However, one challenge reigns supreme: disconnected processes and technology. In fact, according to the Lighthouse Research & Advisory 2024 Talent Acquisition Trends Study, 75 percent of teams struggle to forecast their needs accurately, and 58 percent of teams missed their hiring plan last year, putting their overall business plan at risk. 

These surprising numbers, caused by a disconnection between workforce planning software and the applicant tracking system, lead to four main hiring traps that can harm your business:

1. Reactive hiring
2. Over-hiring
3. Hiring wrong-fit candidates
4. Long hiring cycles 

What is the ultimate dream for more aligned and efficient processes? Connecting your workforce planning solution and hiring solution in one single platform. 

Today, we’re making that dream a reality in Bob. Our brand new module, Bob Hiring, is our built-in ATS that connects directly with our workforce planning module for more strategic and streamlined hiring from one platform. Let’s look at how it works. 

Say hi to Bob Hiring

Before we dive into the beauty that is the connection between Bob Hiring and Workforce Planning, let’s look at an overview of Bob Hiring on its own. Bob Hiring allows HR and talent acquisition teams to fast-track the hiring process using an all-in-one centralized solution. 

Unified journey

As mentioned earlier, siloed processes make an already complicated recruiting process that much more difficult. With Bob Hiring, you’re implementing and maintaining a single, unified platform for all your processes. Not only does this centralize actions and provide a familiar and easy experience for hiring managers (no need to learn yet another platform!), but it also connects to Bob’s Core HR analytics—providing the data and insights to drive strategic decision-making. 

Process efficiency

Time is of the essence, especially in the world of recruiting. Within Bob Hiring, you can seamlessly build and manage your talent pool efficiently by: 

• Configuring your application form to collect only the data you need
• Collaborating with your hiring team
• Scheduling interviews and sending emails directly from Bob
• Evaluating candidates with custom scorecards that are visible to the rest of the hiring team per position
• Sending and managing offers with eSign
• Seamlessly transitioning candidates into your new hire flow to begin pre-boarding and onboarding in a couple of clicks

Pipeline growth

But wait, there’s more! From within Bob Hiring, you can also ensure you’re finding and attracting the right talent internally and externally. Post your open positions to more than 2,300 job boards with global reach, share open job opportunities on your company’s career page, and connect your existing job board contracts for easy posting. If you run internal referral campaigns, use Bob Hiring to generate custom links for your people to post job opportunities on their social networks and watch your candidate pipeline grow.

Candidate experience

First-year turnover is often caused by a bad or incorrect hire (or poor onboarding), costing you in employee churn. According to research by SHRM, replacement costs per employee can be as high as 50-60 percent, with overall costs ranging anywhere from 90-200 percent. Bob Hiring helps you make a great first impression with your company’s brand and culture on full display. It keeps your candidates engaged with a portal that holds information, including the role(s) they have applied for, and the data they submitted for those positions. Don’t worry; you can handle compliance requests (like GDPR) and allow candidates to easily manage and delete their data. Plus, this exceptional experience continues for candidates who become new hires with a similar experience during pre-boarding and onboarding. 

Strategic hiring: Bob Hiring + Workforce Planning 

Okay, Bob Hiring on its own is a fantastic opportunity to streamline your recruitment process. But the real magic happens when you connect Bob Hiring to our Workforce Planning module, consolidating your tech stack.

According to Josh Bersin, the average large company has more than 80 HR tools, and many global companies have twice that. When you consolidate and break down tech siloes, you’re not only saving money and streamlining operations but also strengthening security, simplifying collaboration, creating less manual tasks, and ensuring a great user experience. So, how does Bob Hiring and Workforce Planning help you do just that?

Streamlined processes

Collaboration is key to efficient and effective hiring—especially when it comes to planning with finance teams. However, when you’re working in emails and spreadsheets for planning, it can make transparent and aligned communications messy. That’s not the case when it’s all done in Bob.

Let’s say your R&D team needs to hire a new DevOps Team Lead. This position request is entered into the Workforce Planning module by the manager of this new role. From there, communication, budgeting, and approvals from all your stakeholders for this position occur in Bob. Once approved, this position is moved into Bob Hiring with a few clicks. You can then set up your job description, configure your application, post to job boards, and complete your recruitment process while keeping everyone in the loop. Once you’ve found your perfect candidate, you can send them an offer from within Bob and add them to your pre-boarding and onboarding workflows also in Bob. 

Plus, with all these processes in one platform, you benefit from more robust analytics and insights to optimize your work.

Actionable data 

Speaking of insights…unifying hiring and workforce planning within a single HR system makes it easy to translate business goals into hiring and bring hiring metrics back to the business. You’ll have the ability not only to plan and implement but also to monitor and track them on an ongoing basis in order to identify areas of concern and adjust proactively. For example, you’ll be able to leverage metrics like source of hire, sourcing channel spend, target versus actual hires, and more. All of this will help keep you aligned with your plans and provide easy, data-based insights you can share with other leaders across the organization.

Wrap your head around strategic hiring

With all the ups, downs, and in-betweens of the recruitment market, streamlined processes and removing siloes is critical. Consolidating key processes like workforce planning and recruiting into one platform can greatly impact the experience of candidates, your internal teams, and your business. With the addition of Bob Hiring, our customers can now do just that—saving time on manual processes and gaining time to focus on building relationships with your most important resource, your people. 

The post Get your strategic hiring head on with Bob Hiring & Workforce Planning appeared first on HiBob.

It’s an important edge, too, as the link between hiring and organizational success is crystal clear. People are your most important asset. Aside from the simple fact that they’re the ones who deliver on the strategy, the best hires also elevate performance, break new ground, and reshape a business in their own image. 

In short, your future is at risk unless you find the solutions to your recruitment challenges. 

The four big hiring challenges (2024 edition)

As discussed, times change. But right now, there are four main recruiting challenges facing HR leaders, hiring teams, and, of course, all those hiring managers looking to recruit the very best talent. 

1. Employee expectations

Research into US employment shows that Boomers now account for just 19 percent of the workforce. Gen X (35.5 percent) has now been overtaken by Millennials (39.4 percent), with Gen Z (30 percent) quickly appearing in everyone’s rear mirror. Effectively, employers must balance the needs of four generations with different expectations. 

Among those expectations, the two biggest groups of employees want their employers to provide inspiration, connection, and a great working experience. 

One key consideration here is that 80 percent of these workers expect to work hybrid or remote—so they get the right balance to be inspired in and out of work. Also, 74 percent of executives and senior managers are proactively investing in reskilling, helping their people to stay up-to-date with tech and evolve their careers.

It’s moves like this that give employees more confidence in their employer, which can triple their engagement at work and reduce the likelihood of someone searching for a new role by 69 percent. 

2. Hiring processes

Traditional HR processes just don’t cut it anymore. CEOs feel recruiting is now the number four most inefficient business process behind emails, procurement, and meetings. Additionally, 60 percent of talent acquisition leaders think their main challenge is increasing hiring efficiency and reducing recruitment costs.  

It’s not hard to understand why. Slow progress in the hiring cycle—from planning and posting roles on job boards to collating applications, interviewing, and offering—gives candidates a poor initial impression and the encouragement to look elsewhere. It’s a challenge made even more urgent when the best candidates are available for, on average, just 10 days. 

<< Download our hiring checklist now >>

3. The local, regional, and global hiring landscape 

When it comes to the hiring environment, there is some good news for employers. Seven in ten chief economists expect to see looser labor markets in the short term, particularly in advanced economies. 

So, there should be a larger pool of talent to hire from. But this contrasts with the time it takes to hire. Experts predict it will take increasingly longer for HR teams to fill their roles—across every level of business. This suggests there are other pressures beyond supply and demand. As the needs of businesses shift in response to a changing market, HR and recruiting teams are struggling to keep up. 

4. Technology

Lots of employers now use hiring software and other tech tools. Lots of which play a solid supporting role in recruiting. However, many of the pain points around hiring technology relate to the ROI of the tech itself. In fact, 88 percent of CEOs feel they don’t give value for money. 

A big topic is integration. It’s important to look for ways to blend hiring data with other data streams, from simple spreadsheets to wider human capital management platforms that also support current employees. The insights can really drive strategy, yet this is a recognized problem: 50 percent of talent acquisition leaders either don’t have, or aren’t involved in, a workforce planning strategy. 

Technology at the heart of the solution

One of our four challenges directly influences the other three: siloed and disconnected technology. Excitingly, it’s a challenge that is directly in an organization’s control. When employers don’t connect their ATS to other processes within their company, they fall into what we call the big four hiring traps. 

Reactive hiring

In an ideal world, organizations proactively hire in alignment with a resource plan, preparing for vacancies before they ever happen. Reactive hiring, though, sees employers rushing to fill roles as they appear. 

The first point here is the lead time between vacancy and hire. Without connecting proper planning to an ATS, hiring teams often need to go back and forth to get signoff on revised JDs and org charts—all while a team somewhere within your business is understaffed.  

This means that when the hiring process does kick into gear, the process is instantly pressured. Stakeholders make snap decisions, which can result in a hire that isn’t quite right or may miss out on a better candidate because you run the ads for such a short time. 

Over hiring

If you don’t know how many resources you need, there’s just as much chance you’ll over-resource as much as under-resource. 

That can mean huge amounts of time and money wasted on advertising, interviews, offers, onboarding, and training. Only for the new recruits to find themselves twiddling their thumbs and leaving because they’re disillusioned or, worse, you have to finance a restructure. This can also compound performance in others, with the morale of those left hitting rock bottom and trust in leadership sorely tested. 

Wrong-fit hiring

Going back to reactive hiring, the end result is often a wrong-fit hire who leaves within the first few months of starting. Beyond the financial hit of recruiting and training for the same role twice, there are other costs to consider here. 

They may have a bad attitude that shakes a team’s ethics to its core—compounded by extra work they force their colleagues to shoulder during and after their time in the business. There’s a good chance their behavior will have a big impact on their manager, who will also lose faith in internal processes. 

Depending on the role, customer relationships might be damaged. Additionally, once they’re out the door, a wrong-fit hire may leave a bad review of their brief employment, which makes it harder for you to attract good people further down the line. 

Long-cycle hiring

There are lots of reasons why a hiring process can take time. You may be carefully assessing candidates to make the right choice. There might simply be a lack of great candidates out there. 

Equally, the problem might be that the process is too long or decision-makers can’t agree. Does a junior role really need three stages of interviews? Or are the hiring team’s ‘shortlists’ far too long? 

Either way, it’s disappointing when a good candidate loses patience and accepts another offer. If you have to start from scratch, it will also hit the morale and productivity of the team you’re hiring for. Don’t forget, there’s also the external optics—candidates who get tired of waiting may write bad online reviews.  

New challenges lead to new solutions

HR leaders and hiring teams have a challenging task ahead. The expectations of today’s employees call for many-a-rethink, and the continually evolving HR landscape complicates planning. Yet some challenges are eminently achievable even if, for some organizations, there might be long-standing issues around hiring processes and technology. 

There has been a clear movement towards digital HR tools proven to get results, like using an ATS that connects to your HCM and other tech tools to improve hiring ROI. Those that use them won’t just win the battle for talent. They’ll secure their long-term future, too. 

The post Hiring? Here are 2024’s big recruiting challenges appeared first on HiBob.

There are some broad challenges for employers planning how to work with Gen Z, for sure. But for forward-thinking employers, they also provide opportunities. Offer structures and benefits that reflect their needs, and they’ll consider you a far more attractive proposition. 

Professionally speaking, things like secure pay, opportunities to grow, and support to improve influencing and persuading skills are high on Zoomers’ lists (as well as training on platforms like Teams and Slack, which they may be unfamiliar with). 

However, you can also create greater engagement by meeting more personal needs. Gen Z is more engaged and motivated in the office, looks for immediate feedback, and wants to share and feel part of your overall mission and goals. In turn, Gen Zers want you to actively improve their wellbeing and create an environment where diversity isn’t just supported—but promoted. 

So, how can you manage Gen Z? All together, it can look overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. Bob makes managing Gen Z employees simpler. Totally customizable, it’s bursting with features and people data that help you recruit and retain Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. Excitingly, it’s also been built to engage with a younger cohort that’ll make up 30 percent of the workforce by 2030: Generation Z. 

Let’s have a look at how Bob supports HR strategies to engage and retain Gen Z.

Bob supports professional development the Gen Z way 

The YGIT report showed that 37 percent of Gen Z felt a promotion would encourage them to stay with their current company more than a better compensation package (30 percent). Research also shows that Gen Z’s brains have evolved to process information faster. As a result, they prefer constant feedback. 

This calls for a step-change in professional development, as many managers don’t have the tools or training to guide Gen Z direct reports effectively. In response, Bob’s Talent Module offers a comprehensive suite of performance, mentorship, and training features. 

These features empower your managers to become more hands-on with their reports’ growth. In the other direction, your employees come to see their managers as a conduit for success. All of which strengthen what are arguably the most important professional relationships in your organization. 

• Create structured performance management. Arrange reviews as often as you wish to measure growth and performance clearly. Set individual and team KPIs or OKRs in Bob for the clear career signposting that Gen Zers crave.

• Schedule regular 1:1s. Managers can book dedicated time to properly mentor their reports and provide a forum to discuss goals, performance, and career paths. In tandem, this also ensures Gen Z gets the attention they deserve.

• Integrate with learning management systems (LMS). Compatible with platforms such as HowNow and Auzmor, it’s easy to enter courses, classes, and milestones into employees’ timelines and smoothly coordinate training and certifications. 

• Celebrate success. Managers can post Shoutouts and Kudos on the Bob homepage for everything from passing a professional exam to a job well done on a big project or something else entirely. These public peer-to-peer acts of recognition tell Gen Z (and others) they’re appreciated. 

• Run surveys. Bob allows you to run targeted or company-wide surveys that help you gauge employees’ happiness at work, assess their satisfaction with their team or department, and canvas their thoughts on opportunities for learning and growth.

These features make Bob indispensable to Gen Z, helping with retention. But more importantly, it gives your HR professionals and managers the tools to help their teams realize their potential. In particular, they can remind Gen Z that the business understands their needs, is open to their opinions, and considers them indispensable, too. 

<<See how Bob supports professional development.>>

Bob makes diversity and inclusion your superpower 

48 percent of Gen Z feel they represent a “racial or ethnic” minority—the most ever. So it’s no surprise they expect employers to champion DEI&B. In fact, 83 percent say an employer’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is significant when choosing where to work. 

Key to this is Gen Zers’ sense of belonging. They want to feel accepted for who they are in the workplace and among their peers. 

However, diversity metrics can be difficult to track. Sometimes, feedback can be collected ad hoc. At other moments, employees can feel that nothing will change, even if they share their experiences.

This is where Bob can help. You can create safe spaces for people to voice any concerns while using a variety of features to enhance your DEI&B practices and prove you care about and want to celebrate your employees’ individuality. 

• Set and monitor DE&I goals. Bob’s advanced analytics and DE&I dashboards can pinpoint discrepancies between your company’s stats on the ground and your wider diversity and inclusion goals.

• Personalize employee profiles. Help your people to express what’s important to them by providing the flexibility to define pronouns, name pronunciation, hobbies, and more in their official employee profiles.

• Run DEI&B surveys. Bob gives employees a direct and private channel to your HR team. This makes it easy for you to track their opinions, collate feedback on your practices, and gather ideas on where you can improve.

• Use Your Voice as a safe and anonymous space. Located at the bottom of the Bob homepage, Your Voice is secured with leading encryption technology so employees can speak freely about any general or personal concerns. 

<<See how Bob boosts your DEI&B programs.>>

Bob supports healthy cultures by building communities in the workplace

Effectively the world’s first COVID-impacted early careerists, Gen Z wants to make up for lost time in terms of building relationships in the workplace. 

Their sense of disconnection likely evolved from lockdowns and possibly plays into the fact 54 percent are “not engaged”, with most Zoomers saying they don’t feel close to co-workers, managers, or employers. It may also be why they value a strong company culture and community. 

For employers, this calls for more face-to-face working and socializing—unfortunately, just as the wider distribution of workforces makes it tricky to have “watercooler” moments where colleagues share stories and ideas. 

Concerningly, YGIT found that 37 percent of Gen Zers felt they either didn’t have enough opportunities to build relationships through work, didn’t spend enough time in the office, or both. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Bob’s culture tools can have a hugely positive effect in this area. 

• Make it easy to connect. From personalized onboarding to profile pages where you can create custom fields for things like “How to work with me” and special skills and open the door to mentoring—Bob helps everyone build lasting relationships. 
• Encourage recognition. With Bob’s Shoutouts, Kudos, and awards badges, you can instantly celebrate colleagues’ achievements and prove their efforts are appreciated. 
• Create clubs. Extra-curricular activities are arguably the most powerful way of building morale. Bob’s Clubs feature lets you set up hobby and interest groups so your people can spend time outside work with like-minded peers.
• Run pulse surveys. Because all your people use Bob, it’s the best channel to promote and manage wide-ranging employee questionnaires. Bob’s Pulse surveys give you a detailed assessment of your workplace culture and social initiatives.

<<See how Bob supports healthy cultures and community building.>>

Employ a Human Capital Management platform tailored for Gen Z employees

Bob has lots of the answers to the question of “how to lead Gen Z.” Moreover, while Bob makes working life better for all generations, many of its features have been developed principally with Gen Z in mind. 

This includes key aspects of the employee experience that Gen Z hold dear—their professional development, commitment to diversity and inclusion, and appetite for community. 

Bob empowers Gen Z to discover upskilling opportunities, keep track of their performance, and get instant congratulations on a job well done. 

In turn, it’s a portal to better workplace relationships. A tool that helps Gen Zers feel more confident in who they are, opens the door to mentoring, and suggests memberships to clubs that go beyond the professional sphere to enrich their everyday lives. 

On the other side of the coin, Bob also makes it easy for businesses to manage Gen Z. Use Bob’s Analytics to see what you’re doing well, plus where you might need to invest in recruitment and retention. Because Gen Z’s impact on your organization is only going to increase.

The post Growth, DE&I, and culture: Bob helps Gen Z get what they want appeared first on HiBob.

What’s more, by 2030, 30 percent of the world’s workforce will be Gen Zers. For businesses to thrive, HR leaders need to find ways to keep this new cohort engaged. 

Concerningly, they’re the most disengaged (54 percent) generation we’ve ever seen. The key will be to meet their expectations. But who really is Gen Z? What does this generation want? 

In the first quarter of 2023, we surveyed 3,691 tech professionals aged 20-30 across the United States, Australia, and Europe. The results, published in the Young Generation in Tech report, highlighted their unique personal and professional characteristics, needs, and aspirations. More than any other generation, we found that Gen Z demands work that mixes career growth with personal wellbeing and a genuine sense of community. 

For employers who don’t meet these expectations, a stark warning: Gen Zers have no qualms about leaving. 34 percent expect to move within the next two years, and Deloitte found roughly a third would walk without lining up another job. 

However, employers who do invest in these areas can expect big dividends throughout the employee lifecycle, including benefits such as lower employee turnover, higher retention, a happier workforce, and faster, more cost-effective recruitment. Plus, these returns will only increase as more and more Zoomers join the working world.

So who is Gen Z, anyway?

There are competing opinions on when Generation Z starts and ends. But most would say a Zoomer is someone born between 1995 and 2012. 

Growing up with the internet means social media is second nature for them. In terms of personality, they also tend to be open-minded and accepting, and they don’t merely keep track of current events—they’re politically active. 

In the workplace, as the Young Generation in Tech report showed, there are some clear differences that set Gen Z workers apart from previous generations. Broadly speaking, they:  

• Bring a passion for diversity
• Demand a personalized employee experience 
• Are good at multitasking 
• Enjoy individual tasks more than working in teams
• Prefer companies with good ethics, impact, and practices
• Want financial stability
• Look for independent learning opportunities
• Expect competitive salaries (though it’s not a top driver) 

What Generation Z’s characteristics mean for employers 

With the Gen Z workforce now firmly on their career ladders, employers need to know their strengths and weaknesses to harness their talents. If you understand the how and why of working with Gen Z, you can create a business environment that keeps them engaged. That means creating a place for Gen Z at work that: 

• Offers the financial security they need
• Rewards their confident professional abilities
• Maximizes their competitiveness and drive to succeed
• Enhances their creativity and entrepreneurialism
• Nurtures their ambition to progress 
• Provides the fast and constant feedback they crave
• Supports their preference for face-to-face communication

<< Turn the Gen Z challenge into a genuine opportunity. Read the guide. >>

What Gen Z values most in the workplace  

All generations want career growth, so it comes as no suprise that this is also a top-three priority for Gen Z. However, they differ from their older peers in other areas. Gen Z puts more focus on personal wellbeing and needs to know their employer will, too. They also see the workspace as a place for community, so it’s vital your culture emphasizes both professional and social bonds. Let’s dive a little deeper into each of these areas of focus.

Value 1: Gen Z wants career growth opportunities

27 percent of Gen Zers say they don’t have a clear career path. As this is the most common single negative issue for them in the workplace, employers must champion a transparent work model where everyone has well-signposted routes to progression. 

Growth isn’t just about career progression, though. It also comes down to your learning and development strategy. Investing more in L&D won’t just make your Gen Z employees happy, either. . In fact, research shows that 61 percent of professionals see it as one of the most powerful reasons to stay in their current position. 

So, investing in traditional training courses can benefit professionals of any age. Especially when that professional development helps employees to harness technological advances, shifting modes of work, and evolving industries to maximize their talents. 

However, there’s no substitute for experience–or sharing experiences. Because Gen Z values face-to-face communication and community, it is vital to invest time and effort into mentoring programs. 

A caveat: almost half (47 percent) of dissatisfied Gen Zers in the Young Generation in Tech report had taken part in informal mentoring. So structure is key. Match the level and form of mentoring to individuals’ needs and, once established, your program can become a real point of difference in both attraction and retention.

Value 2: Gen Z want you to care about personal wellbeing 

Gen Zers look for employers who share their insistence on finding the right work-life balance—the relationship between employees’ personal and working lives. 

Too often, people put too much energy into work and can burn out. Gen Z wants to know they are free to carve out time for meaningful and enjoyable activities away from their role. 

In response, you can develop a policy on when employees can be contacted after hours. Also, make it easy to book time off and encourage senior figures to be role models by genuinely disconnecting from work while on leave. 

Beyond this, there are other elements of wellbeing to consider. For example, is your business a net positive for society? Because 42 percent of Gen Z were attracted to their current role because of their employer’s impact and mission. 

The culture you foster is vital, too. Gen Z is twice as likely to be happy working for employers who promote collaboration, fairness, and kindness. 

Then, there is your work on inclusivity. 9 percent of unhappy Gen Z employees work for employers without DEI&B initiatives, compared to 4.5 percent of satisfied Gen Z employees. Remember, it is not just about embedding effective DEI&B measures—promote their successes, too. 

Value 3: Gen Z is all about building relationships 

Community is everything for Zoomers. They prefer to communicate face-to-face. Not just to ‘network’, but to build genuine connections with their colleagues. They also want to work in teams where they really feel they belong. This is backed up by the findings in the Young Generation in Tech Report 2023: 

• 41 percent feel more engaged and motivated at the office, compared to 29 percent at home
• 37 percent felt there weren’t enough opportunities to build relationships, didn’t spend enough time in the office, or both
• After their role, they most value their company culture (29 percent) and immediate team (28 percent) 

These insights don’t mean you should insist everyone returns to the office five days a week. However, they do mean you should be thinking about a kind of “social contract” to run in tandem with employees’ professional contracts. This might be one in which you support hybrid working, and provide platforms for face-to-face time, opportunities for networking, and environments, events, and initiatives that foster closer relationships between colleagues.  

A useful concept that feeds into this is ‘employee happiness’—the relative positive attitude and outlook your people have towards their work. It covers a variety of areas, from recognition and reward to professional development. But a core pillar looks at employees’ relationships: their connections to co-workers and managers. For a healthy, high-performing organization—especially your group of Gen Zers—it is vital to both measure and improve your employees’ happiness.

<< Turn the Gen Z challenge into a genuine opportunity. Read the guide. >>

Other ways to prioritize the work-life balance for Gen Z 

A good work-life balance allows Gen Z to enjoy wholesome, stable, and meaningful professional and private lives. If they’re working too hard or—because they’re driven by their careers—not enough, they will lose motivation. Plus, after growing up alongside the rise in flexible working, it’s no surprise Gen Z understands the benefits of hybrid. 

Where previous generations have put great stock in presenteeism, Gen Z expects a healthy balance of hybrid working. It is vital that you make it easy for them to be productive on-site and remotely, building practices around their situation and needs. 

In turn, they appreciate employers that understand how to operate hybrid environments. Environments with structures that allow leaders to manage teams by setting targets and deliverables, rather than assessing the time spent on tasks. 

Gen Z vs Millennial: the generational differences  

From a distance, some might think Gen Zers are similar to Millennials. However, there are some big differences. 

Millennials are motivated by purpose more than salary; whereas Gen Zers place greater emphasis on their day-to-day roles and financial security. Zoomers are also exceedingly confident in their professional abilities and driven to succeed. In contrast, Millennials are energized by the idea of fulfillment in the workplace. 

It’s also clear that Gen Z prioritizes career progression. While the work-life balance is important, they are happier to work hard so long as that work delivers in terms of advancement. Millennials, while also hard workers, are more likely to insist that their workloads fit around their own personal responsibilities. 

<< Turn the Gen Z challenge into a genuine opportunity. Read the guide. >>

Gen Z trends that drive HR engagement strategy

The Gen Z conundrum is not a distant worry. HR leaders around the world are putting them at the top of the agenda for good reason: in just six years, they’ll account for almost a third of the workforce. 

But while meeting their needs is an urgent task, it takes careful consideration. This is a generation with a unique set of drivers. 

However, the research has been done. There is now a deep understanding of what’s required. Aspiration, wellness, community. Taken together, they present businesses with a once-in-a-generation opportunity. A chance to put structures in place that allow everyone to succeed, live life to the fullest in and out of the office, and build relationships that elevate the day-to-day working experience. 

It’s all too easy to focus on the obvious benefits of attraction and retention. There is more to this. Businesses that help Gen Zers succeed will see an upturn in their business performance. An upturn that will accelerate in step with Gen Z’s growing role in the modern workforce. 

The post The Gen Z explainer: how well do you know your A to Gen Z? appeared first on HiBob.

Dave Ulrich, Professor of Business at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and Partner at RBL Group, shares a practical roadmap to navigating the HR transformation and getting results in a keynote address at The HR Congress World Summit 2022 entitled “Get Results From Your HR Transformation.”

According to Dave, in our current paradigm, “HR is not about HR. It’s about helping your company succeed.” He believes that creating marketplace value is the best way HR can perform its function—and that the way to do it is through a framework of human capability built around improving outcomes in talent, organization, and leadership.

Simplify and streamline with a human capability framework

HR initiatives can often feel haphazard and all over the map. You have technology, DEI&B, leadership coaching, ESG (environmental, social, and governance), hybrid and remote work, to name just a few of the items on today’s HR departments’ to-do lists. It can be overwhelming to comprehend—and communicate—how they all relate to each other and the company’s goals. 

Frameworks are a great way to cut through the clutter. Dave provides examples of widely understood frameworks that organize and simplify complicated concepts into easily digestible pieces, such as food groups, personality types, and risk assessments. Frameworks also make  tracking metrics and results possible and help systematically determine areas for improvement.

He suggests a framework of human capability for the HR transformation centered around four elements: talent, organization, leadership, and HR, where HR ties the other three together. According to Dave, all HR initiatives can fit into one of these categories by determining which of the following questions they respond to:

• Talent: What should we do to have the right individual competence, workforce, or skills?
• Organization: What should we do to have the right organizational capability, workplace, or team?
• Leadership: What should we do to have the right leaders and shared leadership on all levels?

HR is responsible for delivering all three of these and generating improvements across each of them. The final piece of the puzzle is ensuring your HR department has the right people, practices, and metrics to be able to use the human capability framework to deliver value in the marketplace.

According to Dave, “An organization is not about its structure. It’s not about its hierarchy and morphology and roles. It’s not even about where people work. It’s about: ‘What do they work on?’” He thinks that in the world of hybrid work, people too often get hung up on “space and place” when they should be more focused on: “What am I working on that will help our company be successful in the marketplace and with investors?”

Work the framework: Combine actions with impact

Dave cites recent Governance and Guidance for Growth through Human Capability (G3HC) research that looks into exactly how companies can generate human capability outcomes across the entire framework. He goes deep into the data and identifies the specific actions in each category that statistics show as having the greatest impact on improving results.   

Talent: Acquisition, engagement, and experience

The G3HC defined 10 dimensions of talent that help create human capability. They include aspects around hiring, performance management, development, diversity, communication, and retention.

After studying 7,000 companies, the general results show that the areas with the most substantial overall impact are talent acquisition, tracking people engagement, and creating a positive experience. In other words, focusing efforts on these areas is an effective strategy for HR departments.

Organization: Speed, strategy, and service 

G3HC identified 12 organizational capabilities, including aspects of culture, social responsibility, innovation, accountability, and technology. The results show three areas where HR actions have the highest impact: agility, strategic clarity, and customer-centricity. 

Organization: Speed, strategy, and service 

G3HC identified 12 organizational capabilities, including aspects of culture, social responsibility, innovation, accountability, and technology. The results show three areas where HR actions have the highest impact: agility, strategic clarity, and customer-centricity. 

Dave recognizes that each company is different and suggests a tailored approach. “[You] can build agility by defining what agility means, how to make it happen, how to apply it. [You] can define strategic clarity by getting opportunities … and customer-centricity by serving customers.”

Leadership: Build the case and ensure reputation

The next piece is leadership, and the G3HC research detects six dimensions of how companies can build their leadership brand. They include metrics to define, assess, develop, and measure the impact of company leaders and leadership as a whole.

Fascinatingly, according to Dave, the most notable areas are clarifying a case for business leadership and ensuring reputation. It’s about “building the case that leadership matters, especially in this distributed world” and ensuring “our leaders have a reputation for empathy, meaning, and emotion.”

HR: Focus on reputation and relationships

The final piece of the framework centers on HR itself and determining how to enable and empower HR to make results happen. According to G3HC research, nine dimensions are the backbone of great HR departments: reputation, customers, purpose, design, practices, and relationships.

The research revealed reputation to be the number one high-impact area. “If we in HR have a great reputation—not only for efficiency or best practice or strategy but for creating market value—we drive results.” And the second most impactful sphere is forming incredible relationships and working well with others, both within HR and between HR and the rest of the company. 

“Of those nine dimensions, the HR design matters—that’s our role—but the HR reputation and the HR relationships matter even more,” Dave explains. 

Shift from nouns to verbs

Sometimes the HR transformation feels like a revolution, and other times it’s more subtle. One final takeaway Dave shares is, surprisingly, grammatical. He points out that for the past 30 years, “we’ve defined the competencies or skills of an HR professional as a noun: credible activist, change agent, business partner, employee champion.”

To face a future of uncertainty, challenges, and opportunities, he encourages HR departments to think about their job in terms of verbs. The research identifies five key skills: “I accelerate the business. I advance human capability … I mobilize information. I foster collaboration, and I simplify complexity.” 

Just making these tiny adjustments can completely alter how we, and others, approach our work. With those skills and this new mindset, Dave says, you can go out there and “create the results that matter.”

This article is based on the presentation “Get Results From Your HR Transformation.” Watch the full presentation to learn how to use the human capability framework to deliver HR value in your company.

The post Why the human capability framework is essential for your HR transformation appeared first on HiBob.

In concert with other tactics—like creating and discussing KPIs and using tools like Bob to assess compensation or performance across the organization—it’s up to managers to build the connections that allow them to support individual contributors throughout the career lifecycle.

In an interview presented at “The State of DEIB” virtual event, our Chief Customer Officer Adi Janowitz explained how managers can extend the value of belonging through interactions with people on their team, and what HiBob looks for when hiring or promoting new managers.

“Being a caring manager is a great opportunity for me to be the person that I want to be at work,” Adi says. “But it’s more than that. By doing so—plus having clear goals for the team and radical candor—it helps us get to where we need to excel.”

DEI&B is a lens for improved focus

At its core, being diverse and inclusive is about keeping an open mind and giving different kinds of people across your organization opportunities to speak up and grow. Adi’s career is a perfect example of this. While she might be a Chief Customer Office today, she started out  as a software programmer. Her enthusiasm for talking about tech and the value it brings people caught a manager’s eye. Adi ended up participating in a client exhibition and working with customers for the first time. 

This opportunity showed her the connection between the product and the value it brings to customers—only later on defined as “customer success”  With an inherent tendency to promote those value discussions, she gradually became more and more attracted to working with clients. 

Her experience pivoting from programming to customer success—two seemingly unrelated career paths—informs her work today: Helping growing multi-national companies understand the value  of creating inclusive cultures for every team member across the organization.

“DE&I is not just about hiring for diversity,” she says. “It’s mainly about inclusion and what it means to us to be inclusive within our culture and within our team. A lot of that relies on creating a safe environment in which each individual feels OK to voice their opinion, feels OK to voice their concerns or challenges, or even to say, I’m having a bad day.”

Having a diversity of thoughts, opinions, and backgrounds within an organization creates a multiplier effect that produces better results than a homogenous team ever could.

One-on-one conversations welcome candor and care

Companies that successfully apply DEI&B principles across the organization don’t stop at creating a safe environment for all people—they also value radical candor.

“We have to make sure that the feedback we’re giving to people is such that it can help them grow,” Adi says. “Sometimes those are not easy conversations. It’s about being brave and being able to articulate what feedback we can give people to help them grow within the company.”

Beyond providing feedback, these conversations are also essential for listening—ensuring that managers are hearing people and that their thoughts and opinions have a space within the management agenda.

Within the manager-employee relationship, the one-to-one meeting is the prime place where organizations can put these ideas into action. One-to-one meetings are most effective when they recur in a regular rhythm and utilize a predictable structure. 

“Being able to wrap that conversation in a structure that is known and familiar goes back to creating [a] safe space,” Adi says, “while at the same time we’re not neglecting talking about what we are here to achieve together from a results perspective.”

She says that these meetings are, at their core, about empowering a manager to support their individual contributors by providing tools, and by taking a joint look at what they have accomplished so far.

And while it can be tempting—especially among remote and hybrid teams—to skip the small talk, asking someone about what’s happening in their personal life can actually be a very important point of connection.

“What’s the one thing that gives you the power to start your day, and what’s the one thing that is making you slower today?” Adi suggests these as strong questions to ask, adding that being able to reflect on these types of topics ultimately allows people to perform at their best.

Identify the culture-builders

As crucial as managers are for creating inclusive environments that allow people to thrive, the traits required to successfully manage a diverse team don’t come naturally to everyone.

Culture fit—the idea that a new hire shares the values of the team they will be joining—is an important aspect of hiring. But when it comes to managers, it’s not enough.

“We need people who are culture builders,” Adi says. “Those are the kind of managers that are passionate about building a culture and building a community.”

Successful managers are enthusiastic about this part of the job—management is not just a chore that comes alongside a promotion.

“Oftentimes in the world of technology especially, it’s very easy to promote people based on their performance,” Adi says. “But if we don’t look enough to make sure that the people we promote are passionate about coaching, are passionate about building that safe space for each one of their people and allowing them to succeed, then we’re not setting ourselves up for success in terms of building that culture and embracing it.”

Finding the win together

At HiBob, the principles of inclusion and belonging are encapsulated in the motto, “Bring me, win as we”—an important sentiment that reveals the organization’s pathway to success at every management level.

“It’s all about winning together,” Adi says, “which means sometimes making sure someone else is in the spotlight. But as long as we can support them and make something successful, we’re all for it.”

This article is based on an interview from “The State of DEI&B: What’s Changing and What’s Next.” Watch the full virtual event for a look at the future of belonging in the workplace.

The post How to empower people managers to create an environment of inclusion and belonging appeared first on HiBob.

These elements all go into crafting a strong compensation and benefits strategy. Beyond creating an attractive offer to new job candidates, organizations need to have this crucial strategy in place to retain their top people, maintain equitable compensation across teams, and provide transparency about when and how people can access certain benefits.

A panel of industry experts discussed the challenges and merits of building effective compensation strategies—and shared the top questions that HR and leadership teams should consider—in the webinar “Creating a well-balanced compensation and benefits strategy.”

• David Duckworth, co-founder and COO at global benefits platform company, Ben
• Sophie Matthews, people manager at cloud-based payroll software company, Payfit
• Patrick Maier, former general manager at compensation benchmarking company, Payspective

Here are some of the key takeaways from their conversation.

How to figure out what to pay people—and why it’s so hard

One of the most challenging questions companies face when figuring out a compensation structure is also one of the most fundamental.

“The most basic challenge that a lot of the companies that we’re working with have is that it’s simply really, really hard to determine what the right package is for any given role,” Patrick says.

The lack of comparable benchmarks can be a significant obstacle.

“Smaller businesses don’t have the luxury to have access to these huge metrics on compensation,” Sophie says.

Sites like Glassdoor can offer some insights, but their numbers often skew towards larger enterprises. Similarly, they don’t consider the different pay structures—like bonuses or stock options—that smaller or startup businesses might use.

Once you’ve found reliable benchmarks to work from, you need to develop a strategy around using them.

“Have a strategy for where you want to be,” David says. “Do you want to be super competitive and always pay over the top? Do you want to be paying above market or below market? What’s the strategy around the type of talent that you’re trying to attract?”

For example, if your company focuses heavily on design and you need to attract the top 10 percent of designers in the country, you can expect to pay well over the median salary range, perhaps closer to the 90th percentile. On the other hand, if your business model requires a less specialized skill set, you may be able to find the people you need by offering median pay or even a little less.

Likewise, you may want to incentivize a team of high-performing young salespeople with equity or stock options based on performance while simultaneously optimizing the base salaries of more experienced team members in other functions.

As you make these decisions, be sure to keep an eye on their effect on equitable compensation. 

“You may have very rigid salary bands, and you may be quite confident that you’re not discriminating on pay when it comes to men versus women,” Patrick says. “But you could still have a huge gender pay gap because all your C-level is male or because all of your engineering roles are dominated by men.”

Identify an objective for your benefits package

Beyond salary, there are several questions to consider when deciding what benefits will round out your compensation package.

David says he sees companies fall into one of three categories:

• Statutory: Organizations that provide only what is required by law or benefits that offer them a tax advantage, nothing more.
• Market competitive: Organizations that choose benefits that are relevant within their particular geography, such as offering a choice of health insurance plans to United States-based teams.
• Over-the-top: Organizations that want to be known as an employer of choice and use benefits as a tool to create that perception. Big names in tech (Facebook, Google) fall into this category.

“The important thing, as ever with any of these kinds of questions, is defining what the objective is,” he says. “Why are you offering the things that you’re offering?”

Align benefits packages across global sites

At PayFit, Sophie and her team answered this question by aligning on a few benefit themes to offer people employed across five countries, even if the deliverables vary slightly across geographies. For example, each office provides some sort of benefit to cover travel expenses to work and another to encourage health and wellbeing. The organization ties anniversary rewards to another company value.

“We are currently rewarding one-year and three-year anniversaries,” Sophie says, “and the benefit in relation to that is to really encourage people to try something new, whether that’s visiting a new place or trying a new experience—like a sports activity or a dining experience—something that pushes them out of their comfort zone.”

Targeting your benefits to your people is one way to use your benefits budget efficiently, Patrick says. If people aren’t using what’s available, it’s time to find out what they want and focus on offering that rather than a wide (and expensive) variety.

“A smaller budget can go a really long way when you spend it right,” he says.

Consider non-monetary benefits in your calculations

Some benefits are hard to put a monetary value on—but they might be the ones worth the most to your people. That’s where company culture plays a role.

“When you join a business, very early on, you learn—are you trusted as an employee?” Sophie says, talking about how a company treats brief absences for things like dentist or doctor appointments. “Businesses where they trust their employees to do that and not have to take your leave … I think they are very much appreciated by teams to not have to make formal processes around those kinds of small things.”

David says that whether or not companies write these practices into policies, they are a part of the system of which leaders should be conscious.

“How does your compensation and benefits system help to either reinforce or create the kind of culture that you want?” he asks.

Cut the cost of benefits with flexible work policies

Remote and hybrid work policies are another benefit more people expect from companies today. 

“We’ve heard from a few companies that have had quite financially attractive offers rejected because they wanted them to come into the office,” Patrick says. “I think [remote working] is a really important complement and something to keep in mind.”

In a smaller business or startup, communicating the value of non-monetary benefits can help attract top talent, even if you aren’t yet able to offer as much in terms of salary.

“If you’re joining a really small business, your potential for career progression … could also be really important for you,” Sophie says. “If you can only budget-wise afford on the lower quartile, then look at what your alternative selling point is.”

Make it official: Craft a clear and transparent policy

Whatever you decide to offer in terms of pay and benefits—whether the bare necessities or all the bells and whistles—formalize the details into a compensation policy that your company can follow, communicate, and manage across the organization.

Instituting formal processes too late—or failing to communicate them—can lead to unintentional inequality in the pay structure.

“Early-stage companies often just give pay raises to the people who ask for them and just assume the ones who don’t are happy with what they are getting,” Patrick says. “That’s quite dangerous because statistically, men are much more likely to proactively ask for a raise than women. And when you just do it on the basis of what you feel is right, you might not actually be treating your whole organization the same and fairly.” 

“So having those processes in place,” Patrick continues, “and having a policy in place where you can be sure that you’re treating everyone equally—and also something that people can refer back to and say, hey, this is in the policy—it’s really important.”

Being transparent about your compensation policy doesn’t mean sharing everyone’s salaries. Nevertheless, it’s important for everyone in your organization to know that there is a policy in place. This helps people understand what goes into compensation decisions, how they can access new benefits, or when they are eligible for pay raises.

“It’s great if you have an amazing policy in place that takes into account all sorts of different situations and employees,” Patrick says, “but when people don’t understand what the policy is, and when there’s no transparency in the organization, then there might still be frustrations. There might still be a perception of unfairness.”

In relaying policy, HR leaders must take the lead 

In addition to the processes, HR leaders can play an essential role in communicating the full value of what the organization offers its people.

“You would be surprised how far just being great at communicating what your policy is will get you—and what’s the total value to a potential employee,” David says, “because all these things get buried under somewhere, and they might not understand that.”

The conversation around compensation and benefits involves a lot of tough questions that leaders will need to answer, but the reward is a competitive and equitable strategy that will guide your organization for years to come.

“Compensation is a really vast topic,” Sophie says. “And being such an important topic, I think it’s important that you try to get it right the first time and take your time in doing that.”This article is based on the panel discussion “Creating a well-balanced compensation and benefits strategy.” Watch the full webinar to learn more about crafting an equitable, manageable, and attractive strategy for new hires and current team members.

The post How to stand out on compensation and benefits appeared first on HiBob.

In 2021, HiBob surveyed 1,000 full-time professionals over the age of 25 to find out what they want in a workplace and what employers can do that would make the difference between leaving and staying.

HiBob’s Senior Director of Communications and Strategic Projects Zoe Haimovitch teamed up with Jonah Goldstein, the head of learning at 360Learning, to share the results of the study, as well as strategies for engaging and retaining top talent, in the webinar “Employee retention strategies for the new world of work.”

One common thread throughout their conversation was the importance of listening to your people through surveys and other feedback forums that invite sharing what matters to professionals and what they consider important for their career development. Flexible work arrangements and collaborative learning opportunities also play a crucial role in the 2022 workplace.

Here are some of the key takeaways from their conversation.

Don’t shirk work-life balance in mid-size companies, where resignation risk is higher

The Great Resignation has hit companies of all sizes across all kinds of industries. But, the survey data shows that people who work for mid-size companies (50-1,000 employees) are the most likely to have changed jobs in the past 12-18 months and consider quitting.

Only 44 percent of people at mid-size companies are working in the same roles they were in a year ago, and 56 percent said they are likely or very likely to quit in the year ahead. Large companies (1,000+) are the most stable, with 55 percent of people working in the same roles and only 36 percent likely to quit. Small companies (1-50 people) land somewhere in the middle.

“While some turnover is healthy, the Great Resignation has the power to blindside companies if they’re not attuned to the main motivations driving this shift,” Zoe says. “HR leaders need to understand why people are quitting and what they are looking for instead.”More than half of those who did or are planning to quit reported that seeking better work-life balance and better pay were the main reasons behind their decisions. Benefits and opportunities for advancement also ranked high as reasons to make a change.

Find ways to be flexible

Many people are choosing to quit because they want more flexibility in their work lives. When companies don’t offer flexible working models, they risk losing top talent, and there’s an opportunity to introduce practices that could significantly impact retention.

“As companies reevaluate returning to the office,” Zoe says, “many employees expect continued flexible options as the most important benefit of staying at their jobs.”

Half of survey respondents—including 53 percent of people working at mid-size companies and 55 percent at large companies—rated workplace flexibility as “very important.” Even more eye-opening, 56 percent of people at mid-size companies said they will quit if their employer does not offer flexible working hours and location options.

Unfortunately, many of these people have seen their HR teams backpedal on flexibility-related policies. And more than a third of people at mid-size companies are afraid taking advantage of flexible working policies would hinder their career growth or even delay promotions.

“Employees at mid-sized companies are productive working from home and they expect to be respected for that,” Zoe says, adding that it’s vital to create HR strategies that don’t pit those working from home against those who choose to work from the office.

“The company culture needs to support people working from home and people working from the office at the same time,” she says. “The new world of work needs to be adjusted.”

Here are a few solutions that organizations can employ to encourage flexibility and help retain people who have become used to working when and/or where they choose:

• Don’t require people to be in the office five days a week. Allow them to set some working hours or choose their work location.
• If you ask people to come into the office, make sure the ask has a purpose. “The office is evolving from an everyday workspace to a place of socialization, collaboration, and company culture,” Zoe says. Use in-office times for meetings, get-togethers, and onboarding activities and allow people to do their individual work elsewhere as desired.
• Make it easier for people to communicate with each other, whether they’re on-site or remote. Create more private meeting rooms in your physical office for Zoom calls, and institute a “one person, one screen” policy for group meetings.

Workplace learning—but make it collaborative

Investing in your people’s career development and learning is another way to keep them engaged and happy in their roles.

In a survey that 360Learning conducted in 2021, respondents rated learning opportunities as highly important to job satisfaction, with 57 percent saying they would consider leaving a job that didn’t have enough professional development opportunities.

“But people are not just looking for content when it comes to learning,” Jonah says. “What they really want are opportunities for connection and collaboration.”

Applying a collaborative strategy to workplace learning looks a little different than traditional training models. Conventional models employ a top-down approach, with leadership identifying needs at a high level and learning and development teams creating large, slow training programs that quickly become outdated. “Success” for these programs usually is not measured beyond the number of people who complete them.

“In opposition to that,” Jonah says, “there’s this notion of collaborative learning where you are listening to your people, where you are identifying the needs that they have identified themselves, that will allow them to grow, which will allow them to progress in their careers, which will allow them to have more impact and to be even more high performing in their roles.”

All together now: how to make learning more collaborative

Here are some of the ways collaboration might appear in each stage of the learning process:

1. Allow people in the organization to determine their own learning needs. Over half of the people surveyed said they know best what they need to learn. Create a space to collect topic suggestions and allow team members to chime in so you can see what subjects make them tick.
2. Bring learners, managers, and subject matter experts together to create new courses or training programs. Decentralizing the ownership of the content makes it easier to maintain. As a result, the focus areas will be more relevant, up-to-date, and valuable to your people, and you’ll extend the life of the training material.
3. Structure courses or training to include engaging questions. Rather than asking people to listen to a lecture or flip through a slide deck, include open-ended questions where learners can respond and receive feedback from colleagues or subject matter experts.

“Ultimately, what we’re trying to drive is engagement and retention,” Jonah says. “You need to have the means to gather data in order to understand the impact that you’re having.”

He recommends collecting reaction and relevance scores to understand how effective the training material is and whether it’s meeting the intended need.

“That enables me to know that the content is on point,” he says, “For those learners who are engaged with it, it is, in fact, offering them opportunities to grow, to respond to the needs that they’ve identified, and to recognize that there are growth opportunities within the company.”

More ways to resignation-proof your organization

Beyond flexible workplace policies and investing in learning, there are many more strategies to address people’s workplace pain points and retain top talent amid the pressures of The Great Resignation.

• Develop the relationships between managers and your HR team. “Managers are an HR team’s eyes and ears during the transitional phase of work,” Zoe says. “They are in the best position to guide HR about what might benefit their team.”
• Manage compensation and benefits strategically. “Employees trust when their organization has a regular compensation management cycle, and they know there’s a reason to wait,” Zoe says.
• Offer continuous feedback and regular recognition to make sure people feel valued for their hard work.
• Be upfront and honest with candidates during the hiring process. The surest way to lose a new hire is to promise something you can’t deliver.
• Don’t just talk about DE&I—live DE&I. It’s all about creating a sense of belonging and ensuring everyone feels welcome.

The Great Resignation is a sign that retention practices must be deliberate and targeted to the difficulties that lead good people to quit their jobs. Survey your people, listen to what they need, and be prepared to take action on what you learn—maybe in innovative new ways that allow for more flexibility and collaboration than ever before. The future of your workplace depends on it.

This article is based on the webinar “Employee retention strategies for the new world of work.” Watch the full webinar to learn more about HiBob’s research into The Great Resignation and other strategies to retain people in this shifting landscape.

The post High-impact retention strategies for a high turnover world appeared first on HiBob.

As companies continue to wrestle with the Great Resignation and changes within the world of work, understanding how to implement impactful people-first strategies is vital to attracting, retaining, and nurturing the best people for your business.

We sat down with two of Australia’s well-respected leadership experts to better understand what people-first organizations require of today’s leaders and what strategies can help with addressing common HR challenges:

• Dr. Kirstin Ferguson is an award-winning business leader, writer, speaker, and former Deputy Chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She currently serves on the boards of two companies where she chairs the people and remuneration committees, and she writes weekly leadership columns in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
• Kathleen McCudden is the chief HR and communications officer at SEEK, Australia’s leading online employment marketplace operating across APAC and LATAM regions. Before SEEK, she worked as IBM’s director of human resources for Australia and New Zealand and in HR roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Here are some key takeaways on overarching people-first strategies from the conversation.

1. Modern, people-first leadership involves both the head and the heart

On the people and remuneration committees that Kirstin chairs, there has, unsurprisingly, been plenty of discussion about the talent shortage in the tech industry, how to compete to hire the best people, and how to make your company’s employee value proposition (EVP) blow competitors’ out of the water.

But to Kirstin, the conversation around these topics—and around the Great Resignation, which she renamed “The Great Realignment” in a recent column in the Australian Financial Review—misses the point completely.

“You can have the best EVP in the market, but people won’t want to work with you unless you also offer them an environment where they can be led by—and be encouraged to lead as—modern leaders,” she says.

The art of modern leadership, Kirstin says, “is about understanding the extent to which you currently lead with your head and your heart, and then understanding how to draw upon those skills at the right time and in the appropriate way.”

Grasping the importance of this balance is important, not just for “capital L” leaders who direct departments or manage teams, but also for people who play a role in identifying emerging leaders who can benefit from company investment in up-and-coming talent.

Head vs. heart: 8 attributes to consider in modern leaders

On Kirstin’s head and heart leader scale, the head-based leadership qualities that emanate from the cognitive, rational parts of the brain have traditionally been more highly valued. These first four (of eight) attributes include curiosity, wisdom, perspective, and capability.

“There is no doubt that leading with our heads is critically important,” she says. “It allows us to analyze complex data, to weigh up risks and opportunities, to create business strategies, and to write policies.” 

Schools and workplaces reward people who lead with their heads when they pass exams, meet sales goals, or engineer complex solutions. And because the results of these efforts are tangible, the head can feel like a safe place for many leaders to stay.

By contrast, leading with the heart is about processing emotions, connecting with others, and developing values. These skills (the other four attributes)—which include humility, self-awareness, courage, and empathy—may be more difficult to see or measure, but they are equally as important in a people-first organization.

Look beyond the hero leader

In her research, Kirstin has asked hundreds of people to name a modern leader. Most people name individuals like Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and President Barack Obama.

This is no surprise, she says. For centuries, the idea of the “hero leader” or “great man” was narrow in scope. Traditional renditions of the idea defined “hero leaders” primarily as men with superior intellect, courage, and abilities required to be great leaders–and excluded anyone else.

“Now, obviously, that view has been well and truly debunked,” Kirstin says, adding that the world now seeks out female and nonbinary leaders from all ethnicities, faiths, abilities, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds. 

“We need modern leaders who lead with their head and their hearts in every context, regardless of the formal roles they might hold in an organization,” she adds.

2. Articulate your principles and policies

The head and heart model describes the soft skills required of modern leaders, but once those leaders are in place, how does an organization extend people-first principles into the day-to-day work of the business—or even into extraordinary circumstances like a global pandemic?

During the pandemic, Kathleen and her team were faced with a lot of important questions to answer in a very short period of time. How would people work from home when most only had desktop computers? What about people working in locations with weak internet connectivity? What if people needed to take time off to care for themselves or their families?

Kathleen quickly recognized the value of head and heart leadership as SEEK’s leadership team addressed both the practical and emotional needs of an increasingly concerned workforce.

“It was a crisis that no one had ever experienced before. So there really wasn’t a playbook,” she says. “Our leaders needed to be really front and center talking to people about what the pandemic meant for SEEK as a business, and how we would help people through it.”

Put guiding principles into action

Something that made those early decisions easier was understanding what company principles to apply to the situation.

“Our number one principle was: We will always put the health and well-being of our people first,” Kathleen says. “So that meant if people couldn’t work, they couldn’t get access to technology because we didn’t want them to be traveling and coming to any office. That’s fine—we would just live with that and we would do whatever we could to then provide them with technology.”

SEEK provided unlimited carer leave when schools closed so people wouldn’t have to choose between caring for family members or resigning from their jobs.

“We didn’t want to put people in that position,” she says, adding that SEEK’s guiding principles governed decision-making during the early pandemic and also allowed team leaders to make day-to-day choices about how to lead their teams.

Document workplace policies—for both candidates and managers

Although the Asia-Pacific region hasn’t experienced the unprecedented resignation numbers seen in the United States and Europe, the Great Resignation—or what Kathleen calls the Great Jobs Boom—offers companies a unique opportunity to be creative and flexible.

Pay and work-life balance are two of the most important issues for candidates, and research shows that the need for flexibility and boundaries is especially important to women.

“Being able to promote that you’re a place which is flexible, that you understand people have got lives to live, and that you’re offering stimulating, interesting work and careers—but you also recognize that people are whole and they’re juggling lots of things—I think is really important,” she says.

Creating written policies to govern flexible work arrangements is just as important as articulating your organization’s guiding principles. Policies should be well-documented, easy to understand, and communicated to everyone across the organization.

Some leaders may worry about underperforming team members or those who could exploit hybrid work or work-from-home policies. But, Kathleen says rather than creating policies or processes based on exceptional cases, organizations do better when they develop approaches that work well for 95 percent of their people. Then, they can more easily address individual problems on a case-by-case basis.

Kirstin adds that this is part of the job when it comes to managing people.

“You’ve got to have these difficult conversations,” she says. “And whether that person is sitting outside your office while you have it or they’re in another country, I think it’s just part of being a leader.”

3. Bring the people-first strategy into the boardroom

Leading with a people-first strategy goes beyond managing teams and creating strong EVPs—it’s a posture that must extend all the way to the boardroom.

“CPOs (Chief People Officers) should be in boardrooms and making sure boards are really informed about what’s going on from a people-first strategy perspective,” Kirstin says. “If you’re not there, it sends quite a message—I would expect a bit of a flag, especially if you’re an HR professional—about the value that people are being given in your organization.”

Use data to support a people-first perspective

When HR leaders are present at the table, part of their role can be educating board members for whom a people-first strategy may be less familiar.

Even in organizations that really prioritize people, there will be times when the CPO may need to help board members step into the shoes of people in the workforce, Kathleen says. 

“Rather than just expressing an opinion or a view, if you can express that opinion or view and make a recommendation—something that you want [to have] an influence in—backed up by actual data, that tends to be really compelling,” she says.

Engagement surveys, people metrics, onboarding interviews, and exit interviews are all excellent sources to mine for data that will enhance an HR leader’s ability to influence decisions at the board level.

Pro tip: Provide a “vibe report” to keep board members in the loop

Kirstin regularly asks the CPOs she works with for a “vibe report.” This is a verbal report—written reports often become quite sanitized—about what’s going on in the organization and where leaders encounter any hot spots.

“Where is there a team or a team leader that’s really struggling? What are some of the big-picture issues that are keeping you up at night? That ‘vibe report’ ends up setting the tone for the rest of the meeting,” she says.

The bottom line: People-first strategies engage leadership at every level of the organization

Articulating principles, policies, and priorities for everyone from team leaders to board members is key for any organization on a mission to modernize its approach to leadership.

“It is modern leaders who truly believe that leadership itself is the privilege and is no longer just for the privileged view,” Kirstin says. “Our workplaces need leaders who understand that the art of being a modern leader lies within.”

The post Leading with a people-first strategy: understanding principles, policies, and priorities appeared first on HiBob.

• Ben Keefe, Senior Manager, People Operations at HiMama
• Camden Louthan, Human Resources Generalist at Kaléo
• Rukkini Sen, People Operations Specialist, Omnipresent

The panelists discussed how they recently started using Bob to help with their current challenges: 

1. Automating processes for onboarding and offboarding as volume increases
2. Building and fostering company culture and values
3. Implementing a tool that keeps processes consistent for all people

All three HR specialists share how putting Bob’s features into practice helped them as their companies continue to evolve and remain flexible.

HR automation means more productivity

Although sending out birthday or work anniversary messages may not seem time-consuming, time spent on these tasks does add up. Automating reminders to complete smaller tasks is helpful, but automating onboarding tasks is key for managing a complex and growing workforce.

Creating an automated onboarding process

Bob’s Task Lists feature—one of the tools the panelists use in their daily operations—lets users automate onboarding procedures by creating a customized new hire creation flow based on hire date.

HR teams can set up task lists to send out documents for signatures, assign time-off policies and benefits, and begin the journey of onboarding for specific positions.

From there, managers will know when to set up an orientation program and when IT members should provide equipment for the new person or grant access to other systems.

Organizations can create similar task lists to ensure the completion of all offboarding procedures when people leave the company. HR automation doesn’t stop there. Companies can also use this for time off and reporting processes and even integrate these features with other programs.

More time to think about vision

All that free time means that HR leaders can turn their focus to the larger picture. That’s more time to think strategically about the structures they have in place rather than the dozens of small things that previously occupied their to-do lists.

Automation also helps HR personnel find and relay answers to questions about analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and reports in seconds or minutes rather than hours or days.

“I think it’s freed us up to actually be answering those important questions for our leaders and actually be the advisors to the business that we aspire to be,” says Ben.

Build a stronger culture

As some people return to working in the office and many work remotely, it can be a challenge to grow and maintain a connection between co-workers who rarely—if ever—see each other in person. 

The HR team has the responsibility to help nudge people in the right direction organically. Here’s where an HRIS and its tools can be extremely useful. For example, breaking the ice can be difficult for new team members in a traditional, in-office setting. It’s even harder in remote and hybrid work environments. An HRIS toolkit can help bring back a sense of familiarity and mirror the in-office employee experience.

Encourage engagement between team members

Camden expressed how much she likes Bob’s personal touch. Her company uses the system for introductions so that people can share more information about themselves and upload headshots to put faces to the names behind the screen.

“We’ve also faced the question of keeping the culture strong and making sure that we have that warmth, that level of personalization, with each person that comes through the door,” says Rukkini. “We really look for that characteristic in all the tools that we work with … One of the things that I like about HiBob is the Clubs feature. I think that’s a really nice way of bringing people together, regardless of where they are from.”

The Clubs feature is just what it sounds like, allowing people to start discussions and connect with other team members who have similar hobbies and interests. Organizations can set up different clubs according to people’s interests, whether for yoga, skiing, music, or knitting.

Ultimately, Clubs lead to stronger trust between team members and allow people to talk to others with whom they may not have spoken before. HR teams can also use analytics to break down Clubs engagement by age, nationality, department, and more.

Create consistency for everyone

The world of work has gone through a revolution, and things aren’t going back to how they were any time soon. While more people than ever are working remotely full-time, HR teams are also managing people who work from other countries.

It’s important to create a consistent, quality experience for everyone so people don’t feel like guests in their own workspace. This involves creating a personalized and tailored experience for each person. 

A personalized experience can look like acknowledging the differences between countries, such as holidays, laws, compliance, and terminology. Also, it can be simply making sure people have access to the systems they need upon onboarding.

Quick tips for evaluating an HRIS

Every company’s needs are unique. When choosing an HRIS, leaders should contemplate what is most important for their company to determine which system will deliver on and exceed expectations.

Consider the following when analyzing an HRIS system:

• Customizability
• Support and enhancement of current processes
• Internal resources to deploy, maintain, and optimize the system
• Support of the full team member lifecycle
• Integration with other systems
• Security

A good HRIS is flexible and able to withstand the changing tides of the current models of work.

Automating processes to focus on your people

Companies of all sizes and varieties are facing a constant evolution of work where agility and flexibility are key. It’s up to HR professionals to find the best ways to support their people through it all.

The right HR tech can help companies boost productivity and automate clear and consistent processes, from onboarding and offboarding to performance reviews and KPI tracking. HR automation gives HR time back to work on maintaining clear communication and consistency and help their people to feel safe and supported even during times of uncertainty and change. 

This article is based on the presentation “Modernizing HR processes for fast-growing companies.” Watch the full webinar to learn how scaling companies can also grow their HR processes.

The post How to solve company growing pains with an HRIS appeared first on HiBob.