Author: The Organic Recruiter

FOCUS ON ‘HOW’, NOT ‘WHAT’ THEY LEARN

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Retention, Latest News and Articles

Giving high-potential employees the right job-related experiences, and action plans to help learn from them, can boost their performance by up to 30%

By CEB Human Resources | December 15, 2015

From having conversations with clients around the country, they are often surrounding retention problems.  “How do we keep the good?”, “Why is everyone leaving us?” or “What’s it going to keep our people?”. It makes me wonder if they are asking me of their competition’s strategy or if others are having these same problems.  The answer is yes, everyone is.  But the question is not the correct one.  The right question is, how do we retain our “High-potential Employees (HIPOs)? Once this is answered and implemented, your success, revenues and culture should align better because these are the future leaders of your company. ~The Organic Recruiter

High–potential employees (HIPOs) are incredibly valuable to a company. If the firm can keep hold of them and train them in the right way, they are the ones who will one day hold the top jobs and make decisions that will determine the company’s future.

They are 91% more valuable than non-HIPOs in an organization, according to CEB data. So it is important to find which employees are HIPOs – it’s not the same thing as a high-performing employee – and to use objective benchmarking to ascertain whether your HIPOs have sufficiently high potential.

But once the HR team and senior managers have done that, they need to make sure that their green shoots of future success will one day bear fruit.

This is where a lot of HIPO programs – whose aim is to find, retain, and develop HIPOs – go off the rails. Only 5% of programs follow through properly with action plans to develop HIPOs, so it’s no surprise that nearly two-thirds (64%) of HIPOs say they are unhappy with their development.

Spend Less Time in the Classroom

Even when companies do put real focus into HIPO development, most rely on formal classroom or online training. Yet only 10% of what all of us learn comes from this kind of training, according to the widely accepted 70:20:10 model. Most of our knowledge (70%) comes from job-related experiences, and 20% from peers and mentors. Essentially, the model shows that learning is a continuous process.

So HIPOs don’t just need training courses, they need experiences that allow them to practice new skills. Such “learning exposure” needs to be tailored to the individual’s career goals and challenges. It might mean, for instance, taking on a tough project that’s failing and turning it around.

And if HIPO programs get these experiences right, they can improve HIPOs’ knowledge and skills by up to 16%.

Three Ways to Make the Lessons Stick

But there’s another hurdle to overcome. High quality learning won’t necessarily lead to better performing HIPOs. What people really need to know is how to extract what they need from their knowledge to help them perform better.

It helps to think about how you approach something really hard, like learning to play a musical instrument. At first, it’s difficult. You have to concentrate and you perform slowly and deliberately. As you practice, things get easier, especially if you try different approaches and your tutor gives you feedback on what to adjust.

Finally, after yet more practice you find that you no longer even think about playing – you do it naturally.

This is just as true of learning skills in business. Extracting learning requires these three simple elements that should be central to all HIPO development.

  1. Practice: Action plans need to focus employees on the most difficult aspects of a new task and set aside time for these to be done many times until they are done well.
  2. Reflect: Employees need to be encouraged to stop, think about, and even document what went well and what they’ll try differently next time to improve the results.
  3. Get feedback: Action plans should include asking others to rate employees’ performance and its effect on their work. Encourage them to get feedback from multiple perspectives.

Giving HIPOs relevant on-the-job experiences that stretch them, and action plans that embed these three elements, leads to performance improvements of up to 30%, according to CEB analysis.

Nearly three-quarters of HIPO programs (generally run by the HR team) are struggling to demonstrate any return. Putting a good development plan in place and being able to quote performance improvements of nearly a third would be a great response when the CFO next asks whether all that “HIPO budget” is worth it.

TO TELECOMMUTE OR NOT TO TELECOMMUTE?

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Retention, Employment Value Proposition, Latest News and Articles

by Anne Caldwell | February 2016

Working at Monster, we are blessed to work from home (~85% of us).  We are more accessible to our clients, flexible to internal meetings and much more productive as an organization. The amount of money saved by organizations by not having to pay high priced office space is huge.  One of the benefits to our clients is we don’t pass office expenses on to our you, therefore you know you are getting great pricing on our solutions.

A great benefit to my employer is they are getting much more efficiencies, less stress from undue commuting, and most likely more hours of production (i.e. me writing this newsletter on a Saturday). ~The Organic Recruiter

More than 80 percent of employees consider telecommuting a job perk, and 36 percent would sacrifice salary for the option of telecommuting at work, according to a survey conducted by Global Workplace Analytics.

This begs the question: Should employers provide telecommuting options? The increased demand and employee popularity of telecommuting in the workplace has resulted in the upward trend of more than 37 percent of U.S. workers currently telecommuting, according to Gallup’s 2015 annual Work and Education Poll, but the debate on the benefits of telecommuting rages on.

Technology has made working remotely, “Telecommuting,” easier and ideal for employees, but is it beneficial to employers, too? Many business owners are hesitant to implement telecommuting options for employees because they are afraid that telecommuting reduces employee productivity, quality of work and team collaboration – but studies show that when implemented properly, telecommuting is a win-win for both employees and employers.

Even more eye opening is that today’s employees are increasingly willing to sacrifice other perks to be able to telecommute, including sacrificing a portion of their salary for the increased flexibility that working from home offers.

Cost Effective: When implemented correctly, telecommuting increases business profit margins and streamlines business operations – and is cost effective for both employees and employers.

Employees who are given the option to telecommute are reportedly much happier with their employers and their ability to telecommute than traditional office workers, says a study conducted by OnlineMBA.com.

Many employers are also embracing telecommuting as a way to show their commitment to the environment, incorporating telecommuting options into their social and corporate responsibility initiatives.

Today’s employees, especially millennials, place more value on “Life perks,” such as corporate culture, social responsibility and telecommuting options, than salary.

One critical aspect of implementing a telecommuting policy is to be clear about which positions qualify for telecommuting, that is, which are capable of being done remotely.

Business owners should develop an employee benefits package that includes telecommuting eligibility and options, telecommuting policies, and company tools and processes for success, too.

Telecommuting in public relations Scottsdale-based The Knight Agency, a boutique public relations, marketing and event agency, launched telecommuting options as a part of its company culture and employee perks, which produced the following results: Efficiency: Each employee has a different working style, and telecommuting lets employees create their best work, says Erica Knight, president of The Knight Agency.

Empowerment: Working in an environment with telecommuting perks empowers employees and gives them control over their schedule and work efforts – making them feel valued.

~ for complete article: http://bit.ly/telecommute-cw

YOU CAN’T KEEP FAKING IT! 3 WAYS TO FULLY COMMIT TO MAKING SUCCESSFUL CHANGE

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Retention, Employment Value Proposition, Latest News and Articles

By Scott Span | February 5, 2016

Often, we talk to customers about their EVP (Employment Value Proposition) or rather why does someone want to work for you and they say…well we are working on that.  I find that when I hear that, they really aren’t working on that and telling stakeholders they’re getting to it. I believe its more paralysis by analysis, therefore perpetuating the problem of why it’s so hard to retain or recruit great talent.  If we keep faking it, we’ll only be fake and employees and job seekers can smell it a mile away ~The Organic Recruiter

Stop faking change! Stop paying it lip service and not taking supporting actions. Commit to change or don’t even bother. Change is hard. I write about it a lot because how you navigate change impacts whether you will succeed or fail.

It doesn’t need to be costly or painful

Because change is hard, all too often organizations fake change. That means this: They expect change to happen in an environment where they are unwilling to commit to the support needed to make the change a success – unwilling to change processes, culture, strategy and the way they work.

Sounds counter-intuitive, right?

It is. And it’s costing your organization productivity, performance and profit.

Organizational problems are linked together, and change in one area often impacts other areas. New business initiatives, new technology, new processes and procedures, leadership changes – all require new behaviors and ways of doing things.

Organizational change is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it has to be painful or costly. So how do you stop faking change?  First you need to acknowledge how you’re faking change before you can fix it.

You really gotta walk the walk

Communication is a key part of managing change. Are you really providing supporting processes, structures, and culture for open and honest communication? Are you sending the right messages to the right audiences at the right time?

And is everyone inside the organization – from the executives down to the interns – aware of the changes, how it will impact them, and can contribute towards making the change a success?

If not, then you’re faking change. Stakeholders can tell when they’re getting lip service and it does have a negative impact on commitment. Walk the walk and lead the change effort by example.

But, it’s how we’ve always done it

Culture is the way work gets done around here.  One of the hardest parts about causing positive change is changing the status quo – how things have always been done. But you have to change if you want to be successful. You’ve got to commit to the new way – fully.

If the leaders aren’t willing to change their behaviors, or work to change the behaviors of others to support the change, then how do you expect the change effort to be successful? Your job as the leader is to lead.

You MUST make the time to be the face of the change and prioritize engaging with stakeholders. That includes leading in changing the culture if needed to support a new way of doing things.

Fix broken processes

Change in one area often impacts other areas. This requires revamping or doing away with old processes or creating new processes to support the change. You can’t keep trying to use old processes designed to support the old way of doing things and expect a new result. You should do a detailed process inventory and analysis so you have an accounting of your processes, identify which processes need attention, which may need to be created, and then communicate the changes to the team – and train them how to follow them.

The moral of the story is this: You can fake change all you want, but if you really want positive change to be a success, lip service won’t cut it. You must commit to a new way of doing things.

GEN XERS: SKILLS, STRENGTHS, AND SHORTCOMINGS

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Generational Gap, Latest News and Articles, Millennials

By Peter Keseric

Now I may be shooting myself in the foot with this one. However I feel, at times, I am the one embracing the digital world while the millennials are living a fine analog world when the opposites you’d imagine be true. ~The Organic Recruiter

Fair or not, most Gen Xers see themselves as the older, responsible child doing dishes and taking out the trash while the baby boomers and millennials argue over the TV remote.

While the smartphone might personify millennials, and Woodstock exemplified Baby-Boomers, Gen Xers were raised with less pleasurable cultural markers.

Is it any wonder that Gen Xers have the lunch-pail, roll-up-the-sleeves, work ethic most companies should crave?

After millennial Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, did he hire a millennial class-mate to run it? No. He tapped a Gen X COO born in 1969 who not coincidently is a woman.

Is there a person who personifies baby-boomer success more than Richard Branson? What generation does he trust for the heavy lifting? Virgin Group’s CEO, COO, and CFO all are Gen Xers.

Gen Xers don’t have time for Kardashian-style drama.

How to Hire and Retain a Gen Xer Preach long-term stability in the interviews:

  • Preach long-term stability in the interviews.
  • Be ready with any answers about former mass layoffs or past division closings.
  • Don’t expect them to push back in an interview.
  • Don’t mention ‘lofty goals” or a product that will “make the company HUGE money.
  • Tempered growth. Loyalty.
  • Buzzwords are for millennials, not Gen Xers.
  • Talk about the 401(k), not the sales goals that get them a trip to Maui.

All Gen Xers know people who had to cash out their retirement savings after their Fortune 500 Company let them go. If a Gen Xer disagrees, she will politely say “Interesting” out loud, but think “No way am I working here” to themselves.

~ for complete article: http://www.eremedia.com/ere/gen-xers-skills-strengths-and-shortcomings/

YOU SHOULD PLAN ON SWITCHING JOBS EVERY THREE YEARS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Retention, Latest News and Articles, New Job

By Vivian Giang

The stigma when I talk to recruiters is that all the candidates I am finding are job hoppers and we will not hire them.  This article by Vivian addresses the whys and why we should still be looking at them.  And / or what we need to do to retain the great people we have. ~ The Organic Recruiter

Changing jobs every couple of years used to look bad on a resume.

Workers who stay with a company longer than two years are said to get paid 50% less, and job hoppers are believed to have a higher learning curve, be higher performers, and even to be more loyal, because they care about making a good impression in the short amount of time they know they’ll stay with each employer.

Patty McCord, former chief talent officer for Netflix, says job hopping is a good thing, and young people should plan to do so every three to four years.

“In terms of managing your own career, if you don’t change jobs every three years, you don’t develop the skills of getting a job quickly, so then you don’t have any career stability,” Trunk tells Fast Company.

I read a lot of research about what makes a good employee … and people used to think that the longer you kept an employee, the more worth they are to you, because you train them and they get used to their job and then they do it.

An employee who stays on the job and isn’t learning at a really high rate is not as engaged, so they’re not doing as good work.

~ for complete article: http://www.fastcompany.com/3055035/the-future-of-work/you-should-plan-on-switching-jobs-every-three-years-for-the-rest-of-your-#