December 6, 2011
Contradicting a 2004 study showing that using the Internet to look for work prolonged unemployment, a new study has found the better job boards, improved site design, and enhanced technology have dramatically improved the job seeker’s ability to identify positions, make application, and secure employment using the Internet. Also noted by the researchers was the percentage growth of unemployed individuals using the Internet—up from 25% in 1998/2000 to 74% in 2008/2009. In addition to the formal services, the Internet was cited as a valuable “networking” tool where the unemployed could communicate with family, friends and professional colleagues, thereby extending the reach of their searches. Enhancements to job site “user friendliness” were also cited as having an impact on their growing popularity.
University of Colorado-Denver news release:
http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/Study-shows-using-Internet-to-find-work-cuts-unemployment-time.aspx
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hiring process | Tagged: competitiion, Employment, hiring best practices, HR, Human Resources, job descriptions, job posting, strategic employer | 
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Posted by Richard Yadon
November 16, 2011
What if I told you that your company could double its profit margin through employee engagement? Would that make employee engagement a priority? What if your profit margin only improved by 20%? Still a priority? If employee engagement is not a priority today, then it should be. Your corporate talent has more to do with driving profitability and competitive edge than anything else in your company. Engaged employees are more productive, more enthusiastic, and more effective than just competent employees.
Employee engagement is not the same as employee motivation. If you have a workforce of engaged employees then employee motivation takes care of itself. You don’t need expensive rewards and programs to foster engaged employees. For little or no expense you can create an employee engagement culture that will improve employee morale and employee relations. What it will take is some planning.
Company leaders can invest 30 days and follow four simple steps to plan for effective employee engagement. There are few principals to keep in mind, however, before you start employee engagement planning. First, don’t confuse employee engagement with employee involvement. Only when employee involvement is focused on the company mission and passion will you get engaged employees. Second, employee engagement is not employee relations. Employee relations are a barometer of employee engagement.
To plan for employee engagement on a super tight budget, follow these four steps over the next 30 days.
- Survey Employees – Find out why they come to work. What is it they want to contribute to the customers they serve? Why is this meaningful to them? You have to understand this to know how to help your team become engaged employees.
- Brainstorm – Hold a meeting with company leaders and key contributors. Present the results of your survey. Look at gaps between what employees want and what they are getting. Remember you are looking for gaps in the meaningfulness of the work, not the benefits you provide. Next, have the group brainstorm low/no cost ways to bridge these gaps.
- Prioritize – Review the brainstorm ideas and prioritize the ideas that will have the most impact on employee engagement. Develop metrics to gauge the impact of these ideas.
- Implement and Test – Implement the number one priority over the next 30 days. Measure the impact against the metrics you developed. If you don’t get the results you expected, fine tune and try again. Then move to the next priority.
Of course it would be more effective to get outside help to facilitate this process if your budget permits. By following these four steps, however, you will start to raise the level of employee engagement and your profit margin.
Richard Yadon consults and speaks about employee engagement and other talent management issues.
1 Comment | employee retention, hiring process | Tagged: employee engagement, employee involvement, employee morale, employee motivation, Employee Relations, engaged employees, Engagement, Human Resources, Talent management | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
October 19, 2011
A funny thing happened on the way to school last week. My son, a high school senior, was getting ready for an awards event. Before leaving he asked me to tie his tie for him. Putting a tie on is something I’ve done almost every morning for more than twenty years. You think I could do it in my sleep by now. But I couldn’t! First I tried to do tie it standing in front of him while it was around his neck. That was strange; I’d never done it before from that perspective. Then I tried to tie one around my neck, over my own tie, while standing in front of his mirror. For some reason that was even stranger. It took me almost fifteen minutes before I could get it tied. For years I put on my tie in the same room, at the same time, in the same mirror, the same way for so long. Now I was out of my element, in a new environment, and I couldn’t do it. The entire process was on auto-pilot and when something new came along the process broke down.
The same thing can happen if your job analysis process is on auto-pilot. When a job evaluation has been done the same way for so long it becomes ineffective. Companies that want to attract top talent must transcend the tradition of writing job descriptions. Today’s talent will not come to your company when the human resources process for job evaluation is a cut and paste operation. The HR job description from four years ago is not the same as a true performance based job analysis.
The process of job analysis consists of several steps (see my related post The Pros & Cons of Job Analysis). If you think your job analysis process is on auto-pilot, take a fresh approach. Start with your HR job description. This will have all of elements of what a person needs to have to do the job. But the job analysis process goes well beyond writing job descriptions. The next step is to understand what a person must do to be successful. This can be different from the HR job description. Would you rather have a person who has done the job successfully in the past or someone who has all the job description requirements? Most Strategic Employers would take the former, even if person didn’t have all the requirements in the HR job description.
Take your job analysis process off of auto-pilot. Begin the process of job analysis with what someone does to be successful, not what they need to have.
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Leave a Comment » | hiring process, role analysis, Top talent | Tagged: Business and Economy, Employment, hr job description, hr job descriptions, Human Resources, human resources process, Job description, job description process, job evaluation, the process of job analysis, writing job descriptions | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
October 6, 2011
Are you still Fishing for employee motivation? This was a popular employee motivation strategy several years ago. There are lots of books on Amazon.com
that will teach you about how to motivate employees. Every business wants good employee relations and a happy, productive workforce. Strong and positive employee morale is necessary for optimum productivity. I can’t think of any client who has told me they didn’t want high employee satisfactory. All companies work hard to motivate employees.
Corporate leaders and business owners have a lot of reasons to know how to motivate employees. High levels of employee engagement make their jobs easier. They want less stress in their employee relations. They have profits to increase. They want to sharpen their competitive edge. They want to keep costs low and productivity high. They want to generate more revenue. They want, they want, they want… Are you reading this? They want to motivate employees for all their corporate reasons and this is why most companies fail in how to motivate employees.
Employee motivation, employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and employee relations will never improve if it is all about what the company wants. No one is going to work to make the company better or to reach company goals. Organizations will fail if they believe a slick, new “program” is the way to motivate employees. Employees will only be motivated when they know what’s in it for them. They will increase productivity only when their needs are met. Incentives to motivate employees must be tied to what they value and desire. Strategic employers know this. They work hard to understand what makes their employees tick. Only when employee values are linked to motivating incentives will companies succeed.
2 Comments | employee retention | Tagged: employee engagement, employee morale, Employee Relations, employee retention, employee satisfaction, Employment, How to motivate employees, Human Resources, Motivation | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
September 22, 2011
Entrepreneurs and business leaders report employee retention is still on of their top 3 challenges.
A 2011 AFLAC Workforce Report found that 18 percent of business owners see the benefits package as a direct influence on an employee’s decision to leave. The report lists voluntary benefits as a way to reduce costs and still offer quality benefits.
What is important to note, however, is that even in a recession and high unemployment, good people are willing to leave their jobs. This makes solid employee retention strategies an essential part of every business opeation. As the report states “it takes time and money to recruit, interview, train and hire a new employee.” Buisnesses who don’t drive employee retention strategies from the top down are going to lose their competitive edge.
If your business doesn’t have a written and implemented plan to minimize employee turnover, today is the best day to start!
5 Comments | employee retention | Tagged: Aflac, Compensation & Benefits, competitiion, Employee benefit, employee turnover, Human Resources, innovative benefits, job analysis, keeping good people | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
September 17, 2011
When I finished my active duty service with the Navy I took a job as a sales representative. The company sent me to a training session with a world renowned sales trainer. During one session he asked us to list the first word that came to mind when we heard the term “salesperson”. We all listed words like “pushy”, “obnoxious”, and “slick”. He told us that if those are the words 95% of the pubic used to describe salespeople we should become the exact opposite and we’d be successful. For me that strategy worked very well.
Employers can apply this lesson after they read the article linked below. Not only does the article list the most hated jobs, it also provides great insight as to what employees hate most about a job. It’s not what you might think!
Today it is the company with the best talent that beats the competition and increases profits. Employers don’t want their top talent hating their jobs. Read the article then be sure your company is doing the opposite!
10 Most Hated Jobs
Leave a Comment » | employee retention, Top talent | Tagged: competitiion, employee engagement, employee motivation, employee retention, employee turnover, HR, Human Resources, job analysis, profits, reduce turnover, retention | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
September 14, 2011
The link below is to an article in the Wall Street Journal about the President’s jobs bill. It is an excellent overview and every employer should read this. Some key points contained in the jobs plan….
- Nothing really addresses the underling cause of current unemployment; the real estate mess. Until real estate, housing in particular, starts to make a comeback we will not see tremendous growth in jobs.
- Like a domino effect, the housing crisis has created an access to capital crisis. This was cited in Inc. magazine as the number one reason why small businesses are not hiring in a robust way. According to the article below nothing about capital is addressed in the plan. Small business tax breaks are part of the bill, but they appear to be temporary and most small business owners will take those savings to the bottom line, not necessarily hire people.
- A large portion of the plan relies on government sponsored/funded construction projects. While this may offer some temporary unemployment relief for that industry, it is doubtful the Super Committee will spare the axe for these projects.
Read through the article and leave me your thoughts. The comments on the WSJ site are particularly interesting.
Article Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904836104576560593248402036.html
1 Comment | hiring process | Tagged: Business, Employment, HR, Human Resources | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
September 7, 2011
Give employees a career instead of a job
“That’s just not fair!”
Whether it is true or not, this is not something you want employees to say. Often is beyond a company’s power to control how employees feel. However, company’s can avoid creating situations that might cause an employee to think or say this. Companies DO have a great deal of control in which they hire and promote.
In my executive search business we often hear from executives who feel this way. Either they have been passed over for a promotion or they have seen others passed over multiple times. Sometimes their company never considered an insider for an open position. Whatever the reason, these people feel like a commodity instead of a valued contributor. If this kind of perception starts to permeate the workforce the company is doomed – especially now that top talent is harder to find.
There are many reasons why a company would go outside to hire top talent; they don’t have a qualified person internally, they want fresh perspectives, they want competitor intelligence, etc… Hiring outside is expensive, time intensive, and dangerous (see steps 1 & 2)! Often it can be avoided if companies have a career development culture instead of an open seat culture.
Hiring from your current employees only works if you diligently practice Step 3. It also means a huge ROI on your labor expense. When employees believe they have the opportunity to grow and advance they don’t spend time looking elsewhere. When they enjoy a company development program they have greater confidence to take on more responsibility. Employees will take their performance more seriously and pursue self-development agendas. Giving an employee a career is a long-term investment strategy, one that every company must follow.
This is the final installment of the four steps to building a high performance team. Putting these steps into practice will have tremendous impact on company profitability and competitive edge. Don’t wait until your competition has all the top talent, beat them to the best people now!
Leave a Comment » | employee retention, Top talent | Tagged: competitiion, employee engagement, employee motivation, employee retention, employee turnover, Employment, health career professionals, hiring best practices, HR, Human Resources, job benchmarking, Job description, keeping good people, Recruitment, reduce turnover, retention, selection, Small business, turnover | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
August 31, 2011
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Align training with business priorities and coming trends.
Why do high performance sports teams film their games and practices? Why do they scout their opponents at other games? Why do they watch film of their opponents? It’s because they want to be prepared for the future. They want to know what to expect in an upcoming game. Team practice is not about coaching the fundamentals; it is about adjusting their game plan. Teams use the visual feedback from film to spot weaknesses of their opponents to exploit. All of the practice and film work is so they can do the right things, make adjustments, and win the game.
Employee training should serve the same purpose. Building a high performance corporate team requires ongoing improvement because business is a world of ongoing change. Companies must articulate and value a culture of continuous employee development. Employees should be encouraged through programs like tuition assistance and in-house training to take charge of their own professional development.
Training, however, just for the sake of training, is wrong! Employee training must support the core business mission and strategy. The training companies develop, offer, and support must also prepare employees for the future. Few corporate leaders believe that today’s talent needs will be the same in the future. Therefore companies must create a culture and partnership with employees to prepare for what it ahead. Just as high performance sports team practice and develop to win the next game, corporate teams train and develop to accomplish their mission and beat tomorrow’s competition.
Leave a Comment » | Top talent | Tagged: competitiion, Education and Training, employee engagement, employee motivation, Human Resources, keeping good people, performance base hiring, retention, strategic employer | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
July 13, 2011
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A few weeks ago I took an extended trip with my family. The first morning I woke up before everyone else to go for a run. As I dressed I suddenly realized I had forgotten my running cap. That might not seem like a big deal, but it makes a real difference in the quality and enjoyment of my run. I always run with that cap, it keeps the perspiration out of my eyes, provides a shield from the sun, and has a safety reflector quality to it. When I got into mile two my eyebrows didn’t work as well as that cap. I spent the rest of my run annoyed and wiping my eyes . In the haste of packing for the trip I forgot to include a small detail that created a consequential impact.
The same is true when a company is trying to hire a key player. The small details have a consequential impact. Forget to create a performance profile? Than all you have is a job description. Forget to write an attraction oriented job posting? Than all you have are ‘B’ and ‘C’ level people applying. Forget to profile the job? Then all you can do is validate a resume. Missing just one of these details causes companies to make costly hiring mistakes.
If I had used a packing checklist I might have remembered my running cap. Likewise, companies that use structured hiring process make much better hiring decisions.
Leave a Comment » | hiring process, role analysis, Top talent | Tagged: employee turnover, hiring best practices, Human Resources, job benchmarking, job descriptions, performance base hiring | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
