable to your company strategy and  they could probably use a little extra recognition and appreciation for the difficult work they’re responsible for managing. You never know, they might just be what’s standing in between your company and a compliance disaster, or hiring debacle, or budgeting nightmare.  Support your HR team. Celebrate them. It’s well deserved! 

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by langstrup

Social Media for Your Business: Behind the Scenes

Social media is rampant and here to stay. You already get this. You understand that marketing on social media is a big part of building your brand and finding new customers. There are thousands of articles titled things like “Social Media is Here to Stay” and “Why Your Company Needs an Online Presence.”  You’ve probably read some of them. 

You know its importance for establishing your company’s social credibility and promoting your products. But social media channels offer so much more useful stuff than just a space to promote your products. It can become a tool to keep your company ahead of the curve and build the kind of following that pushes you to where you want to go.  

So what are we talking about here? Special secret doors of coding that can lead your company to the pot at the end of the capitalist rainbow? Maybe not. But we can tell you about a couple great uses of social media that can help give you the insight and support your business needs to succeed—beyond just promoting your products.  

Social listening 

Social media provides an opportunity to learn more about your audience and your surrounding community. It opens you up to potential customers near and far and allows for you and your audience to observe each other.  

One key to building a successful customer experience is understanding your company’s ideal customer, creating a buyer persona, and using this partially real/partially constructed personality to guide the way you develop your customer experience, your marketing initiatives, and your products. 

Building a buyer persona is tricky. You want to use a mix of real data and well informed decisions about personality traits, along with buyer pain points, so you can tailor your customer experience to best meet the needs and expectations of your customer. And where better to look for useful data and information about your customers and audience than social media?  

Using social media channels, you can get an in–depth look at how your customers interact with and talk about your brand. You can learn about other brands and companies they interact with, and the kinds of common pain points that drive them to look for solutions. You can: 

  • Read review sites that cover your market to identify what people find frustrating about your industry and find opportunities for you to fill gaps in what is available. 
  • Keep tabs on what your competition is doing, how they are approaching their customer base, and where they are excelling and lacking. 
  • Learn about shared interests of your audience, discovering what people in your community have in common (pain points, interests, and methods of communicating). 

Once you begin down this path, you’ll see just how far it goes. There is an endless amount of information and data you can collect to inform your customer experience, your buyer personas, and your company as a whole. 

Market your company to job seekers 

This one may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often businesses simply post a job on Indeed and call it good. But the statistics say it’s no longer acceptable for companies just to stop at posting a Craigslist ad. This study found that 94% of working Americans would visit a company’s social media before applying to work for them.  

People want to work for (and buy from) a company that aligns with their values and makes them feel good. Especially now that employment is at an all–time high, companies have no excuse not to do everything in their power to attract top talent.   

Using your social media platform to promote your company values, your brand vision, and your culture isn’t just a great way to drive people to have positive emotional responses to your brand, but it will do wonders in driving the talent you need to your door.   

Here’s how you can optimize your social media to help attract talent. 

  • Get your employees involved in company social media. Have them share articles, post reviews, and stay active on the company page.  
  • Promote information about your company culture. Highlight your values, any charitable events you sponsor or participate in, and perks you provide for your employees. 
  • Share educational information for people involved in your industry. This helps build your brand authority and sets you up as a reliable source of helpful and useful information to both customers and workers in your industry.  

More, more, more! 

Do your company a favor and do your research. Find out what you don’t know about the tools social media can provide you. The more you delve into all the ways social media can get your company ahead, the more difficult it is to ignore.   

Social media is a massive resource, and it’s free. The opportunities for what you can mine from social channels and how you can expand your brand’s voice and power are unlimited. And the really exciting thing is that it’s always expanding. So, jump in and take advantage of the opportunity social media can provide, both to your customers and to your company.  

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by ronstik

 

Create a Winning Strategy with Happy Employees

In today’s job market, companies are having to take extra steps to stay ahead of their competition. Prospective employees have more options than ever and are often already employed.

Now more than ever, employees are valuing jobs that support their ability to lead a healthy lifestyle. The Randstad 2019 employer global report found that the demand for employers that support a healthy work-life balance has steadily risen since 2015 and now sits above job security.

Building a work environment that supports a healthy work-life balance and encourages employees to take care of themselves outside of work may sound like a daunting ask for an employer. Here are three ideas to get you started.

Consider a shortened work week

There’s a recent study going around that’s gotten a lot of media coverage—for good reason. Microsoft’s subsidiary in Japan did an experiment over the summer to investigate what would happen to productivity if they cut their work week from five to four days a week. The result was a 40% spike in productivity from the same month of the previous year.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

Employees were given less time to accomplish their duties and more time to focus on their personal lives and the result was a massive increase in productivity for the company. Not to mention the savings they had from decreased electricity usage (down almost a quarter from the previous year) as well as a decreased use in office supplies.

Talk about a win-win for both employees and employers.

This may not be a model that works for your company, but don’t worry! There are other ways to offer employees greater personal control over work hours.

Flex time

While remote working options have taken a huge rise in mainstream economy, it doesn’t work for a lot of people for a variety of reasons. Flex time, however, offers employees greater flexibility for the hours they work without having them work at home.

Often, flex-schedules revolve around a set number of hours that are agreed upon, allowing employees to control what time they begin and end their workdays. Companies that offer flex-schedules often have set hours during the day or week where all employees are required to be at the office, allowing for easier scheduling and promoting collaboration.

Employees with children or family members in their care are able to make work schedules that allow them to run errands, drop children off at school, or take someone to a doctor appointment.

The easier you can make it for employees to work for you, the less stressed out they’ll be. And the less stressed out your employees are, the more likely they won’t call out of work. (Which, by the way, contributes to over half of all the lost working days in a year.) 

Perks

Purchasing a benefits package for your employees can be incredibly expensive and isn’t an option for most small business owners. But that doesn’t mean you can’t provide employee perks that encourage self-care.

Consider getting rid of those beanbags no one ever sits in, and instead, offer perks that encourage employees to take time to nurture themselves.

Providing your employees with a gift certificate for a massage every quarter or offering a sponsored gym membership are great examples. If you can, try putting together a number of options for employees to choose from.

When you offer employees a variety of perks and let them choose which is best for them, you’re contributing to a great employee experience. Offering choices increases the chance they’ll use it, allows you to give them autonomy, and helps personalize the work experience. 

You can even take this a step further and create opportunities for team building and development around fun, recreational activities. Just be sure you select activities that are accessible to everyone in your office for it to be a team morale booster.

Encouraging your employees to take care of themselves, to prioritize their mental, physical, and emotional health not only shows that you value them as individuals, but that you recognize a healthy employee is a good employee. Talk about a good loyalty-builder! 

It’s good for everyone

Work-related stress can cause literal death, but it also contributes to lower engagement, lower productivity, and lower job satisfaction. Having stressed out employees does no good for anyone.

So whatever it is your company does to help, be it increased flexibility, decreased hours, or a free massage every few months, make sure your company is doing something. You’ll nurture trust, loyalty, and engagement in your employees.

Plus, it’s just the right thing to do. Care for them, and they’ll care for you.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by ammentorp

 

 

HR’s Secret Weapon: Marketing Communications

If you were asked what HR’s job is, I’m sure you’d come up with a list of answers. Keeping the company in compliance, managing workplace risk, providing resources and support to employees, payroll, hiring top talent, maintaining a positive company culture… the list goes on and on. But what ties this all together? 

Communication. 

HR has the responsibility to communicate all this and more to company employees, but all too often the tactics fail to actually get enough attention to be noticed. This is where HR can take some pointers from marketing. Because when it comes down to it, marketing is communication. And HR needs high quality communication to do their job well.  

Think about it. How difficult is it to get an employee to read (and understand) their benefits package, or the employee handbook, or any other important information HR needs them to have? Difficult enough to be causing HR professionals some frustrating headaches for sure.  

So how do you approach this problem? Following are some marketing tips HR can apply to their communication tactics to get, and hold, the attention they need. 

Send out a weekly or monthly email/ newsletter  

Highlights: Use this to highlight work events that are coming up, give a shout-out to a team or employee who has gone above and beyond or completed a big project, and talk about things you want the entire company to know about. This could be an upcoming employee survey, a deadline for enrollment for benefits, or a reminder about checking tax withholdings to help employees prepare for tax season.  

Perks: Overview the perks you offer to employees such as opportunities for personal development and career coaching, company retreats, and PTO. Keep the resources you make available to employees top of mind.  

Goals: Review company goals and how specific teams and departments can help reach them. This is a great opportunity to highlight what different teams are doing to reach the same overarching goal. This can help align departments and keep everyone focused and feeling the team spirit. Plus, if you give a shout-out to a team or an individual, you’re creating a culture of appreciation and recognition! Talk about a good employee retention strategy!  

Teamwork: This also encourages different departments to see how they support each other, further bringing the community together. The more clarity there is about how teams work together and support each other, the higher functioning the company. And the less time HR spends on mitigating interdepartmental disputes.  

Attract the talent your company is looking for  

Marketing works to help guide people from being prospects to customers by meeting them at all the various points of contact they might have with your company. It’s marketing’s job to draw customers in with useful information, content offers, and guidance specifically targeted to where they are in their journey to becoming a customer.  

HR can take the same approach with attracting the type of employees they want working for the company, sometimes even hitting two birds with one stone.  

For instance, you can create a video highlighting your company values, perhaps interviewing an employee about their experience or covering a recent charitable event your company hosted or participated in. This type of content is not only one of the more successful types of content marketing, but it could also help promote you to prospective employees. People tend to want to buy from (and work for) a company that shares their values and makes them feel good.  

HR can also take a page from marketing’s book by streamlining the process to apply. Just like you want to make it as easy as possible for customers to interact with your company (i.e., providing social icons for sharing and having easy options for answering questions and contacting support) you want to make it as easy as possible for job seekers to apply to work for you. You can: 

  • Keep the process down to five minutes or less  
  • Offer useful information at different points of the application process to help applicants discover more about you and what to expect throughout the application process 
  • Convey your company values and culture through the job description 
  • Highlight the perks and benefits your company offers 
  • Showcase the employee development and training services you offer 

Great communication = trust 

When it comes down to it, HR has a lot on its plate. So make it easier by learning to communicate often, clearly, and with the employee (or prospective employee) in mind. The better you communicate, the more people feel they can trust you, and the easier it is to do your job. It also means you get your message across in a way that sticks. 

As an HR professional, you work so hard to make other people’s jobs easier and to help provide useful information that will support and inform employees. We know how challenging it can be to find successful channels for communicating. So next time you’re looking for an effective way to provide that helpful information, think about how marketing would approach it and try using some of these tactics to help you. It’ll maximize the work you’ve done to provide support, and it’ll help them receive it.  

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners
 
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alesmunt