Category: Talent Acquisition Strategy

Diversity Training: Getting it Right, Right Away

Posted on by edyson

Diversity training is important. Creating a more diverse and equitable workplace culture encourages a true sense of belonging among coworkers. So, how can employers create a more diverse and equitable workforce? Not only does diversity improve coworker relationships, it also helps the bottom-line. In fact, the numbers on DE&I in the workplace speaks for itself. According to McKinsey’s Diversity Wins study, diverse organizations are more likely to be more profitable than their less diverse counterparts.

What’s more, in PwC’s Global Diversity & Inclusion Survey, 75% of respondents cite diversity, equity, and inclusion or (DE&I programs) as a priority. However, only 4% say their organization succeeds in DEI initiatives.

The data is clear—it is not enough for employers to merely create a diverse employee population. Employees inside the organization need to feel that they are truly included and that their experiences matter. However, fostering a true sense of inclusion and belonging seems elude many employers. Organizations still struggle with implementing diversity programs that truly improve individual employees’ sense of inclusion.

Some employers may not know where to start. In this article, we provide guidance on building a thoughtful diversity training program to help increase employee awareness, empathy, understanding and inclusion.  

What is Diversity Training?

diversity and inclusion training

Diversity training is a type of professional development training that increases employees’ cultural awareness, knowledge and communication skills. There is no one size fits all approach to diversity training, as it can look different in every organization. However, diversity training should help educate employees on the following topics:

  • Awareness around workplace diversity issues. Examples include issues underrepresented minority groups face, gender gaps, microaggressions, and other forms of discrimination that may not be apparent to employees
  • Beliefs and challenges surrounding unconscious bias and discrimination in the workplace
  • Connecting employees through gaining a deeper understanding of what motivates colleagues of other cultures to get a sense of how others feel
  • How to effectively collaborate and communication with employees from different backgrounds.
  • How to spot and report discrimination, racial bias, microaggressions, or other misconduct  
  • How employees can contribute to an inclusive workplace culture and environment through employee resource groups

In its diversity training, an organization may also want to educate employees about the organization’s commitment to diversity and history of progress on social issues effecting a variety of demographics. Use your diversity training as an opportunity to communicate the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and aspirations.

Why is Diversity and Inclusion Training Important?

The differences between people are what make us unique and offer a richer tapestry of experiences and perspectives to draw upon in the workplace. However, at times, employees experience difficulties communicating and celebrating differences.

As organizations grow their DE&I efforts, it’s important to offer employees the right type of diversity training and support to ensure that DEI programs and learnings translate into a more inclusive environment in practice.

Below, we have compiled three reasons why diversity training programs in the workplace have a positive impact.

Increased Employee Engagement

diversity equity and inclusion training

When employees feel excluded, engagement suffers, which in turn can hurt production and profits. In fact, according to Gallup, a highly engaged workforce can outperform peers by 147% in earnings per share. By implementing a diversity training program, your organization will foster greater inclusivity and increase overall employee engagement which can boost revenue.  

Improved Employee Retention

The Great Resignation is causing organizations to focus on employee retention more than ever. Employees who do not feel included in an organization’s structure and mission may be less likely to invest their time and energy in the organization’s future success.

On the other hand, employees who feel a sense of belonging are more likely to stay with an organization. Diversity training programs help to increase that sense of belonging amongst employees—and overall, can help improve your retention rates.

Positive Systemic Change

Often times, our systems and existing power structures have been built for some—but they certainly may not “work” for all. Put into practice, diversity training can help change systematic diversity hurdles—things like your organization’s hiring practices, how diverse talent is sourced, actions to increase board or leadership diversity and more. These steps may make positive systematic change for all employees, not just some.

The Four Types of Diversity Training

diversity training program

Just like our diverse workplaces, there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to diversity training programs. Diversity training programs come in all different types and can be catered to help achieve your organization’s goals.

Awareness Training

Oftentimes, awareness training is the type of early adopter diversity training that’s highly effective for most (if not all) workforces. Awareness training is essentially the first step in creating change in your organization. It gives employees an overview of:

  • Workplace and/or organization demographics
  • Education around sexual orientation, gender, race and racial minorities, ethnicity, and more
  • Education and awareness around workplace equity

Many diversity trainings stop there, making people aware of their actions and how that is experienced by others. But this is a valuable opportunity to drive awareness of the benefits to everyone in the company of having a truly diverse workforce where people can contribute at their best.

By implementing awareness training, team members will increase their problem-solving and decision-making skills. Through awareness training sessions, you can help shift to a belonging mindset—and promote respect, inclusivity, and value among your employees.

You’ll also lay the groundwork for the need for change and additional actions to come because your workforce is now educated and aware of the diversity issues at hand.

Skills-Based Diversity Training

diversity training in the workplace

Skills-based diversity training focuses on specific actions people at different levels across your workforce can take to practice the skills of inclusion to ensure all employees are equipped to foster belonging. This type of training helps employees at the “awareness” stage move into a “proficiency” stage when handling diversity in the workplace. For example, skills-based training could include a session solely focused on communication and best practices. At the end of the session, employees will walk away with the communication skills needed to foster a culture of inclusivity in their work environment.

Basic Diversity Training

We know sometimes, it’s best to start with the basics. Basic diversity training has a simple goal: create respect and empathy within your workforce.

In a basic diversity training program, it’s common to find the below topics:

  • Identifying company values—and how DEI embodies those values
  • Anti-racism training
  • Anti-sexism training
  • Educating about sexual orientation and gender identities
  • Cultural sensitivity training
  • Human resource compliance training
  • How to create effective diversity training

Regardless of what type of training(s) you choose to implement at your company, it has to be effective to truly make an impact. But how do you create effective diversity training?

First, it’s important to understand where your organization falls in your DE&I journey. Once you’ve figured out what work needs to be done and identified your top priorities, use some of these tips to ensure you’re delivering an effective diversity training programs to your employees.

Be realistic about what you can accomplish. Being aware of where you’re starting as an organization is crucial. If you’re setting out to change your company’s culture with a diversity training program, you might want to think again.

Set goals and communicate them to your employees. Once you’ve established where your organization is on its DEI journey, set realistic goals. It could be as simple as setting a goal that 100% of employees take at least one diversity training course. Once you’ve determined your goals, communicate them. Studies show that accountability translates to better outcomes.

Equip your employees with resources to reach your DE&I goals. It’s not enough to set goals and ask your employees to reach them. Organization leaders need to equip their teams with the resources to reach those goals. Having a portfolio of diversity training programs or encouraging employees to start employee resource groups (ERGs) are just some examples of how leaders can get started.

Measure your progress — and report out how you’re doing. Similar to setting goals and communicating them out, it’s important to measure your progress. Employees aren’t going to be able to impact change if they don’t know how they’re doing. Share feedback with your teams on the company’s progress and ask for their support. 

Fostering a culture of belonging is not an easy journey. Uncomfortable, hard conversations will inevitably be had between peers and leaders. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s in these tough (yet respectful) conversations where real growth happens.

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace culture is everyone’s responsibility. That means everyone in the organization needs to be a part of the training, regardless of where they fall in your organization’s hierarchical structure.

Commit to the work. Implementing a diversity training program is not going to fix your DEI issues. It’s a great start, but to truly impact change, your organization will need to commit to the ongoing work. You might uncover more work as your organization moves through its diversity training programs—and that’s okay. Stay committed to the big picture.

Conclusion

diversity training programs

Training has so many benefits for any organization. Not only will you see better overall performance that impacts your bottom line, but employees will be more engaged, happier and more productive.

Remember, diversity training is more than an item on your HR to-do list. It is a vital and important component of organizational growth. Companies who are going above and beyond the standard one-and-done diversity training make inclusive leadership a core competency.

The UK Talent Shortage: How to Engage & Support the “Missing Million”

Posted on by akessler

By Joe Mongon, Head of Recruitment Delivery

When Dame Sharon White, former Chief Executive of Ofcom and current Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, was recently interviewed on BBC radio, she said: “One area that I think has not had enough attention is what has happened in the jobs market over the last 18 months.” Not enough attention? The UK talent shortage, and the tightness of the labour market, has been at the heart of many mainstream news stories in the UK over the past year: petrol shortages, queues at air and sea ports, and general “skimpflation” in the customer experience.

In this case, White touched upon an interesting factor in the dynamic between an oversupply of job vacancies and an undersupply of job seekers—the “missing million” in the UK workforce who have left employment all together since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Who Are the Missing Million?

White identified that there are “1 million fewer people in work,” adding that, “Some think about it as the ‘great resignation’. I think about it as the ‘life reappraisal’, because this is predominantly people in their 50s.”

This latter point is broadly correct: four-fifths of the recent rise in economic activity is among older people, and while the concerning increase in long-term ill health negates the idea that this is most often the result a positive “reappraisal” of life priorities, growth in early retirement started in summer 2021 and remains persistent.

White rightly called for government action to address the challenge of encouraging early retirees back to work, and it’s possible that “flexible retirement” will in the future be discussed as often as “flexible working.” In the meantime, there is much that employers can do directly to support and re-engage early retirees including approaches to recruitment, job design, workplace support, and – yes – flexibility.

How to Attract and Retain Older Workers

A clear and informative job profile that brings the role to life and amplifies these factors can be the first step to finding the right candidate, including engaging overlooked or under-engaged audiences like the missing million. Job seeker priorities are often straightforward and are typically unaffected by age. Salary and flexibility—especially work from home considerations—lead the way when it comes to potential job switches.

To succeed, employers must recognise that temporary solutions to business problems, such as hybrid working, have turned into ongoing employee preferences and expectations. If you can’t advertise jobs as flexible and leverage that advantage due to the type of role, investment in pay or upskilling offers may be the answer.

At PeopleScout, we are certainly giving the UK talent shortage our full attention. We’re offering our clients bespoke strategies and tactics to overcome these challenges. By helping organisations understand their audiences—including the missing million—we’re able to support targeted candidate attraction efforts that create real results.

Interviewer Skills Training: How to Conduct Interviewing Skills Training for Hiring Managers

Posted on by edyson

Interviewing skills training is crucial, as many hiring managers feel that the success of a well-conducted job interview hinges on the interviewers ability to build a connection with the interviewee. What’s more, for many candidates, the interview is a critical factor when deciding whether to accept a job offer, with 50% of candidates declining job offers after feeling disrespected during the interview process.  

When interviews do not go well, they not only lead to candidates declining offers, but they can also lead to poor hiring decisions, possible compliance issues, and hiring manager burnout. Interviewing candidates is arguably the most important part of the hiring process, so interview training for hiring managers is essential. Hiring managers touch many parts of the recruitment process—often opening new roles, writing job descriptions, posting on job boards, interviewing, and in some cases, making that final call on which candidates get hired. 

With all that’s riding on the hiring manager, they must know how to interview effectively. Interviewing tips for managers can come in handy because the interview process can be stress-inducing regardless of which side of the table you happen to be on. In this article, we provide insights into training hiring managers to be effective, impartial and empathic interviewers. 

 

Securing Hiring Manager Buy-In for Interview Skills Training

recruiter training

Both new and experienced hiring managers can benefit from interview skills training. A veteran hiring manager typically has years of hands-on experience engaging, interviewing, and hiring candidates for a variety of roles. However, even the most seasoned hiring manager may need to brush up on their skills through learning emerging interviewing skills and techniques, like combating bias and improving diversity, how to use structured interviews, and avoiding cliché or out-of-date questions that conflict with the modern hiring experience.

For newer hiring managers, interview training can serve as an on-the-job education and can help accelerate their career through learning the latest and most effective interviewing techniques.

Before introducing a new interviewing skills training program, schedule a meeting with hiring managers to discuss the status of your current interviewing process as well as their thoughts and concerns when it comes to engaging with candidates. You can ask them if they use interview techniques such as structured interviews, panel interviews, and blind interviews to gauge areas of interest and potential training topics.

It may be a good idea to create a list of questions for hiring managers to think about leading up to their training. Questions for your hiring managers may include:

  • Can I talk about the company’s strategy, mission and structure confidently?
  • Can I answer questions about perks and benefits accurately?
  • Do I know what the job description involves before going into an interview?
  • Have I coordinated with my team on the candidate and job details?
  • Have I read candidates’ CVs?
  • Do I know what interview questions I’ll ask?
  • Are my interview questions reviewed by HR for legality?

 

Interviewing Skills Training: Help Hiring Managers to Combat Bias

job interview skills training

Meeting a candidate for the first time may prompt a series of unconscious judgements that cause a hiring manager to make unfounded assumptions based on attributes that are not job-related, such as race, gender, religion, or socioeconomic status. These unconscious biases can result in unequal treatment of candidates. Yale University released a study revealing that hiring managers judge candidates’ socioeconomic status based purely on the first few seconds of their speech. Furthermore, the candidates perceived to be from a higher social class received more lucrative salaries and signing bonuses.

Everything that makes a hiring manager a better interviewer in turn makes them less biased. The best way to combat biases during interviews is to be aware of them. This can’t be achieved overnight—it takes time and effort. A good start would be to help the interviewer standardise their interviews.

Unstructured interviews lacking defined questions where a candidate’s experience and expertise are meant to translate naturally through conversation can be unreliable and produce bias. Structured interviews, where each candidate is asked the same set of defined questions, thereby standardising the interview process, help minimise bias.

This outcome (allowing hiring managers to focus on skills and experience that directly impact the role)  comes from having an interview based on job analysis and a structured, evidence-based assessment framework. Standardising the interview process reduces bias by creating a level playing field for all candidates and ensuring that everyone is asked the same questions in the same way.

Combating bias is not easy, however, by addressing bias you will empower your team to tackle bigger challenges and to make a real commitment to building an inclusive culture.

 

What is a Structured Interview? Teaching Hiring Managers to Understand Structured Interviews

Structured Interview

Conducting structured interviews is an exceptional strategy for screening job candidates and finding the best possible person for a role. So, what is a structured interview? Structured interviews ask a set of questions in a structured format intended to help hiring managers to collect valuable data from each interviewee that can then be compared to the response of other candidates. Your should also include a clearly defined rating process for hiring managers and interviewers to follow when evaluating and scoring candidate answers to questions- asked during an interview.

Structured interviews are more objective and legally defensible than unstructured interviews. Interviewers who use this interview format should learn how to prepare behavioural questions, understand rating scales, and score candidates consistently.

In this section, we provide examples of structured interview questions as well as how to conduct and rate interviews.

 

Role-Related Structured Interview Questions

Role-related questions ask candidates directly about the duties and responsibilities of the role. Including role-specific questions in a structured interview can assist a hiring manager in determining whether or not a candidate possesses the skills and experience necessary to succeed in the role.

Examples of role-related structured interview questions include:

  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of the CRM software you used in your last role?
  • What in your career or educational experience do you believe connects you with this role ?
  • What do you like and dislike about working in nursing?

 

Behavioural Questions and Structured Interviews

Behaviour-related questions in structural interviews ask candidates to provide examples of their professional experiences. Including behaviour-related questions in structured interviews can help hiring managers to find out which experiences the candidate may have excelled in and struggled with in the past. Ask a mix of questions to gain information about each candidate’s professional successes and challenges and the way they interacted with their clients, coworkers, and superiors.

Examples of behaviour-related structured interview questions include in interview skills training:

  • Describe a time when you have had to deal with a difficult colleague?
  • How do you ensure that you know what kind of experience your customers are having in your stores?
  • Can you tell me what you look for in a manager or which management style fits you best?

 

Situational Questions for Structured Interviews

Situation-related questions in a structural interviewing skills training ask candidates to think on their feet and imagine how they would handle varying scenarios working for your organisation. Situation-related questions can determine a candidate’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills. There are a variety of questions that assess how candidates would interact with your clients and employees, how they work with a team, and how they would react to common workplace challenges.

Examples of situation-related structured interview questions include:

  • How would you handle an unhappy customer?
  • How would you pitch our new product line to customers?
  • How would you prioritise multiple deadlines from different stakeholders?

 

What is a Mock Interview? Teaching Interview Skills Training Best Practices Through Role Playing

mock interviews

Mock interviews are simulated or role-playing interview exercises designed to give hiring managers the opportunity to sharpen their interviewing skills through formulating responses in real-time. Mock interviews can help inexperienced hiring managers familiarise themselves with an interview setting and give veterans a chance to practice the latest techniques. For example, hiring managers can practice brief notetaking techniques to avoid being distracted by their notes during actual interviews.

Here are the goals of mock interview training for hiring managers:

  • Identifying the common steps of the interviewing process and how to respond
  • Learning how to thoroughly review a candidate’s CV and prepare for a productive conversation
  • Developing technical, cultural, and behavioural questions to successfully evaluate a candidate’s fit in the role and organisation
  • Determining what they need to do before, during, and after an interview
  • Evaluate information gathered during the interview more successfully
  • Understanding how to interview within the law using acceptable and appropriate questions
  • Reading body language

Much of communication is nonverbal. In an interview setting, hiring managers unable to understand body language may misinterpret what is being communicated during an interview. Mock interviews can help interviewers become more aware of candidates’ nonverbal cues, thus improving their overall interviewing skill set. For example, if a candidate’s body language suggests they are anxious, interviewers may make a more conscious effort to relax the candidate. You can train interviewers to control their body language as well. Even if hiring managers think a candidate is unqualified, they should not let their body language negatively affect the candidate’s experience.

Job Interviewing Skills Training: Compliance Training is Key

One of the best ways to avoid potential legal compliance issues is to ensure that all interview questions are related solely to the role the candidate is interviewing for and are in compliance with the employers hiring laws and practices. To determine if a question is truly role-related, have your hiring managers ask themselves the following questions:

  • What type of information is the candidate likely to provide in response to the question or the comment?
  • Is that information related to the job?
  • Is the question that I am about to ask, or the comment that I am about to make, necessary to make a legitimate assessment of the candidate’s qualifications?
  • Could it appear to the candidate that I was trying to encourage them to reveal information related to the candidate’s inclusion in a legally protected class (based on age, race, disability, national origin, marital status, etc.)?
  • Do I need to know the information that I am about to (or likely to) gather?

What’s more, many countries have laws protecting job candidates from discrimination during the hiring process, so it’s important for hiring managers to understand how discrimination can occur in recruiting, interviewing, and hiring and how to remain complaint with local laws. You can provide guidelines for handling your interview-related responsibilities fairly and legally. Guidelines may include:

  • Guidance on identifying candidate categories protected from employment discrimination
  • Follow a standardised interview process to help ensure a fair and consistent hiring process
  • A list of questions to avoid during interviews that can lead to discrimination claims
  • How to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate interview behaviour from candidates

 

Skills Training for Interviewers Begins and Ends with Relationship Building

As a talent acquisition leader, investing in interviewing skills training can mean the difference for your organisation’s ability to hire quality staff in today’s candidate-driven market. With a well-run interviewer training program, you can increase the chances of securing the talent your organisation needs for a competitive edge.

It is no longer only about candidate experience, it is about building candidate relationships. Candidates expect their job search and hiring experience to be positive, and the interview is a key component of fulfilling their expectations.

Talking Talent: Reducing Unconscious Bias for an Inclusive Recruitment Process

Posted on by nfuqua

In this episode of our Talking Talent podcast, we hear from Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory, about tactics to reduce unconscious bias and make your recruitment process more inclusive.

Unconscious bias affects us all. In the two years since the death of George Floyd, public consciousness around the issues of diversity, equality and inclusion has risen throughout the globe. As such, employers can no longer remain silent. 

Not only are investors and shareholders paying greater attention to social challenges, but employees, candidates, and consumers are also pushing businesses to make public commitments regarding diversity and inclusion—and to publish their progress. In today’s job market, where job vacancies are outpacing unemployment, candidates have more choices than ever about where to work—and they’re choosing employers that prioritise DE&I: According to Glassdoor, 76% of candidates said that a diverse workforce was an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers. 

Unconscious bias is one of the key forces holding employers back from making strides in DE&I initiatives, and it’s a complicated issue to tackle. In this article, we’ll walk through the different types of unconscious bias, how they can affect your recruitment process and how to effectively reduce their effect.   

What is Unconscious Bias? 

What is Unconscious Bias?

Unconscious bias—sometimes called implicit bias—is a term that describes the associations we hold outside of our conscious awareness. Everyone has them, and they don’t make you a bad person; they’re an evolutionary adaptation designed to help our brains make decisions.  

Imagine if, every time we made a decision, we had to consciously take into account every piece of information available to us. Unconscious bias develops from our life experiences to help us navigate the world more quickly. However, it can also have negative consequences. And, the fact that it happens unconsciously means it can be difficult to bypass.  

For instance, in action, unconscious bias can look like what happened in the Boston Symphony in 1952. The Symphony was looking to diversify its male-dominated orchestra, so it conducted an experiment with a series of blind auditions. In an effort to remove all chance of bias and allow for a merit-based selection only—a selection that would hopefully increase the number of women in the orchestra—the musicians would be auditioning from behind a screen. To their surprise, the initial audition results still skewed male. Then, they asked the musicians to take off their shoes. The reason? The sound of the women’s heels as they entered the audition unknowingly influenced the adjudicators; once the musicians removed their shoes, almost 50% of the women made it past the first audition. 

This is just one example. There are several different types of unconscious bias that affect our decision-making: 

Confirmation Bias 

Confirmation bias causes us to seek out information that confirms something that we already believe. We hear about this type of bias most often in relation to politics. People are more likely to seek out positive news about the candidate they support, reinforcing their belief that they are supporting the right person. It can also play out in the hiring process. Recruiters and hiring managers can make snap decisions about candidates based on perceived truths. Then, they ask questions to try to justify these biases, rather than evaluate each candidate on the same criteria.  

Affect Heuristics 

Affect heuristics are mental shortcuts we take to make decisions based on our emotional or mental state, rather than taking all of the facts into account. In the recruitment process, this could play out with a recruiter or hiring manager discounting a candidate because of personal feelings that have nothing to do with the role. For example, if you used to have a friend named Pete, who you fell out with, you might still carry a negative bias toward a candidate named Pete. 

Anchor/Expectation Bias 

An anchor or expectation bias happens when we allow ourselves to anchor on to one piece of information to make a decision. This can happen in the hiring process when a hiring manager believes that a new hire needs to be a carbon copy of the person who used to have that role, so they anchor on one aspect of a candidate that is similar to the previous employee and ignore other information. 

Halo Effect 

The halo effect is a bias that causes us to use a general positive impression of someone to influence how we evaluate their specific attributes. For example, if we’re impressed by one fact about a person (like if they went to a prestigious university), that could make us see them in a generally positive light. The halo effect often kicks in when we wish we were more like another person. This plays out in the hiring process when a hiring manager or recruiter focuses heavily on one positive aspect of a candidate’s background and lets that guide their opinion moving forward.  

Horn Effect 

The horn effect is the opposite of the halo effect; it happens when we let one perceived negative aspect of a person influence the way we think about them. For instance, something as simple as not liking a candidate’s outfit or the way they speak can cloud a recruiter’s or hiring manger’s judgement during the recruitment process and be difficult to get past. 

Affinity Bias 

The affinity bias causes us to connect with people who are similar to us. This is different from the halo effect because it happens when we identify a similarity with someone, rather than looking up to them. We like the feeling of affinity because it makes us feel connected and part of a community, and we also want to surround ourselves with people who we feel we have rapport with. In the hiring process, this can lead to teams with little cognitive diversity as recruiters and hiring mangers lean toward candidates similar to themselves.  

Conformity Bias  

In essence, conformity bias is peer pressure. It causes us to rely on the opinions of others when making decisions, rather than making an independent choice based on our own interpretation of the facts. This can kick in when making the hiring decision: If you’re on a panel and you think one candidate is really great, but the rest of the group prefers someone else, you could get swept along by the majority. 

Contrast Effect/Judgment Bias  

The contrast effect happens when we compare two similar things to each other, rather than assessing them independently. During the recruitment process, this can happen when a recruiter or hiring manager compares one résumé or CV to another they viewed before. In doing that, they shift the goal posts; instead of judging a candidate based on their suitability for the role, they make a decision based on what they thought of another candidate. 

Combating Unconscious Bias 

Unconscious Bias

Understanding the different types of unconscious bias is only the first step toward reducing its influence on your organisation. And, while training can raise awareness, it rarely changes behaviour. So, to make a real change, employers should implement a robust diversity and inclusion program that touches every aspect of the hiring process. Following are some proven steps you can take to reduce bias.  

1. Clearly Outline the Role 

Taking time to really understand what the role requires is essential for weeding out bias in the recruitment process. Specifically, by identifying eight to 10 objective criteria that are predictive of role success, you’ll decrease the likelihood that decisions are made using unconscious bias. It’s important to evaluate what it takes to be successful in the role. Is there anything that could stop a candidate from applying? Does the role need to be performed in person or can it be done remotely? Are the criteria you’re using accurate predictors of success? Are you relying on the vague concept of “cultural fit” that breeds affinity bias? 

As an example, some of the big four accounting firms have reduced their reliance on academic achievement for their early careers and campus hiring programs because they know it’s not an accurate predictor of future success in the role. Instead, they’re now focusing on potential by using other measures that they’ve tracked over time to show their effect on performance. 

2. Build an Inclusive Job Description 

Once you’ve outlined your role internally, focus on your external job description. Is there anything that could discourage a strong candidate from applying? In particular, remove gendered language from your job descriptions and check the pronouns you’re using. Additionally, avoid words like “expert,” “superior” or “rockstar” that turn off female candidates. A variety of online tools can help highlight and remove biased language. 

Next, ensure that the requirements that you list for the role only cover what is absolutely necessary. Women are less likely than men to apply to a role if they don’t feel that they meet all of the requirements, whereas men are more likely to apply if they only meet a portion of them.  

Finally, when creating a job description, ask multiple people from different backgrounds to review the job description—and take their feedback into account.  

3. Update Your Screening Process 

The next area to consider is your selection process. Are you relying too much on résumés and CVs? Research shows that CVs are not only fraught with bias, but that they’re also bad predictors of success. That’s because there are many factors on a CV that can trigger unconscious biases, like the person’s name (gender or ethnicity), the school they went to (geography or economic class) or the year they graduated (age).  

For example, according to the National Centre for Social Research, people with white-sounding names are nearly twice as likely to get callbacks for jobs than people with ethnic-sounding names. In their study, job applicants with white-sounding names were a significant 74% more likely to be invited to a job interview compared to applicants with an ethnic/minority-sounding name. 

4. Rethink Your Interviews 

Recruiters and hiring managers often rely heavily on interviews, which can be rife with unconscious bias. On top of that, interviews have a predictive power of 56%, according to Don Moore, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. That means that, if you’re making your decision based on an interview, you’ll make the wrong decision nearly half of the time.  

Plus, most interviews are conducted one-on-one or with small groups, where bias can flourish. However, mixed panels with diverse interviewers and objective criteria used to assess each candidate can lower the risk of bias when compared to traditional interview settings.  

Meanwhile, there can be an increased risk for bias in the new world of virtual interviews, as well. That’s because, when interviewers can see the inside of a person’s home, they can make unfair assumptions. So, if you use video interviews, ask candidates to blur their backgrounds. 

It’s also important to standardise your interview process so that all candidates are evaluated on the same criteria. This helps you avoid the contrast effect where you only compare candidates to each other, rather than against an objective set of criteria. And, to further reduce the chance of bias, reduce the power of the interview. Can you add other assessment techniques, instead, like work simulation tools or sample tests? 

5. Formalise Your Decision Process 

The final piece of the recruitment process is making a hiring decision. Don’t just get together at the end of the interview and say, “You know, I think John was really great,” or “There was just something I really liked about Kathryn.” Conformity bias can play a strong role in these types of discussions.  

Instead, have your panel step away individually, reflect on each candidate and score them based on your objective criteria. Then, you can review those scores as a group and discuss what you learned about the candidates during the recruitment process.  

Defining Success 

Because unconscious bias is so deeply embedded in all of us, it takes the efforts of everyone to reduce it. However, reducing bias in your recruitment process is a long-term commitment and not something that can happen in three or six months—or even a year. Rather, it involves backing from across the organisation and all the way up to the leadership team. It also requires hiring managers to really engage with the process and be willing to give up making “gut decisions.” Finally, it also calls for a clear picture of where you want to go and how you’re going to monitor, measure and communicate success.  

Learn more about how to evaluate your program and progress in our ebook, “Progress in Action: Moving Toward a Globally Diverse and Inclusive Workplace.” 

High-Volume Hiring in the Contact Centre: 3 Challenges and How to Tackle Them

Posted on by akessler

By Andrew Weston, RPO Solution Director, PeopleScout EMEA

In our world of e-commerce and online banking, consumers want slick digital experiences. But they still want the human touch when they run into a problem. Despite the growth of digital channels, excellent customer service is still a must-have in a business landscape where companies compete on customer experience. High-volume hiring in the contact centre has never been more important or more challenging.

Customer queries are more complex and high-value, and contact centre agents are now expected to not only answer calls, but interact with customers through chats, emails and social media. Contact centres need highly-skilled talent who are comfortable working in a myriad of technology platforms. Customer service representatives (CSRs) must also exhibit strong soft skills like listening and empathy—especially as consumers are experiencing more financial hardships and mental health struggles post-pandemic.

Indeed, 84% of contact centre leaders—whether part of a BPO or an internal contact centre—believe the pandemic permanently elevated the importance of the contact centre for their business. But, it’s hard to deliver against your service levels when you’re struggling to hire or when you’re losing staff amidst the Great Resignation. Since 2019, the number of vacancies has increased, while the number of applicants per opening has dropped by 50%.

Chart showing reduction in applicants for high-volume hiring for the contact centre
(Source: Indeed)

So, how can a contact centre director and talent acquisition leader team up to tackle today’s tough landscape? Here are three top recruitment challenges in the contact centre and tips for overcoming them.

1. Use Your Employer Brand to Attract the Right Kind of Talent

ContactBabel’s UK Contact Centre Decision Maker’s Guide states that contact centre attrition reached 23% in 2022, with 1 in 6 operations experiencing annual attrition of over 30%. This results in UK contact centres making over 212,000 hires annually. With turnover like this, how to make high-volume hiring more effective is always on the minds of contact centre directors.

As consumer behaviour has changed, a different set of skills is needed in customer service. Contact centre agents need to exercise problem solving and analytical skills while also displaying empathy to customers who may be upset or emotional. Agents who lack these skills are more likely to struggle to resolve customer issues and to suffer from increased stress levels.

By honing your employer value proposition and attraction messaging, you can stand out amongst your competition but also zero in the characteristics you need for your contact centre. By shifting your mindset from focusing on getting the most applications, or even those with customer service experience, to getting applications with the right profile, you can reduce attrition by increase the likelihood of your new hires being successful.

Case Study: Finding Candidates with Problem Solving Skills

We helped Direct Line, a British insurance provider, improve their recruitment outcomes in the contact centre through employer branding and recruitment marketing. We found their ideal candidate profile was someone with strong analytical skills and who could proactively problem solve—rather than those with past experience in customer service.

We then expanded our search efforts, looking for candidates who would have honed these skills in non-customer service roles who would be interested in making a career change. Not only did this open the doors for Direct Line to access a new pool of talent, but it also helped to increase the quality of their hires and reduce attrition.

2. Rethink Your Assessment Centre to Reduce Drop-Off Rate

With growing complexity in customer service, organisations need contact centre agents with strong listening skills and written communication skills (for chat, email and social media enquiries) as well as the ability to self-manage and multitask. Leveraging candidate assessment tools to find candidates with the right combination of skills and behaviours is imperative to the success of your contact centre.

Chart of most valued characteristics for high-volume hiring for the contact centre
(Source: ContactBabel)

Case Study: Moving the Assessment Stage Forward

One of our longest standing clients, tasked us with high-volume recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) for their financial services customer contact centres. The bank needed to recruit more staff to meet their service levels and create a great experience for their customers. We designed the customer contact recruitment process from scratch, including a recruitment marketing campaign.

As part of this new process, we advised the bank to introduce an online test immediately after the candidate applied using an automated email. This caught them while the application was still front of mind and also ensured that only best-fit candidates progressed. This meant that hiring managers were committing their time to top talent and helped to reduce the overall time to hire. As a result of identifying high quality candidates sooner, we were able to reduce the attrition rate to just 11%, well below the industry average.

More Assessment Centre Tips to Reduce Drop-Off

Here are some more assessment centre tips:

  • Try introducing assessment tasks earlier in the process or combining assessment stages. This helps increase hiring speed and keep candidates engaged.
  • Rather than traditional multiple-choice tests, try a role play scenario or an interactive experience that gives the candidates a real-life feel of what their day-to-day job will look like. The benefits are two-fold—you get a better idea of how candidates will perform in the role, and they get a better idea of what to expect before they accept the offer.
  • Ensure candidates are prepared for the assessment centre by offering webinars, instruction videos and even practices tests. This helps to eliminate nervousness and boost confidence amongst candidates—reducing candidate drop-off before the assessment centre phase.

Learn more about our whole-person model for assessments and we leverage it for evaluating customer service reps for the contact and other high-volume hiring situations.

3. Boost Your Communications to Eliminate Ghosting

Newly hired customer service reps are increasingly ‘ghosting’ their call centre jobs—not showing up for day one with no reason given and often no communication from the candidate at all. According to an Indeed survey on ghosting in the workplace, 22% of candidates say they have accepted a job offer but didn’t show up for the first day of work.

Following the tips above on finding the ideal candidate profile and assessing for the right skills to start with, will help reduce ghosting on day one. In addition, you can also work to speed up the recruitment process and improve communications to keep candidates engaged after offer acceptance.

Speeding Up the Recruitment Process

With so many contact centres vying for customer service talent, employer response time is crucial as you want to beat the by being the first to move the candidate through the recruitment process. About a quarter of candidates state the reason for their ghosting was because the hiring process was too long or too slow. So, take a look at your recruitment process. Are there any steps you could eliminate or combine? Are there ways you could reduce the time between steps?

If it’s feasible for your organisation, you might consider moving to same-day offers, even if they’re contingent upon reference verification, background checks or drug testing. Also, moving the start date up will reduce the likelihood of a competing offer turning your candidate’s head. Waiting for your next training class could be risky, so think about running smaller training classes more frequently to accelerate hiring.

Staying Connected with Regular Communication

Communication is also a key part of combatting ghosting during the crucial period offer and onboarding. Staying in touch with candidates is imperative to keep them interested. If you ghost your brand-new hire by forgetting to check in, they’re more likely to ghost you in turn. The same Indeed study found that 77% of jobseekers saying they’ve been ghosted by an employer.

Assessing the touchpoints between your organisation and the offer holder is an important way for employers to ensure they keep the lines of communication open and increase engagement with candidates. Are you using your CRM to the fullest? Investing in creating content that showcases your employer value proposition (EVP) and sending it out regularly to your candidates via engaging emails will ensure they are reminded regularly of the value you offer—whether through benefits, flexibility, growth opportunities, diversity and inclusion initiatives and more.

Personal touchpoints are another way to stay connected. Check-in emails from the recruiter or even messages of congratulations from the hiring manager will help candidates feel valued and special. You might consider asking existing employees to act as an ambassador and share some onboarding materials with more information about your organisation, your culture and values or your employee resource groups (ERGs) so they start feeling like a part of the team.

These small gestures can help your candidate feel connected to the organisation before they start—and could end up being what keeps them from changing their mind when they receive a competing offer.

RPO for the Contact Centre

Facing a recruitment landscape in which you need high-volume hiring to support your contact centre operations? Check out our latest webinar in conjunction with Personnel Today, featuring CCMA, in which we discussed how to maintain speed and agility in high-volume hiring whilst keeping the quality of hire. Watch it on-demand!

WEBINAR ON-Demand:
Hire quality vs speed: Finding the perfect balance

Watch Now

Insights From the Volume Hiring Market: Hire Quality vs Speed

Posted on by cspivack

We all know it’s a candidate’s market. A lack of applications and number of suitable candidates, ghosting, dropouts, and a high level of attrition are all making hiring more difficult than ever. In 2020/21, the customer services market saw a record number of vacancies. However, the number of active candidates per vacancy reduced by half. This has further highlighted the need for organisations to use innovative solutions to attract talent.

A recent poll by PeopleScout asked participants what their biggest hiring challenges were in the current market:

  • 50% of candidates answered that they faced the most problems getting good quality candidates to apply
  • 27% said that holding onto candidates throughout the hiring process was their second biggest challenge

In addition, time-to-hire is also an issue that has been at the forefront for our clients. So, the question becomes, how do we accelerate the hiring process without jeopardising quality?

In the last 12 months, PeopleScout have helped organisations such as Virgin Media, the AA and Heathrow to make 4,000 new hires, ranging from graduates and apprentices through to customer service agents.

Our hiring success is a result of working in partnership with our clients, understanding their employer value proposition (EVP) and activating their employer brand. We bring to the partnership expert planners, designers, and implementation specialists who provide innovative strategies to recruit the right quality and volume of talent in the shortest timeframes.

We recently hosted a panel for our Hire Speed vs Quality webinar including speakers from PeopleScout, Virgin Media O2, easyJet, Shakespeare Martineau and the Call Centre Management Association. These experts discussed the challenging market situation and how innovation can provide solutions. The panel agreed that, taking greater precedence than ever before, is the need for more creative solutions to making the process smoother and quicker. This in turn ensures that the company’s investment in the candidate is not wasted.

A clear and informative job profile that brings the role to life can be the first step to finding the right candidate.

Once they apply, setting clear expectations and providing interventions to keep candidates informed between recruitment stages keeps them engaged. A good EVP that brings company culture to life also helps the candidate understand early on whether they want to remain part of the recruitment process or not.

Essential tools that are gaining traction include day-in-the-life videos, virtual office tours and segmented and enhanced referral schemes. Watch the full webinar Hire Quality vs Speed and gain an edge in today’s challenging hiring market.

Early Careers Recruitment: Hiring for True Potential

Posted on by akessler

By Joe Mongon, Head of Recruitment Delivery

School’s out for the summer, but in the world of our RPO partnerships this is the time of year where we focus on early careers recruitment, in anticipation of entering apprentice, undergraduate and graduate markets in the autumn. Right now, we’re talking with clients both established and prospective about their needs in this area and, as ever, the focus on using EC programs to correct or balance diversity of workforce and (future) leadership remains a priority.

Most organisations will not necessarily view themselves as having a “diversity crisis” of the kind described in a recent article highlighting research into consulting and finance hiring in the City of London. However, many will benefit from accepting its key takeaway that, “employers are more likely to hire black candidates if they rely on anonymised, ‘skills-based’ assessments in the hiring process”.

In my experience, employers have long moved on from the most “traditional methods”. It’s certainly been a decade or more since I’ve heard of an early careers program requiring a cover letter or making space on an application form for candidates to list all the University societies of which they were definitely the President.

But my experience is not universal. I’m not a graduate looking to start my career, and I’m lucky enough to work in a recruitment business with an award-winning assessment consultancy arm, partnering with clients who take hiring for true potential seriously. That doesn’t mean there’s not more work for us to do within these partnerships—even for those who’ve taken positive steps in this area. Each year brings a new implementation cycle, and new opportunities to improve. 

Here are some solutions we’ve developed, launched or refined in our 2022-23 early careers RPO partnerships:

Assessing for Skills & Strengths in Early Careers Recruitment

Over time, many employers have reduced focus on abilities in favour of strengths- or behaviour-based testing, which is considered more conducive to measuring potential. Organisationally we broadly agree, but, where appropriate, we continue to recommend reasoning tests covering verbal, numerical and cognitive ability.  

The key here is not to use them in isolation as a blunt tool. Benchmark or cut off scores should be set only within the parameters of adverse impact analysis using anonymised candidate diversity data, and ability tests should be followed up with strengths or behavioural assessments. The link RPO expertise can create between recruitment technology, recruiters, and business psychologists is critical in this space.

Recruiting for Role Fit to Enhance Diversity

Predicting workplace performance and potential through behavioural assessment is often seen by early careers talent acquisition leaders as a smarter approach to hiring. Experiential tests, backed by data and research, producing personal interview guides for final stage assessment often leads to better outcomes and maintains diversity in the process. 

This approach highlights candidate suitability against role fit over culture fit, the latter being a potential barrier to creating a more diverse workforce (the concept of aligning new recruits with a prevailing culture or mindset being an obvious denial of the need for organisational change).

Focusing on Culture Add Rather than Culture Fit

I am not yet aware of any early careers programs where assessment is now 100% anonymised. Whether online via video, as part of a wider virtual assessment experience, or in a traditional face-to-face meeting, an interview is going to happen before a hire is made. Removing anonymity can introduce bias, and we promote two key mitigations.

Firstly, design and deliver structured interviews which are competency-based and/or focused on culture add (what the candidate can contribute to your organisation’s culture) over culture fit. Our teams often partner with hiring managers on best practice in this area, even facilitating or assessing directly where needed. This helps maintain consistency and relevance, avoiding questions on personal interests or previous experience—instead asking specific questions on working styles and preferences. 

Secondly, put candidate experience first and learn from feedback to provide support and guidance, setting the stage for success. By hearing the candidates’ voice, and measuring their experience across, we’ve been able to improve outcomes for employers.

We’re looking forward to seeing how these solutions progress, and what improvements they bring as we take early careers RPO from now to next, supporting the diverse workforces of the future—identifying and unlocking true potential wherever it exists.

Learn more assessment best practices in our ebook, Candidate Assessment: Bringing in Better with Passion, Purpose and Mindset.

How Project-Based RPO Can Solve Your Toughest Talent Challenges 

Posted on by nfuqua

More than two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers are still dealing with ripple effects influencing their ability to hire qualified workers. Organisations are still rebuilding their workforces and turnover is high. Talent acquisition teams are spread thin—spending even more time than usual sourcing passive candidates and working with candidates who have multiple job opportunities.  

On top of that, it’s difficult to hire recruiters in the current market. According to LinkedIn, the number of open job postings for recruiters has increased nearly seven times year-over-year. Additionally, uncertainty continues. According to a survey by PwC, CEO optimism is down 20% compared to last year—and this survey was taken before geopolitical conflict and high inflation began to affect consumers and employers.  

These factors have left many employers looking for short-term talent acquisition support that can be set up quickly to respond to changes in the market. Rather than a full recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution, many employers are turning to project-based RPO, sometimes called Recruiter On-Demand. In this article, we’ll walk through the different ways a project-RPO partnership can be deployed to address specific challenges within talent acquisition programs.  

What is Project RPO? 

labor on demand

Project-based RPO represents a talent solution designed to meet the demands that internal resources may be unable to accommodate. Specifically, project-based solutions provide focused support for organisations in all industries during challenging periods of the recruitment cycle, such as peak hiring, hard-to-fill positions, compressed timeframes and more.  

Project RPO is a great option for organisations that don’t need or want a full RPO engagement, but still feel that they could benefit from some extra talent acquisition expertise and a small number of extra recruiters (or even just one). 

While these types of programs typically begin with a defined timeline and scope, they also have the ability to expand, extend and evolve as needs arise. There are three major use cases for project-based RPO engagements; below, we’ll cover what they are, how they work and how they fit together. 

Use Case: Top-of-Funnel Sourcing 

The first Project RPO model is a top-of-funnel sourcing solution. This model is exactly what it sounds like: Your partner works to fill the top of your recruitment funnel with more candidates. From there, your own internal team takes over reviewing their applications, interviewing candidates and making all of the hiring decisions. 

When Should You Use it? 

This type of solution usually appeals to employers for a few reasons, but the overarching theme is that internal talent acquisition teams don’t have enough time or bandwidth to source enough qualified candidates for open roles. This could be due to a hiring surge, ramp up or expansion. We also see this challenge for employers that have great consumer brands: They often get a lot of applicants, but can struggle to source candidates for specialised roles that aren’t what their brand is known for. This is common when hiring for IT or technology roles at companies that are not in the tech space.  

Likewise, as many organisations work to meet their diversity and inclusion goals, talent leaders can also struggle to find enough candidates from underrepresented backgrounds. The challenge can be further amplified when employers have locations spread across dozens, if not hundreds, of communities. That’s because recruiters and sourcers have to understand all the demographics and nuances of disparate locales.  

How Does it Work? 

At PeopleScout, a top-of-funnel sourcing engagement proved successful for one of our clients, a national retail sporting goods company. The team at this company was experiencing two challenges: They needed to fill a few specialised IT roles and they were struggling to source candidates from underrepresented backgrounds at their different locations. They also needed many candidates for their manager and assistant manager roles.  

In this situation, the retailer needed five sourcers: one person supporting their hard-to-fill IT roles, and the other four working to source for their high-volume area of retail and distribution roles. They had also identified several Midwestern states where they wanted to focus their diversity efforts and bring in more candidates from underrepresented backgrounds. To help them reach their goals, we created a detailed sourcing strategy. We also worked with local chambers of commerce and community-based organisations, in addition to leveraging social media platforms. By the end, the sporting goods retailer was able to meet its hiring and diversity goals, and the benefits even continued for weeks after the engagement ended.    

Use Case: Source/Screen/Present

Meanwhile, for employers that need slightly more support, there’s the next level of project-based RPO support: source/screen/present. This type of engagement starts out the same as a top-of-funnel sourcing partnership; recruiters and sourcers support an internal talent acquisition team for a period of time, sourcing candidates to apply to open roles. However, rather than handing those lists of candidates off to internal teams, the recruiters take the next step of prescreening the candidates to ensure that they are both qualified and interested in the role before presenting prequalified candidates to hiring managers.  

When Should You Use It? 

We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of employers looking for this type of support. By taking on the front end of the recruitment process, these recruiters and sourcers give more time back to internal teams. This means that they have more time to interview candidates, put together competitive job offers and onboard new hires. 

This solution can be helpful for employers for a number of reasons, but the most common is that they need to hire for a large number of roles at the same time. This could be because they’re in expansion mode or rebuilding their team after the challenges of the last few years. Or, maybe they have a seasonal hiring surge as they gear up for a busy season, and it doesn’t make sense to have a large internal team when they only need the extra help for a few weeks or months at a time. We see this type of need frequently with retail clients gearing up for the holidays; educational organisations adding staff for the school year; and healthcare companies preparing for open enrolment.   

We also see a need for this solution when employers have a lot of branches or locations spread across a large geographic area—especially if hiring decisions are made at the local level and not at the corporate office. Similarly, we often see that local, branch-level teams don’t have the manpower to source and screen large numbers of applicants.  

How Does it Work? 

In practice, this type of solution can have a major influence. For instance, we have a client that provides early childhood education for children six months to 12 years of age; at one point, they had more than 900 openings across the country. Simultaneously, they were dealing with the Great Rehire, classrooms were reopening and they were working on an acquisition. Their final hiring decisions were also made by the school at a local level. Clearly, this was more than the small internal team could manage.  

When we partnered with this organisation, our engagement started with two recruiters on a 16-week project. Those recruiters conducted the sourcing and prescreening of a minimum of 25 candidates per recruiter per week. Then, they sent prequalified candidates to the assigned school, where the hiring managers conducted in-person interviews, job offers and onboarding.   

Now, 10 months later, the project is still going strong. Because of the success of the initial team, the PeopleScout team has grown to six recruiters and, so far, they’ve phone screened nearly 3,000 candidates and submitted nearly 2,000.    

Use Case: Full-Cycle On-Demand Recruitment

Full-cycle project RPO partnerships are the most involved and most closely resemble traditional RPO partnerships. Think of them as “RPO light.” 

In a full-cycle partnership, recruiters support an employer’s internal team for the entire process—from intake to offer. There’s also even more space for a consultative partnership as the support extends throughout the entire process—not just bits and pieces. This means that there’s a greater opportunity to learn from the experiences and best practices that your partner has gleaned from years of working with employers across industries in all types of talent markets. Yet, despite the increased support, these types of full-cycle partnerships still retain all of the benefits—including the billing structure, shorter defined timeline to secure on-demand labour and more. 

When Should You Use It? 

This type of partnership typically works well for employers that are struggling to keep up with their hiring load. This could be due to attrition or a hiring surge and can cover every part of the process—from applicant management to interview scheduling to offer. 

We also see it work well for employers that want the best practices and experience of an RPO provider, but don’t have the need for a traditional, large, long-term engagement. In this case, these often start out as short-term projects, but end up being long-term partnerships.   

How Does it Work? 

At PeopleScout, we currently support a client that hires licensed clinical social workers. Because they provide virtual therapy and counselling sessions, their internal team was struggling to keep up with the increased demand caused by the pandemic. 

Once again, this Recruiter On-Demand project started small, with a 13-week planned engagement with two recruiters who handled everything form sourcing candidates to initial screenings and setting up interviews. The project also involved sourcing candidates from across the entire U.S. Finally, our team also handled offer letter execution and management.   

Now, 19 months later, the recruiting team has grown to 14, and we’ve hired more than 1,000 licensed social workers. We’ve also extended our services to support the client’s hiring needs in their call centre and IT department.  

A Growing Partnership to Provide Labour with On-Demand Recruitment

Project-based RPO engagements have built-in flexibility, which makes it easy for them to shift in scope. In this way, a partnership can start out focusing solely on top-of-funnel sourcing and then later expand when needs change to cover more of the hiring process. A project RPO partnership can even migrate to a traditional RPO partnership.  

Challenge Accepted: Tactics & Strategies for Hiring in a Candidate’s Job Market

Posted on by nfuqua

The job market and the world of work have changed drastically in the last few years, leaving employers to deal with the new challenges. For example, in the U.S., there are currently more than 11 million job openings, and year-over-year wage growth was at 5.2% in May. On top of that, the Great Resignation has record numbers of workers leaving their jobs: In the last six months in the U.S., more than 4 million people left their jobs each month. And, it’s spreading across the globe; CNN reports that resignations have also jumped in countries like the United Kingdom, Australia and France. 

But, employers are dealing with more than just a tight talent market, increased turnover and rising wages; the world of work has changed permanently—and so have candidate expectations. For instance, nearly two-thirds of the workforce wants some form of remote work option and nearly one-third wants hybrid work. As such, employers can’t simply plan to return to the pre-pandemic ways of doing business; instead, they must adapt. 

More precisely, to succeed in this job market, you need to both hire the best talent and retain the workers you already have—and that requires multifaceted solutions that address the specific issues within your organisation. In this article, we’ll cover the potential sources of your talent challenges, some signs that they may be negatively affecting your organisation and strategies you can use to get ahead.  

Is Your Employer Brand on Life Support? 

Throughout the pandemic and initial recovery, many organisations didn’t have the resources to invest in their employer brands. Unfortunately, if this was the case for your organisation, it may be affecting your ability to recruit top talent. That’s because, if your employer brand is weak, qualified candidates won’t apply because they simply have other options.  

So, how can you tell if your employer brand is holding your organisation back? Watch for these warning signs: 

why is there a labor shortage 2022

Solution: Rebuild Your Employer Brand 

If any of these signs look familiar, it’s time to focus on your employer brand. Luckily, there are a few things you can do. The first is to build out a strong employer value proposition (EVP) as the foundation of an employer branding campaign.  

At PeopleScout, we define your EVP as the essence of your uniqueness as an employer, as well as the give and get between you and your employees. In many ways, your EVP is the foundation of your employer brand—the perception and lived experiences of what it’s like to work for your organisation.  

It’s important to note that building a strong EVP to drive your employer brand requires research into the short- and long-term goals of your organisation; the reality of what it’s like to work for you right now; and the outside perception of your organisation. That information is distilled into an EVP that’s unique, aspirational, authentic and dynamic. From there, you can communicate your message through an employer branding campaign via your careers site, social media campaigns, hiring events and more.  

At PeopleScout, we supported work on the employer brand at Vodafone, a telecommunications company in the UK. In this case, consumers knew the brand well as a mobile phone retailer, but didn’t see it as a multifaceted tech innovator. So, to help Vodafone hire more young workers, we worked to create an employer brand campaign that captured the spirit of change and possibility that’s part of their EVP. At the end of the project, PeopleScout had generated more than 16,000 applications and increased the number of female candidates by 23%. 

Does Your Candidate Experience Leave Much to be Desired? 

If your employer brand is in good shape, but you’re still struggling to hire qualified candidates, the next area to evaluate is your candidate experience. Candidate experience has always been important, but it’s even more critical in today’s job market. Nowadays, people have plenty of other options, so they won’t take the time to complete a long application or wait weeks for a call back.  

How can you tell if your candidate experience is the cause of your hiring woes? Look for these signs: 

Candidates accept other offers while in your recruitment process.  You have a lot of interviews, but make few hires.  Your process is slow and requires multiple steps for candidates. Candidates ghost before starting

Solution: Update Your Talent Tech Stack 

The right technology can have a significant influence on your candidate experience. Candidates want the recruitment experience to be fast and easy and allow them to feel in control. For this reason, evaluate every step of the candidate journey to identify where you can make improvements with technology. 

Your first step is to look at your application. Have you tried filling out your own application recently? How long does it take to complete? Is it simple or does it feel drawn out and tedious? Can you complete the application on a mobile device? If the process takes a long time or requires a desktop computer, it’s time to update your application.  

Then, look for other points in the process where you might make things easier for candidates. Do candidates have to wait weeks to schedule a screening or interview? If so, consider adding a self-scheduling interview tool or virtual interview solution, like text interviews or on-demand interviews. Furthermore, adding something as simple as a status bar that shows candidates where they are in the process can help them stay engaged. 

At PeopleScout, we work with a large retailer that had a strong consumer brand, but still struggled to recruit candidates. Their application required a computer and took more than 30 minutes to fill out. As an alternative, we developed a mobile-first application with just 11 questions that took less than eight minutes to complete. Now, half the candidates apply on mobile devices and the application conversion rate rose to 85%. For comparison, employers using a traditional application have an average applicant conversion rate of just 35%. 

Are Your Offers Competitive Enough in the Job Market? 

Salary and benefits are the elephants in the room in any discussion about hiring challenges. Wages are rising significantly. While the average year-over-year salary growth in the U.S. is at 5.2%, some industries are experiencing even steeper wage growth. For example, in the leisure and hospitality sector, wages are up more than 11% in the last year. In fact, the World Economic Forum reports that wages are rising in every region of the world. Therefore, in the current job market, your offer needs to be competitive.  

Here are some signs that your offers may not be competitive enough: 

Candidates make it through the process, but turn down offers.  Candidates cite salary expectations significantly higher than your budget.  Employees who leave frequently cite increased pay. 

Solution: Adjust Your Compensation to Current Job Market Rates 

If you’re experiencing any of these warning signs, evaluate your compensation against the market and adjust where necessary. Due to remote work, the job market has changed. Now, you’re not just competing against employers in your area for talent; you’re competing for talent across the country and, in some cases, the entire world. 

To that end, an RPO or MSP provider can help advise you on market rates and what types of adjustments are needed to make your offers more competitive. Plus, increasing your wages could even save you money in the long run.  

This happened for one PeopleScout client, a major rural healthcare system. Hit hard by the ongoing nursing shortage, the healthcare organisation was relying on expensive travel nurses and struggling to bring in enough candidates. PeopleScout advised the provider to implement a $10,000 hiring bonus. This resulted in a cost savings as the client was able to reduce its nursing recruitment spend by 77%, totalling more than $4 million. The client was also able to reduce its use of travelling nurses by 68% and experienced its lowest-ever nursing vacancy rate—just 1.3%. 

Does Your Company Culture Send People Running? 

Perhaps the best way to avoid staffing shortages is to ensure that you don’t have to backfill large numbers of roles due to turnover. The Great Resignation is in full swing, but employers shouldn’t just throw their hands in the air as employees leave for new jobs.  

The good news is that employee turnover isn’t just about money. Talent leaders are finding that a major driving factor is employee disengagement. Throughout the last few years, many employees have experienced negative effects on their mental health, causing burnout and driving a reevaluation of work/life balance. Conversely, company culture can play a huge role in keeping employees happy, healthy and engaged. 

Is your company culture a problem? Watch for these warning signs:  

job market

Solution: Determine What Employees Want in the Job Market & Meet Their Needs 

To improve your company culture, you must first determine what employees feel they’re lacking from your organization. You can gather this information in two ways—and both are valuable. First, you should be conducting exit interviews with employees who have resigned. Try to get an idea of why they decided to take a new role. Is it simply increased pay? Did they feel they lacked a clear career path at your organisation? Did they not feel appreciated by managers and colleagues?  

Next, try to identify problems before they drive employees to leave. You can accomplish this through anonymous pulse surveys; there are a number of tools you can use to track employee engagement and look for areas of improvement. Do employees want more opportunities for training? Do they want to feel as though they’re part of something bigger? Do they feel as though company leadership is not addressing their concerns? 

Then, once you determine the biggest pain points for employees, make targeted improvements to your company culture. You can demonstrate appreciation for your workers in tangible ways: Communicate actively and often. Define paths for advancement and look at learning and development programs. Offer more flexibility. Provide training for managers. Not only will these kinds of investments keep tenured employees from leaving, but they can also improve your employer brand and make your employment offers more competitive.  

There’s no doubt that the current talent market is difficult for employers, but the sources of the struggle are multifaceted and complex. There isn’t an easy, one-size-fits-all solution. Employers need to evaluate both the candidate and employee experience and alter their processes where inadequacies reveal themselves. You can’t keep waiting for “things to return to normal.” We’re in the new normal, and we have to adapt. To learn more, check out our ebook, “Employer Brand: Helping the Right Talent Choose You.” 

Prioritising Mental Health for Employees: Creating a Culture That Promotes Employee Mental Health and Wellbeing

Posted on by jpatel

Mental health for employees continues to be at the top of minds since the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly contributed to deteriorating employee mental health around the globe, bringing new awareness to the importance of employee wellbeing. Globally, the overall number of mental disorder cases rose dramatically in 2020, with an additional 53.2 million cases of anxiety and 76.2 million cases of major depressive disorders, as reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).  Many of the factors that led to this dramatic increase at the height of the pandemic remain—childcare and other caretaking responsibilities, financial difficulties, economic uncertainty and unemployment, to name a few.  

“These are stressful times. Half of Americans say their mental health has been affected by the pandemic. When you add racial injustices and a recession into the equation, a mental health crisis is imminent.”

Stephen Etkind, telemedicine provider with First Stop Health

Forbes noted that nearly six times as many employers have reported increased mental health issues among employees since the pandemic began. Clearly, this growing problem is one that employers can’t afford to ignore. 

Staggering Statistics

Mind/body health company All Points North conducted a survey of 1,000 individuals. They found that, since the onset of the pandemic, 36% of respondents reported experiencing more anxiety, 32% were suffering more panic attacks and 27% reported greater depression—with more than 30% saying that they regularly battled stress and anxiety. Similarly, a report from Indeed found that 52% of all workers were feeling burned out, up more than 9% from a pre-COVID survey.    

Mental Health for Employees

According to the 2022 State of Workplace Mental Health report by Lyra Health, working parents and other caregivers are more likely to face mental health challenges; nearly 90% of caregivers surveyed said they had experienced at least one mental health challenge in the last year and were more likely to experience worsening mental health. Moreover, Mental Health America estimates that depression costs the U.S. $51 billion in absenteeism and lost productivity alone, and Gallup data backs up this theory, finding that burned-out employees were 63% more likely to take a sick day and more than twice as likely to be actively looking for a different job.   

However, just as employee mental health is not a new concern, it’s also not one that will vanish anytime soon. As such, it’s essential for employers to recognise and prioritise the psychological safety of their employees, just as they protect employees’ physical safety. But, how do employers prioritise mental health in order to retain employees and give themselves a competitive advantage? Let’s start by taking a closer look at worker expectations. 

What Workers Want: How to Better Support Mental Health at Work

Mental Health at Work

The pandemic shined a light on previously unexamined areas of peoples’ lives—causing many to shift their priorities, rethink their work/life balance and reevaluate what really matters. And, these moments of clarity are unlikely to be forgotten anytime soon. Workers want a change in their working lives and are prepared to leave their jobs if they don’t feel support for their mental health at work.   
 
For instance, according to a FlexJobs survey, 56% of workers listed flexibility in their workday as the top way that their employer could better support them. In fact, remote work is considered the most important element to compensation and benefit packages, ranked only behind salary. Encouraging time off and offering mental health days were tied for second at 43%, and 28% said increased PTO and better health insurance were needed. Evidently, adopting a remote or hybrid work model could go far in many organisations, although that may not always be realistic depending on the role or industry. Fortunately, there are other ways that employers can ensure employee wellbeing. 

Actionable Ways to Prioritise Mental Health for Employees

employee mental health

The problem is clear: Employees are suffering mentally, emotionally, psychologically and even physically. So, to effectively prioritise the mental health of employees, it must be woven into the fabric of a company’s culture. The following are a few actionable ways you can do so. 

Effective Leadership and Mental Health at Work

As with any meaningful cultural change, leader buy-in is essential—and mental health prioritisation in the workplace starts at the top. By demonstrating awareness, compassion and openness toward mental health, leaders can reduce employee concerns of being perceived as weak or vulnerable if they come forward with an issue. And, the most successful leaders know that leading by what they do is far more effective than what they say.

In an article on post-pandemic mental health predictions from Forbes, Adam Weber, SVP of community at 15Five, said,

“If executives want their employees to prioritise their mental health, they need to be doing the same in a very visible way. It’s one thing to encourage people to take time off for therapy or a mental health day, but most leaders have yet to take the next step of doing that themselves in a transparent way.”

Adam Weber, SVP of community at 15Five

Leaders should also regularly and actively listen to their employees; having open and honest conversations with employees about what matters to them and how they’re feeling mentally and emotionally is critically important. For example, in a study with Qualtrics and SAP, Harvard Business Review found that nearly 40% of global employees said no one at their company had asked them how they were doing. Conversely, ensure that your leaders are creating a safe space during one-on-one meetings with their staff to bring forward any worries, anxieties, struggles and concerns.  

In the People Managers’ Guide to Mental Health, UK-based mental health charity Mind and international champion for better work CIPD offer the following suggestions for a management style that promotes employee mental health:  

  • Create realistic deadlines. 
  • Communicate job objectives clearly. 
  • Deal with problems as soon as they arise. 
  • Give employees the right level of responsibility. 
  • Encourage participation from the whole team. 
  • Act as a mediator in conflict situations. 

When managers and executives are on board with prioritising mental health, the groundwork is laid for a culture that acknowledges and protects all aspects of employee wellbeing.   

Recognise the Signs of Mental Illness in the Workplace

Once top-down buy-in is achieved regarding the importance of employee mental wellbeing, it’s important for employers to understand and be able to spot the early signs of mental health issues in the workplace—and know how to respond. While employers should not give advice about a mental health problem (as they’re rarely qualified to do so), identifying warning signs and responding appropriately can help prevent issues from escalating. This awareness is also a critical component of a culture that prioritises the mental wellbeing of its employees.  

Early indicators of a potential mental health struggle may include:  

  • A sudden change in the employee’s work habits 
  • A dramatic difference in an employee’s personality 
  • An increase in absences or arriving late to work 
  • A sudden inability to control extreme emotions 
  • Social withdrawal 

If you notice any of these red flags, or if an employee approaches you with concerns regarding their mental health, be sure to approach the topic carefully and with respect. Make them comfortable by showing empathy and compassion, and reassure them that there is no judgement or risk to their professional reputation.  

Organisation-Wide Training

Beyond identifying the warning signs of mental health concerns, employers must also equip employees at all levels of the organisation to manage issues as they arise. In a recent global managers’ survey from Yahoo, less than one-third of managers said they felt equipped to handle the mental health needs of their team and 80% of managers worried about using the wrong language when addressing sensitive topics like mental health.

Additionally, some individuals may feel more comfortable bringing forward a concern to a peer, as opposed to their leader. For this reason, it’s critical to educate all employees on the best way to manage these situations. Plus, the right training can help bridge the gap between mental health awareness and effectively meeting the mental health needs of the workforce. Investing in mental health training for all levels of the organisation will pay dividends in employee wellbeing and retention. Formal learning programs can also help substantially move the needle by debunking myths, reducing stigma, and building skills to appropriately and effectively manage concerns.

Employee Resource Groups 

If you don’t have the budget to invest in training, mental health employee resource groups (MHERGs) are a low-cost way to build a culture that prioritises employee wellbeing. Regardless of the segment of your employee population that they represent, ERGs provide employees with the unique support that only those with shared experiences can provide.  

According to Bernie Wong, manager of research and design at Mind Share Partners, MHERGs are “an effective resource that reduces mental health-related stigma through an evidence-based model of social contact, peer support and education.” Further, Wong believes that MHERGs should be open to the general employee population and that participation should be encouraged for all employees—regardless of their mental health needs—so that belonging to the group doesn’t “out” someone as having a mental health issue. This also ensures that membership doesn’t violate employee privacy rights.  

At PeopleScout, our Healthy Minds Collective is an ERG that “inspires individuals to enrich their mental health and wellbeing by enhancing the mind, body and spirit connection.” Additionally, our team in the Europe/Middle East/Asia region (EMEA) also created a group called “Here For You.” This team of volunteers received the training and certification* required to serve as “Mental Health Responders” to provide employees with a confidential channel for reporting mental health concerns and share valuable resources with employees. 

Even if employees choose not to participate, simply making employees aware of ERGs such as these and openly communicating about group activities and discussions can go a long way in normalising mental health in the workplace, which helps foster a culture of inclusivity and emotional wellbeing. 

* Level 2 Award in Mental Health: Workplace Responder qualification from St. John Ambulance service 

Employee Assistance Programs 

In addition to employee resources and training, comprehensive health benefits that include mental health services are quickly becoming a requirement, not a perk, according to Corporate Wellness Magazine. These benefits (or lack thereof) are influencing employees’ decisions about staying in their current job versus looking for a new one. For instance, in Lyra Health’s 2022 State of the Workforce Mental Health, it was reported that 84% of employees surveyed indicated that it was important that a prospective employer offer “robust and comprehensive mental health benefits,” with 29% saying it was “very important” and 55% saying it was “somewhat important.” 

During COVID-19, many companies added or expanded their Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to help employees cope with the added stress, uncertainty, personal loss and safety concerns associated with the pandemic. However, as we’ve learned, heightened mental health issues aren’t dissipating anytime soon. Therefore, providing employees with access to quality, convenient and affordable mental health care is more important than ever.  

Encouragingly, many employers are catching on to the need for comprehensive health benefits to attract and retain employees, as well as improve employee satisfaction and experience. As an example, Kara Hoogensen, senior vice president of specialty benefits at Principal Financial Group, said EAPs, telehealth and mental health programs were among the top benefits that employers planned to increase in 2022.  

Employers across the globe are recognising the importance of supporting and protecting the mental health of their employees as a vital component to the future success of their business. However, although we saw a rise in conversations around mental health during COVID-19, the stigma still remains. Therefore, above all else, practice normalising conversations about mental health and creating a safe space to raise and address issues. Additionally, encourage employees and managers to openly use the term “mental health” and integrate associated language into corporate training, company newsletters, meeting agendas, and more to make it clear that your workplace acknowledges and prioritises mental wellbeing. Finally, practice self-care at all levels of the organisation—in a visible way—to assure employees that they can and should do the same.