Category: Hiring

When Not to Worry About Turnover

Posted on by AllMyHR

Most HR professionals would agree that turnover is a source of stress. Losing an employee can feel like losing an investment, and replacing that person has its own costs—advertising, onboarding, training, and coverage to name a few. But we also know that turnover is a manageable cost of doing business, and sometimes even welcome. In short, turnover is a metric to take seriously, but also realistically.

Let’s examine a few potentially stressful situations related to turnover and explore whether they’re really something you should be worried about.

Potential Stressor: Your Turnover Rate Seems High

Whether a given turnover rate is high or low depends on many factors—both in and out of your control. If ineffective or toxic managers are scaring away talent, you should prioritize fixing that. If a bunch of employees resign about the same time, definitely pause and seek to understand why.

But if most of your workforce consists of students who typically leave after graduation or entry level workers who usually put in only a year or two before moving on, it’s prudent to prepare for those departures, but the effect of these departures on your turnover rate needn’t keep you up at night. Don’t stress too much about a number—it’s information that can be helpful, but also a distraction from what’s really important.

Potential Stressor: New Hire Quits

It never feels good when a new hire leaves within the first few months of their tenure with you, but unless it happens repeatedly, it’s probably not a red flag.

That said, digging into your recruitment and onboarding processes may help you tighten any loose ends. Look for disconnects between what is advertised and what the job actually entails. Conduct exit interviews if the departing employee is willing and ask open-ended questions about their experience. If you feel like you’re getting only “safe” answers, be more pointed in trying to determine if the role was as they imagined based on how it was advertised, and whether there were any processes or people that contributed to their decision to leave.

Building a process that creates a true job preview for candidates should prevent them from feeling like they’ve been “had.” New employees who come in with a clear picture of what to expect and then have an experience that matches those expectations are more likely to stick around.

Potential Stressor: One Team Has Much Higher Turnover

As you track turnover, you may notice spikes within one or more teams rather than throughout the whole company. Higher than average turnover rates among certain teams may point to bad management practices or unusually stressful working situations, but they also may be a sign of normal and good things happening. Approach the situation with curiosity.

You may find that teams with higher turnover operate with more entry-level or transitional positions that employees don’t typically spend a lot of time in. Perhaps you have a manager who’s regularly helping their reports move up in the organization or setting higher (but still reasonable) performance standards than their predecessor. You may also find that the work that team does is more stressful, grueling, or monotonous than work elsewhere in the organization. You’d expect higher turnover in these situations. It’s not necessarily a problem you need to solve, but it’s definitely something to account for.

Parting Thought

If you work in HR, you may have some sleepless nights. It’s the nature of the job. You’re constantly putting out fires, addressing emotionally challenging situations, and taking steps to make every hire a good investment for the company. When people leave, it can feel like you’ve failed.

But be kind to yourself. Turnover is always important—but it isn’t always a problem. Turnover is normal and expected. Some turnover is good! Approach employee departures with curiosity and patience. They may indicate that something needs to be fixed or tweaked, but they may also be a sign that everything is working as it should.

Take 10 minutes and find out how you can build a more cohesive team.

Strong Managers, Strong Businesses

Posted on by AllMyHR

Ever notice that great managers always seem to have great people working under them? Dedicated, happy, more productive and their goals tend to parallel the organizational goals. Strong managers enable companies to prosper during difficult times.

Does your company have a system that facilitates the development of new talent from within? At AllMyHR, we feel effective professional development of your team shouldn’t be complicated, difficult to administer and it shouldn’t break the bank. Our Learning Management System is inexpensive, easy to administer, and the materials are both pertinent and compelling. We even provide you time with a training consultant who will help design a program that best fits your company’s needs.

To find out how AllMyHR can make growing your own talent a manageable process, click here and schedule a brief call/or demonstration and start developing your management from within. You cannot afford to have your managers get their degrees from the “School of Hard Knocks”.

What a Good Enough Hiring Process Looks Like

Posted on by AllMyHR

Being the best is rarely necessary. Thinking in terms of good enough helps you set realistic goals that are grounded in the real needs of your organization. With a good enough approach to recruiting, you can focus on what you actually need to accomplish.

The last few years have proved challenging for employers trying to fill positions. Low unemployment, among other factors, made the job market much more friendly to jobseekers than to employers keen to hire them. In this highly competitive environment, some organizations upgraded their compensation packages or experimented with other attractive perks, hoping to stand out as the best. Others re-examined their recruitment and hiring processes or sought help from consultants or vendors. Struggling employers may have been tempted to look for a “magic bullet,” that one thing sure to get them more candidates.

Both the desire to offer a great recruiting experience and the eagerness to find a magic bullet are understandable given the state of the labor market. But both have their disadvantages when it comes to recruitment.

Recruitment is not just one thing—it involves a lot of moving parts and relies on multiple people within the organization. A single-minded focus on being the best can lead to unrealistic goals and misaligned expectations. It can also zero in on one part of the process at the expense of others. Using the best technology won’t by itself solve discriminatory hiring practices. First-rate recruiters can’t by themselves elevate subpar hiring managers. Software that lets people apply for jobs via a text message may sound super cool, but it’s not going to be suitable for every kind of industry or brand.

The good news is that an effective recruitment process doesn’t need to be the best or magical or otherwise super flashy. It just needs to be good enough to fill your open positions.

As a standard, good enough can get a bad rap both in the business world and in American culture generally. Many of us want to be the best. Striving to be “the best” is ingrained in our everyday lives, after all. Theme songs from The Karate Kid to Pokémon evoke that feeling. You probably saw more than a few “Best of 2022” lists last month. When we talk about behaviors and procedures we recommend, we call them “best practices.”

Let’s examine what good enough looks like in the four basic parts of any recruitment process: the Need, the Search, the Selection, and the Onboarding. What’s good enough for your organization will depend somewhat on the particulars of your situation, but the principles and practices below should help get you started.

The Need

You have an open position—maybe it’s new, maybe it’s a replacement. Regardless, you need to bring someone into your organization. Being good enough at this stage means that those involved in the hiring process (e.g., the recruiters and the hiring manager) can effectively discuss the need prior to beginning the search for candidates. For that, they’ll need a job description, information about what kind of person they’re looking for, and a salary range. Determine who should be bringing what information to the table. After discussing the need, create a job posting. This job posting serves as the source of truth so you can find the right candidates.

The Search

Now begins the actual search. Finding your candidates can feel like one of the hardest parts of recruitment. Good enough at this stage involves sharing the job posting and training interviewers how to compare the incoming candidates to the need, of course, but it also means finding and implementing ways to make the search easier and smoother for everyone. Software can help a lot here, but more important are good practices. Consider what extra work you may be giving to yourself and your prospective applicants. Are applicants required to submit a resume and then manually enter the information on their resume into the system? Are they required to draft and submit cover letters when those letters aren’t necessary or even part of the decision-making process?

The Selection

Chances are you’re not going to be able to pick the best of all possible employees. You might not even have a candidate who checks every box. But you don’t need the perfect candidate; you need someone who can do the job well enough and can grow in the position.

A good selection process starts with training hiring managers on how to review applications, conduct interviews, and evaluate the candidates in a fair, equitable, and compliant manner. It involves providing regular and reasonable updates to your candidates and following up with them when you say you will. It includes extending an offer and providing the selected candidate with a reasonable amount of time to consider it. The process concludes when a candidate accepts your offer.  

The Onboarding

The onboarding experience finalizes a new hire’s first impression of the company. A bad experience can cause the new employee to regret accepting the offer and may prompt them to quit at the first opportunity. A great experience, however, can set the stage for a long-lasting relationship.

Fortunately, onboarding doesn’t need to be perfect to be great. The first few weeks on the job are going to feel overwhelming. The new hire isn’t going to remember everything they learned.

Good enough onboarding keeps the process simple, straightforward, and consistent. Set up time for the new hire to complete the necessary paperwork, meet coworkers, read the employee handbook, and complete any training. Time between onboarding meetings and tasks—allowing them to process the information and experiences—should also be built in.

Conclusion

Good enough isn’t about doing the minimum or having the latest shiny new tech; it’s about doing what’s necessary to get the results you want. It means understanding the various pieces of the recruitment and hiring process, setting realistic expectations for yourself and your applicants, and keeping things in perspective as you move from step to step.

For job applicants, candidates, and employees, a consistently good recruitment and hiring process from start to finish is a much better experience than one that is the “best” in one or two areas, but mediocre or subpar in others.

Turning the Great Resignation Into a Great Re-engagement for Your Company

Posted on by AllMyHR
great resignation

“Help Wanted” signs – virtual or storefront – are everywhere. In 2021, millions of American workers quit their jobs, including a record 4.5 million in November alone, a 30% increase over the same month last year. Perhaps more startling, another 65% of Americans are looking for a new job. Predicted back in May 2021, the Great Resignation is underway.

But that’s only half the story. Business hiring is also at record levels. Most Americans aren’t simply quitting their jobs and leaving the workforce. They’re pursuing new roles and companies, or opportunities in new industries altogether.

There are many theories for what’s causing Americans to do this. One of the most prevalent I’ve seen is the “epiphany” theory. The COVID pandemic, like other disruptive events, caused people to reexamine their needs and priorities, and make life changes accordingly. Perhaps it’s spending more time with family, aligning their work with their personal values and interests, staying home to take care of children, having more flexible hours, or moving somewhere new.

Employers are scrambling to keep up. In the face of unprecedented employee turnover, supply chain challenges, new federal and state regulations, and pandemic protocols, their patience is wearing thin. It’s tempting for businesses to bemoan their employees’ reordering of priorities – and willingness to leave their jobs because of it – as entitled, short-sighted and ill-timed. The Great Resignation, the prevailing wisdom says, is a thorn in employers’ sides.

But what if the Great Resignation wasn’t just an opportunity for employees to build a more purpose-driven and engaging career and life? What if it was also an opportunity for employers to build a more purpose-driven and engaged company?

Over a decade ago, online retailer Zappos gained fame when it pioneered the “pay-to-quit” concept: paying employees a bonus if they left their jobs. Zappos believed it would be better off if employees who weren’t dedicated to the mission, values, and work simply opted-out. As then-CEO, Tony Hsieh, wrote in his book Delivering Happiness, “Our goal at Zappos is for our employees to think of their work not as a job or career, but as a calling.”

Now the pandemic is doing organically what Zappos and other businesses have been doing artificially: prompting workers to ask themselves whether their jobs and companies are the right fit, and causing them to make changes if not. If managed effectively, employers can turn The Great Resignation into a renaissance for their teams and companies, creating a more engaged, productive, cohesive, and loyal team in the process.

Here are 6 steps business leaders can take to turn the Great Resignation into a Great Re-engagement for their companies:

  1. Embrace the Change. The labor market will not always be as tight as it is today, but the world of work is fundamentally and permanently changing. For companies to emerge stronger from this period than they were when they entered it, leaders need to embrace the idea that employees are key stakeholders in their organizations. And just like shareholders or customers, employees’ needs and goals need to be understood and addressed as a strategic and cultural commitment. Only then will businesses be able to leverage the current environment and maximize organizational success.
  2. Conduct Stay Interviews. Many companies conduct “exit interviews” to learn why employees leave the organization. It’s important to invest the same time, attention, and curiosity in employees who have not chosen to leave. “Stay interviews” are 1:1 meetings between managers and their employees to discuss what’s going well, what’s not going well, and what changes the employee, the manager, or the organization could make to strengthen the relationship. These meetings require a foundation of trust between the employee and their manager, and are most effective if they are recurring, not one-off, conversations.These conversations should also not be constrained simply to job responsibilities. To achieve a Great Reinvigoration, managers and employees need to open lines of communication about employees’ life goals and values, and how both can be furthered at the organization, or even at a different organization. For example, a manager might learn that one of their employees has a dream of writing a novel or has a family member they need to care for. By opening the dialogue, the manager can help the employee connect or adapt their current role to their goals and needs, or discuss whether there are other roles or even other opportunities that might be a better fit. Sometimes the most powerful conversations occur in discussing opportunities outside the company, as that’s when an employee understands their manager is truly invested in their success.
  3. Don’t Chase. If an employee has decided that they don’t want to stay with the company, it’s generally better to support them in departing gracefully than in pulling out the stops to keep them. The pay-to-quit programs at Zappos, for example, not only don’t chase employees, they nudge them out the door. The key, of course, is to make sure the employee has full information about the direction the company, their team, and their role is heading. If they do, and they choose to leave anyway, trying to “save” an employee risks retaining employees who are not fully bought in, putting a band aid over underlying issues, and undermining the company’s ability to achieve a Great Re-engagement.
  4. Be as Intentional in Hiring as Your Candidates are in their Job Search. American workers are reevaluating their priorities, values, and goals, and are looking for opportunities that better support and align with them. This is a perfect environment to hire employees who will engage in their work at a deeper level and for a longer period of time, assuming you find a match. The key is to adapt your recruiting and hiring processes to find these people. For instance, make sure the interviewing process invites a dialogue with the candidate about not just having the right competencies and capabilities, but also about what’s important to them from a culture, values, team, expectations, and responsibility perspective, so both you and the candidate have confidence that the company and role fit their reexamined priorities.
  5. Shift Dollars from Recruiting to Training. After factoring in recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and lost productivity, the cost of replacing an individual employee is at least 50% of that employee’s annual salary. For employees who are performing well, consider reallocating a portion of what you would spend to replace them from your recruitment budget to expand your training budget. The training could focus on upskilling an employee who is looking to advance their current focus, or reskilling an employee who would have better opportunities in a different career track. Most workers want to grow their skills and will value an opportunity that allows them to do so. Set aside an annual training budget and engage your employees in discussing the best ways to use those resources to further both their and the organization’s goals.
  6. Invite Your Employees to be Co-Creators. Ten years ago, researchers discovered that consumers more highly value products they invest their own time, energy, and creativity in than “off-the-shelf” products. Called the IKEA effect, this same principle also applies to employee engagement and retention. People value organizations more highly if they are part of building them, whether it be their culture, processes, innovation, team, or strategy. To turn The Great Resignation into a Great Reengagement for your company, engage your team more fully in the process of building an organization that serves both their and your customers’ and shareholders’ needs. Turn organizational decisions or initiatives over to employee task forces or informal leaders, or simply empower employees to do things such as define the company’s values or develop programs. Given that people are investing so much though in their lives and work, now is an ideal time to hear their ideas and engage them in bringing them to fruition.

Make no mistake: with millions of American workers leaving their jobs each month, it’s a challenging time for employers. But it’s also an opportunity, one that leading employers like Zappos have previously invested in.

By embracing the moment, rather than ignoring or trying to resist it, employers can turn the Great Resignation into a Great Re-engagement for their businesses, and emerge with a new strategic advantage: a more engaged, productive and loyal workforce.

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Onboarding Starts Before a New Hire’s First Day

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Pre-Employment Communication

New hires are often overwhelmed on their first day – especially when the orientation program includes long lists of procedures, tasks, company policies, introductions to co-workers, compliance requirements, and all the technical aspects of employment. It’s difficult for new hires to absorb and retain much of the information conveyed during orientation, this is why follow up is critical.

So first-day orientation, while important, isn’t the end of onboarding. Onboarding is a larger process that begins before the start date and continues through most of the first year, done properly it will provide a seamless, efficient and effective new hire experience.

It All Begins Here

Remember when you started. When did you receive and sign your offer letter? How soon did you start? Did you have communication between your hire and start dates? If there was communication, what form was it in? What did it say? What materials were provided? Hopefully you received a reminder to bring valid identification as well as signed copies of employment documentation (offer letter, employee handbook acknowledgment, I9, and a W4).

Onboarding documents, such as a Welcome Packet, are sent as part of the series of communication before your employee’s start date. These documents provide an overview to help set expectations. They also give your new hire time to review information and arrive for their first day prepared and ready!

Standardized new hire onboarding communication decreases the work and relieves much of the effort creating this experience for each new hire. This will also help you build a consistently reinforced employer brand with each new employee.

While some items in the onboarding process can be conveyed via bullet points in an email (direct deposit setup, background check, dress code, etc.) others need to be more thoroughly and clearly communicated. The Welcome Packet you create does just that.

A Good Heads-up Will Lower Anxiety

We like the Golden Rule when it comes to a new employee orientation checklist: When starting a new job, would you want your new company to send you a generic welcome email before your first day, or more personalized and detailed information to get you ready for your new position.

Provide new employees with a sense of transparency with the materials your company provides in their Welcome Packet. Include information to give them a heads-up (maybe refrigerator lunchroom rules or the temperature in the office). When appropriate an email introduction to team members or a request for a short personal bio for a welcome announcement to the company.

Providing a snapshot of coworkers (just the basics) first name, face, and function. These basic three can prove to be helpful when your new hire first meets their coworkers. This information can also help lower anxiety.

Day 1

New hire expects an HR orientation on their first day. How long will orientation take 60 minutes, a full workday? What needs to be covered? What questions should be asked? These are the types of things new hires are thinking about. Introductions, new hire paperwork, lines of communication, different team members, understanding the new role and expectations of performance are all unanswered question new hires want and need to know.

Start by sending Welcome Packets a week before the new hire start date. This provides basic information and answers questions and concerns before that often stressful first day.

As we all know, first impressions matter! The first day is a major part of the onboarding process. This is where your company makes its first impression. This is why it’s essential to get things off to a proper start. Providing a detailed look at the agenda will keep you and your new hire on the same page and help ease the stresses of day one.

Six Months

Onboarding is about employee perception and experience, providing a platform for successful employment. It doesn’t stop after the first day. It’s not unusual for new hires to take as much as 6 months to a year to fully get up and running in all aspects of their new employment. The all important 90 day review should include a review with not just the employees manager but with the HR department. This provides the perfect opportunity to ask about their experience and opinion of the onboarding process.

This is why it’s important to have a plan that extends out 90 days to as long as 6 months.

Conclusion

Once the onboarding is complete, check for understanding, track your results, examine any gaps, incorporate feedback to improve your future Welcome Packets.

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Businesses are Struggling to Hire—Here’s What They Can Do About It

Posted on by AllMyHR
small business hiring - allmyhr

If you’re finding it difficult to hire employees, you’re not alone.

Bloomberg reports that many small businesses are struggling to find people who currently want to work—in fact, 42% say they have jobs they can’t fill. The number of people quitting jobs right now is also higher than average.

One culprit is likely COVID-19. For reasons related to the pandemic, a number of people are choosing not to work right now. They don’t want to risk getting sick, they have children at home, or they may be able to get by for now on unemployment insurance.

Some small businesses with positions to fill have turned to gimmicks like signing bonuses and free food, but these recruiting tactics are unlikely to be effective long term. They don’t address the risks, challenges, and needs people have right now.

Fortunately for employers looking to hire, the problem of people choosing not to work isn’t fundamentally different than the problem of people choosing to work somewhere else. In both cases, the would-be employer has to convince prospective hires that working for them is better than the alternatives, and then they have to live up to those promises.

To be sure, those who choose not to work are missing out on many benefits. A job provides not only a paycheck, but also opportunities for employees to do meaningful work, contribute to their community, make friends, develop skills, receive training, advance their career, and fund their retirement. If someone isn’t working, they’re missing out on these and other opportunities. Employers may be able to leverage these benefits to appeal to those who have removed themselves from the workforce and convince them that work is worth it.

Safety, Flexibility, and Pay

Before employers can use benefits like friendship and skill-building to lure applicants, they must first address safety, flexibility, and pay; in a hierarchy of employment needs, these are foundational.

While vaccinations are proceeding at an encouraging rate and all adults are now eligible, COVID-19 remains a serious threat. It will be some time before people getting their shots now develop immunity to the virus, and they may worry about infecting friends and family who are unable or unwilling to get the vaccine. Because of these fears, some people aren’t going to work, period, and there’s nothing employers can do to persuade them. Others, however, may be open to working if they feel confident enough that the job won’t put them or those they care about in danger.

Flexibility is another key component for many potential applicants, much more so now that in-person school and childcare have become scarce. Since younger children cannot be left to fend for themselves while parents are at work, something has to give. Employers that provide flexibility—either through the initial scheduling of shifts or the ability to rearrange working hours on the fly—will likely receive more applicants and have a lower rate of turnover.

Other potential employees may be willing to work if they feel the pay is worth the risk and sufficient to cover the costs of working (transportation, childcare, insurance premiums, etc.).

Of course, most businesses don’t relish the idea of paying employees higher-than-usual wages, but there’s good reason to believe that increased pay is a good investment, especially for people in traditionally lower-paying jobs. When people are preoccupied with bills, debts, and other forms of scarcity, they tend to be less productive and make more mistakes. But, when scarcity isn’t taxing their mental bandwidth, they’re able to be more productive, make fewer mistakes, and increase business profitability. Increases in pay can pay for themselves.

Career Development Opportunities

It may be that the positions an employer needs to fill don’t come with an exciting career path or teach the kind of skills that employees are likely to put on future resumes. But that’s not set in stone. Both the employer and the employee choose what skills are learned and used in every position.

Imagine, for a moment, a local deli that needs to hire a person to take orders at the register. The job market might consider this job “low skill,” but the owner of this deli doesn’t think of the job that way or advertise it that way.

Now, the owner doesn’t use the gimmick of giving the job a fancier title than what it entails; instead, they set the job up to provide skills training for more advanced positions in customer service or sales. In the first few days, the new hire will learn the menu and the layout of the register, but then, in the lulls between rushes, they’ll learn techniques for talking to customers, de-escalating tense situations, upselling, and the like—training that people in customer service and sales would expect to receive. Later, the new hire might even learn some of the ins and outs of starting and running a small business.

This owner knows that high employee turnover is simply the nature of the business and that employees will, sooner or later, take their training and skills to other jobs. And that’s the point. The aim here is to cultivate a reputation in the community as an excellent place for customers to grab a meal and an excellent place for employees to start learning marketable skills they’ll use throughout their careers, increasing the size of both the applicant pool and the deli’s profits.

Attractive Job Postings and Hiring Processes

Poorly written job postings can prove a serious obstacle to getting applicants. It’s important, as Katrina Kibben reminds us, that recruiters and hiring managers understand what they’re looking for in a new hire and write job postings that are simple and effective.

If an employer offers some or all of the benefits discussed above, they should showcase them in their postings with concrete examples and as part of an engaging story. For instance, instead of the deli owner writing, “We teach valuable skills,” they can explain that down time will be filled with instruction on sales and de-escalation techniques. And instead of saying, “We offer flexibility,” an employer can advertise that employees have of a range of shifts to choose from on a weekly basis, or will be able to complete their work at any time of day, so long as weekly deadlines are met.

But no amount of training opportunities will mean a thing if a business’s hiring process is a chore for applicants to get through. The more minutes it takes to complete an application, the more applicants will decide it isn’t worth it. And the longer a candidate has to wait for an offer, the more likely they’ll turn down that job offer—sometimes, as Adam Karpiak illustrates, even when they don’t have another job lined up.

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