Sirona Says

Would these employee benefits help keep you at a company?

We all know that as the market is fast picking up, the passive employees are slowly becoming 'un-passive' and seeing what else is out there in the job market. Coupled to this, there is the tranche of recruiters and organisations now actively targeting passive job seekers (social media has REALLY helped this).

Companies (if they haven't done so already) should be actively looking at retention NOW! I saw a post on MindFlash.com and liked some of the things other companies have done in this area. Not huge things, but the little perks that we all like. Would they make you stay at an employer? Maybe not 100%, but they will certainly help!
Which one of these examples below is your favourite? Mine is between the MillerCoors PubClub, and the Quicksilver surfing time!

So now it is your turn - what have been the best perks/benefits you have had at an employer, past or present?

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Generation Y - Who, What, How

Today, I delivered a presentation to a room full of HR and Recruitment Directors from the Hotel industry, for the hosts, Caterer.com . The subject was generation Y in the workplace - their characteristics and how to engage them as employees. The hotel and leisure industry has a very high level of gen Y employees, and they are experiencing their fair share of recruitment and retention issues. There now seems to be a desire to address some of the issues - hence the presentation!

The presentation was well received, and as promised (to all the delegates) here are a copy of the slides this morning.

Generation Y Who, What, How

View more presentations from Andy Headworth.

And for all of you today that didn't know what a blog was......... you do now - you have just been reading one:)

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The recruitment reality check: Your employees are leaving sometime soon!

Are you one of those companies who like sticking your fingers in your ears, while singing 'la la la' out loud. hoping that it won't happen to you? Come on, you know you are!
After all, all your staff are happy, you have a great employer brand and everything is 'nice and dandy' with your employees, right?

WRONG!

You need to order in some of the reality check cookies and start munching away quickly. Whatever you think you are as an employer and however loyal you think your employees are........... think again - we have entered a very interesting recruitment phase at the moment, that doesn't appear too often.

Some economists would probably call it, 'post recessionary recruitmentism' or some other 'over-clever' mumbo jumbo .................. for me it much simpler. I just call it recruitment reality.

We are coming out of recession (well most places are, anyway) , M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) activity is buoyant again and there is (finally) talk of large hiring strategies again. Things are already changing fast with regards to candidate availability, as recruitment markets are quickly picking up again - most recruitment agencies have been seeing a surge in demand for candidates now for the last few months. For many it is the busiest they have been for the last 2-3 years.

So what is going to happen?Here are my five 

1. It's hemorrhage time (go on sing it to MC Hammers famous song - you know you want to!). Candidate attrition has been still running at just over 18% on average  during the recession. This would mean that you would lose one in five of your workforce this year. BUT, realistically this could double if not treble over the next 12 months, as candidates start sticking their heads above the parapet again.  - Yes! Many companies will have staff turnover rates of well over 50% in the next 12 months!!!  What are you going to do about it then?  Are you ready to replace half your workforce? Where are you going to find them from? When was the last time you looked at your career site? You need to have a recruitment strategy in place (NOW!) just to maintain your existing workforce levels.
2. Past employers will return like Great White sharks. Remember they couldn't get rid of their employees quick enough two years ago could they?  You snapped up some great catches then, didn't you? Well, now they are leaner and meaner and ready to come hunting for your staff. And don't think your employees won't consider going back, they will for the right package - the recession has taught them to forget about loyalty (unfortunately) and focus on themselves and their own needs (perceived or real). You won't know anything about it until they are gone!
3. Recruitment agencies are also sniffing for blood. A fact of employment life is that your good staff WILL be getting calls from recruiters, looking to prise them from your company. Ignore this fact at your peril - a good recruiter is like a pitbull - once they have the teeth into your employees, they just simply won't let go, until they get what they want - your staff!
4. Thanks to social media it has made it even easier to find your employees!! To be fair, it has never been easier to find candidates, what with LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs and of course Google. Obviously 'finding' candidates isn't recruiting them, and that is a whole different ballgame! But, they are there waiting to be found, and there is nothing you as an employer you can do to stop that happening.
5. Finally, what about all the 'regular ordinary workers' - your company's lifeblood -  out there, that are unhappy in their work? There are many! During the recession, they just keep their heads down, grateful for continued employment. Now the grass is looking greener again. They have started to realise that there are more jobs out in the marketplace again. They are starting to actually look for jobs again! >>> Now this is a BIG problem. These are the workers who you BELIEVE to be your loyal subjects, and happy in their work. When was the last time you said (about them) "they won't leave, they are like part of the furniture here" to a colleague? Don't say I didn't warn you - they WILL be walking out the door sometime soon!!

Now you may feel I am being a little over dramatic here - I just wish I was. I am having these conversations with companies every day - they are seeing their staff leave EVERY day, and yes they can counter offer, but that is only temporary. I read a survey last month that said 84% of all employees expect (or want) to change jobs in the next 12 months - now that is scary stuff!
Employee engagement, employer brand and (dare I say it) salary package reviews are all areas of focus at the moment, but is it too late for your company?

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Social media in employer branding: Is this the key to successful social recruiting?

There is one question that employers want to know when discussing social recruiting, and it crops up time and time again:

What do job seekers expect with regards to social media, and how do they interact with social media with regards to recruitment?

There are usually three reasons behind this question:

1) Companies are considering social media as part of their recruitment strategy
2) Companies are using social recruiting, and want to improve their success rate by ensuring they are doing it 'properly'

3) Companies deciding not to be using social recruiting methods, use the answers to justify why they stay away (a good example is the 2009 Facebook fear campaigns in the press)

This is currently a very important area for employers, as their 'employer brand' is fast becoming very key indeed, in the transparent and viral nature of social media. HR Directors AND Marketing Directors should now be equally concerned with the power of their brand, because as with product and services, prospective employees are the lifeblood of any organisation.

There is a very interesting trend report carried out recently by Potentialpark Communications- a global research company on employer branding and online recruitment - that asked 16,000 job seekers across Germany, France, China, the US and the UK, that looked at social media in the decision making process of job seekers.

Vanessa Meyer who works for Potentialpark and helped produce the findings of the report, gives her opinion, "when the companies that chose not to have a social recruiting strategy in 2010, see a rise in the percentage of job seekers that look for career related information and opportunities through social media next year, the decision to go forward with a social recruiting strategy will be irrefutable. The upside of waiting till 2011 is that these companies will have a much faster learning curve than those who went in first and accumulated the "know-how" of social recruiting the hard way - through trial and error."

One of the findings of their report is really interesting to me, and I guess not that surprising - career sites are still HUGELY important in the recruitment process for employers. The graphic below from the Potentialpark trend report proves this:

 

Companies need to integrate social media into their career sites, making them user friendly (not something many career sites have taken into consideration, in my opinion!) and use social networks as traffic drivers to them. Here is the potential problem for me, with this: social media is 'sexy', fun, real-time and the future of communications on the web, but many career sites are just plain awful and don't portray the employer brand very well at all.
So you attract candidates via Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, you get them excited about you as a brand and an employer........................then they land on your career site....................DOH! Too complex, over engineered, boring and no well thought out user experience quickly send them away again! The result is that your employer brand takes a beating!! And the double whammy is that with social media being so viral and transparent, bad experiences get shared around!!

Another really important fact from the trend survey - and remember this is from 16,000 job seekers, is the reliance on the internet (and search of course) as an online information tool.

 

With search engines like Google and Bing now fully indexing the social networks like Twitter, Facebook (company pages) and LinkedIn so effectively, it is absolutely imperative that companies have a full social footprint to ensure the job seekers find your company. No longer is it sufficient just to rely on SEO on your career site to drive traffic, you need to be looking at a wide range of social channels. 

Many people are starting to turn against the phrase, 'social recruiting'. Many people still don't understand it, and the implications for recruitment strategies.
But, whether you want to call it 'social recruiting', 'social media in recruitment' or even 'social media recruiting' - one thing is certain, organisations who think that social media isn't for them will definitely be left behind over the next couple of years. It won't replace your current recruitment strategy, but social media will definitely become intrinsically linked to both you employer brand and your recruitment strategy.

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Does this Social Map reflect your social media footprint?

 

We are all seeing the social web, now starting to impact our sector greatly. Whether it is for sourcing candidates, networking, connecting with old work colleagues, engaging with prospective employees or (dare I say it), checking people out on the web before you think about hiring them.

While doing one of my favourite work past-times - blog reading and soaking up further information out there on the internet, I came across the above graphic in a blog post by Ryan Turner.

Ryan has broken the social map into six distinct areas, and all together they form your social map. In the social recruiting space, then all of these are important to ensure you are maximising all your social recruiting opportunities, whether they be from a pure sourcing perspective or from a company's brand and engagement perspective.

So, here are the six aspects of a social map explained further:

1. Social networks are about individuals : Social networks are sites primarily structured to support content pages about individuals. These content pages become collectors of relationships.

2. Communities are about groups: Communities are different than social networks in that they are built primarily around groups of people, rather than individuals.

3. Blogs are about a singular perspective or subject: Blogs are structured around individual posts that typically have in common either that are are written by a single person or that they are focused around a single subject. The content is the key.

4. Social media services store, edit, and share content: Social media sites are socially-enabled web sites used primarily to share personal content, such as blogs, comment, photos, videos, or slideshows.

5. News sources are about timely or topical content: News sources are diversifying - they are having to - many more people are publishing content, and content is now both participatory and socially vetted by everyone, with sites like Twitter.

6. Marketplaces are about the exchange of goods and services, and information about good and services, among people: The emerging social marketplace is not just about e-commerce web sites per se. There is now a complex web information sharing ecosystem that supports purchase decisions, with other people (often strangers) having more influence on buying decisions than expensive advertising campaigns.

I think this is a great overview of what a social map will consist of, and one that fits with everyone.

Is there anything missing in your opinion?

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Guest blog: Is employee engagement really just about good communication?

 

Last week I had the pleasure of talking to Pam Kennett from a company called Chiswick Consulting. They do alot of work around organisational effectiveness, and improving the way companies work.

One of the parts of our conversation, revolved around communication, and how poor it is within many companies - specifically around employee engagement. It resonated so well with me I asked if she would write a guest post on this subject, and she kindly obliged. Here is Pam's guest blog:

It's not engagement, it's communication

I know I keep banging on about communication and how important it is to business success, but I was recently reminded of just HOW important with a few stunning statistics:

•    Highly engaged employees can improve business performance by up to 30 percent
•    Fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their ‘disengaged’ colleagues.

Of course you may want to define what we mean by ‘highly’ or ‘fully’ engaged versus ‘disengaged’ but if we think about the bigger picture and potential, it’s quite amazing.

Just think what would happen to your business if your performance improved 30% with the same resources? That’s 30% on your bottom line profit is it not?

Now you may be thinking that engagement takes money and that in a recession you don’t have any money to invest. But it doesn’t have to. Engaging with employees is nothing more than keeping the lines of communication open. And given more than 1/3 of employees plan to change jobs once the recession is over, communicating with them now is likely to manage unwanted staff turnover.

An example of how communication (or ‘engagement’ if you prefer) was used to help reduce costs and raise performance is from North Dorset Council.

In 2006, North Dorset was told it had to save £2.4 million when central government slashed its budget by a quarter. You would think this would have a serious negative impact on morale and yet a recent survey found that staff felt both supported and happy. On top of this, the authority has exceeded savings targets by more than half a million pounds.

They did this by communicating and asking staff to help cut costs, prioritise investment and plan change.

Every year since 2006 the council have asked their staff to find savings in their budgets. For every £25,000 in savings they find, they save a job.

The council also went out to the public to communicate with them and had open and frank discussions about the budget situation and asked them what they thought was the best way to achieve the savings. They planned future cuts well in advance and communicated changes before they happened.
So what have we learnt from North Dorset that we can apply to our own businesses:
•    Explain where investment is being made in the business and why
•    Engage staff in cost cutting exercises – communicate cost cutting in meaningful ways (eg save £25k and you save a job)
•    If we have to make difficult changes, plan them and introduce them over time
•    If we have to cut services or product lines, focus on delivering the best quality possible and take pride in that
During tough times, it’s even more important to keep communicating with staff. In the absence of information, staff will assume the worst and all that worrying will get in the way of them delivering their job.
George Bernard Shaw said "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." In our current woes, let’s not forgot to communicate and engage with our staff.

Thanks Pam for a great article. If you want to get in contact with Pam then she can be found at pam@chiswickconsulting.com .

If you would like to be a guest blogger on Sirona Says, then please email me with your article idea - please bear in mind it has to be on topic and not an advertorial!

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Are Brands failing to follow the rules of candidate engagement?

While reading Marketing Week yesterday, I came across a a very interesting article entitled, Brands Fail to Follow Rules of Engagement. And while it sits in a marketing magazine, I believe that the same applies to recruitment and candidates.

Research from Targetbase Claydon Heeley (now that's a catchy company name, if ever I heard one!) suggests that the majority of company marketers (for my analogy substitute HR Director) are confident they are engaging with their audiences (for me, prospective employees), while consumers ( the job seekers) believe the opposite.

Here is the summary of their results:

What do you think the results would have been if they had asked HR Directors similar questions?

Do you think that 41% would have selected 'Demonstrating understanding of the customer' (read job seeker)? or 44% would have selected 'Personalised and tailored communications' (with job seekers)?

While I think they may well have made a utopian selection (just to look good in a survey!), experience tells me that, in reality, they actually have no understanding of the job seeker at all!

There are some very good organisations of course - the best I have seen for a while is Deloitte's - , but they, I believe, are currently in the minority........unfortunately.

What do you think? If you substituted a recruitment slant to the title of the table above, would it look much different?

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IS this THE BEST job in the World? I dare you to argue!!

With all the doom and gloom around, I was amazed to see this fantastic job being that is currently being advertised on an aptly named website called Islandreefjob.com. Let me give you some of the details, and just see if you disagree with me, that this is THE BEST job in the world!

Tourism Queensland is seeking applicants for the best job in the world! The role of Island Caretaker is a six-month contract, based on luxurious Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a live-in position with flexible working hours and key responsibilities include
exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef to discover what the area has to offer.
You’ll be required to report back on your adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video updates and ongoing media interviews. On offer is a unique opportunity to help promote the wondrous Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

Other duties may include (but are not limited to)
Feed the fish - There are over 1,500 species of fish living in the Great Barrier Reef. Don’t worry – you won’t need to feed them all.
Clean the pool - The pool has an automatic filter, but if you happen to see a stray leaf floating on the surface it’s a great excuse to dive in and enjoy a few laps.
Collect the mail – During your explorations, why not join the aerial postal service for a day? It’s a great opportunity to get a bird’s eye view of the reef and islands.

About the job package
Living above the Great Barrier Reef is a pretty unique benefit, but the successful candidate will also be paid a salary package of AUD $150,000 (approx £70k) for the six-month contract. You’ll receive return airfares from your nearest capital city (in your home country), accommodation and transport on Hamilton Island, travel insurance for the contract period, computer, internet, digital video and stills cameras access, plus travel to a number of the other Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. The six-month contract commences 1st July 2009.

About the location
Stretching for 2,600 kilometres, and composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands, the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia is the world’s largest coral reef system. The World Heritage Listed area supports a diversity of wildlife including whales, dolphins, sea turtles and more than 1,500 species of fish. The reef is an extremely popular destination.

It is no surprise to see that demand has been awesome!! They have advertise this in 18 countries, and surprise, surprise it crashed the website last week!!

Now someone tell me how this isn't the best job in the world currently!!

Now these results may surprise all you hardened online recruiters!

As part of a project to look at and examine the recruitment process for a large employer, we commissioned an external market research campaign based around employer brand. The survey was targeted at 1000 16-35 year olds in the UK, and was conducted by one of the UK market leaders in consumer research.

One of the questions, has provided some very interesting - and surprising - insights into how this age group looks for a new job.
When asked what medium they would use to find a job (from a list of about 12 choices) these were the top answers:

1. Job Centres - 54%
2. Online Job Boards - 47%
3. Local Newspapers - 43%
4. Company Websites (Direct) - 38%
5. Word of Mouth - 33%
6. Recruitment Agency - 32%

Has that surprised you, because I was not expecting the top answer to be the job centres! But should it be a real surprise? Maybe we do underestimate the role they can play in recruiting staff?

The only problem I have with them is the calibre (most of the time) of staff, that are in charge of the recruiting interface with clients. They usually have no experience of recruiting , and are there just to -seemingly - process numbers to interviews, whether they are right or wrong. Because of  the threat of having benefits cut, many job seekers from job centres are only interested in attending interviews to maintain benefits.

I guess that's why so many companies have had bad experiences with job centres previously. BUT is it time to revisit them and try again? Over half the survey sample of 16-35 years would go to the job centre to look for jobs - maybe it is time to reconsider?

The other surprise, is the number of people that would go direct to company websites to look for a job. This must definitely be a change in the marketplace, as more people have become more web savvy, and (maybe) less trusting of recruitment agencies?
It does highlight the need for companies to put some work into their websites, and to start to make them functional and appealing to job seekers - a good one that has just launched is the new Sky website.

So overall, job seekers between the ages of 16-35, use a mix of sources to find a job. Is that really so strange? I guess not, but the mix certainly is!!

Is your workplace a 'great place to work?'

We all have a place of work, but is it a good place to work? Some would say yes and others would say no. But how do you define what makes a good place to work? The Great Place to Work Institute (GPWI) believe that at the centre of their definition, a great workplace is measured by the quality of the relationships that exist there. Fostering positive relationships within a company at all levels is absolutely crucial to a great workplace.

But just what sort of culture is needed to foster such relationships to win the understanding, engagement and commitment of the management and staff?

Good relationships = Good communication = Good engagement

So how do you go about making the middle part above - good communication - the most effective you can in your workplace? After all if you get that right, then according to the GPWI, you will have good relationships and engagement, giving you a good workplace.
There are ten things that you can do to improve your workplace communication, therefore making your company a better place to work. So here they are:

1. Keep things simple. Work out a single sentence message that succinctly and exactly portrays your key message to your staff.

2. Make it interesting. Maybe make a series of messages, but with a common theme - like a campaign.

3. Listen. Engagement needs to be two-way, so make sure there is a way of receiving feedback.......and make sure you listen to the responses. Even better, comment on the responses to show your staff that you have read them!

4. Keep it real. Don't use actors in the delivery, use your own staff, it is much more meaningful and respectful.

5. Management and planning. As you reach out with more channels of communication, make sure you are able to handle the effects and the responses of the messages. Multiple channels means many streams of returning information!

6. Channels. Make sure you use more than one channel to communicate. You need to reach as many people as possible.

7.Be creative. Use different mediums and different locations to distribute your messages.

8. Business strategy first. Your communication strategy should be based firmly on your business strategy, and it should be embedded into as many of your projects as possible.

9. Money. You will have to commit to a budget to allow you to deliver your message. You will also need to commit staff resources to the project. You don't have to spend a fortune, but none of this is going to be free!!

10. Do it because you want to! You need to want to embark on a communications strategy, don't just do I because you have been told it is the thing to do. If it is delivered with belief and passion it will mean so much more!

What do you think? Is your workplace a good place to work? How would you improve your workplace?

Thanks to Phil Morley from Blue Goose for the inspiration for this post.