Archive for Talent management
It’s time to change your recruitment ads to be “gender smart”
Posted by: | CommentsMany organisations in Australia, particularly listed companies, are focusing on gender equity at board and executive levels. A gender balanced organisation is not just an outcome by achieving gender ratios, as there is also a need for a process to develop a more strategic approach.
Recent research by Roy Morgan Research highlighted specific gender differences for buyers of packaged alcohol. Female buyers are placing more importance on the service of staff, whereas male buyers are more influenced by lower prices.
The business implications are clear – females value service and males look for signs that advertise cheap beer.
In the world of recruitment, there is also a shift required to more gender smart recruitment advertising.
Changing your ads
Job advertisements on job boards would typically provide a brief paragraph with information about the company, followed by some description of the role, as well as some of the responsibilities attached to the vacant position. Some clues or filters would then be provided in terms of competencies that applicants should have, in order to be considered.
Despite the great advances we have made in technology, all that has happened today is that the same ads that used to be published in newspapers are now being replicated on job boards. As result, we have seen a massive increase in quantity, but quality has in fact deteriorated. Often ads would include some basic errors, and sometimes some grave ones.
Why Should I Apply?
These job ads are usually doing a reasonable job of providing limited information about the job, but usually fail to encourage the job seeker, particularly the passive job seeker that may just glance at an ad, that the recruiting company is offering a real career.
Often in job ads there is a discrepancy between what recruiting companies say and what they have done. This perception difference between external perception and internal reality is the driver for employer branding initiatives.
Lack of awareness
There is still a major lack of understanding or awareness of how job advertisements are demonstrating that the organisation was attractive to women and in what way. Recruiters would expect applicants to access the company’s web site, but not be thinking about how the organisation appears to women, when the board and executive team photo’s clearly highlights the lack of senior women leaders.
As an aside, there is ample opportunity with hyper links, to facilitate and influence this search process by directing prospective applicants to relevant information on the company’s web site.
Adapting the recruitment process
Gender balanced organisations have adapted their recruitment approach to include those themes that are the most likely to be of strong interest to women, focusing on flexibility, the culture, collaboration, and opportunities for development.
There needs to be an alignment and consistency of what the recruiting company is saying and what it is doing. Progressive organisations will always ensure that there is a person that applicants can talk to and discuss the role and potential opportunities in more detail, rather than directing applicants through the applicant tracking system, without any conversation.
Perhaps an example will better illustrate my point. Real estate agents have been very effective with advertising houses, using pictures and being able to tell a story. Now I am not suggesting that recruiters should apply the same creative license, but one thing real estate agents are doing well is to convince buyers that they are selling a home, not just a house.
This was really well illustrated by the popular Australian movie – The Castle. In this movie, the Kerrigan family is threatened by the compulsory acquisition of their family home, which is not just a house, but in their eyes – their castle filled with memories that can’t be replaced.
Telling a story
Writing a good job ad takes time, particularly we make the transition. Working with a HR team recently, we devoted half a day to finalise the ad for a role that was really difficult to fill. Every job advertisement should tell a story. It takes more than just a picture of a female.
Rather than using words such as challenge, drive, determination and results it may be more effective to use language such as opportunities, engage, contribution, partnership, team, relationships and outcomes. This is not about being politically correct, but to be more aware of the subtle messages we communicate to applicants.
A recent ad used some very effective descriptions:
- Make you feel like coming home
- Comfortable with relationship management
- Using your charms to influence outcomes
- Flair for effective leadership
Language is very powerful and unconscious bias may impact negatively on our ability to attract talented staff, particularly if a company is trying to attract and encourage more females to apply for certain roles. Gender smart organisations are aligning their HR systems and processes to achieve a better balance in talent management.
If you have any ideas or suggestions please share your views.
Social Media and HR – Building Employee Engagement
Posted by: | CommentsSocial Media has become an integral part of the way we live and work. It is hard to imagine that it is only twenty years since the Internet was created. According to Nielsen research, social network traffic grew by 43% from June 2009 to June 2010. Social network activity now dwarfs online games, email and search as the number one activity. Every single day more people are also now turning to their social networks, as the preferred way to find jobs.
Managers need to realise that social media is much more than Facebook or LinkedIn. There is also a level of skepticism and confusion about the value of social media. A communications manager recently told me that she was one of the first people to get a Twitter account, after attending a conference in New York. Currently she still has no active account, and perhaps due to her confusing initial experience, is now a social media skeptic.
The astronomical growth of social media has created new ways for companies and candidates to connect online. In the late seventies, the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was written and directed by Steven Spielberg. The movie used Hynek’s scale of three types of encounters: sightings; observations of UFO’s; and human observation of animate beings.
Similarly, the involvement of Human Resources with the phenomena of Social Media can best be described and summarized at three distinct levels or types of encounters: compliance; sourcing; and engagement.
Level 1 –Compliance
Legal firms are frequently running workshops, as a number of employers are still working on an effective social media policy. Companies are struggling with dealing with how social networking sites may impact on their workplace, as well as trying to understand the laws and other factors that may impact their approach to social networking.
From a compliance perspective, companies may be concerned about the distractions of social media at work, and the consequences of privacy, bullying, and harassment issues that can follow.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia recently released their Social Media Policy, only to experience a massive backswing from employees and unions reacting angrily.
Companies need to design a policy framework on social networking sites, which also require education of employees on how to use social media sites in a meaningful way.
Level 2 – Sourcing
A recent survey (The Jobvite Survey: Job Seeker Nation 2010) highlighted that proactive career managers (defined as currently employed and open to a new job but are not actively seeking one) have a very social profile: Facebook (67%), Twitter (28%) and LinkedIn (28%). They are well connected with 52% having more than 50 contacts on Facebook.
Younger professionals are using the benefits of technology to build their networks faster, by generating more referrals online, as compared to previous generations that are still preferring more traditional methods.
Companies, such as Microsoft, have developed effective recruitment strategies to ensure they manage their online and offline presence to remain an employer of choice. This includes creating a supporting environment for recruits and utilising employee networks to reach those candidates that are not active job seekers.
Increasingly, Australian companies, such as Fosters (@FostersCareers), are building strong talent management teams, adept at using LinkedIn and other social media tools to attract top talent, inviting potential employees to learn more about a career with their business. Recruiters are often online for a period, with “Ask and Expert” segment, to answer any questions that applicants may have.
Level 3 – Engagement
Social networking sites can be great tools for attraction, recruitment, communication, connection and engagement. Social media has also created new business opportunities – a recent internet survey confirmed that 68% of users found LinkedIn the most valuable tool.
Internal social groups can be connected and engaged through the effective use of social media. Social media is a critical part of communication and collaboration technologies that can help to make people more productive. Clearly there is an opportunity for employees to share ideas, replacing the old style suggestion boxes with a more interactive process, which is being used by many forums to collect views from users.
An example is Salesforce.com which is using a Twitter-like product and calling the employees that are using it the “Chatterati”. These employees are getting their jobs done by using these tools, which creates value for the organization.
VicRoads are using Yammer, an internal “twitter” bringing together all of a company’s employees inside a private and secure enterprise social network. According to Judith Pettitt, Executive Director People Services and Internal Communications, more than 20% of their 3,000 employees are engaged in providing valuable shared knowledge on various business topics. It has been especially helpful in organisational problem solving and in ‘seeding’ ideas.
VicRoads has also supported a recent blog project where all staff were able to make improvement suggestions on line, comment on others suggestions and get feedback from the Corporate Leadership Team on implementing the proposals .Using contemporary communication tools makes such a difference to the immediate needs of staff to share their knowledge and effectively engage with each other.
Embracing the future
Companies need to embrace social media with the same vigour that the internet and websites are today an intrinsic part of the communication within a company. Often it is about making a start. The HR department is the custodian of employee communication. By developing social media strategically, the HR department can apply social media tools in an integrated way where they have real meaning.
Managers often feel a lack of control, particularly when a major change process is taking place. Rather than trying to control the process with zealous compliance, leaders need to embrace social media and encourage employees to use it meaningfully to improve engagement.
Companies are responding to the growing interest and investment in social media applications, to support the attraction and retention of talent. A few companies are taking a leadership position as visionaries by embedding social media as an integral part of their employee engagement strategy.
How To Increase Employee Engagement by 50%
Posted by: | CommentsGood people management is not difficult. However, research confirms that the large majority of employees are disengaged and increasingly cynical about the commitment of their employer to provide a great place to work. According to recent research conducted by employee engagement consultants Infogroup, Australia is placed seventh globally in terms of employee engagement, narrowly behind the United States and Germany. The research surveyed the views of 9,300 employees across the globe.
Some years ago I worked for a large manufacturing company, with the typical entry points where all staff had to clock in for their next shift. As is usual, staff would change into their work clothes and store their personal belongings in their locker. One of the production managers would often remark that it was such a shame that staff are leaving their initiative locked away as well, as they change into human robots, going through another boring twelve hour shift.
There are five highly effective strategies that can be adopted by any manager to significantly increase employee engagement by more than fifty percent. This article provides a brief overview on each of these strategies.
Role Clarity
Most employees go to work to do their best, though somehow it seems as if employers are making it as difficult as possible for an employee to do their job well. It all starts with having a clear job description of what is expected from them. Every manager has their specific expectations and standards, which needs to be shared with every new employee, or whenever there are any substantial changes. Employees are not mind readers and managers need to discuss and explore with employees what is expected of them. The key here is to focus on outputs or outcomes, not tasks or activities, as employees will become more engaged if they understand what is required, but have the opportunity to decide the best way to achieve the desired outcome.
Agreed Goals
Most jobs incorporate a long list of requirements. Some of these actions include daily actions, others weekly or monthly outputs, and others may be more project based or one-off assignments. Having a clear and agreed list goals is a very powerful way to hold employees accountable, provided they have been involved in developing the list of goals, which also makes it easier to get agreement. Too often, managers confuse KPIs or target measurements with goals that encapsulate the key priorities for the business, creating a strong alignment and making it more meaningful for the employee to see how they contribute to the business.
Regular Feedback
We all enjoy feedback, hearing that we are on track and doing a good job. Feedback should always be timely and regular, rather than creating a list which is only discussed every quarter or annually. Most managers dread giving feedback as they are used to a very formal process, rather than using role clarity and agreed goals as signposts that guide the feedback process, taking away the risk of becoming a very subjective discussion.
Learning Plan
Personal growth is often top of the list of motivators, reinforcing how all employees, and in particular Gen Y employees highly value any investment by their manager and the company to develop their skills and make them more employable. Having a highly developed structure of the role and how the employee is performing ensures that any training and development is of mutual benefit.
Career Discussion
No employee wants to be in a dead-end job, without any prospects of career progression. Once the employee has proved their performance and competence in their current role, it is essential to discuss how the learning plan is assisting the employee to be appointed into their next role, where role clarity kick-start the next cycle, in a virtuous cycle of employee engagement. The opportunity to rotate staff into other roles often creates new enthusiasm and also adds fresh skills, providing the employee with new career opportunities.
Increasing employee engagement is a major HR strategy for most organisations, and critical to make the employer a preferred employer of choice. If manager can nurture, develop and recognise the talents of employees, employees will be highly engaged and more likely to be retained. By using these five strategies, companies have been able to significantly increase their levels of employee engagement, by more than fifty percent, through better people management.
How LinkedIn Can Help Your Job Search
Posted by: | CommentsLinkedIn is one of the best business networking sites around to help anyone searching for a new job opportunity to maximise their job search. An extraordinary large number of people are already using this site – far more so than other business networking sites that I know of.
It is easy to regard LinkedIn as another distraction, but it can in fact be a very sophisticated relationship management and effective job search tool. By understanding how you can use LinkedIn to differentiate yourself, you can increase your job search effectiveness exponentially. A core ingredient of any job search is to develop and enhance your personal brand.
About a year ago I started to develop my own website, with some blogging and other social media initiatives to develop my own personal brand. When I started, I would get less than 20,000 hits when I searched for my name. Today, it is almost reaching the half-million mark.
Most people have a shortage of time, so be economical with your profile building and first get it right on LinkedIn. At a later stage, you can easily clone the profile and update other sites, such as Plaxo, Xing, Naymz, Ecademy, to name a few.
1. Picture – most people use a picture. Unfortunately many miss the opportunity and use an obscure picture hiding behind a ski mask. Using a picture that presents you in an authentic way is the best choice. The absence of a photo raises more questions and is not the best way of building your personal brand.
2. Headline – though you get 120 characters, think of a compelling headline – highlight the typical position title you are aiming for and add some flavour to make you stand out from other candidates. Think of it as a by-line that will catch the eye without being over the top, but may be a typical key word.
3. Profile – the summary section provides you with an opportunity to provide a snapshot of your career. Here is an opportunity for some of your style and personality to shine through, by adding a story about your experience and skills. It is very important that this is consistent with your resume; otherwise you can expect some difficult questions during an interview.
4. Getting Connected – building connections is an on-going process. After networking and meeting new contacts, LinkedIn is a great way of adding them to your network and staying in touch. As you continue to network and connect with others, your contacts will increase as well.
5. Groups – by joining selected groups, you can easily expand the reach of your network. One of the main advantages of groups is the ability to send emails to people in your group. This is useful to make contact with relevant people and engage in further communication.
6. Personal Invitations – though LinkedIn saves you time with a standard invite, always add some personal comments to make it more compelling for your business contacts to respond to your invitations. Try and introduce your contacts to others, as a way of sharing information. Quality of contacts are important and it is best to only invite people that you have connected with either in person or through phone/email.
7. Companies – this is a great new feature and you can include your target companies, as a way of keeping track of any departures or appointments. Doing research on a company prior to your interview has just become a lot easier.
8. Jobs – I have left the most obvious for last. In the jobs section LinkedIn will display potential jobs that you may be interested in. You can also request an introduction through one of your existing contacts. The difference here is that you can connect jobs and contacts – leveraging your relationships and exponentially enhancing your job search.
Lastly, technology is a great enabler. It works while you are busy with other things, creating touch points. Ultimately, it is not just about how who you know, but also who knows you. LinkedIn is a great way of helping you with your job search.
Using Social Media Strategically to Find Top Talent
Posted by: | CommentsCompanies will be able to attract top talent more effectively by leveraging social media using four key strategies. Though many companies are keen to explore social media, there is an underlying wariness as policies are trying to control the flow of information. This article provides an overview of social media and the potential application to attract top talent.
Underneath the iceberg of vacant jobs being advertised on job boards and newspapers, a strong invisible current of talent is ingeniously using social media to identify and strategize their next career moves. Prior to the popular rise and rise of social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, the talent sourcing process was limited to a linear process – where a vacancy is filled in transactional fashion, embedded in a perpetual recruitment environment of sourcing in new talent.
The advent of job boards have resulted in a significant shift away from print media, but compounded the overload of thousands of job boards, with job aggregator sites promising candidates to identify vacant roles. Though the cost of recruitment has been reduced, the process remained reactive.
Integrating Technologies
The convergence of a number of technologies and the establishment of a talent pipeline has created the opportunity to develop relationships with talented candidates through an effective just-in-time recruitment model.
LinkedIn is the preferred social networking site from a business perspective, with more than 72 million users across the world. In Australia about 25% of all employed people are using LinkedIn. Users can create a brief profile with recommendations, making it easy for recruiters to search for talent.
Facebook is by far the most popular social media site, with more than 300 million users. Most professionals demarcate their social media presence, with limited access to Facebook restricted to friends and family, with a dash of business added for interest, though Facebook offers a level of granularity to separate friends and business contacts. Companies are increasingly using Facebook to create a social media presence. A weekly email report provides HR recruiters with statistics to track a summary of activities by fans.
Twitter is being used by a large number of companies to post job openings, though smart employers are also using it to share interesting news and to strengthen their employment brand. By using a tool like Tweetdeck, companies can easily monitor channels and track activity.
Companies can use creative ways to find talent through social media, by running competitions, surveys, blogs and email updates. The importance of reputation management cannot be overemphasized and a high level of authenticity needs to exist. Most companies will have a Social Media policy that determines the flow of information, with Internal Communication often reporting to HR, though there is a strong connection with Marketing departments.
Though some companies tend to use social media as just another distribution channel, a strategic sourcing strategy provides the challenge and opportunity to connect with potential future employees in ways exponentially more effective than reactive recruiting for job postings.
Building a Talent Pipeline
Companies can and should use social media to find top talent, by building a talent pipeline:
- Leveraging LinkedIn to create a company network with alumni employees, staying in touch as these ex-employees have an excellent understanding of the business. Alumni should be able to register for events, finding about jobs and connecting with others. The boomerang effect extends beyond savings in recruitment costs, as alumni can move to customer organizations, or become ambassadors through their extended networks.
- Engaging interested fans through Facebook and LinkedIn to track the company and maintain a watching brief about interesting company news and developments. Companies can enhance their employer brand by positive influencing interested applicants through regular updates.
- Integrating the various social media in a deliberate and authentic fashion. By adopting a consistency in the information flow to potential future employees, companies can engage and connect with passive applicants in more meaningful ways that develop positive talent relationships.
- Investing in technology rather than just banking the cost savings of recruitment without third party recruiters (TPRs). Using a good applicant tracking system (ATS) is not enough, as companies need to invest in resources such a researcher or social media recruiter, in order to maximize the benefits of social media to attract top talent.
Looking ahead to future talent needs
With the advent of technology, top talent are empowered to research their target company beyond annual reports to a level of detail where they will research the profiles of their future manager and the interviewer.
Companies need to invest and explore how they can tap into social media to find and attract top talent, long before they need to fill a specific role, rather than fighting fires by being stuck in a transactional recruitment system, where they are to busy to plant the seeds so they can enjoy the harvest.
Social media is much more than just another channel and by integrating it with the overall employer branding strategy, companies can attract top talent that can grow with the company.
Is an Appraisal the Same As an Assessment?
Posted by: | CommentsThere are a number of core HR processes that are intrinsic to good and effective people management. The biggest challenge in companies today is the development of talent. Most companies apply a number of HR strategies to become an employer of choice and to be a great place to work.
There are five core people strategies that helps to a company to improve the performance of their employees:
1. How to attract top talent?
This strategy is all about building a strong employer brand, so that applicants are attracted to come and work for the company. Part of good recruitment is to attract applicants so that the company find and recruit the best employees. Best-in-class companies have good assessment processes. In a recent survey by the Aberdeen Group of 400 organizations, it was found that top performing companies are using assessment more broadly across the business, as well as more frequently and consistently.
2. How to motivate employees?
Most companies have an annual performance appraisal process. This is the usual process of conducting a performance appraisal, which is a formal process of reviewing the employee’s performance over the last year. Unfortunately many performance systems are better at demotivating employees as supervisors are either reluctant or poorly trained to give constructive feedback to employees. Good performance discussions focus more on the future than on the past.
3. How to reward employees?
Reward systems have improved in the last ten years and there is a better understanding of the need to structure pay to reward both short and long term performance. By having an appropriate fixed pay, the company can then provide variable pay in the form of incentives to encourage performance. For pay systems to work, the systems have to be meaningful and transparent, with clear line-of-sight so that the employee can impact on their pay outcomes. If companies spend half the time in this area, and more time in developing and growing employees, we would have much happier and productive workplaces.
4. How to develop and grow employees?
Most training takes place to improve the employee’s performance in the current role, typically technical training or on-the-job training. Far too few companies have good training plans in place for every employee to help them to grow and develop to their full potential.
5. How to retain talented employees?
If all of these five strategies are integrated in a coherent and logical way, this strategy is really about having an open culture so that talented employees share their dreams and aspirations with their managers, making it easier for a company to provide an environment where work is meaningful and rewarding.
Now that we have covered the five core strategies, it is much easier to answer our fundamental question.
What is an assessment?
Conducting an assessment, usually as part of recruitment, assists in the selection of top talent. Many companies only do assessment towards the end of the recruitment process, usually just before reference checking. However, there are a small number of employers that have realized there are significant benefits in pre-employment screening to identify top talent. If you are asked to participate in an assessment process, it is always advisable to understand what sort of tests are going to be conducted and to ensure you get feedback once assessment has been completed. Assessment typically includes a number of tests to determine and measure the person’s knowledge, skills and abilities; as well as beliefs that impact on their behavior.
What is an appraisal?
Appraisal is part of performance management, an essential part of giving an employee feedback on their performance. There has been a significant shift in performance management in recent years. Employee feedback is a powerful way of motivating employees, however in most companies it has become an administrative process, rather than being an opportunity for the employee to do a self-assessment and sharing feedback with their manager. If you asked to participate in a performance appraisal, it is helpful if you agree with your supervisor on the process beforehand, so that you are well prepared so that you can fully participate in the appraisal of your performance – after all, you have been experiencing the role firsthand.
In conclusion, both these processes share one characteristic, receiving feedback. Assessment is useful to understand an employee’s potential; and Appraisal assists to understand an employee’s current performance. There is a clear correlation between these two factors – potential and performance. Like champion athletes, an employee with high potential could also be a top performer.
Job Search Secrets
Posted by: | CommentsAs an expert in job search, I have published a free eBook on Job Search Secrets
I have also published a number of useful and interesting articles. These articles have been specifically written for the WorkLifeGroup, a career website that helps and empowers job seekers to take charge of their own career and to get a better job!
Please find below a number of links to get highly relevant articles to help any job seeker with their job search.
Finding a job in a difficult job market
Understand your personal strengths
Know your destination and find your next role
When it is time to make a career change – five reasons to move on to your next role
These articles have been written to provide practical advice to anyone looking to make a career change and searching for a new job.
Know your destination and find your next role
Posted by: | CommentsYou need a clear picture of your ideal next role, which you need to be able to describe succinctly to your networking contacts and recruiters.
The Trusted Recruiter
Posted by: | CommentsIn his well-known book, The Trusted Advisor, David Maister explored the paradigm of that very important business relationship, using the professional services paradigm as a basis. His book covered some key components of trust (the trust equation), the process of creating trust (including the most common trust-breaking mistakes and this post includes a good example).
Trust is not a soft or an ambiguous concept – and it should not be. Some years ago I attended a one-week leadership course by an American trainer – Ken Blanchard (not the writer). During the course we did a trust exercise and the one take-away learning was that trust is an absolute concept. You can think clearly about it and be seen as a trusted advisor by your clients.
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