by Raghu Nandhan | Apr 30, 2020 | Blog, Employee Engagement
Strong morale is not a luxury item; it’s always been an essential for life. And that’s even more true today considering present situation. Uncertainty of the future can damage both motivation and productivity and can also create a lot of fear among employees. Companies that can sustain workforce and boost their employee’s morale while coronavirus disrupts businesses will be better compared to those who are just watching and waiting for it to vanish.
Keeping in view what’s important, here are few virtual and virtuous tips for maintaining morale at your company:
Stay Positive
If you’re in a leadership position or the boss of a company, keep in mind that the other employees are going to take indications from how you react to situations. If you keep complaining about unsteady market, economy downturn and bad productivity, employees will loose hope and the feeling of despair will spread as fast as a piece of office gossip. You need to be positive and upbeat. Try to look for solutions and be enthusiastic in your daily interactions with employees. By no means try to paint a false picture. Don’t restructure your personality just because you’re going through a hard time.
Be open
It’s one of the biggest mistake employers do, attempting to hide things going on with the company from your employees. Not realizing that they probably know, hearing rumours within the industry and talking amongst themselves, so it not okay to pretend like there is no problem. Being positive doesn’t mean in any way that you have to hide the truth from your employees thinking they would panic. Being honest and open about the current situation and the issues you are facing can strengthen your relationship and bring you all closer as a team and work towards finding a common solution. Discuss the problem and also the improvements and keep the forum open for suggestions. Being involved and valuing your employee’s thoughts in improving the company will automatically boost up their morale and loyalty.
Develop self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a belief within that you are effective and can handle difficulties without getting stressed. Developing self-efficacy is like muscle strength training, you grow stronger and stronger with increased level of challenges. You can help your employees build their self-efficacy stronger though appropriate levels of challenge. Provide them with the right tools and resources. And train them to do their jobs well, so they can feel the thrill when challenged during difficult times.
Cut back unnecessary sources of stress
The fluidity and uncertainty of the current situation requires both companies and employees to be flexible. Priorities are quickly shifting and often unpredictably. So, you need to adapt to the present and not stick on the previous policies. Review your rules and policies as you don’t want your employees to spend all their time and energy struggling to cope up with ridiculous rules and policies. Smart employers, ask their employees about their challenges and try to find solution for those to eliminate all unnecessary sources of stress and frustration.
Be available and accessible
Now is not the time to disappear and lock yourself up and bounce back on surface when things are smooth sailing again. This is the time to be proactive and be out in the thick of it. If you act like you don’t care, your team is going react in the same way and stop caring about work and company too. Employees admire leaders who try to be part of the team and try to do as much as the rest of the team to find solution to the problem. Keep your doors open and be accessible. Encourage your employees to approach you about any problem or apprehension they have.
Celebrate wins and show your appreciation
The positive feelings that come from success are an antidote to anxiety and fear. Nothing boosts spirits and strengthens determination like succeeding at challenging times. During difficult phases when nothing falls at right place employees often develops a loser mentality. Restrain this natural tendency by celebrating victories both small and large. Make it a practice to appreciate hard work sharing this whole company on a regular basis.
Closing thoughts
Several researches conducted on stress and health has proven that strong relationships are more resilient to traumatic events. As a leader you should foster strong relationships by building teamwork, mutual respect, courtesy, and caring.
Even in the worst of times, recognizing and appreciating the hard work of employees even with a simple thank you every now and then can keep their morale up, meanwhile also strengthening the relationship that exists between you and your staff. By including your staff in the efforts to improve the current process and also their work will help them do a better job, making them feel like they have a stronger stake in your company.
by Raghu Nandhan | Apr 29, 2020 | Blog, Employee Engagement
Engaged employees are more dynamic, more customer-oriented and more devoted to company’s success and organizations with high levels of employee engagement are more successful. Employee engagement is one priority always on top-of-mind of HR industry experts.
Considering the present situation retention is equally as important as recruitment. Organizations are focusing on different methods to better engage workers who might otherwise go elsewhere seeking what they perceive to be “greener grass.”
As an employer, you need to find unique and innovative ways to improve employee engagement in the workplace. Along with the traditional benefits like loan assistance, health insurance, there are lot of new perks which can be added to your current employee engagement plan like gym memberships, standing desks, nap rooms and team building activities. These methods can be tailored according to the needs and motivations of each individual organization and employee.
Companies can invest in workplace wellness programs to combat the daily stress and decreased employee productivity. And in return reap the benefits of increased creativity and low employee turnover. Following are few innovative ideas to consider adding to your employee engagement strategy to truly make a difference in the lives of your employees.
Make room for Employee Engagement flexibility
One of the secrets to increase employee engagement in the workplace is by giving flexibility to your employees. This would give them the freedom to adjust their work schedules to starting the day earlier or later or location to suiting their needs. You can also continue working from home one or two days a week even after the current pandemic situation is over. Millennial’s being the largest generation in the workforce always seek for flexibility and implementing these would definitely make them happy and comfortable and eventually more productive.
Try to be authentic
A sincere relationship between employees and the management is based on genuine attempts from both ends and it motivates building teamwork and trust. Employers should try to create a workplace environment that is unique, comfortable. Do not falsify your relationship with employees and develop a trusting work environment. This helps employees realize that their workplace is an open forum to keep their thoughts with no sugar-coating. This would motivate them to be honest and not to hide things from their managers. Creating such workplace environment will make people feel valued, heard and improve sense of comradeship.
Add benefits that satisfy employee engagement lifestyle needs
As employees enter different life stages their lifestyle needs also changes. For example, young families would love paid parental leave programs, recent pass out graduates would prefer education loan assistance. Encourage your employees to maintain a lifestyle balance between work and their personal life.
Take a comprehensive approach to wellness
Earlier employee wellness used to mean arranging an internal health fair. But now companies are widening their approach to address the overall aspect of wellness including physical, mental, emotional, social, occupational, financial, purposeful and environmental wellness. Encourage your employees to take a short break from their desk at regular intervals and stretch.
You can utilize few applications that can be easily installed in your computers to remind yourself to take breaks and set your eyes off the system. These don’t have to be equally proportionate, but happy, healthy employees are generally engaged employees, so address their wellness needs fitting your organization and employees the best. When employees see that you care for their well-being, they tend to work harder towards achieving the company goals.
Encourage collaboration and Show gratitude
Collaboration is one of the key aspects for any business to focus on improving. Collaboration while working on projects develops better ideas and even improve employee engagement by encouraging teamwork and learning from colleagues and peers. Successful organizations make clever use of employee collaboration to reduce company costs and improve efficiency among the team.
One important aspect to increase employee engagement is by simply saying ‘Thank You’ to your employees. Appreciate all their hard work and efforts they have put into in making your organization more successful.
Finally
The biggest secret to increase employee engagement at workplace is that there is no secret. Great leaders pay close attention to what their employees have to say and then act on the feedback. Focus on creating a work culture that promotes continuous development and help employees to build the skills required to fulfill their job responsibilities. Follow the above discussed tips and you will be surprised by the results.
by Raghu Nandhan | Apr 27, 2020 | Blog, Company Insights, Employee Engagement
The process of making an employment offer to a candidate may seem a simple task at first glance. But do you know critical factors based on which applicants are weighing job offers. A recent study proves that salary isn’t the only factor that candidate looks for in a job offer.
The key to a creating a successful job offer extension is to consider it as a process that starts from the very second you start engaging a potential candidate. As employers, we all experienced that annoying feeling that comes along after finding a great candidate and rolling out a job offer and then the candidate reacting to it with unwillingness, taking too long to respond or even accepting a counter offer.
A compelling offer is anything that makes your organization and position stand above all other potential competitors in the market. Here are the tips to keep in mind while creating an offer that candidates just can’t resist:
Gather Information
This might seem simple, but it is one of the most commonly made mistake while making a job offer, lack of details and rolling out offer too early in the process. Most offer rejections happen just because hiring manager doesn’t know the candidate sufficiently. During the interviewing rounds, make a conscious effort to know the candidate well and note the key information points. A couple of must have notes is the candidate’s desired start date, financial outlooks, ability and willingness to commute to the office etc.
Apply the standard 10% rule
Generally, professionals expect a minimum of 10 to 15 percent increase in salary when they switch to new job. You noted down their present salary during the interview, so while making an offer keep this in mind that you will just get a tepid response if the amounts on table is less than 10 to 15 percent. But sometimes less salary can be compensated with additional bonus, healthcare, investment or lifestyle benefits, also highlighting your work culture, flexible work arrangements can act as a sweet topping on your offer which candidates just don’t want to miss.
Act Fast to Make an Offer
If you’ve made a decision and found your right fir then why wait? Time is always ticking on your head if you don’t act fast then you will miss out your found treasure, because in a down economy exceptional talent is rare. Reach out to candidate soon after they are interviewed and turn their interview anxiety into enthusiasm of cracking it successfully. This will ease the candidate’s stress during the post-interview waiting period. While informing the candidate don’t forget to mention how he was best among the whole lot of other candidates, show that you are thrilled to make them a part of your team.
Follow Up in Writing
Most important, many candidates don’t believe an offer to be real until it’s sent in writing. Then put your words in an email or letter. Clearly lay out all the elements in the offer letter including job title, base salary, benefits, vacation, holidays, perks, etc. Once the offer is sent to the candidate, don’t forget to follow up at least once a week until the start date. The risk of candidate backing out last minute is slightly high if the time period between acceptance and start is longer.
Set a deadline
Make sure to you set a deadline for the candidate to accept the offer. A three-day deadline is typical but if the candidate takes too long to respond then its not a good sign. Follow up again and ask the right questions to discover if you still can expect a positive response or candidate has made other plans in mind to do offer shopping.
Finding the right candidate in today’s competitive employment market is tough, you should be prepared to entice top talent at all levels in the recruitment cycle. And when you found the perfect fit for your job opening don’t risk losing out on them. Streamlined job offer process is one of the most important steps which includes designing a well-tailored offer letter that address the candidate’s needs, wants and pain points and is just too irresistible. The above discussed tips will definitely help you make a compelling and effective job offer and results in positive experiences that compel best talent to join your company.
by Raghu Nandhan | Apr 23, 2020 | Blog, Employee Engagement
One of the foremost wanted employee benefits today is flexible work schedules and the environment. Aside from compensation, a flexible work setup is among the top thing a candidate would look, while searching for a job in today’s market, and this comes as no surprise. Technological advances have long been paving the way and it is a boon to an employee to achieve everything at a remote with cloud-based tools, real-time collaboration platforms, team messaging applications, and advanced video conferencing.
COVID-19 has brought restoration focus in flexible working as we all struggle to adapt to the present situation. However, the COVID-19 crisis isn’t the first or last major obstruction we are likely to face within the future and businesses should try to adapt.
While the advantages of the individual are strongly noticeable, the impacts on the employers aren’t always so clear. Vital brush back arguments often inculpate remote working allocation to cause authentic results, inconsistency from an immoderate amount of rescheduling, slower outputs, stifled teamwork thanks to less physical presence, and sacrifices to company culture. However, many companies that embrace flexible working environments especially software companies, in particular, are finding that the positives way outweigh the negatives.
Here is what many organizations are arguing that they are gaining from it:
Increased employee retention
Arguably the most important driver for companies to provide flexible working options is that the impact on employee retention rates. A report from the New York Times published that “flexible scheduling and work-from-home opportunities play a significant role in an employee’s decision to accept the offer or not, and Thrive Global quotes, according to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management, “89 percent of companies report better retention just by offering flexible work options.” Particularly in an industry like software development where experienced developers are a very important part, flexibility has become an essential part of the employment offer.
Increased productivity
Providing employees the liberty to form their hours has led to a rise in productivity for several companies. When it happens to agile development, it’s not a prerequisite for everybody to be performing on the same thing at the same time. Employees can figure out when to work based on what most accurately fits them – some people are morning people while others are night owls. Some companies have expressed that employees who be flexible to regulate their schedules produce higher quality work more regularly.
More engaged team members
If staffs are happier in their work environment, then they seem to be more engaged. Sara Sutton Fell, founding father of Flex jobs, said, “Employees who feel entitled to design their work and personal lives according to their needs are more satisfied. When asked whether they’d rather have a flexible work environment or a pay raise, employees overwhelming to opt for flexible work”(source).
Access to a wider pool of talent during a broader geographic area
Companies that support the offering of flexible work and utilize the tools to their advantage have fewer reasons to control their recruiting geographically. This will provide enormous benefits on the whole because it opens the door to more talented individuals and may become a robust culture that draws other great people. Provided flexibility, it also grants companies the chance to work with talented individuals who can’t support traditional 9-5 roles due to disabilities, family responsibilities, or alternative reasons.
Making remote work, work
Considering everything, it’s a key that flexible working isn’t only offered as an employment perk but that it also works well for both parties. Being an individual you should realize and go the extra mile to fulfill the responsibility and add value, and therefore the company will revise its processes to handle a more dynamic environment. Everyone should have an understanding of what kind of jobs or tasks should make as a remote work a better option, and therefore the company must take the required measures to make sure that communication, company culture, and responsibilities are upheld. Going forward, all signs purpose to flexibility changing into a fair larger mainstay within the workplace.
There was an increase in the trend towards remote working even before COVID-19, created inevitable state of reality. For organizations that had been contemplating remote work activities, this present crisis can serve as a crucial testing land. There might be doing cut and try as leaders struggle to establish new relationships with their workers through virtual or remote applications. However, if they keep an open mind, and communicate effectively, it might be the dawn of a brave new age.
by Raghu Nandhan | Apr 20, 2020 | Blog, Industry Trends, Talent Acquisition
In the fast-moving world of recruiting, the main objective while searching for a new employee is to hire the best talent available in market for a given position as quickly and efficiently as possible while also reducing the hiring costs. Technology is helping the whole world in all aspects and it has come a long way in streamlining the overall recruitment process and also improving the candidate experience.
Automation helps to reduce unconscious bias, it gives job seekers the flexibility to self-schedule interviews, which makes communication between recruiters and the candidates much easier than ever. While all this sounds good to hear, it is a difficult task in reality. With progress also comes the challenge. There are recruitment pitfalls which can knock down all your recruiting efforts off course if you’re not careful.
Here are the top recruiting pitfalls to avoid for a better candidate experience
Improvised Automation
Automation has so many good things to talk about. But complete automation removes the human element completely from the recruitment process. Job search has an emotional side that recruiters should keep in mind. Automation should act as an aid your recruitment process not to completely replace it.
Automation should be used to handle all the behind-the-scenes functions like to do job postings, maintain candidate’s data etc. Don’t miss out on the actual human touch-points while communicating with candidates. Just getting automated feedback from your side will make candidates less engaged and finally loose interest in your position.
Falling Prey to Bias
Humans tend to like people who are similar to them in any way this happens while interviewing also but just because you liked a candidate for who they are doesn’t mean they are fit for the job role. Recruitment is about hiring someone who can bring in fresh ideas and new perspectives rather than someone whom you’ve considered in your head as right. With bias recruitment, diversity in the hiring process fades away slowly, crashing all efforts to build a balanced and multi-talented team.
With advancement of AI recruitment tools human biases against older workers, minorities or religious groups is reduced to some extent. But AI works on perceiving patterns of past behaviors, which might result in few hidden biases in your organization’s hiring that an AI solution will inevitably pick up.
Rushing the Recruiting Process
The ease of applying for jobs online helps recruiters to build a large pool of candidates. But this also makes it difficult to sort right candidates from so many applicants. If there are lot of resumes to look at, it’s tantalizing to toss each one aside at the first bad line. Obviously, you want the hiring process to be smooth and really quick in order to fill open positions fast, but not at the cost of excessively expensive or a bad hire. An in efficacious process results in multiple mistakes and ultimately, a wrong hire. Take time to understand and analyze each applicant before you decide he or she isn’t the right fit for the job.
Complicated HR technology platforms
There are enough human resource software solutions available that you can use to manage your recruiting efforts, to name a few: Workday, Epicor HCM, Oracle HCM Cloud, Dayforce, SAP Success Factors etc. But not all systems can do everything you need or want it to do. Many solutions have feature gaps that require to be augmented by additional point solutions for example CRM to interview scheduling to improve the candidate experience. It’s highly recommended to do gap analysis before integrating it to the rest of that platform to be make sure your team has the right tools to succeed.
The main goal in recruitment is to give all candidates a great experience while also ensuring the best candidates keep moving along the interview process and get hired. Technology certainly helps with the overall process. But relying on it too heavily, or without the right amount of thought and consideration will lead to certain pitfalls. If you avoid these pitfalls, you’ll be reaping all the benefits of the digital age hiring great talents and offering amazing candidate experience.
