Tag: strategy

How Proactive Branding and HR Teams Build Employee Loyalty

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

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Reputation management is an essential part of what human resources and marketing managers must do in order to build great teams and maintain employee loyalty. An organization’s reputation affects how potential applicants view the firm. Reputations also have an effect on how people working for the company feel about their employers. According to a recent Glassdoor survey, 84 percent of survey participants would consider leaving their current company if another company with an excellent reputation offered them a job [1]. By taking the time to proactively brand your organization and build strong human resources teams, you can help to build loyalty within your organization.

Daily Experiences in the Organization

A big part of proactive branding is ensuring that an employee’s daily experiences are positive. Your human resources teams will need to set the tone for the culture. When a company’s values are in line with the individual employee’s values, he or she is more likely to have a positive experience at work every day. Proactive branding at work should be included in the mission and vision statements as well as workplace policies. One positive branding message could be, “To treat every person with respect.” This sort of positive messaging is actionable and inclusive.

Focusing on Improvement

Admitting that your organization could use improvement is a great step in proactive branding. Working on improving how your organization does things gives every person a goal to work toward. Because improvement never stops, the idea that there is more to be done motivates employees to stay on at your organization. As employees see that work they are doing is improving your company, they will maintain their loyalty to your brand.

Integrating Brand and Business Strategy

Proactive branding should be intertwined with your overall business strategy. This means doing some brand research to see what people inside and outside of your organization think. The way that the top talent outside of your organization feels about you will have direct impact on who applies for jobs and who wants to initiate business relationships. Allowing your employees the ability to anonymously make comments about the business culture will help to build loyalty. Your organization can use that information to work toward maximizing internal resources and keeping your most talented employees on staff.

 

[1] http://www.careerarc.com/blog/2016/01/13-recruiting-stats-hr-pro-must-know-2016/

The Pros of the Telecommute Perk

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image_011Telecommuting began to rise in popularity within the past decade when fuel prices soared. While it immediately benefited employees who would no longer have to spend hundreds of dollars per month to fill their gas tanks, human resources managers also began to notice benefits. Telecommuting is a growing trend – about 40% of U.S. employees are working remotely either full time or part time [1]. If you are considering implementing a telecommuting policy at your organization, keep these pros in mind when making your decisions and setting up the rules of your telecommuting program.

Efficiency

Employees who work from home may be able to start their workdays earlier and end later than they would if they had to commute. They may also experience fewer distractions, such as conversations at the water cooler or disruptions from coworkers chatting rather than working. On the other hand, employees who work at home may become distracted by household chores, the doorbell, television, and spouses or children who are also at home.

Equipment Savings

When employees work from home, your organization may be able to cut on some costs, such as utilities, office supplies and furniture. A typical business could potentially save up to $11,000 per employee per year [2]. When telecommuting employees do come into the office, they may be able to use shared work areas. This might even allow your organization to be housed in a smaller space. Keep in mind that you may have to reimburse your employees for their work-related internet fees, pay phone bills for work calls and provide them with a laptop so that they can do their work from home.

Employee Loyalty and Retaining Staff

The flexibility of being able to telecommute may help to increase the loyalty of your employees. Employees who have young children may appreciate the ability to work from home on days when their childcare center is closed or when their child is sick. You may be able to retain your staff by offering the option of telecommuting one or more days per week. Your employees are sure to enjoy the time savings and experience less stress from not having to drive in weekday rush-hour traffic. The savings on gas and wear and tear on cars also benefits your staff, who may decide to stay with you for these benefits.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2016/07/27/for-employee-retention-theres-no-place-like-home/#48ca551855ec

[2] http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics

Promotion Versus Hiring: Deciding How to Fill Management Positions

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image_28When your organization has a management position to fill, deciding how to hire for the opening can be a challenge. Promoting from within is often faster than looking outside of your organization. However, hiring from outside provides you with greater access to potential employees who may have a wider range of skills. However, there are many reasons to consider both options.

Promoting From Within

When you open up a management position to your current staff members, promoting from within can reduce the amount of time the position is vacant. There will not be a need for routine human resources activities such as checking on the applicant’s resume or references. This can reduce your hiring costs. Hiring from within means that you are already familiar with the employee’s personality, skill set and experience level. A study from Kelly-Radford found that senior executives fail, in general, 34 percent of the time when hired from the outside versus 24 percent when hired from inside your organization [1]. Promoting from within helps to boost employee loyalty, allowing your staff to do their best because of the potential to move up the corporate ladder.

Recruiting From Outside of Your Organization

Even if there are qualified candidates for a management position within your company, there are many reasons why you might want to consider outside recruitment. Bringing in a fresh perspective allows your company to increase its range of skills. Recruiting an outside candidate may also be easier on supervisors and staff who might otherwise develop a contentious relationship with internal promotions. Top talent is attracted to companies that are using best practices and offer the opportunity for growth, not companies that always want to stick with what’s safe and comfortable [2]. A new person may have more experience or relevant technological skills than the people you already employ. Outside recruitment allows you to capture the best talent from applicants locally, regionally and even internationally.

[1] http://www.ddiworld.com/ddi/media/white-papers/thecaseforinternalpromotions_wp_ddi.pdf?ext=.pdf
[2] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/blog/the-benefits-of-hiring-outside-your-industry/

Building Your Talent Pipeline for Future Needs

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Successful organizations include Human Resources as part of their strategic planning team. HR, as a partner in the company’s plan, can execute recruiting and employee retention plans, develop timelines and assist in budgeting for new hires. Ensuring that the talent pipeline contains an adequate number of qualified candidates requires workforce planning.

Identify Critical Skills

Identify critical jobs – jobs that must be performed well for the company to succeed. These positions often reside in the conduct of everyday business rather than in upper management. They could be new positions and skills based on future company initiatives. Companies need to identify, attract and develop candidates for the critical skills pipeline.

Assess Talent Pools

Now that you’ve identified current and future skills requirements, take inventory of what you already have. Once you’ve identified the critical skills the company needs, create a profile of the ideal employee for that position and take a look at current employees that could fill critical roles and those who should be included in the critical talent pipeline. Use the profile to identify external candidates as well.

Perform a Gap Analysis

When HR is part of the strategic planning team, they become aware of future plans to upgrade a computer system or to open new warehouses. Many of the initiatives mentioned as part of a five-year plan will require specific talent and staffing requirements. The qualifications and number of positions required to support future business development and the current expertise will expose the gap in staffing.

Track Development of Internal Employees with Critical Skills

Those candidates that fit the profile for specific critical skills should be offered development in order to reduce the chance of turnover and to make them more valuable to the company. Regular assessments can provide an indicator of critical skills development.

Create an External Critical Skills Candidate Pipeline

External candidates with the required skills and competencies should be viewed as potential hires for critical roles. The staffing challenges that come with new technology or economic fluctuations can be successfully managed with a well-tended talent pipeline.

Education Versus Experience: Which Is More Important to Your Organization?

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The debate between education and experience is one of the oldest in the hiring book, and it’s still relevant today. According to Glassdoor’s U.S. Employment Confidence Survey, 82% of U.S. college graduates said their level of education has been an asset to their careers [1]. Instead of wrestling between absolutes, start asking different questions. Every position has its own unique needs, and the right person for the job could come from either end of the spectrum.

The Benefits of Less

Never discount an applicant simply because they lack either education or experience. Taking on candidates fresh out of school with little experience gives you all the benefits of a freshly educated, malleable mind that can grow to exemplify your organization’s values. A candidate with little education but a mountain of experience will bring intuition and insight only the battle-hardened can boast.

Think Specifics

Rather than treating education and experience as broad subjects, look at the details. An applicant whose qualifications are specialized in the field you need is invaluable to a team and is often a better choice than someone with a more extensive but non-specialized background. The specifics may also reveal unexpected perks, like training that would benefit a major project your organization is working on or alternative viewpoints that add extra value to a candidate.

Consider Your Current Team

If your applicants will be working closely with other people, identify the gaps or imbalances in your current team and look to fill them. If your current staff is heavy on experience, bring in someone with a more extensive education. If your staff is well educated but lacks experience in the type of project you are about to undertake, choose someone with the right practical skills.

Seek a Middle Ground

When it comes down to it, academics and practical skill are equally important, and having a balance of both is ideal. Remember that you can use seminars and other training programs to polish otherwise perfect candidates with a few gaps in their resume.

As applications come across your desk, give education and experience equal weight. Hone in on specific skills and think about the assets you are lacking. Striking a balance will always serve you well.

[1] http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/view/story.jhtml?id=534357362

 

Which Social Media Platforms are Most Effective When Recruiting Millennials?

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Those born in roughly the 1980s and 1990s are defined as millennials, and a recent article in Time highlighted that these millennials are now officially the largest generation within the working class [1]. Recruiters need to know how to attract and retain the top talent in the millennial generation, and social media may be the key. Discover which social media platforms are most effective when it comes to recruiting millennials.

LinkedIn
Currently, LinkedIn occupies a 40 percent market share for those seeking jobs in the United States. While it may only have 300 million users annually [2], far less than other social media platforms, it may still be the best place to start when seeking millennials because existing users are focused on their careers. Recruiters in search of millennial talent should be prepared to hunt for suitable candidates as well as post job opportunities.

Facebook
Without question, the largest social media network on the planet is Facebook, with more than 1.49 billion users, many of them daily viewers [3]. Of that staggering number of users, approximately 42 million are between the ages of 18 and 24, and an additional 44 million are between the ages of 25 and 34. In terms of sheer reach, particularly when companies are recruiting a highly specific candidate, Facebook can offer the greatest potential to get as many eyes on your career opportunity as possible.

Instagram
When Instagram recently surpassed 300 million users worldwide [4], surpassing Twitter in the process, it highlighted how a younger generation prefers to use social media. Quick, to the point and highly visual, Instagram is a fantastic way to attract millennials [5]. Instagram can be used to create a corporate culture that appeals to millennials, and it can also be searched through hashtags to find specific users who may make ideal candidates.

Twitter
Thanks in part to the mobile nature of Twitter, more than 100 million users log in daily. However, the demographic is far younger, overall, than Facebook, with 95 million Twitter users under the age of 29 [6]. For recruiters targeting a demographic of millennials, Twitter can be an effective method of reaching the right audience.

[1] http://time.com/3854518/millennials-labor-force/
[2] http://mashable.com/2014/04/18/linkedin-300-million-users/#tmgMHMvoaZk9
[3] http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/
[4] http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/10/not-a-fad/
[5] http://www.inc.com/jt-odonnell/a-powerful-way-to-use-instagram-to-recruit-employees.html
[6] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141118182103-28964915-social-media-user-statistics-age-demographics-for-2014

How Much Flexibility is a Good Thing When Attracting Top Talent?

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image_09Businesses are only as good as their employees. In order to be the best, companies must hire the best. Sometimes, acquiring top talent requires significant time, patience and a creative mindset.

The best employees on the market know their worth. They look for ideal positions and can usually demand that. Therefore, when a business is seeking one of these highly talented individuals, that business must offer more than what they currently have. The top choice for today’s companies is workplace flexibility.

What Is Workplace Flexibility?

A flexible work environment hands over the reins to employees. They may be able to set their own hours. Some may feel more productive in the early morning or late in the evening. Some employees may wish to work longer hours on a daily basis in order to have more time off each month or even every week. Still, others may opt to telecommute full or part-time. Offering this type of flexibility has been proven to attract and retain better employees.

Why Offer Flexible Hours?

Aside from being an intangible benefit to employees, a flexible work environment is smart money for employers. This is especially true when full-time telecommuting is an option. Workers who perform their duties at home save the business on the cost of supplies, energy and even insurance. Likewise, employers can hire all over the world. This broadens the pool of applicants, but it also can lower salary requirements. Whereas a top-notch marketing executive in New York City can easily command over six figures, that same employee in Mid-Missouri tops out at about $60,000.

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Flexibility?

One issue that employers may run into is offering to be too flexible. Not every employee is cut out for telecommuting. Those that need to be managed closely, have difficulty meeting deadlines or are easily distracted may need the cocooning of a traditional 9 to 5 job. However, those employees also are unlikely to be among the talented few. It is far better for employers to risk offering workplace flexibility to attain and retain the best and the brightest than to risk losing them to a competitor.

The Pros and Cons of Offering Moving Expenses to Recruit Top Talent

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image_21When you’re recruiting top talent into your agency, chances are good that competitors of yours are also interested in the same candidates. According to the 48th Annual Atlas Corporate Relocation Survey released in April 2015, there has been a significant uptick among U.S. companies relocating employees since 2013 [1]. Recruiting nationally means that you need to have a competitive edge to your offer of employment.

While most candidates are looking at the hard numbers of their potential annual salary, they’re also increasingly interested in softer parts of an employment offer, such as vacation time and paid relocation expenses. Consider these pros and cons to offering relocation benefits:

Reasons to Offer Paid Moving Expenses

If you’re located in New York City and the candidate you’re trying to recruit grew up and just graduated from a university in Seattle, that person may not want to leave the area without a strong impetus to do so. Offering relocation expenses is one way to inspire such a candidate to make the leap and cross the country to join your organization. A new graduate may not have the funds to move across the nation, rent an apartment and get set up for a new job. People who live in housing markets that continue to be poor might feel as if they cannot afford to move for a new job. In this type of a situation, paying the person’s moving expenses can ease the financial burden of just starting out in a career or making a transition to a new organization. Employees who have their relocation expenses paid feel a sense of loyalty to the employer and are more likely to stay on the job for a longer period of time. This can lower your organization’s future recruiting costs.

Pitfalls of Offering Relocation Expenses

Paying for relocation expenses may seem like an empty investment, especially if you’re in an industry with high turnover, such as technology. If you’re offering a generous salary and benefits package, paying for relocation expenses may not be necessary. When your organization is recruiting many new employees, the costs of relocation expenses may be burdensome to your corporate budget.

Whether you are just starting to write a relocation policy or are re-evaluating your current policy, keep in mind that every relocation policy should answer: who is eligible for relocation benefits, what relocation benefits are offered, and what the tax implications are [2]. It’s important to evaluate your current strategy to make sure communication is clear as it’s critical for a relocating employee to understand if they’re eligible for relocation benefits, what they qualify for, and how to use them.

[1] http://www.helioshr.com/2015/08/top-5-considerations-in-writing-the-best-relocation-policy-for-your-business/

[2] http://www.urbanbound.com/blog/3-components-every-relocation-policy-should-have

Refining Your Brand Mission to Improve Morale and Productivity

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image_27When your organization could use a boost in morale and productivity, one way to do so is to redefine your brand mission. Every brand should have a mission, vision and goals. While these are typically developed at the same time as the product or near its release, you can redefine them at any time. Redefining your brand mission takes a team effort, but the results are well worth it in the end.

Defining Your Brand’s Mission

According to this article, it is easier to redefine your brand’s mission once your vision and goals are clear and established [1]. Your brand’s mission is the how-to guide for advancing your goals and vision. The best time to redefine your brand’s mission is when there is only slow or halting progress toward your overall goals. Low morale and poor productivity are often symptoms of slow goal achievement. A better how-to guide can inspire your staff to get working again toward your organization’s goals.

Including the Four Key Components

Your brand’s redefined mission should be able to inspire your staff and encourage them to make positive progress toward organizational goals. The mission statement must also be reasonable and plausible as a “smart” objective. Dave Smith from Inc.com explains that there are four key components to your brand’s redefined mission statement [2]. These components include value, inspiration, plausibility and specificity. Each of these ideas should revolve around your brand’s key theme.

Creating a Clearly Redefined Brand Mission

A redefined mission statement should ideally be a single sentence that every member of your staff can learn by heart. In the best of all worlds, you company’s mission statement could double as the product’s slogan. The statement should be memorable and effective, leading back to your roots as to why you developed the brand in the first place. If you choose a short-term mission statement, redefining it will need to be a regular part of your work. This is because the improved morale and productivity will allow you to achieve the goals as stated in the mission. A long-term mission statement will need to use language that allows for organizational growth.

[1] http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/brand_innovation/amon_rappaport/how_define_%E2%80%93_align_%E2%80%93_your_brands_purpose_vision_missi

[2] http://www.inc.com/ss/5-tips-on-developing-an-effective-mission-statement

Does Your Website Work? How to Ensure You Get the Most from Mobile and Career Pages

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image_16Does your company’s website work the way you think and hope that it does? If not, you may not be getting as much attention from prospective applicants who are qualified to work at your organization.

In today’s high-tech world, more than 77 percent of job seekers use the Internet as their primary source for finding leads and scouring open positions, explains an infographic from Beyond.com [1]. More than 84 million Americans use a smartphone to do their Internet searches, which means that your company’s recruiting and career pages need to be performing well in order to capture today’s top candidates.

Mobile Friendly

With most adults using smartphones to access the Internet, your website must be mobile friendly. Rather than having a separate mobile and traditional website, consider using a website with a responsive design. A responsively designed website is user friendly across devices and platforms. Responsively designed websites also rank well on all of the major search engines.

Social Media and Websites for Career Searches

According to a survey from Jobvite (featured on LinkHumans), more than 86 percent of job seekers use social media to find job openings [2]. This means that your organization needs to have both a great career page and an active social media account that is geared toward the type of candidates you are seeking. Your social media links should take guests to your career page or a landing page where users can enter search parameters to find current openings.

The Benefits of Responsively Designed Career Pages

If your organization is looking to hire tech-savvy individuals, a well-designed website is the first step to getting them knocking at your door. This is especially true if you are seeking new graduates who are well versed in the use of technology. Candidates who are highly comfortable with technology will use apps and text alerts to let them know when a job opening fitting their needs has been posted. Keeping your career pages optimized and up to date gets you fast results from candidates across the nation. Now is the time to make sure that your website is designed in a way that works well for all users.

[1] http://about.beyond.com/infographics/mobile-job-search-apps

[2] http://linkhumans.com/social-recruiting/jobseekers-social-media-study