How to Deal With a Toxic Work Environment

by Raghu Nandhan | Sep 10, 2019 | Blog, Industry Trends

A harmful work atmosphere is made once an employee feels afraid, threatened and uncomfortable in his or her workplace due to the offensive behavior, intimidation or abuse by a colleague or superior.

The ongoing distress of a work environment where the pervading attitude is overwhelmingly negative, the management is self-interested and incompetent, and bullying and cliques are rife, makes you more likely to experience depression. It can leave you physically and emotionally drained in your work and personal life. And all that stress and depression can take its toll on your body. If you are undergoing something similar then take a deep breath and continue reading.

Be kind to yourself

The impact of a toxic environment is far-reaching. Prolonged stress is unsustainable. It causes us to break down physically, mentally and emotionally; it destroys our self-esteem; our performance suffers, as do our personal and work relationships. One of the best ways to deal with this is to find the fun and happy folks in your workplace and align with them. Make sure you take care of yourself by eating right, getting enough sleep and exercising. Spend time outdoors and in creative endeavors with people who matter to you. Recharge and regroup. And put out feelers for other opportunities.

Address the issue directly with the offender

On your first encounter of offensive behavior from your colleague or supervisor, it’s always better to bring their attention to their behavior. Stop them before it gets worse.

Inform Management and Human Resources (HR)

When you have tried everything and there is no option left, other than approaching HR and Management, then make sure you have all evidence against the offender. Stay calm and address the issue to Management, and let management handle the matter in their manner instead of you asking to fireside the employee or take action against the offender.

Focus on the Facts, Not the Stories

It will get very easy to get wrapped up in all of the stories being told. It may be simple to create these stories. I encourage you to take a step back, breathe for a second, and focus on the facts. What is happening here and what is not happening? Don’t waste your energy making an attempt to theorize why or why not one thing did or did not happen. Focus on the facts, don’t create stories that explain something regarding you, and keep grounded actually.

Document Everything. Seriously, Everything

Even if your work environment is not specifically “toxic,” you must think about documenting everything. Documentation is not foolproof protection from domineering managers or coworkers determined to throw you below the bus for his or her own mistakes, however it offer some defense. It is always useful to keep a work diary for your growth, but it can come in handy in other ways too. This implies saving and organizing each email associated with projects you’re working on. Make sure you take notes in meetings and on phone calls, and never trusting somebody to recall and agree after you inform them of something they said or did.

Don’t forsake your job

Don’t quit the job due to the toxic environment unless you think the situation remains persistent and you are not satisfied by the action of management or if it is affecting the productivity of your work. It sounds easy to quit the job to cope with such a situation but usually, it is not, setting yourself from one company to another will draw ample energy and time.

You’re not obligated to remain in a harmful workplace, particularly if you’re the sole one doing something regarding it. Your dignity may be disgracefully mocked, but no one can ever take it unless you surrender it willingly.  It’s all about making right decisions and finding strength to defend your boundaries.

No one should have to deal with working in a toxic office, but thankfully there are ways around it by using a few of these tips.

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Motivating Different Generations in the Workplace

by Raghu Nandhan | Sep 4, 2019 | Blog, Industry Trends

In today’s organization, it has been seen up to five generations working at one place at one time. And this provides a depth of experience, skill sets and energy, it also presents unique challenges. The generations have its own way of thinking, working and processing information. So it’s important to create a culture that meets the varying needs of each age group.

Let understand first, about the different generations, and what motivates each:

Baby Boomers: Born: 1946 – 1964

Baby Boomers are technologically talented, ambitious and more goal- oriented also motivated by promotions, professional development, a desire to be in a position of authority, and having their expertise valued being acknowledged. They prefer recognition from their peers rather than their supervisors, and they do prefer monetary rewards and value non monetary rewards such as flexible retirement planning. They do not require constant feed backs.

 Generation X: Born: 1965 – 1980

Generation X is smaller than the previous and succeeding generations, but they’re often credited for bringing work-life balance. This is because they saw firsthand how their hardworking parents became so burnout. Members of this generation are in their 30’s and 40’s had spent a lot of time alone as children. This created an entrepreneurial spirit with them. In fact, Gen X makes up the highest percentage of start-up founders at 55 percent.

They also value opportunities to grow and make choices, as well as having relationships with mentors. They believe that promotions should be based on competence and not by rank, age, or seniority. Gen X can be motivated by flexible schedules, benefits like telecommuting, recognition from the boss, and bonuses, stock, and gift cards as monetary rewards. Even if they’re not starting their own businesses, Gen X prefers to work independently with minimal supervision.

Generation Y (Millennia’s): Born: 1980 – 1995

Millennia’s (Generation Y) are tech-savvy generation and is currently the largest age group in the country. They’re in their 20’s and are beginning to come into their own in the workforce. They’re the fastest growing segment of today’s workforce. This generation content with selling their skills to the highest bidder. That means unlike Boomers, they’re not as loyal. In most cases, they changes one organization to another. That’s doesn’t mean you can’t motivate this generation; you can motivate them by offering skills training, mentoring, feedback. Culture is also extremely important for Millennia’s. They want to work in an environment where they can collaborate with others. Flexible schedules, time off, and embracing the latest technology to communicate are important for Gen Y.

Generation Z: Born: 1996 Onwards

Generation Z  who born 1996 onwards are more interested in social rewards—mentor-ship and constant feedback—than money, but this generation also motivated by meaningful work and being given responsibility. They always keen to know how their work impacts the organization and their role in the organization’s big picture, they always seek for exciting projects which passionate them. They challenge businesses to think about their operational model. This also is the most tech-savvy of the generations. If Millennial’s [Generation Y] were multitaskers, then this group is multitaskers on steroids, and members typically are plugged into five devices at once.

In rewards they prefer include recognition from the boss, experiential rewards and badges such as those earned in gaming. This generation expects workplace flexibility and diversity. Preferred recognition style: regular in-person public praise.

We understood about the different generations, there types and what motivates each, now we let’s understand how to motivate each:-

1. By eliminating stereotypes

The biggest reason professionals from different generations are, they don’t want to work together effectively because of preconceived notions about how a certain generation behaves. The Millennial feels that baby boomers are technologically impaired, inflexible and closed-minded, while baby boomers think that millennia’s are entitled and lack a strong work ethic. To eliminate the negative consequences of making assumptions about people’s behavior is to avoid doing it yourself. Being a leader, it’s important to eliminate stereotypes in the way you express yourself and in the way you treat your employees. Whereas, it’s important to evaluate each employee based on their own merit and be mindful of doing so. Too often we succumb to stereotypes without realizing it. So pay attention to the assumptions you’re making about each of your employees, and try eliminating these stereotypes.

2. Avoid assuming everyone is on the same page.

When assigning team projects, don’t assume or avoid making general statements about the tasks assuming that everyone processes information the same way. Different generations might understand in different ways, leading to unnecessary clashes when they try to work together.

Before assigning tasks, review the instructions for the following:

• Make sure that they are clear and specific.
• Avoid trendy abbreviations or acronyms.
• List a deadline by date and time.
• Make sure everyone’s role is clearly defined and the point person on the project is identified and understands their role.
• It may require some extra time and effort of yours, but when instructions and expectations are clear, your team will be able to work together more effectively regardless of their age.

3. Prepare common ground/Make them agree on common goal.

To make your employees work together, make them to agree on common goal. If there is a motivational factor or goal that speaks to all of your employees, they are more likely to come together to achieve it, no matter how different their strengths or personality type is. That’s your job to determine what’s motivating factor could be.

Think about the following:

• Does the project have a positive effect on society in general? For instance, do you want to implement a new process to reduce environmental waste?
• Does this project help your clients of all age groups? Making out the benefits for older clients and new clients will avoid any inner feelings of favoritism.
• Does this project address a common value important to all of your employees, such as family, personal fulfillment or communication?

4. Find their strengths.

While eliminating stereotypes, it is true that every generation has its own skill set. And pairing teams or assigning projects make sure everyone is able to do something that they are good at. For example, if you are working on a new social media campaign, it may be helpful to team up a millennial who knows how to hash tag with a baby boomer who has more experience with client relationships. The baby boomer can provide insight on what clients respond while the millennial can help with phrasing for better social media exposure.

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Global Recruiting Trends to tune in 2019

by Raghu Nandhan | Jul 18, 2019 | Blog, Industry Trends

2019 recruiting trends is a guide for implementing recruiting strategy. This will bring a new set of recruiting trends that will impact whole the recruiting process

Impact of new recruiting trends in 2019

In terms of recruitment trends, 2019 will bring a fresh set of recruiting trends that will impact your whole recruiting process. Are you ready to implement them or you want to be the same old follower to be left behind?

We bring you the some top recruiting trends for 2019 that you need to start implementing ASAP, otherwise, you will end up being the loser in the war for talent before the year ends!

Recruitment using Technology

Technology has many salient features in itself, among which its collaborative nature and its preponderance to data-driven analysis. These two attributes find great favor with hiring managers and recruiters when it comes to finding the candidate with the best fit for a particular role or company as well as employee retention. In recruitment, the impact of technology and the data it captures is becoming more pronounced in terms of enhancing the hiring process for both the candidates and the hiring teams. With captured data, it has opened up new possibilities for recruiters and hiring managers to reach candidates. The market has become largely candidate-driven, which means that recruiters and companies are working harder to attract top talent.

Start using digital assets to speed up the recruitment process.

The prevalence of technology has created higher levels of expectations from job seekers who want a fast, straightforward application process. If you have noticed yet, talent acquisition has become more like a marketer’s game for HR and recruitment professionals. It attempts to build a strong employer brand and a fun corporate culture, and then actively promote them on social media and other online platforms.

With each day that hiring proves to be a drag, recruiters are more likely to lose the best candidates to other firms, while companies end up spending more of their resources than what is necessary.

To act against this, here are some ideas to help you accelerate the hiring process using a digitally-driven approach.

Conducting video or mobile interviews

First-round of interview should be video or mobile interview which offer flexible options for recruiters and job applicants alike since they help eliminate chances of delays in schedule and lengthy hours preparing for a face-to-face meet. According to researched data it has been proven that more than 60 percent of companies are now using video interviews for their hiring.

Using ATS (An applicant tracking system)

An ATS is a great help for recruiters and employers to sort through thousands of applications submitted to them, and with more and more people on mobile and social platforms, you need your ATS to be capable of leveraging these channels. While leveraging your ATS, consider your organization’s needs; i.e. accessing your candidates’ social media profile on LinkedIn, for example.

Marketing recruitment

It’s the strategy based, on the implementation of marketing tactics in recruitment Industry. It is the process of nurturing and attracting talented individuals to the organization using marketing methods and tactics.

 Marketing recruitment is a discipline that has been introduced as a consequence of the current situation in the labor market. The main goal is to follow the latest trends in the market and offer solutions to the companies that best overcome these new challenges. Companies that adopt these new recruiting best practices will be more likely to attract talent. This is why Marketing recruitment will be at the sole top of the recruitment trends 2019.

Inbound Recruitment

 It is a strategy where you proactively and continually attract candidates with the goal to make them choose you as are their next employer. Your goal in inbound recruitment is to attract, convert and engage candidates.

 Lately, there has been a switch from outbound to inbound recruitment. Simply reaching out to the candidates and offering an open position is not the way to attract the talents anymore. If you are looking for a long-term solution to advance your recruitment process and hiring strategy, inbound recruitment is the trend you should adopt.

 Employer/Organization’s Marketing 

 Employer marketing is the term commonly used to describe an organization’s reputation and popularity as an employer, and its employee value proposition, as opposed to its more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to customers. Employer marketing ideas are essential for building a strong and attractive employer brand.

From research it has been proven that more than 75% of job seekers research about a company’s reputation and employer brand before applying. Employers with a bad reputation not only struggle to attract candidates, but they also struggle to retain employees. This is why employer marketing is one of the top recruitment trends of 2019!

Candidate’s experience

It is current, past and potential future candidates’ overall perception of your company’s recruiting process. It is based on candidates’ feelings, behaviors and attitudes they experience during the whole recruiting process, from sourcing and screening to interviewing, hiring and finally on-boarding.

It is important to focus on candidate experience in recruitment trend you should adopt in 2019

Because candidates who had a positive candidate experience in your recruiting process will more likely accept your job offer, reapply in future and refer others to your company.

On the flip side, a negative candidate experience can cost you more than a few candidates – it can even lose your company big bucks! The example of this case is Virgin Media, a company who calculated that a bad candidate experience costs them a shocking $5.4 million annually!

Candidate’s pools

Candidate’s pool refers to a place or database where recruiters and HR Managers keep all of their top job candidates. Candidate’s pool make not only candidates that have applied for jobs, but also sourced, referred candidates, silver medalists and candidates that have willingly joined your pool in an inbound way.

Imagine if every time you had a job opening, you had a pool of Candidates from which you can just pick the best one! Sounds great, right? This is the reason why many recruiters have already adopted this recruitment trend and started building a high-quality candidate database for current and future needs.

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The Top Onboarding Trends to Keep an Eye on in 2019

by Raghu Nandhan | Jun 26, 2019 | Blog, Industry Trends

Remember how you felt going to work on the first day of your new job – Excited, Eager and Ready to get started, right?

It is the responsibility of the HR, IT and Facilities team to make sure everything is ready – right from the work station, ID cards, network access and more. To get all these, there are usually a lot of backend processes that take place. This often causes the unnecessary delay and interferes with the productivity of the teams involved.

It is time to hit refresh on these Onboarding Trends!

Onboarding is the integration process used to ensure a smooth transition of new employees into their roles and the organization. It is more than just providing new employee orientation.

It’s the role of onboarding to help new employees welcome and get them prepared for their jobs, and to successfully contribute to organization’s mission, vision and values.

Here are 3 Employee Onboarding rules essential to the immigration and smooth transition of employees into their roles and to the organization;

1. Have a plan and follow it
2. Commit to 365 days
3. Checklist – Build great resources

Let’s take a look at each rule in more detail and explore some tips and tricks for each.

1. Have a Plan and follow it:

Organizations must invest the time, energy and resources necessary to create an Onboarding experience.

Create a plan using the Three C’s of Onboarding:

• Clarify policy, expectations and how the employee’s work adds value to the organization.
• Help employees navigate culture, providing a sense of values, norms and unique language
• Make connections by fostering interpersonal and organizational relationships for the new employee.

This strategic approach requires HR professionals to deliver onboarding experience and support managers in doing the same.

2. Commit to 365 days

Onboarding is so much more than a day one orientation session.

Understanding in organization is associated with the employee commitment, satisfaction and engagement.

So use milestones such as 30,60,90 and 120 days on the job, and up to one year from day one to facilitate experiences and check in with your employee.

Onboarding best practices:

• Have everything ready.
• Make the first day on the job special
• Use a formal new employee orientation session
• Develop a written onboarding plan
• Consistently implement

Be crystal clear about objectives, roles and responsibilities.

3. Checklist– Build great resources

A checklist provides the road-map for the onboarding journey. HR professionals must provide for the understanding and support of the new employee and the manager.

It helps in ensuring consistent onboarding experiences.

Let’s take a look at 3 critical areas to cover in your onboarding checklist:

Before arrival of the new employee (Pre-boarding):

• Have all paperwork ready
• Have an on-the-job training and work plan ready
• Have the employees workstation ready and waiting to hit the ground running
• Create a what-you-need-to-know list – (tools used for the job, programs used to communicate with the teams, etc.

Day One for the new employee:

• Let them in on what’s going in the organization
• Lay out your expectations
• Impart your company culture
• Have projects or training programs, ready for them to work on.
• Remember to have someone they can go to with questions.

First whole year of the new employee

• Help them build a foundation in the organization
• Socially integrate into the team and the organization
• Build engagement and commitment through intentional experiences that meet their needs
• Conclude by recognizing their year one milestone

Follow these 3 simple rules of onboarding to create experiences that integrate and build connections between employees work and the organization’s mission

Joining a new company for hopefully be a long-term and mutually beneficial partnership is a critical first step in your employee’s career with your organization. Plan it with care so it’s a smooth and comfortable experience and watch -you, your employee and your company flourish!

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