Category: Talent Acquisition Strategy

The Importance of an Employer Value Proposition and Employer Brand Strategy

Posted on by skatz

As employers face increasing competition for the best talent, a well-defined employer value proposition (EVP) and employer brand strategy have become more important than ever. In a candidate-driven market, employers need to stand out to their target talent audiences through a unified EVP and employer brand. High-quality candidates know what they want out of a future employer, and organisations that don’t effectively show their value to candidates risk losing them to the competition.

If you google EVP and employer brand, you’re likely to find thousands of definitions. At PeopleScout we define EVP and employer brand as the following:

  • Employer Brand: The perception and lived experiences of what it’s like to work for your organisation.
  • Employer Value Proposition: Captures the essence of your uniqueness as an employer and the give and the get between you and your employees.

Both concepts revolve around the qualities that make a company a great place to work, as well as the benefits, career growth opportunities, work-life balance and company culture that attract top talent.

EVPs are particularly important in today’s job market, as a majority of candidates heavily evaluate companies before they even consider applying for open positions, and it can be a critical differentiator in a company’s ability to attract talent.

Key Elements of a Successful EVP

As HR Technologist explains, “An employee value proposition must be thoughtfully designed since it has a direct impact on behavior. It must look into the tangible and intangible elements of the psychological contracts between the employer and the employee. It must start way before the employee joins, even before the person is a job candidate; it must appeal to the person irrespective of whether the person intends to work with the organisation or not.”

A successful EVP articulates the value that you offer to your employees. At PeopleScout, we establish three elements to support a successful EVP:

  • Pillars: Pillars are the core components of your EVP and are informed by insights into your cultural DNA and your audience’s motivations. Pillars are used to define the relevance of your EVP and are based on research.
  • Narrative: The narrative is usually a single, manifesto-style paragraph – it’s the emotive “sell” of what you offer. The narrative defines consistency throughout your EVP and employer brand strategies.
  • Strapline: Finally, the strapline is a concise phrase that summarises your overall offering – it focuses on being memorable rather than detailed. The strapline defines a point of focus throughout your EVP materials.

By creating pillars, a narrative and a strapline to support your EVP and employer brand strategy, employers will be set up for a successful deployment both internally to current employees and externally to candidates and the broader marketplace.

For example, we recently completed an EVP and employer brand project for a global law firm based in the UK called Linklaters. Here are the pillars, narrative and strapline that we created to bring the project to life.

Linklaters employment brand pillars
Linklaters employer brand narrative
Linklaters employer brand strapline

Benefits of a Well-Managed Employer Value Proposition and Employer Brand Platform

Organisations that effectively deliver on their EVP can enjoy a host of benefits, including decreased annual employee turnover and increased new hire commitment, according to Gartner research. Other benefits include improved brand sentiment, increased reach to target audiences, a greater sense of commitment from current employees and cost savings related to compensation.

Improved Brand Sentiment

Organisations with effective EVPs are more attractive to candidates and are considered employers of choice – organisations where candidates want to work. In order to make yourself an employer of choice, you have to be able to appeal to your ideal candidates by differentiating your company from your competitors.

A compelling EVP and employer brand can move your brand sentiment in a positive direction. A clearly defined EVP creates the foundation on which to build your internal and external employer brand messaging, which allows you to have greater influence over what you are known for and how you are perceived.

Increased Reach

A thoroughly researched and tested EVP is designed to speak more effectively to your target talent audiences. When you are able to tailor the core of your message to individual audiences, while keeping your narrative and strapline consistent throughout, more diverse groups of candidates will respond favorably. This has real business impact. According to a Morgan Stanley study in The Atlantic, there is a positive relationship between equity returns and the gender composition of an organisation’s employee base, as an example.

We work with an organisation in the UK that was once an online automobile magazine but is now a digital publication. The organisation struggled with brand perception. Many candidates thought the company was old-fashioned, and they struggled to attract women to their open positions. We developed an “adventures in awesomeness” EVP that spoke to the digital transformation that had already happened at the employer. This EVP not only increased brand attractiveness and shifted sentiment, but also increased the number of women visiting the careers site by 300 percent.

Greater Employee Commitment

Organisations with strong EVPs enjoy significantly higher levels of engagement from employees. In one example studied by Cornell University, a beverage bottling and distribution company launched an initiative to develop an integrated employer brand. Around the same time, the company decreased headcount by more than 6 percent and maintained tight control over salary raises. Despite these difficulties, employee engagement grew at the company from 36 percent to 55 percent over a five-year period.

This study suggests that when you clearly articulate your EVP and the behaviors you’re looking for from employees, it can be a factor in successfully attracting and retaining employees with the right cultural fit for your organisation. This yields more engaged employees.

Compensation Savings

Organisations with effective EVPs are able to reduce the compensation premium required to attract new candidates. Another example highlighted in the Cornell paper found that organisations with a well-managed employer brand had a 26 percent economic advantage in terms of labor cost.

Key Considerations When Creating an EVP and Employer Brand Programme

There is ample data that shows that effective EVPs generate real business benefits. To realise those benefits, there is a lot of work that goes into creating a successful EVP and employer brand. Before launching an EVP internally or externally, it’s critical that companies spend time researching, defining, developing, optimising and deploying an EVP that accurately represents the company’s value to employees.

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Posted on by epadmin

So, what is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), and why should companies use it? RPO can boost your talent acquisition by optimising processes amid fierce competition. Whether you’re exploring RPO or want to learn more about maximising it, this guide will provide valuable insights. Understand how partnering with an RPO can boost your talent acquisition outcomes.

This overview explains RPO, answering common questions, including:

  • How RPO works
  • Types of RPO
  • The benefits of outsourcing recruitment
  • What to look for when selecting an RPO partner

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is a type of business process outsourcing (BPO) in which an external organisation (RPO provider) supports an employer’s talent acquisition function by assuming responsibility for some or all facets of the talent acquisition function to support some or all of an employer’s hiring needs.

For example, an RPO engagement may only cover sourcing and screening candidates (partial-cycle RPO) or it may cover the entire recruitment lifecycle from receiving hiring manager’s requisitions all the way to presenting and negotiating job offers to candidates (full-cycle RPO). An RPO provider works closely with an organisation’s internal talent acquisition team, either remotely or on-site.

👉 Debunk common RPO myths.

talent recruitment

Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Recruitment?

Below, we highlight a few high-level reasons why organisations seek RPO providers, and conversely, when RPO may not be a good fit:

REASONS TO ENGAGE AN RPO PROVIDER:

  • If your organisation is looking for more speed, agility and flexibility in your recruiting processes
  • If you are looking to improve the quality of candidates applying to your positions or struggle to attract the right talent
  • If your organisation is looking for a more cost-effective and standardised recruiting process
  • If your organisation’s current use of recruitment technology isn’t up to par and you are seeking a variety of digital upgrades specific to your organisation’s recruiting objectives
  • If your organisation is looking to increase diversity hiring, RPO providers can help you uncover new diverse talent recruitment sources and strategies

REASONS NOT TO ENGAGE AN RPO PROVIDER:

  • If your company culture is not ready for outsourcing talent recruitment
  • If you just need a vendor to fill a quick requisition or two as opposed to a partner to support your talent acquisition strategy
  • If your organisation isn’t open to optimising your recruiting processes and tech stack

Remember, these reasons are not set in stone. Only you and your organisation can assess if you are in need of an RPO partner’s services. An RPO partner should customise their solution to match your needs and offer flexible options to support for peak hiring, hard-to-fill positions, compressed time frames and more—however it works best for you.

👉 Are you Ready for RPO? Ask Yourself These Three Questions.

How Does RPO Work?

During an RPO engagement, the RPO provider’s team works closely with their client’s talent acquisition team and hiring managers to learn the organisation’s long-term talent acquisition strategy, hiring challenges and goals.

The RPO provider then designs a customised recruiting program tailored to support the client’s specific needs. RPO is not a one-size-fits-all solution. A leading RPO partner will customise its service to match your requirements, which could include any or all of the following talent acquisition activities:

RPO Process

👉 Learn more about what to expect in an RPO partnership.

What is the Difference Between an RPO Provider and a Staffing Agency?

An RPO provider is distinct from a staffing agency or headhunter. Staffing agencies identify candidates, obtain their résumés or CVs and submit them to the client.

An RPO partnership brings a higher level of engagement. Your RPO provider will do a deep dive into your talent acquisition goals and challenges and then create and execute a customised recruitment program—and report back on the results. An RPO partner is a trusted advisor who can help you gain agility and future-proof your business.

👉 Learn the top differences between an RPO and a staffing agency.

What are the Types of RPO Models?

Designed for flexibility, RPO can be customised to meet your needs. Fully outsourcing recruitment may not make sense for all organisations. But that doesn’t mean RPO won’t provide value if you’re not ready to go all in. RPO teams are often used alongside existing in-house recruitment teams. The RPO can complement your current recruitment program by handling recruiting for specific job groups, locations or business units.

Here are various types of RPO that are commonly available:

Full-Cycle RPO

The RPO partner owns the entire recruitment cycle from opening requisitions all the way to presenting and negotiating the job offer—and all activities in between. This solution offers the client the full benefit of the RPO partner’s expertise which most organisations don’t have in-house, including value-added services like market insights, recruitment technology and employer brand consulting.

Partial Cycle RPO

The RPO partner covers certain parts of the recruitment process to boost internal recruitment resources. For example, the RPO partner might source and screen candidates and then hand them over to the in-house recruitment team to schedule interviews and manage offers.

Project RPO

Project RPO engagements are typically fixed-term contracts meant to address specific recruitment challenges such as seasonal hiring peaks, hard-to-fill positions, compressed timeframes and more. The RPO is there to augment the in-house team, often due to rapid growth. These engagements kick off quickly, and the required positions are filled within a few months.

👉 Learn more about project RPO.

Modular RPO

Modular RPO, or variable RPO, is a strategic approach to managing the recruitment process in an ultra-focused manner. It involves outsourcing specific components of the recruitment process to an RPO provider, or as a supplement to an existing outsourced recruitment engagement, providing quick access to targeted and customised recruitment support. With a modular or à la carte approach, you choose from a range of services based on your requirements.

👉 Learn more about modular RPO.

High-Volume RPO

High-volume RPO involves sourcing, screening, interviewing and hiring large numbers of applicants for similar openings or job types. It requires a tricky balance of keeping substantial quantities of job applicants moving through the recruitment process at speed. Plus, throughout the year it requires talent acquisition teams to scale up quickly to meet seasonal demand, like for holiday shopping periods or during peak travel times.

👉 Learn how to overcome high-volume hiring challenges.

Recruitment Cost Per Hire

What are the Benefits of RPO?

Now that you can answer the question, “What is recruitment process outsourcing?”, you may be wondering why organisations engage an RPO provider. Partnering with an experienced RPO gives you access to extensive recruitment knowledge across industries, roles and regions. RPOs have managed every type of hiring campaign imaginable. Whether you need help with one function or end-to-end recruiting, RPO offers advantages including:

Minimise Costs

Every day a role goes unfilled, your organisation loses productivity, which can lead to losses in revenue and profits. Plus, inefficiencies in your organisation’s hiring processes can result in lost revenue and more hours spent recruiting. And, if your organisation hires the wrong person, you’ll spend even more time and money recruiting and training a replacement for the bad hire. By streamlining and optimising recruitment processes, improving the time-to-hire and retention rates, RPO providers can increase your recruiting return on investment and deliver real cost savings to your bottom line. In fact, Everest Group states that organisations can expect a 45% to 55% annual savings with RPO compared to in-house recruitment.

Access Higher Quality Talent Faster

As skills shortages and talent scarcity becomes more challenging, having an RPO team digging into passive sourcing to access niche skills sets will boost time to hire and improve quality-of-hire. RPO providers leverage their comprehensive talent networks and effective screening and assessment tools to produce stronger candidates and more diverse talent pools. This keeps hiring managers happy and helps your organisation achieve its goals.

Agility & Scalability

A leading RPO provider should flex to meet your requirements. Your organisation can scale the amount of work your RPO provider performs to better manage your recruitment cost-per-hire goals and recruiting budget. When you have an increased demand for talent, an RPO provider can promptly scale up your team of dedicated recruiters to keep on top of your increased demands. This works the other way around as well: when there is less demand, we can scale down, saving you recruitment spend, and you avoid layoffs in your talent acquisition team during low demand periods.

Enhanced Candidate Experience

You want your recruitment process to leave every applicant, regardless of whether they get the job, with a positive experience. Your RPO partner can advise on ways to improve the candidate experience including career site audits, job application recommendations and how to leverage technology to speed up the process and reduce friction.

👉 Get Inside the Candidate Experience with our exclusive research report.

Best-Fit Technology

RPO providers can help you implement technology solutions that balance human expertise with automation. RPO partners have expertise with platforms across the HR and talent acquisition tech stack and can make recommendations to help you attract and engage talent more effectively. PeopleScout’s talent acquisition platform, Affinix™ is a mobile-first, cloud-based platform that creates a consumer-like candidate experience and streamlines the sourcing process.

Access More Expertise

Partnering with an RPO means you gain important talent acquisition expertise without having to invest in internal resources. RPO partners have developed a depth and breadth of experience from working across many clients, industries, job types and regions. While they offer recruitment sourcing best practices, they also offer value-added services that will optimise and streamline each phase of the recruiting process like employer branding, recruitment marketing, skills assessment, market insights, specialist sourcing solutions and more.

Improve Diversity

Through experience collected over many client engagements, RPO teams are knowledgeable about different talent attraction options and can help you expand to new job boards, social media groups, online forums and events to engage a more diverse workforce. Plus, RPOs understand the regional nuances of DE&I issues. For example, in some countries like Poland, it is not legal to ask candidates their ethnicity, gender, etc.

Workforce Planning Strategy

Leading RPO providers can provide labour market insights, talent intelligence and benchmarking data. With access to these insights, you have the data you need to support your workforce strategy as well as tactical business decisions. You can capitalise on the latest market analysis, thought leadership and competitive intelligence to inform your talent strategy. Your RPO partner can provide analytics to help you understand what’s working so you can maximise your ROI.

Global Reach

Leading organisations are taking a much more holistic view of the talent landscape and are looking for ways to standardise across regions. Working with a single partner for multi-country RPO eliminates the need for multiple relationships and saves time and money—while raising the quality of your hires. An RPO provider can be your most valuable partner in global expansion, because they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience gained through working with clients in different industries around the world.

Seamless Compliance

A significant aspect of recruiting is dealing with the multitude of compliance requirements that vary by jurisdiction. Your partner should help you navigate the labour laws and compliance issues that accompany any sourcing program. An RPO provider’s rigorous processes ensure a legally compliant hiring process and streamlined responses to audits. Additionally, a partner can help you anticipate any communication and training issues so that you can tackle them head-on.

What Should I Look for in an RPO Company?

If you’ve decided that RPO will be a good fit for your organisation, you may be wondering how you go about choosing the best provider. Here are just three things to consider in order to make RPO a truly transformational model for your business.

Partnership

The best RPO partners understand that each company has unique needs. Look for an RPO partner that is collaborative, that will listen to your ideas and take the time to truly understand your business and pain points. Avoid providers with a one-size-fits-all approach. The right partner balances consistency with customisation.

At PeopleScout, for 30 years we’ve built our services on integrity. We won’t say one thing during the sales pitch only to reset expectations after the ink is dry. We won’t make you comply with a cookie-cutter recruitment process. If we mess up, we’ll make it right. That’s why we have some of the longest running client relationships in the RPO space. 

Talent Advisory Solutions

A strong employer brand is key to recruitment success. The right RPO partner offers talent advisory solutions to develop your employer brand, EVP, recruitment marketing approaches, candidate assessments and more.

Companies often use separate agencies for recruitment marketing and RPO. This silod approach means less accountability. The agency is less likely to be held accountable for their campaigns leading to high quality candidates entering later candidate journey stages. On the other side, the RPO partner has limited means to provide feedback on the campaigns and the impact the ads have on recruitment outcomes.

Look for an RPO with in-house expertise (not one who outsources to an external agency) to consult on your entire talent program, not just filling roles. A holistic approach attracts and hires quality candidates.

Technology Acquisition Technology

HR tech is rapidly evolving, and RPO partners are well positioned to advise on tools like AI and analytics to improve recruiting. Your RPO partner should offer expertise on talent tech. Others have their own proprietary talent acquisition platforms. Look for an RPO partner who will support a modular approach, so you can continue to benefit from existing investments and grow your recruitment tech stack as your needs change.

👉 Get the most out of RPO with this podcast.

talent acquisition recruiter

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing? The Keys to RPO Success

The most important key to successfully engaging an RPO provider for services is to have a clear understanding of what your organisation is trying to achieve. Then, you can choose an RPO provider that best meets your needs.

One thing to keep in mind on your RPO journey: RPO engagements are not only about outsourcing your recruiting, they are also about finding the best partner to help manage the people, process, technology and strategy of your talent acquisition function.

There is no single best option, only the option that best aligns with your organisational needs. To determine if RPO is right for your organisation, take an audit of what your organisation’s specific recruitment and sourcing challenges are and if you have the internal capabilities to overcome your challenges.

Rethinking Work: Providing Flexibility in the Workplace

Posted on by epadmin


Checking the status of an important project while waiting to catch a flight. Replying to a coworker’s email from the comfort of your favorite café. Shifting your hours to make time to take an aging parent to a doctor’s visit. Each of these scenarios has one thing in common – they are made possible through flexibility in the workplace.


Flexible work arrangements are surging in popularity. In the U.S., 94 percent of employers provide some form of flexible work arrangement according to a survey conducted by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. A survey conducted by Regus revealed that some 54 percent of global respondents now report that they work remotely 2.5 days a week or more.


You may be wondering: What’s behind the surge in popularity for flexible workplaces? Well, the data speaks for itself. Global Workplace Analytics found the following:

  • AT&T found that its remote workers worked five more hours than its office workers.
  • Compaq’s flexible workforce increased productivity between 15 and 45 percent.
  • American Express’ flexible workforce had a 43 percent higher productivity level than their traditional counterparts.

In this article, we’ll cover what workplace flexibility means, why you should consider bringing more flexibility to your workplace and how you can best manage the challenges and opportunities presented by a flexible workforce

So, What Does Workplace Flexibility Mean and Why Should I Care?

Workplace flexibility is an alternative to traditional workplace models that dictate when and where workers perform their work. Workplace flexibility permits employees to choose when, where and how they work.


Flexibility in the workplace shouldn’t be seen as just a perk you offer to employees; it should be viewed as a critical part of your organisation’s talent acquisition strategy – and as a fundamental way to increase productivity.

How Employers Benefit With More Flexibility in the Workplace

A Broader Talent Pool


When your workplace culture allows talent to work from anywhere, your talent pool instantly becomes global. Your organisation can source and recruit talent across the country or across the globe. With the rise of communication tools such as Skype and Slack, secure intranets and video conferencing, distance is becoming less of a hurdle to collaborating with talent globally.


Improved Employer Branding


According to LinkedIn’s 2017 Global Recruiting Trends, 80 percent of talent leaders agree that employer brand has a significant impact on their ability to hire great talent. Offering flexible workplace policies communicates to potential employees that your organisation is committed to helping its employees achieve a better work-life balance, which in turn can help improve jobseekers’ perception of you as an employer.


Cost-Savings


The most prosaic benefit to flexibility in the workplace is cost savings. Costs on business necessities such as office supplies, real estate and utilities are reduced when your organisation provides employees the ability to work off-site.

How Employees Benefit With More Flexibility in the Workplace

Meet Personal Obligations


Employees have a variety of personal obligations and family responsibilities. If you provide them with a flexible workplace, they can make that important parent-teacher conference during the day, go back to school or simply be home when the engineer comes to fix the dishwasher all without having to neglect work in favor of personal responsibilities. If you trust people to get their work done in a way that works for them, that trust is usually rewarded.


Employee Empowerment


Flexible workplaces can give employees an increased feeling of personal control over their schedule and work environment. By allowing employees to set their own style for delivery, you appeal to the entrepreneurial spirit—which can be good for your employees’ sense of self-determination.


Reduced Commuting Time and Costs


For some employees, commutes of more than an hour each way are not uncommon. If employees are allowed to work from home that can potentially save them fourteen hours of time, untold money in fuel costs and wear and tear on the road – not to mention the effect on well-being.

Types of Flexibility in the Workplace

Job Sharing


Job sharing is when two employees share the same role. Job sharing can be very appealing for your employees who may not want to work full-time, for example after having a child or with elderly relatives in need of care.


In a job share arrangement, one role gains two brains – two people with passion and creativity who are committed to success.
There are a number of ways employees in a job-sharing arrangement can manage their responsibilities. Some employees sharing a role may segment the work by each taking responsibility for specific deliverables and tasks charged to them.


Others may split the same workload, with one employee working on projects and passing along their work to their job share partner while they are off the clock. The model you and your employees choose will depend on the nature of the work performed and what preferences and skills each employee possess.


At PeopleScout UK, we have the luxury of employing two wonderfully talented women in our Head of Assessment role. This role wasn’t initially designed to be a job share. However, after our incumbent in the role wanted to reduce their time in-office after becoming a mom, another talented colleague stepped up to support the team.


As both women began building their families and took on the challenges of motherhood, their ability to provide 100 percent to the role was never compromised, as when one needed to take a step back the other is always there to pick up where they left off.


By providing the flexibility our employees needed to share this role, we retained two of our brightest minds. And more importantly, we let our employees know that you should never have to choose between being a parent and being a professional, you can do both equally well with the right support.


Remote Work


Remote work is when an employee works primarily from home or an off-site location. A well-planned remote work programme can help your organization increase overall productivity and promote greater job satisfaction among your teams and may even help you in improving your employee retention efforts.


For PeopleScout UK, we did not always see remote work as an employee perk, rather we viewed it as a practical financial decision to reduce office expenses at our London location. We began our intrepid adventure into remote work by hot-desking—the practice of multiple workers using a single work station—our client services team.


What began as an exclusively financial-based decision borne of necessity quickly paid unexpected dividends. When our client service team members didn’t feel the need to stay affixed to their desks, something marvelous happened, they became more engaged with clients which in turn brought in more business for PeopleScout UK.


We were not entirely sure what to expect when we initially opened up our organisation to become more flexible. However, after witnessing the success of our remote work programme one thing was clear: flexibility was a business asset, not a hindrance to productivity.


Flexible Scheduling 


Flexible scheduling allows an employee to work hours that differ from the traditional company start and stop time.


According to data compiled by The Economist, working fewer hours correlates with higher levels of productivity. Nations like Greece average 2,000 work hours a year, while nations like Germany average around 1,400, but yield 70 percent more productivity at work. This suggests that fixed schedules and mandatory hours may not be the key to getting the most out of your employees.


Typically, a flexible schedule involves either a compressed work week or flexible starting and stopping times. In a compressed work week, the most common schedule is a four-day work week where employees work four ten-hour days—variations on this schedule could include three twelve-hour work days, etc. This scheduling flexibility allows employees to have an additional day or two to relax, spend with family and friends or pursue activities and causes that interest them.


At PeopleScout UK, we encourage our colleagues to take full advantage of our flexible scheduling options. For example, we had a colleague who wanted to leave work a half hour early once a week to attend choir practice. We not only supported them by allowing them to flex the hours, but we also couldn’t help wondering if they’d like to invite their co-workers to their performance. As it turns out they were happy to have some new people for the audience, and many members of their team showed up to cheer them on.


By promoting and supporting our colleagues interests and encouraging others to do the same, we are communicating that we see our workers as whole persons and that their personal achievements are just as important to everyone at PeopleScout UK as their professional ones.


When your employees feel you appreciate them for more than what they can contribute to your bottom line, that you appreciate what they contribute to their community as a whole, you help engender a familial office atmosphere where employees feel both empowered and respected.

Managing Flexibility in the Workplace

Stay in Compliance


Before your organisation begins offering your employees flexible work opportunities, you need to make sure your programme won’t become a legal headache. Issues to consider include workers’ compensation and state/national overtime regulations, as well as matters of individual responsibility for company property used off-site. Your organisation’s legal counsel should review any flexible work programme proposals to make sure you stay in compliance with your country’s employment laws and the regions your organisation operates in to ensure you can provide the flexibility in the workplace you to your employees.


Stay Connected


It is extremely important to stay connected with employees in flexible work arrangements. Make sure that your managers and in-office employees remember to include remote employees and support them to feel like they’re part of the team. While conference calls and email chains are effective means of communicating with remote workers, nothing substitutes being in the same room. Leverage videoconferencing technology such as Skype or FaceTime to bring more of a face-to-face feel for remote employees in important meetings.


Be Fair


A major key to managing a successful flexible workplace is ensuring that employees who opt for more traditional work arrangements are treated as equitably as their non-traditional co-workers. When you treat your all employees fairly, they feel respected, cared for and may develop a stronger sense of trust in your organisation. Make sure to monitor your flexible workplace policy and periodically tweak it to address new or unforeseen inconsistencies in the treatment of workers both in traditional and non-traditional work arrangements.

The Gist

To reap the benefits of flexibility in the workplace, you need to continuously evaluate your flexible work programme and monitor which employees use it, how the programme is being used and take note of any challenges participants and managers are experiencing.


You should routinely speak with both participating employees and managers regarding if your programme is working as intended, how it can be improved and what their individual experiences are while using the programme. Assess their satisfaction with the programme and tweak it as necessary.


Remember, as employers, we hire whole people. We need to take them as a package: both the things that directly benefit our organisations and the things we may need to accommodate for them.
 

Attitude is the New Experience

Posted on by epadmin

There have been numerous studies on turnover rates in multiple industries, and they all land on a similar conclusion: a high proportion of staff fail within the first 18 months of starting a new job. In fact, one study found that figure to be 46 percent of 20,000 new hires in America. When you look at the reasons why, 89 percent of those who failed did so due to cultural misalignment or attitudinal reasons, rather than technical capability.


To try and buck this trend, I’ll share with you a few tips on why it’s so important to attract and retain the right people, rather than the right skill set and how you can adopt this approach in your organisation.


First, you need to have a great culture, which is essential to keeping people in the building. Each company’s culture and mission will be unique, and you need to make sure you have values that you stand by. Secondly – and this is the main area that I’m going to focus on in this article – you need to have a recruitment strategy that is aimed at finding the right people for the organisation rather than the right skill set at every opportunity, from graduate roles through to senior management. At our client PHD Media Worldwide (PHD), we’ve focused on hiring people that align with our values of collaboration, courage and curiosity with conviction – and it’s really, really helped!


“Hire for attitude, train for skills” is a phrase that every HR professional has uttered once or heard being uttered from colleagues. However, unfortunately, only a small number of businesses apply it (like, actually apply it) to their recruitment strategy. Whilst a lot of job advertisements will focus on the soft skills and cultural alignment piece, often the interview process can revert to focusing purely on the hard skills and capability a candidate has from day one.


We work in an ever-changing industry, with the constant emergence of new technologies, new software and increasing shift in focus from traditional channels to more sophisticated digital channels. Change takes place now at a faster rate than ever before, and what you knew yesterday might not necessarily prepare for you tomorrow. So, with that in mind, why do some businesses focus on purely trying to tick skills boxes? The candidate who feels fully aligned with their organisation’s strategy and beliefs and is a part of its continued success will be more motivated to learn the necessary skills for tomorrow than someone who only has today’s skill set and not the buy-in.


Here is how we can go about finding those right candidates in various levels of the organisation:


Graduate Roles


For so long, the media industry, for example, has only considered candidates from a media/advertising/marketing-related field and often opt for interns who have gained first-hand experience working with their particular agency. When interviewing candidates with a specific degree and asking them what they know about a media planning and buying agency, their knowledge levels are comparable with that of any other degree – very little!


A huge amount of the first 12-18 months in a media agency is about learning as much as possible. A very small amount of what you learned in university actually applies to what you are now working on in terms of real briefs with real multi-million-dollar budgets attached. With that mind, at PHD we’ve had a lot of success in opening up our doors to entry-level staff from any degree/non-degree background.


Zac and Tiffany, two great coordinators who joined PHD in the last 12 months, even wrote an article recently on how university prepares you for your first job in media. Notice how throughout the article, it never mentions that it’s the marketing theory they were taught in school or the principles of advertising that has helped them succeed. Instead, it’s the focus on meeting deadlines, presentation ability, working under pressure and as part of a team. These are the skills that you need to succeed in your first job, and when you couple them with the right attitude, you can really learn anything, relatively quickly.


More Senior Roles 


Believe it or not, it’s those same soft skills that apply to the more senior roles that we look to fill. Let’s face it – at one point or another, we have all had to “fake it ‘til we make it” in our careers. A little white lie in an interview, a little oversell of our abilities and BANG, we’ve landed ourselves a gig without a clue of what we’re actually going to do. When faced with this situation, those with a good attitude, flexibility and the ability to learn quickly will be able to adapt and succeed in their roles better than those without these critical skills.


Additionally, no one knows exactly what they are doing on day one. We all have our own systems, processes and ways of doing things. At PHD, we have our proprietary planning tool, SOURCE. Unless you have worked on it before, there is a learning curve for everyone to pick it up, and it’s the pace and ability with which people pick it up that matters, as they would have zero experience in using it before. All companies have their own processes and tools, which they will expect you to learn over time.


Yes, you need to have a fundamental understanding of what you are talking about and the more senior the role, the more of an understanding we expect you to have. But we want to talk to someone about their attitude towards certain situations, learn how they act when everything goes wrong (because it does sometimes) and what they would do in the difficult times and how they bring a team along on the journey with them. Ultimately, someone who ticks the attitude box will get the job, and we will often wait until that person comes along, rather than simply fill a role with a candidate who doesn’t fit.


So, What is Attitude?


Attitude, for me, is a collection of soft skills that you can apply to every job. It’s not necessarily something that someone has been taught (or could be taught) but more an approach to work, an approach to learning and the way someone conducts themselves personally and professionally.


What does one look for when gauging attitude?
  • People who look for solutions to problems rather than people who find problems without resolve.
  • People who raise their hand rather than point their fingers.
  • People who make mistakes and have a sense of humility but then focus on what they can do next time to improve.
  • People who, when times get tough, dig in and rally everyone to achieve the same, rather than openly complain to others.
  • People who genuinely love their job and are interested in joining the organisation – this is half the battle, finding someone who wants to be on the same journey as you.
  • People who genuinely seek development/career growth opportunities.

Too often, and it’s so easy to, we get bogged down by the immediate needs of our new hire. It may be replacing someone who has left, or it might be a new role that has popped up because of workload increases. However, it works, every time, to be cautious and focus on hiring the right person for the organisation, because the longer-term impact of having the right person will really pay off and the struggle of having to dig a little harder to find them will soon be forgotten.


Read the original article on AdNews.au.

Talking Talent Leadership Profiles: A Q&A with David Wilkinson, Boeing Global Talent Acquisition

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David Wilkinson spends a lot of time in airplanes, and that’s not just because he works for Boeing. In global talent acquisition at the aerospace giant, he has lived and worked in London and Dubai and now leads his team from Mesa, Arizona in the U.S. While a lot of people talk about globalising talent acquisition, David actually lives it.


Regardless of whether he is looking towards the future of Boeing in the deserts of the U.S., the drizzle of the UK or the heat of the UAE, he is a talent champion. He’s also a member of the PeopleScout community. For this issue of PeopleScout NEXT, we caught up with David on an early morning call to learn about his insights on the future of talent acquisition.

What is the mission of Boeing Global Talent Acquisition?

Our journey is to become global talent champions. To us, that means delivering best-in-class solutions that unleash the full potential of Boeing’s people, products and services.


I’m really excited by that mission because it requires us to celebrate and champion talent at every opportunity. It also acknowledges the fact that it is a competition for talent, and we’re here to win.

What are some of your priorities as your team looks to the future?

The two things that I really think are the needle movers for us are operating globally and embracing an intentional use of talent technology. We are excited to work with PeopleScout and other valued partners in pursuit of those goals.


One of our main priorities is evolving our approach to talent technology. We’re working towards a holistic end-to-end technology strategy that will use data-driven insights to inform our experience and activities. I’m hoping that strategy will enable our teams to deliver the best experience every time, at every touch point.

What tools, methods and strategies are you exploring to achieve your approach to talent technology?

For me, the single greatest opportunity is technology. It’s also our single greatest dependency.


We’re adopting Workday globally. Given our scale, this is a significant endeavor. It’s been a two-year project, and we’re going to implement in 2019. So, our focus is on maximising every opportunity that this change offers.


I see great potential for more intentional tools usage. When you implement a brand-new technology, you can be more intentional about that technology and the way you use your tools, processes and systems. What does that entail for Boeing talent acquisition? It means looking at artificial intelligence, business automation, access to real-time data and more.


We also see opportunities in technology to enable our global journey. Working in talent acquisition in London for eight years, Dubai for 10 years and now the U.S., I’ve learned that there are very, very few truly global tools. What’s big in the U.S. might not be big in Europe and may not be used at all in Asia, for example. This is an important opportunity for us and one that I believe will truly impact the candidate experience.

What are you most proud of in your role at Boeing?

I have been really lucky to lead some great teams globally, and specifically, I’ve been really lucky with Boeing to lead teams in London, Manchester, Delhi, Bangalore, Dubai, Riyadh, Nepal, Beijing, Tokyo, Mesa, Chicago and Seattle. Each of these experiences has influenced my personal development.


When I look at Boeing’s mission to Connect, Protect, Explore and Inspire Our World Through Aerospace Innovation, I embrace the global nature of that mission and the power of connectivity. We want to connect, protect, explore and inspire the world.


My experience and my career journey across the globe demonstrate the power of connectivity. I’m proud to be learning and developing alongside teammates in Mesa and nationwide. So, I’m most proud of the global nature of my role and the journey I have been on – and how I have personally and professionally developed throughout that process.

What are you excited about for the future of talent acquisition?

It’s a similar theme – the opportunities provided by global technology and the opportunity to operate as a team that is globally efficient, locally relevant and resolutely focused on the candidate and user experience.


The opportunities that come with a global talent approach are long established. We know that, for example, there are a million graduates in India. There are also 200,000 Chinese nationals who pursue further education in the U.S., but they have yet to truly be embraced because it is difficult for employers to hire them.


We need to make it easier for talent to move around the globe, and even if you just look on a local scale, we need to make it easier for talent to move around the country. Then we need to make it possible for workers who have been influenced and enriched by an experience in a new location to return home with a more global perspective and stronger than when they left. That’s huge.


I’m energised daily by our mission to become global talent champions and to embrace an intentional use of talent technology. As I look to the future, that is what I’m most excited about as we evolve our partnership with PeopleScout and other valued partners.

Talking Talent: How Many Requisitions Should a Recruiter Carry?

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In this episode, we talk about a question that most employers ask – how many requisitions should a recruiter carry?

Unemployment in the U.S. is at the lowest level in decades while hiring is at record highs. This means that for nearly all roles, the competition for talent is intense. So, talent acquisition teams have more jobs to fill – and they’re harder than ever to fill. HR leaders and recruiting teams are under intense pressure. Given this reality – how many requisitions should recruiters be carrying? At what point should an HR leader make the case to add more recruiters? What’s the downside of a requisition load that includes too many – or too few?

To answer these questions – joining us on this episode are Linda Brenner and Tom McGuire, the co-founders and managing directors of Talent Growth Advisors. TGA is not your traditional consulting shop. They provide a mashup of finance and talent management expertise to clients including AT&T, Coca-Cola, Delta and more.

Linda leads client success efforts for Talent Growth Advisors – and gets personally involved in talent strategy design,talent acquisition process improvement work and recruiter skills assessment and development. Prior to starting an earlier iteration of the firm in 2004, Linda led operations, talent acquisition and talent management teams for Gap, Pepsi and Home Depot.

Tom helps the firm’s clients connect business value, intellectual capital and talent so they can make smarter people investments. Prior to co-founding TGA, Tom led global talent acquisition for Coca-Cola for 10 years. He left Coke to become CFO and then International President of Revlon. At the beginning of his career, Tom volunteered with the Peace Corps in El Salvador.

You can learn more on the Talent Growth Advisors website and access their recruiter workload calculator mentioned in the episode here.

Through The Grapevine: How to Create and Manage an Employee Referral Programme

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A well-managed employee referral programme may be the single most powerful weapon in an organisation’s recruitment arsenal. In fact, according to Silkroad’s Sources of Hire Report, employee referrals continue to be a top source for hires.

By encouraging employees to refer contacts in their professional networks for open positions you can reduce recruiting costs, improve candidate quality and increase employee engagement.

In this article, we explore the case for employee referral programmes, some of the top considerations organisations should be mindful of and how to properly manage a referral programme.

The Case for Developing an Employee Referral Programme

Intuitively, developing a formal employee referral programme makes sense. After all, who better to refer great candidates and sell those candidates on why they should join your organisation than your own employees?

Employee referral programmes make good business sense. Some of the benefits your organisation may reap from an employee referral programme include:

  • Faster time-to-hire: A LinkedIn study uncovered that it takes an average of 29 days to hire a referred candidate compared to 39 days to hire a candidate through a job board.
  • Less impact on your talent acquisition budget: An employee referral programme is an inexpensive sourcing strategy that relies primarily on word-of-mouth and internal communication. You don’t have to pay to advertise job posts. Due to the faster time-to-hire, organisations can cut internal costs as well, since recruiters won’t be spending as much time sourcing and interviewing candidates for open positions.
  • Top talent begets top talent: Another LinkedIn survey revealed that star employees tend to refer other star employees. Tapping into your top talent can help organisations source and hire high performers more effectively.
  • Better employee retention: Not only are candidates hired via an employee referral typically of higher quality, they also tend to stay at their jobs longer, with 46 percent remaining in their position for at least three years.

Employee Referral Programmes as an Extension of Employee Engagement

With employee referral programmes, saving time and money is just the beginning. Employee referrals also add value through improved employee engagement. Using employee referrals to hire candidates builds a more robust corporate culture by intersecting performance and engagement to drive business success through tapping current employees for qualified candidate referrals, thus simplifying the sourcing process.

Employees who recommend a new hire have a vested interest in onboarding and retaining that person, as many referral programmes include a requirement that the referred employee must be with the organisation for a specific period of time before the referring employee can get a referral bonus. What’s more, employees who refer candidates will feel a sense of commitment to ensure their referral’s success because they recommended the position.

Moreover, employees who are involved in the recruitment process may feel a greater sense of purpose towards the future of your company. By encouraging employees to submit referrals, you are letting them know you value their input and contribution.

What to Consider Before Implementing an Employee Referral Programme

Set Programme Objectives

Before implementing an employee referral programme, organisations should outline objectives in order to set a clear goal. Defining objectives early on in the process helps ensure your team is on the same page and knows exactly what is expected and when.

Setting objectives can be achieved by holding planning sessions with key stakeholders where you share the vision for the programme, develop strategies to achieve success and find solutions that are mutually agreed upon.

Objectives for an employee referral programme might include:

  • Improving quality-of-hire
  • Increasing new hire retention
  • Boosting employee morale and recognition
  • Lowering overall recruiting costs
  • Increasing diversity within the organisation
  • Sourcing candidates with a specific skill set
  • Reducing the time-to-hire for external candidates
  • Better targeting and sourcing of passive job seekers
  • Deepening the pipeline of potential applicants

Leverage Technology

Technology can help make the employee referral process better for both employers, employees and referrals. Using your technology tools can streamline processes and minimise inefficiencies and missed opportunities in the referral programme.

In an article with SHRM, Jennifer Newbill, Director of Global Employment Brand, Dell explains that Dell uses a combination of “white glove” and automated communications to manage its more than 40,000 annual employee referrals, making the process more manageable for the organisation’s talent acquisition teams.

Social Media Referrals

Recruitment marketing technology can allow you to post jobs on your organisation’s social channels in seconds. You can also leverage your existing employees’ social media networks – if your employees are willing to post on your behalf – to expand your reach.

Auto-Posting Open Roles

In order to get your employees more engaged in your employee referral programme, you should consider sharing job openings on a regular basis. Instead of sending out emails manually every time a position opens, you can automate this process through your recruitment email marketing tools.

For example, gig-economy start-up Fiverr leverages employee referral software that gamifies the referral process by adding a competitive element to referring candidates. The software assigns points to employees and credit for all the actions they take. The software also keeps employees up-to-date on the status of their referrals.

Make Jobs Shareable Through Employee Portals

Make it easier for employees to share job opportunities through their social media accounts and email. Adding social links on job posts will allow employees to automatically share job openings with just a few clicks. The quicker and easier jobs are to share, the more likely your employees will participate.

Referral Tracking

Tracking and appropriately attributing a referral is crucial to the programme’s success. To make tracking easier, a referral field should be added to applications. The referral field on the job application can be filled in with information about the referring employee, making referral tracking easier.

Managing an Employee Referral Programme

When it comes to managing a successful employee referral programme, there are a few elements to keep in mind. Ideally, every programme includes the following:

  • Incentives
  • A simple process
  • Feedback

Below, we explain how your organisation can manage each of these three elements within your employee referral programme.

Employee Referral Incentives

According to a survey conducted by LinkedIn, 40 percent of respondents were motivated to refer candidates for a monetary reward. What’s more, 68 percent stated they submitted a referral because they wanted to help their organisation. If you want to get the most impact out of your organisation’s employee referral programme, you should offer a combination of monetary and creative, non-monetary incentives for referrals.

  • Experiment with monetary reward amounts because there is no magic number that will motivate all employees. Periodically testing different amounts can allow you to optimise your financial incentives.
  • Employees who are more altruistic in nature may prefer the option of donating their referral bonus to a charity or cause close to their hearts.
  • An alternative to offering individual monetary incentives is to hold a quarterly prise drawing where every employee who has made a successful referral during the period is eligible to win.
  • While prises and cash incentives can be great motivators, other perks can be just as effective. Non-monetary rewards can include reserved parking spots, extra time off or first choice of shifts and schedules.

For a PeopleScout client and multinational auto parts and accessories manufacturer, we encourage their store managers, area managers and team members to refer quality candidates, including friends and family, to current job openings.

Once the employee’s referral applies to a position, our client lets a member of our recruiting team know that a referral has applied. In the system the candidate selects referral and the client lets us know.  This ensures we do not miss a referral and/or they selected the wrong source code when applying.  Our team then schedules an interview with the referral and if qualified, proceeds to extend a verbal offer.  If the referral is qualified, they will be scheduled with the store/hiring manager for an in-person interview, unless the referral was a quality candidate from the store manager and they already met them in person.

To assist our client in tracking the referrals coming in, our recruiters maintain a digital log of the number of referrals that were phone screened and referrals that were hired. Our client values this referral programme because it yields quality candidates and results in a faster time-to-hire for critical positions.   When a referral is screened the recruiter ensure the source code is correct in the ATS so we provide stats and results of referrals.

Programme highlights include:

  • When we onboard and train our client’s new managers, PeopleScout emphasises the employee referral programme and its importance to the recruiting process
  • PeopleScout’s team has specific SLAs to ensure referrals are expedited
  • PeopleScout tracks time in status and conversion rates specifically for referrals
  • More than 25 percent of hires for our client come from referrals
  • More than 50 percent of referrals submitted are ultimately hired
  • PeopleScout hires between 9,000 and 11,000 people for this client annually

Simplify the Employee Referral Process

According to a survey conducted by RolePoint, 95 percent of HR professionals believe their employees fully understand how to submit referrals. However, 63 percent say they “very often or frequently” receive feedback that employees find it too complicated to refer someone.

When evaluating your programme, ask yourself these questions:

  • Do employees know about your referral programme?
  • Is it clear with whom or where an employee should submit a referral?
  • Is the technology used to submit referrals user-friendly?
  • Is it easy to track if the referring employee was given credit?
  • Is it easy to track the incentives that were earned?

If the programme makes your employees jump through hoops to place a referral, you can be sure that it won’t attract many participants.

To simplify your programme, start with the following steps:

Explain your employee referral programme: Employees need to understand exactly how your referral programme works to make it successful. How you teach employees about the programme depends on your size and how the workforce is dispersed geographically. You might gather your employees together and give a brief presentation or create an online training course. Or, you might do something as simple as sending an informational email or flyer for employees to review.

Set your requirements up front: If you want your employees to refer quality candidates, they need to know what traits and skills you are looking for. Share the open positions you are hiring for and provide employees with the job descriptions, so they get a feel for the types of candidates that would be a good fit.

Provide regular reminders: You should periodically remind employees about the referral programme. If you don’t, they may quickly forget about it.

InMobi, an Indian-based mobile technology company, offered a motorbike—a very popular vehicle in India—to any employee who referred a successful engineering manager candidate. To keep the referral programme top of mind, InMobi parked a motorbike right in front of their corporate headquarters so employees were reminded of the referral incentive every day while entering the building.

When you have an influx of open positions, send a reminder to your employees that explains how they can refer candidates and what the reward is for hired candidates.

You can also promote the referral programme when you aren’t actively hiring. An employee might refer a candidate you do not want to miss out on. You should add those candidates to your talent pool.

Collect and Provide Feedback  

Measure Programme Results: Measuring results is critical to evaluating the success of the programme and to finding improvement opportunities. While metrics can vary depending on the goals you’ve set for the programme, here are some good metrics to track:

  • On-the-job performance of referral hires
  • Retention/turnover rate of referral hires
  • Programme ROI or the cost/benefit ratio
  • Employee satisfaction with the overall process

Provide notifications after an employee referral is made: Referring employees may be nervous about whether their referrals were any good. The best practice is to notify employees immediately when their referral is accepted/rejected, if the candidate is invited for an interview and when the candidate is finally hired or not.

The Gist

Employee referral programmes remain one of the top sources for candidates because they are a cost-effective, engaging talent acquisition strategy. To get the most out of your referral programme, understand what motivates your employees to refer candidates, make the process as easy as possible and maintain good communication with both the referrer and referee.

Rethinking Candidate Generation Strategies

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In this time of rapid transformation and high competition for talent, employers face the challenge of evolving their talent generation strategies to stay ahead. For years, employers focused on attracting as many candidates as possible with the hypothesis that generating more applications was the best strategy to yield better quality hires. That approach to talent attraction and the metrics used to measure success are changing.

The old goal: Attract as many candidates as possible.

The new goal: Attract the strongest candidates who are the best motivational fit for your organisation.

In this article, we cover the changing landscape of candidate attraction and why employers should develop a new, data-informed way of looking at job postings. We also present some specific strategies employers can put in place now and explore the benefits of these strategies.

Change is Not Optional

Many organisations remain stuck with outdated candidate generation strategies. Job titles and descriptions can go years without being updated to reflect the reality of the position or the ways that candidates look for jobs. Long, expensive contracts with specific job boards are common, even though the return on investment may be decreasing. There are several reasons why the old way is no longer working.

1. Employers look at the wrong metrics.

Many employers assume that a large number of views, clicks and even applications indicate an effective strategy, even when those numbers don’t translate to strong hires. At the same time, candidates are left frustrated by applying to jobs that are different than advertised and then facing rejection because they don’t align with the true requirements of the position or with an offer or a job that isn’t a good fit.

If a job posting yields too many unqualified candidates, it creates the risk of harming an organisation’s employer brand. This is because when there are too many unqualified candidates, there is the risk of poor communication. Those candidates could become frustrated with a lack of communication and form a negative opinion of the organisation which they could share with their own networks.

Employers need to modernise their candidate generation strategies and metrics to keep up with changing candidate expectations and advancements in workplace technology.

2. The process is expensive.

The practice of attracting large numbers of applicants is expensive. Employers pay to attract and process candidates who aren’t good fits. At one UK organisation, we found that a dismissal at the CV review stage cost £1.92. This organisation hired 6,000 employees for every 67,000 applicants. This means the cost of just the first stage was £117,000.00. The process of dispositioning an applicant after an interview is even more expensive.

3. Job postings aren’t optimised for the changing landscape.

The changing role of job boards is also disrupting the traditional process. The rollout of Google Jobs, for example, has made it easier for candidates to search for job postings the same way they search for everything else on the internet – and candidates have grown to expect this. Because of this, employers need to optimise job postings and use SEO strategies to ensure candidates will see those postings.

Strategies for the Future

Building a Centralised Recruitment Function

By centralising the recruitment function, employers build a team that can adapt more quickly to change and works more efficiently to put new strategies in place. HR leaders find that a centralised function allows all members of the team better insight into the full hiring process and helps them better understand how each step impacts the broader candidate journey.

It is also easier to test new strategies and deploy successful ideas throughout the entire recruitment function. Because there is no need to get the buy-in of other offices or teams, a centralised function can deploy changes quickly.

A centralised recruitment team also helps maintain consistent metrics and employer branding. When multiple teams are accountable for different parts of the process, those teams can start to shift over time to the point where aspects of an employer brand or the metrics used to define success can look different from team to team.

When processes are siloed it makes it more difficult for leaders to get a full view of the recruitment team and maintain consistency throughout the process. When the entire recruitment team is accountable to the same leader, the process remains more consistent.

Benefit: An accountable and synchronised recruitment team that can more effectively share your brand message.

Sharing an Honest Employer Brand

An authentic yet aspirational, unique and dynamic employer brand is key for employers looking to stand out in the competitive talent market. This type of employer brand will speak to candidates who fit with the current company culture but can also be an effective way to keep current employees aligned with shifting organisational priorities.

According to a report by Cornell University, organisations with a strong employer brand experience less turnover, a higher level of employee commitment, more buy-in to the corporate culture and increased engagement.

Successful deployment of an employer brand will include the development of media toolkits, with language, images, videos, social media posts, emails and more than the recruiting team can use to disseminate brand communications. Materials like these can be used to make sure your employer brand consistently comes through in job postings and advertisements.

Benefit: A strong employer brand will generate applicants who understand and fit in with your culture and who are excited to work for you.

Swapping Vanity Metrics for Sanity Metrics

As your goal changes from attracting the most candidates to attracting the right candidates, you need to adjust what metrics you monitor to see if you’re achieving your goal.

Vanity metrics can include data like the number of clicks or views you have for a job posting and the number of applications. These metrics don’t tell you whether the people who are clicking on your job advertisements or the candidates who are applying are good fits for the position or enthusiastic about working for you.

Sanity metrics are numbers like the ratio of clicks-to-hires or applications-to-hires. Sanity metrics can also include data about the performance and tenure of your new hires. These metrics tell you whether or not the right people are finding and applying to your job postings.

If you are looking at vanity metrics, you cannot tell if you are attracting the strongest talent.

Benefit: A more clear measure of whether you are meeting your goal of attracting the strongest candidates who are enthusiastic about working for you.

Using Data to Inform Decision Making

Data should be central to the candidate attraction process. Your team should consistently ask these four questions and make alterations to your recruitment process based on the answers the data provides.

1. Are you marketing your job properly for the audience you’re looking for?

Sanity metrics will tell you if your tailored approach to candidate attraction is working well. The exact ratios will vary from organisation to organisation and position to position, but your goal should be to decrease the ratio of clicks-to-hires and applications-to-hires while increasing performance metrics and tenure numbers on those hires. If you aren’t already tracking this information, you should gather historical data on the relevant positions and continue tracking performance and tenure data.

If, for example, you spend a significant amount of time and money reviewing applications from unqualified candidates, you can revise your job copy to reflect the more challenging parts of the job. One of our clients had challenges hiring for a door-to-door salesperson. The job posting gave a rosy view of the position, without mentioning the tougher parts.

This led to a high number of applications, but as candidates moved through the process, many realised they didn’t want the position. The cost of processing these applicants was high, as was new hire turnover once candidates started in the role.

By making the job posting more transparent about the challenges, applications decreased by 11 percent, despite a 10 percent increase in the salary for the position. The client saved 305 hours of hiring manager time over a three month period, made the same number of hires as before, spent less on candidate attraction, held fewer phone and face-to-face interviews and new hire turnover in the role dropped significantly.

2. Is your job title optimised for your audience?

Often, job titles at individual organisations are informed by organisational culture and tradition. These can lead to titles that haven’t changed in years or new and creative titles, like “digital prophet” or “crayon evangelist.” While these titles may function well inside an organisation, they can’t attract candidates who search online for positions like “business analyst” or “design director” because those candidates will never find the positions.

Regardless of the job title you use internally, the job title you use in a posting should be informed by data. Tools like Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner can help develop SEO-friendly job titles that will help put your position at the top of search results. Popular job boards also provide click data, and you can perform A/B testing with your recruiting team to determine which job titles bring in the best candidates fastest.

One client was struggling to hire for a position they called “help desk advisor,” although the position was customer service related. Data showed that more people in the client’s location searched for jobs like “customer service representative.”

By changing the job title in the external job posting, the client received the same number of applications in two weeks that it normally received in six to eight weeks. Because of this, the time-to-offer and time-to-fill both decreased, and the client spent less on attracting candidates.

3. Is the most important information in your job posting laid out in the best way for readers?
heat map of job posting

If your marketing and optimisation efforts are successful at bringing job seekers to your posting, you also need to make sure they get the information they need to decide if the position is the right fit and they want to take the step to apply. According to research by The Ladders, job seekers spend an average of 49.7 seconds deciding that a job isn’t right for them and 76.7 seconds deciding that it is a good fit. This only provides a short window of time to provide the information you want them to see.

By developing a strong employer brand, marketing the position properly and optimisng your job title, you will be able to provide the type of information the candidate needs to see to decide if your role is the right fit. Your challenge is to make sure they can digest it in less than one minute. The Ladders’ study used eye-tracking software to determine that most job seekers follow an “F” shape as they scan job postings.

This means, as you write up and lay out a job posting, you need to put the most important information in the first places a candidate will look. Using headings can also help candidates identify key criteria.

4. Are you using job boards effectively?

The introduction of Google Jobs drastically changed the landscape of job boards. For our UK client base, we are already seeing a decreased return on investment from job boards which has decreased our own spending. To ensure you are spending effectively on job boards, you need to constantly evaluate which boards perform better.

To do this, you need to find out which job boards send an appropriate number of the right candidates. Some boards may send a lot of candidates but very few are qualified. Others may send fewer and fewer candidates altogether. By monitoring this data, you can invest your budget into the right job boards to attract the right candidates. You should also monitor whether the job boards you use integrate with Google Jobs and what impact that will have on your application data because it could vary among different industries.

More benefits of data-driven methods:

  • Increased candidate quality and decreased turnover because you are attracting candidates who are enthusiastic about the position and your organisation and who understand the responsibilities and requirements of the role.
  • Decreased time-to-fill and cost-of-vacancy because candidates who aren’t a good fit self-select out of the process, so you don’t waste money evaluating the wrong people.
  • Increased ability to attract the candidates of the future because you’re speaking to them where they are and in ways they expect as they search for new positions.

Key Takeaways

  • Rather than attracting as many applicants as possible, employers should focus on decreasing the number of unqualified or uninterested applicants while increasing the number of strong applicants.
  • Employers should use a data-informed process to guide their candidate attraction strategies.
  • Employers should consistently evaluate their use of job boards to match the quickly changing job board landscape.

Four Factors Impacting the Way Employers Interact with Candidates

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Across the globe, employers and candidates live in an accelerating state of change. Adapting is difficult for both workers and employers, but the process of changing strategies as an organisation is more complicated. There are legacy systems in place – especially for large organisations – and traditions can become entrenched. Remaining nimble is a challenge. For that reason, it is important to watch the employment landscape and respond with smart and targeted strategies.

In this article, we will explore four factors driving changes in the way that employers interact with job candidates: the digital transformation, current global economic conditions, shifting trust and privacy expectations, and the changing landscape of job boards.

1. The Digital Transformation

In a study by Gartner, 80 percent of executives reported that they have a digital initiative underway and 69 percent believe that they need to become significantly more digital to remain competitive.

According to McKinsey, 51 percent of job activities can be automated, but fewer than 5 percent of jobs are can be completely replaced by machines. The report also determined that the pace of change is so rapid, that by 2030 as much as 14 percent of the global workforce could need to change occupational categories.

Employers need to respond by finding candidates who can lead through change and learn and adapt – rather than candidates who only excel at a job as it exists today. This is becoming even more difficult as top candidates are in high demand due to record-low unemployment rates in many major global economies.

Fast Company reports that in May 2018 employers posted 314,000 tech job openings and only filled 8,700 of them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also projects employment of software developers to grow 24 percent through 2026, faster than the average for all other occupations.

What does this mean?

Employers need to be able to attract and identify the candidates of the future – the people who have the skills and mindset needed to drive success into the future. That means developing an employer value proposition, or EVP, and an employer brand platform that is unique, authentic yet aspirational, and dynamic, sharing your EVP with your target audience, using innovative, data-driven strategies to attract candidates for the future and assessing candidates to identify those with a growth mindset.

2. Global Economic Conditions

In the decade since the start of the global economic downturn, many countries have recovered and now have competitive, candidate-driven markets for talent.

In the U.S., the unemployment rate is down to 3.7 percent. In the UK, it is down to 4.0 percent. There are strong employment numbers around the world. In a competitive market, employers need to be proactive about attracting both active and passive candidates.

Additionally, people are starting to feel more comfortable leaving their jobs, which is both an opportunity and a challenge for employers. It means that you have an opportunity to bring in strong candidates, but it also means that some of your strongest employees could leave for greener pastures.

With all of the press coverage about the state of the global economy, in-demand candidates will also recognise that the hiring landscape has changed. This, coupled with the potential for multiple offers, means that top candidates will have higher expectations – not only in regard to salary but also the purpose, mission and culture of the employer they choose.

What does this mean?

Employers around the globe should look for the best talent and use innovative assessment techniques to identify those who derive purpose from the work done by the organisation and who are passionate about the mission. Employers should also ensure their offers and workplace culture lives up to and exceeds the expectations of the best candidates, and they should invest more in retaining top talent.

3. Shifting Trust and Privacy

Candidates are growing more cautious about which organisations they trust and who can have access to their personal data. Candidates in the U.S. and Europe have been exposed to political disinformation campaigns that left many reevaluating their sources of information. Additionally, privacy issues at Facebook have motivated many candidates to increase their social media privacy settings.

As a result, research shows that many people have grown to distrust traditional advertising from brands. Instead, more people are relying on recommendations from friends and relatives, according to Nielson. Forbes reports candidates are asking more about reviews on Glassdoor and issues that they read about online like turnover rates and layoffs. Consumers are also taking steps to avoid ads, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that 80 percent of adults in America use at least one ad blocking method.

While most candidates have some information available online for employers to find, some of the most tech-savvy are cutting back. According to Pew Research, 74 percent of American Facebook users have either taken a break from the site, adjusted their privacy settings or deleted the app from their phone. Another survey found that half of consumers in the UK don’t trust anyone with their personal information.

Beyond reactions from candidates, employers also face increasing regulations. The GDPR, or EU General Data Protection Regulation, took effect in May 2018. It requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. TechRepublic reports that 61 percent of compliance professionals say they’re concerned that the reduced data availability and new requirements of GDPR could impact future sourcing and recruiting. In the U.S., California recently passed the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. These laws are popular with voters, and employers should expect privacy concerns to be a continuing issue.

Despite these issues, Forbes reports that HR teams still have more data now than ever before. Employers benefit from the growing amount of data available, but they should keep in mind its limitations.

What does this mean?

Employers should work to build an authentic EVP and employer brand platform to gain trust and buy-in from candidates. This should include the development of brand ambassadors who can reach candidates who are skeptical of traditional information channels. By developing an employer brand platform that takes advantage of peer-to-peer networking, employers can break through the walls put up by ad-blocking software and ad-skeptical candidates. The authenticity of the message is key to appearing more trustworthy.

4. The Changing Role of Job Boards

The role of job boards is also changing rapidly. Google Jobs makes it easier for candidates to search for job postings the same way they search for everything else on the internet – and candidates have grown to expect this. According to Forbes, the second page of Google search results accounts for only 6 percent of all website clicks. This means that to ensure your target audience can find your available positions, you must have job descriptions optimised for search.

Inc. reports that Google’s preference for relevant text- and video-based content will also apply to Google Jobs results. Employers need to be SEO-savvy to get postings in front of candidates. Additionally, many candidates now search for jobs using the same search engines that supply information like Glassdoor reviews and news stories about your organisation.

Job boards and aggregators have also changed in response to Google Jobs. Candidates no longer need to search a variety of job boards to find postings that match their skills. Because of this, for our UK client base, we are already seeing a decreased return on investment from job boards which has decreased our own spending.

What does this mean?

Employers need to be able to respond quickly as the job board environment changes. Google Jobs has only been available in the U.S. since 2017, and it was only introduced in the UK in 2018. This means there are still more changes to come. Employers should constantly evaluate which job boards bring in the most high-quality candidates in a cost-effective way and consistently adjust their strategy.

Where to Go from Here

In response to this rapid change, these four factors should be seen as challenges and opportunities, not barriers to success. Employers can use strategies like employer branding, new ways of generating candidates and assessments built for the future to set themselves apart. 

Employee Retention: Combating Turnover

Posted on by epadmin

Employee retention is a major concern for many organisations. More than 50 percent of organisations worldwide have expressed difficulty in retaining some of their most valued employee groups according to a Willis Towers Watson study.

Although hiring has increased in recent years, turnover and attrition rates have also increased globally across all industries by more than 3 percent since 2013.

Turnover is not just an inconvenience for organisations, it can be expensive. Research from the Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report uncovered that it currently costs 33 percent of a worker’s annual salary to replace them, with the major costs being recruiting a replacement, reduced productivity, cost of onboarding a new hire and training expenses.

This means for mid- to enterprise-sized employers, turnover can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year. With turnover costs this high, it is important for organisations to improve employee retention.

Employee Retention: Employee Turnover and What To Do About It

The strong economy and historically low unemployment rates have made workers more confident, and as a result, they are more comfortable exploring the job market.

In the U.S., the unemployment rate reached 3.7 percent in October. Low unemployment is not confined to the U.S. The unemployment rate has also dropped to 4 percent in the UK and 5.3 percent in Australia.

In LinkedIn’s Why and How People Change Jobs study, the top three reasons employees leave a position are to advance their careers, dissatifaction with their workplace culture and dissatisfaction with management.

Moreover, the study found that once employees resigned, 42 percent said they might have stayed if their employer had done something to show they valued the employee.

Below, we address some of the main causes of employee turnover and provide insights into how to improve employee retention.

Create a Positive Workplace Culture  

Stressful, negative and inhospitable workplaces are a recipe for high employee turnover. Research bears this out, as the American Institute of Stress reports that workplace stress can lead to an increase of nearly 50 percent in voluntary employee turnover.

How we feel about our work often depends on the relationships we have with coworkers, managers and the overall company culture. According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan, there are six essential qualities of a positive workplace culture:

  1. Caring for, being interested in and maintaining responsibility for colleagues as friends.
  2. Providing support for one another, including offering kindness and compassion when others are struggling.
  3. Avoiding blame and forgiving mistakes.
  4. Inspiring one another at work.
  5. Emphasising the meaningfulness of the work.
  6. Treating one another with respect, gratitude, trust and integrity.

As an organisation, you should work to foster these qualities in your workplace. The University of Michigan research points to two key strategies:

Encourage Trusting Safe Relationships

Employees who trust that their coworkers and managers have their best interests at heart feel safe, as research by Amy Edmondson of Harvard demonstrates. Workplace cultures where leaders are inclusive, humble and encourage their staff to communicate and ask for help lead to better learning and performance outcomes for all employees.

Be Empathic

A brain-imaging study found that when employees recollected instances when a manager had been harsh or lacked empathy, they showed increased activation in areas of the brain associated with avoidance and negative emotion, while the opposite was true when they recalled an empathic manager.

Moreover, Jane Dutton and her team at the CompassionLab suggest that leaders who demonstrate compassion toward employees foster individual and collective resilience in challenging times. Thus, creating a workplace environment more conducive for overcoming challenges and obstacles.

Key Action:

Develop a workplace environment that meets employee needs whenever possible to drive positive organisational outcomes and increase employee retention.

Professional Development

In an article published by HR Dive, Laurie Bienstock of Willis Tower Watson states that “We know from our research and consulting that career management continues to be a top driver of attraction, retention and sustainable engagement for most employees…Effective career management at many organisations remains elusive. That’s one of the main reasons so many of today’s employees feel they need to leave to advance their careers.”

Well-thought-out professional development programmes can provide your employees with opportunities and clear direction on how to increase their skills and advance their careers within your organisation.

With an expanded skill set, not only will employees feel more empowered, they will also have more tools to help your organisation. A win-win for your organisation and staff.

When starting a professional development programme, you can leverage the expertise you have within your organisation. Senior employees, for example, can serve as mentors and help mentees sharpen both their soft skills and technical skills, gain practical knowledge, institutional insights and hands-on guidance, and can help mentees become more valuable and versatile employees.

At PeopleScout, for example, we sponsor a programme where employees are paired with mentors at different levels within the organisation to provide mentorship and career guidance. During the first three cycles of our programme, 10 percent of participants received promotions after completing the programme.

Key Action:

Invest in your employees’ career development and tie their career success to the success of your organisation.

Management and Leadership

It’s often stated that “employees don’t leave organisations, they leave managers.” This is not a mere business platitude, there is evidence to back it up.

In a study conducted by Gallup, 50 percent of employees said they left a job “to get away from their manager to improve their overall life at some point in their career.”

What’s more, according to an article by SHRM, “Employees who trust their managers appear to have more pride in the organisation and are more likely to feel they are applying their individual talents for their own success and that of the organisation.”

To curb employee turnover that stems from mismanagement, organisations should train managers on how to constructively engage, develop and motivate their teams to improve employee retention.

One challenge managers may face lies in the fact that what motivates employees is often unique to the individual. To uncover the diverse factors that drive their team members, emotional intelligence is required.

Training support for managers should involve teaching them how to build better relationships, communicate more effectively, notice the early signs of employee burnout, delegate work and shift their mindset from being “the boss” to becoming a leader who empowers their team for success.

Moreover, managers should not have to wait for HR to step in with retention initiatives. Instead, managers should feel empowered to provide incentives and rewards, as well as the ability to develop their staff and offer meaningful opportunities to their team.

Managers should also be aware that meaningful recognition and praise can be powerful. Employee awards, recognition programmes and praise might be the single most cost-effective way to maintain a happy, productive workforce.

Managers can send positive emails at the completion of a project or monthly memos outlining the achievements of their team, and organisations can develop peer-recognition programmes to provide positive feedback to individuals as well as their teams as a whole.

What’s more, organisations can create formal employee recognition programmes. These programmes let employees know that their work is valued and provides employees with a sense of ownership and belonging within their organisation.

Creating a culture of recognition is something any organisation can do to improve their employee retention. The key to success is identifying how your employees like to be recognised and then finding ways to show recognition in their preferred method consistently over time.

While recognition programmes can help improve employee retention, you still need to make sure managers are provided with coaching and training programmes as well as supplied with the resources they need to become more empowered.

Key Action:

Enable employees to have positive social interactions with leadership and a rewarding work environment to increase satisfaction with their role in the organisation.

Using Predictive Analytics to Track Turnover

Today, organisations are more data-driven, using AI and predictive analytics to better analyse data and drive business decisions. Predictive analytics can be leveraged by organisations to monitor and manage employee turnover by identifying which employees are at risk of leaving the organisation.

Organisations should build their predictive models based on employee data tracked and stored in their HRIS or ATS. This historical data contains a wealth of information relevant to predicting employee turnover. Successfully leveraging predictive analytics to improve employee retention begins with the validity and quality of data fed into a predictive model.

Some of the most commonly used employee information for turnover-focused predictive modeling includes:

  • Tenure or duration of employment
  • Compensation level or ratio
  • Date of, or time since, last promotion
  • Percent of most recent pay raise
  • Job performance score
  • Commute distance
  • Job satisfaction score
  • Number of previous positions held
  • Years with current manager
  • Engagement score

These points of data can be analysed to predict the likelihood and rate of turnover across roles within an organisation.

For example, a PeopleScout client uses data and predictive models to assess turnover trends. The client uses employee demographic information such as age, tenure and their previous employer to predict when an employee might resign based on historical trends and patterns of similar employees.

Equipped with this data, the client is better positioned to prevent valuable employees from resigning by taking preemptive actions during periods or junctures where the employee is most likely to resign.

Leveraging Interviews to Improve Employee Retention

A key to improving employee retention is uncovering the unique issues your employees face day-to-day. Exit and stay interviews can give you a wide variety of perspectives from which to tackle issues that are driving employees away.

Exit Interviews

Exit interviews are designed to gather feedback from departing employees, and can provide an organisation with insights that can be used to make current and future employees less likely to resign.

For example, if your exit interviews uncover that employees feel their duties didn’t match their original job expectations, consider changing your job descriptions and your onboarding sessions to better reflect the duties within a specific role.

What’s more, recruiters and talent acquisition stakeholders should be educated on the competencies and skills that are needed to be successful in a specific role and be able to communicate them effectively to candidates.

Tips for conducting effective exit interviews:

  • Choose the Right Interviewer: When conducting an exit interview, the interviewer should be someone with little connection to the interviewee or someone they feel comfortable sharing their true feedback and concerns with.
  • Ask the Right Questions: To get the most out of an exit interview, it is important to ask the right questions – e.g. what is the attraction of the new position?; how were relationships with colleagues?; was there an issue with benefits or compensation?; what could be done to make this company a better place to work?
  • Analyse the Interviews: Make sure you analyse the results of each exit interview and aim to find any common issues that are causing your employees to leave.

Exit interviews shouldn’t be the only time you solicit feedback from employees. Rather, you should foster a culture of constructive feedback. Employee engagement surveys are a good way to take the pulse of employees throughout their tenure with your organisation. That way, you’re more likely to get honest, constructive feedback from current employees, as well as when employees leave.

Key Action:

During an exit interview, ask about things like the quality of leadership, teamwork across and within departments, opportunities for advancement and internal policies.

Stay Interviews

In some ways stay interviews are similar to exit interviews. They are both used to identify reasons employees like or dislike their job and can uncover concerns or issues an employer may be unaware of.

However, stay interviews can be more valuable than exit interviews because they provide insights managers can leverage to motivate and retain employees before they make the decision to leave.

Questions to ask during a stay interview:

  • What keeps you working here?
  • What do you enjoy about your job?
  • What would cause you to leave the company?
  • What would you like to change about your job, team or department?
  • If you could change one thing about the company what would it be?
  • Have you ever thought about leaving the organisation?
  • What motivates you at work?
  • Do you feel appreciated in your role?
  • Where do you see yourself in five years?

After conducting a stay interview, be as transparent as possible with the interviewee about what you can or can’t do to remedy a particular issue.

Key Action:

Aim to conduct your stay interviews at least once per year to augment the more general information about team satisfaction obtained through engagement surveys. Schedule them separately from performance reviews so the goals of each meeting remain distinct.

The Gist:

Unmanaged employee turnover is costly and disruptive to organisations. Approaches to retaining top talent need go beyond compensation and benefits to include improving employee job satisfaction with meaningful engagement, organisational commitment to managing employees’ relationships with their managers and clearly communicating opportunities for growth and advancement with the organisation.