Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Healthcare: Can You Prevent Quick Quits?

Hiring and retaining new employees are daunting tasks for most healthcare organizations for a variety of reasons. To start, many are struggling with major skills shortages and even sourcing the proper talent to fill open positions can be an uphill battle. And then, the hiring process in healthcare organizations often takes so long that new employees either take another job instead or leave within the first few months.

Resignations that take place within the first three to six months of employment are known as “quick quits,” and given their challenges, it’s critical that healthcare organizations do everything in their power to prevent these rapid-fire resignations. The key is, of course, strategic onboarding in the form of KSR – knowledge, support, and relationships. Let’s look at each of these three components.

Knowledge

Most healthcare workers join an organization enthusiastic to contribute to the best of their ability. However, if they don’t receive proper training and direction, as well as clarity around their roles and responsibilities, they may find themselves at loose ends and wishing they’d taken a different position. In addition to general information about the organization and its policies, your onboarding initiative should include a review of expectations for what new hires are expected to accomplish in a given job. Managers should ensure that these expectations and goals align with what was discussed during the interview process. And because uninformed employees are more likely to be disengaged, there should be an ongoing and seamless flow of role-related information from organization to manager to employee.

Support

Through its work with healthcare organizations, Gallup observed that the rapid changes in the healthcare industry have adversely affected two critical items of employee engagement: knowing work expectations and connecting with the company’s mission.

Providing this type of information is an important way to offer appropriate support, but managers should also ask each new hire, regularly, what they can do to make his or her job easier. Proactively, new employees should be pointed in the direction of key resources that will help them get around common problems or roadblocks, and managers should be on the lookout for the stress reactions that often occur during times of transition – especially in high-pressure healthcare environments.

For the rest of this post, check out the SilkRoad blog.

The Consumerization of HR and the Employee Experience

We started talking about the consumerization of IT several years ago, as employees began to demand technology solutions at work on their own terms, via their own devices. It was natural, then, that the discussion eventually moved to the consumerization of HR.

People now expect an experience at work that is comparable to the experience they have at home via apps like Netflix and Amazon. To be more explicit, employees are looking for digital content available on demand, a friendly user-interface, and online delivery that is agile and automated. They also expect a social experience driven by personalized recommendations relevant to their role, location, and place in the employee lifecycle.

When I talk to HR professionals about this, they get it. Many have taken major steps in the last year to bring their operations to life via mobile and social platforms. They are starting to solicit feedback about what makes a powerful experience at every phase of the employee lifecycle. They are trying new strategies, and using new forms of people analytics to measure their effectiveness.

But something is still missing, and the folks at Bersin by Deloitte identified exactly what that something is.

It’s design thinking.

Deloitte research shows that people collectively check their phones more than 8 billion times each day, yet productivity is barely rising. Traditional HR solutions, say the folks at Bersin, are typically programs or processes to train people, assess performance, ensure compliance, or document a practice at work. Most were built around forms, process steps, formal training, or classroom events.

But we’ve reached a new era. Employees are overwhelmed by the complexity of the workforce and the world in general, and need HR’s assistance in managing it. Design thinking moves HR’s focus beyond building programs and processes to a new goal: designing a productive and meaningful employee experience through solutions that are compelling, enjoyable, and simple.

For the rest of the piece, check out the SilkRoad blog.

Succession Planning is Now Officially Urgent

Succession planning means different things to different people, but it can be broadly defined as a process of developing high-potential employees to fill future strategic roles within the organization. Many organizations engage in succession planning activities informally or not at all, especially if they are small to medium-sized businesses.

However, lacking an official succession plan opens up a company to substantial risk and danger. Many baby boomerleaders act like they’ll be working until they die, but if something happens and they have to leave the organization suddenly, without an adequate knowledge transfer what will happen to those key roles? There is grave potential for at least a moderate disruption of business.

Why Succession Planning is Good for Everyone

Obviously, senior-level talent is essential to keep an organization meeting its current goals, but growth plans should be considered as well. As a company expands and offers new products and services, it will require more fully trained employees to guide its hand.

Formal succession planning not only provides a ready pipeline, but communicates details about that pipeline to the organization so talented candidates can be placed in the best possible role. And frequently, these roles are difficult to fill externally.

Formal succession planning is also one of the most effective ways to motivate and retain your best employees. Employees who understand that they are being groomed as future leaders experience increased loyalty to and respect for the organization.

By focusing on these individuals’ career development and customizing a plan for each person that might include classroom training, cross-functional assignments, and temporary project leadership, companies appeal to a universal hunger for new skills, challenges, and innovation. They also show high-potential candidates that they are valued and worth the investment of time and resources.

For more where this came from, check out the SilkRoad blog.

Filling the Gaps Between Recruitment and Hiring Folks

At this year's SilkRoad Connections conference, IDC VP of HR and Talent Research Lisa Rowan discussed the differing expectations that recruiting and hiring managers have regarding HR-related issues. These disconnects matter because the all-important employee experience begins with the first candidate contact, and employees are at the heart of the customer experience.

In a 2015 study of 500 executives, IDC examined gaps in the following 10 areas:

• Gap #1: Corporate Culture: Culture is viewed as a shared responsibility with an emphasis on HR. Line of business managers want more HR involvement. The main issue for HR? How do you translate culture?

• Gap #2: Employer Branding: Managers want HR to do more here as well. If the brand is good, respondents feel that it sells itself. But if it’s unclear, how can we figure out the right message for candidates, and whose job is that?

• Gap #3: Leadership Development: HR professionals think the responsibility resides with them, while line of business managers think it’s a joint effort and would actually like more direct involvement.

• Gap #4: Translating Corporate Goals: HR professionals feel they should lead the charge here and line of business managers think it’s a joint effort. Both groups would like more involvement and collaboration.

• Gap #5: Recruiting Strategy: Both groups are split on whether this was mostly an HR or shared responsibility, but both also feel that HR should do more. HR would like a bigger role in the overall workforce strategy, which directly impacts the recruiting plan.

• Gap #6: Candidate Pipeline: HR professionals see themselves as mostly responsible, while line of business managers feel this is a shared activity. Both groups want more control over the candidate pipeline.

• Gap #7: Writing Job Descriptions: Sixty percent of HR professionals say this is a joint activity and 60 percent of line of business managers admit that they should step up and do more.

• Gap #8: Job Posting and Social Outreach: Line of business managers are vocal in wanting a bigger role. The survey was clear that they aren’t being asked by HR to tap their networks for promising candidates.

• Gap #9: Screening of Candidates: HR is frustrated by line of business turnaround times. These professionals acknowledge ownership but nearly all (98 percent) want managers to step up!

For Lisa's key takeaways, visit the SilkRoad blog.

Employer Branding Best Practices

Ten years ago, employer branding wasn’t even on the radar of organizational psychologists. But after a Society for Human Resource Management study revealed that over 67 percent of organizations view employer branding as a strategic recruiting tool to attract top talent and nearly one-half identified the employer brand as a top five strategic initiative, psychologists such as Born and Kang at Cornell University began to look it more seriously.

In their new paper “What are best practices in the space of employer branding that enable organizations to attract and retain the best talent?” Born and Kang define an employer brand as a set of attributes and qualities that make an organization distinctive, promise a particular kind of employment experience, and appeal to those people who will thrive and perform their best in its culture.

The researchers recommend the following best practices for deliberately and systematically shaping your employer brand.

Assess and Shape an Authentic, Consistent Message of What Your Organization Values

To attract and retain critical talent, organizations must make a concerted effort to ensure that they stand for something meaningful as an employer. An effective employer brand is a long-term strategy that permeates every aspect of the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, retention, and engagement.

Born and Kang suggest evaluating and understanding your organization’s current value proposition, and ensuring that your employer brand message is authentic and consistent with company practices. You want to be certain that the employment experience you promise to potential employees is one you are already delivering.  A helpful tip is to appoint an experienced brand strategist or influencer to craft an effective brand message.

For example, Yum Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, found that the investment in hiring a marketing manager to drive employer branding initiatives across the organization was well worth it. These branding initiatives resulted in improved retention and applications, outperforming fast-food industry averages.

For more, have a look at the SilkRoad blog.

Whose Responsibility is Employer Branding?

A recent article from my friends at Recruiter.com asks an intriguing question: who exactly owns the employer brand?

In 2015, employer branding firm Universum released a four-part study, “2020 Outlook: the Future of Employer Branding.” Based on a survey of more than 2000 HR professionals and CEOs from around the world, the study examined where employer branding is today and how employer branding may evolve over the next five years.

Interestingly, the results illustrate that HR and the C-suite can’t seem to agree on who should own employer branding, with 60 percent of CEOs saying it’s their job and 58 percent of HR executives saying it’s theirs.  Uh oh.

This situation rather reminds me of the bystander effect – a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. That’s because every individual assumes that someone else will call for help.

The researchers believe that employer branding efforts are stalemated at many organizations precisely because no one is sure who should be issuing calls to action.  “Since there seems to be a misalignment on who is accountable on both a strategic and operative level, no one has a good answer on how to increase internal engagement on the employer branding topic,” says Jonna Sjövall, vice president of talent strategy and employer branding for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at Universum.

For more insights, check out the SilkRoad blog.

 

How to Recruit For A Small Business

In a recent Monster survey, 46 percent of respondents "indicated they would actually prefer to work at a business with between six and 100 employees." But despite the desirability, small businesses are at a disadvantage, as many may not have HR departments. They may have a harder time at each stage of the hiring process and have to be creative when it comes to recruiting new employees in particular.

I sought insight from three successful small-business owners who have mastered the recruiting process: Derek Capo, CEO of Next Step China, a study abroad program in Beijing; Erica Douglass, co-CEO of computer repair shop 1Up Repairs in Austin, Texas; and Phillip Oakley, founder and CEO of branding agency Common Giant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

What Business Owners Consider When Recruiting New Employees

Do you have a recruitment strategy? How did you come up with it?

Derek Capo: Our recruitment strategy consists of reaching out to people who are the most passionate about our industry and mission. We reach out to our community, LinkedIn, current employees or online networks on financial websites.

Erica Douglass: We've hired seven people now, all through word of mouth. Some are college graduates, some aren't. Only one of our previous employees was in a technical position before we hired him. We prefer to hire people who are trustworthy and loyal—our two key values—and train them technically. Our employees have diverse experiences and backgrounds, from a restaurant manager to a veteran to a former security guard.

Phillip Oakley: Common Giant's recruitment strategy is almost completely a byproduct of our brand and culture. The agency world can become a revolving door of talent, which we try to avoid. At Common Giant, we care less about agency pedigree and more about your life experiences and how you learn and adapt from them. I personally decided on this strategy years ago after being in the agency world and seeing incredible talent and humans overlooked. We have found the best employees to be ones that reach out to me personally and are direct with their intentions to work with us.

Where have you found your best employees?

Oakley: Most of our employees have come from internal referrals, but some have reached out without job postings to share interest in our culture. We build relationships through our social media, partners, vendors and networking. Our talent pool has spanned from Chicago to as far as the Philippines.

Douglass: We look for people who are willing to learn and will stick with us for the long term. We've found employees from playing video games and belonging to a car club. It's pretty diverse, but the key for us has been getting out of industry meetups and being willing to train people who want to learn what we do.

Capo: We have found the best employees to be ones that reach out to me personally and are direct with their intentions to work with us. This may seem aggressive, but I think it shows motivation and passion.

For the rest of the interview, check out the AMEX Open Forum.

3 Steps to Effective Social Media Recruitment

Social media can be a terrific recruiting tool, but only if you understand your audience and the laws that formally and informally govern networks. Most organizations have figured out by now that blasting generic job postings over Twitter doesn’t generate much targeted interest. The better approach requires a bit more legwork but is certainly worth it in the end.

Locate where your targets already hang out

Most organizations go directly to LinkedIn because that’s what everyone else is doing. But depending on the segment you’re trying to attract, LinkedIn may or may not be the best option. There’s also Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, as well as hundreds of industry-specific social networks. In an article for the Cornerstone on Demand blog, Andy Headworth suggested employing Google X-ray searches to find potential candidates across networks by using relevant keywords with job titles, skills and interests. Here’s the command:

• Site: linkedIn.com inurl:pub <“insert job title”>
• Site: twitter.com <“insert job title”> OR <“insert job title synonym”>
• Site: plus.google.com inurl: about “lives in <insert location>” <“insert job title”>

As you do more searches, you’ll notice a pattern of certain types of candidates appearing in specific places on specific networks. That’s how you’ll know where to focus your recruiting efforts.

Create audience-specific content

When using social media, it’s a best practice to engage substantially with each community before posting too much of your own content. This means commenting on others’ posts and offering feedback and ideas 5-10 times for every 1 time you submit an article or link from your company.

Your own content should present a strong and consistent employer brand. It should also be novel and relevant to the topic and/or audience. Curating interesting content from other expert sources is a smart way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, and using different types of content – from quotes and questions to videos and Slideshares – will prevent things from getting stale.

Here’s another important piece of advice: don’t just set and forget. Even if you have an automated system (Hootsuite, etc.) that allows you to send social media posts live at a particular time, it’s your responsibility to monitor comments and likes and engage frequently with feedback. Only then can you accurately assess if the content is fulfilling recruitment objectives.

For the last tip, check out the full post on the SilkRoad blog.

Variables Impacting Recruitment Strategy

Segmentation is nothing new to our colleagues down the hall in marketing, but when it comes to recruiting, it’s a relatively new phenomenon. Just a few years ago, recruiting messages were “one-size-fits-all.” We agreed on company verbiage we wanted to share publicly and then shouted those words to anyone who would listen. Then, of course, we’d be stuck going through thousands of resumes, many of which were completely unsuitable for our open positions.

Technology, particularly social media, has made it possible to communicate easily with different groups of potential hires. We also have the ability to research candidates, and learn not just about their education and skills but also about their career goals, interests, personal motivations, and cultural references. In turn, we can create relevant recruiting messages accordingly.

In their book Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management through Customization, Accenture talent executives Susan Cantrell and David Smith suggested that organizations can achieve significant business benefits by treating each individual as a workforce of one – in other words, by offering each would-be employee a customized recruitment experience.

Cantrell and Smith recently wrote an article for Monster.com that revealed how organizations can segment potential employees by any number of variables. Here are a few of their examples:

Talent Source

P&G delivers targeted recruiting messages to potential MBA candidates when they are most receptive – at Christmas vacation, for instance, when students are less busy with academic work and starting to think about the January intern season.

Life Stage or Generation

Companies like Deloitte often reach out to different generations in an age-appropriate format. To reach millennials, for example, they encourage job candidates to speak freely with company employees on Facebook.

For more tips, have a look at the full post on the SilkRoad blog.

New Study Shows What Successful Job Seekers Do Right

In late 2014, the Career Advisory Board’s Job Preparedness Indicator study revealed a startling fact: only 7 percent of hiring managers feel that most job seekers have the right combination of skills and traits needed to fill open positions. This means that while the market is robust and candidates are flooding pipelines, a company might interview 25 people and hire no one. It’s very rare that a candidate applies for whom hiring managers can check all the boxes.

In the interest of providing actionable advice to job seekers, we set out to discover what candidates who are perceived as the “complete package” are doing in order to secure a desirable job offer. In our new Successful Job Seekers research, we surveyed over 550 professionals of varying ages and in different roles and industries. Our respondents had one thing in common: they were either recruited by a desirable company and received an offer without having to search for a new job at all (referred to as passive job seekers), or they received an interview for a job they ultimately accepted less than six months after starting a search (referred to as active job seekers). 

Here, I highlight the results of the research, including that the most effective candidates target, customize, and are organized and realistic about their opportunities. 

Successful Job Seekers TARGET

A short and fruitful job search is apparently not the numbers game that many think it is. Active job seeker respondents, on the whole, did not apply to dozens of positions and hope to get lucky. Instead, they targeted individual companies and applied to open positions very selectively. Fifty-one percent of active job seekers applied to five or fewer positions and 66 percent applied to 10 or fewer. Ninety percent of active job seekers wanted to be at least 75 percent qualified before applying for a position, and 41 percent wanted to be more than 90 percent qualified before applying. This discerning attitude works, as nearly a third of active job seeker respondents received an interview for more than half the positions to which they applied. 

Successful Job Seekers CUSTOMIZE

An essential tool in our respondents’ arsenal was customization. Before applying, 67 percent of active job seeker respondents reached out to the contact person to inquire about the position, and 32 percent reached out to their network to get inside information on the role and company. Alongside their applications, 67 percent included a resume containing the keywords and skills listed in the job description, and 56 percent wrote an email or cover letter pertaining specifically to each open position. Once an interview had been secured, 84 percent of both active and passive job seekers updated or created a new resume for that opportunity. In preparing for individual interview conversations, 63 percent reviewed the company website, 52 percent Googled the company, 46 percent brainstormed concrete examples of how the job description matched their skill set, 28 percent talked to current employees at the company, and 26 percent Googled the interviewers.

Successful Job Seekers ORGANIZE

Organization is important to successful active job seekers: 73 percent kept files on each opportunity, 64 percent stuck to a weekly to do list, and over 50 percent used an online calendar or smartphone app to manage appointments. As one might expect, timely follow up was critical to securing an offer. Sixty-five percent of both active and passive respondents emailed thank you notes after an interview, 17 percent mailed hard copy thank you notes, and 16 percent called to thank the interviewer(s). They didn’t follow up too much, however. While 64 percent of respondents followed up after the interview at least once, only 6 percent followed up frequently. Finally, successful seekers managed their time carefully. Though many career advisers suggest treating a search like a full-time job, most of our respondents didn’t. Only 7 percent spent more than 3 hours a day on their search, 47 percent spent 1-3 hours a day, and 45 percent spent less than an hour each day.

Successful Job Seekers ARE REALISTIC

The most successful active and passive job seekers were willing to settle to some degree. Most accepted jobs that were superior in only a few ways (role, industry, company, geographic location). Sixty-three percent accepted roles they felt were desirable, 55 percent accepted a role at a desirable company, 51 percent accepted a role in a desirable location, and 46 percent accepted a role in a desirable industry. Only 21 percent felt they received an excellent offer, 61 percent thought the offer was good enough, and 19 percent thought the offer was not good, but they wanted the work. 

Have you been very successful on the job search? What made it possible for you?