Building an employer brand that attracts Gen Z talent is critical for companies, especially in the constantly evolving business world of today. Generation Z — the generation born between 1997 and 2012 — is a significant part of the current workforce, and their expectations, values, and needs are different from baby boomers, Generation X, or even millennials. Therefore, if you want to attract the best talent for your clients, you must understand the unique preferences and the most important standards of this generation.

What is Important to Gen Z Workers?

What is Gen Z talent looking for in a potential employer? Here are a few things that are important:

• Equitable pay as well as benefits;
• Honesty and transparency regarding the potential salary and benefits;
• A brand that participates in social justice;
• A good work/life balance;
• The ability to learn, grow, and develop — particularly for the long term.

Although most other generations desire these working conditions, Generation Z is becoming unique in that they won’t tolerate a job without these equitable working conditions.

Create and Highlight Your Strong Company Culture

One of the most critical aspects of building a strong employer brand is company culture. Generation Z wants to be employed by companies that share their beliefs and values. Therefore, businesses have to showcase their culture on their website, social media, and also other channels used to recruit new employees,

One way to help a candidate learn more about company culture is to share employee stories, testimonials, and also experiences. This can be extremely helpful when it comes to candidates having a better understanding of company culture.

It’s also important for companies to emphasize their dedication to employee well-being as well as work-life balance. Offering perks like flexible work hours, remote or hybrid work options, and health and wellness programs can illustrate how committed a company is to its employees.

Use Social Media Effectively

In this day and age, social media is an important part of our lives. Generation Z, especially, is extremely active on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. It is, therefore, a good idea for organizations to leverage social media to promote their employer brand.

Utilizing social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok can help a brand reach a broader audience and show its culture and values. Businesses should also encourage employees to share the work experiences they have had on social media. They can also increase visibility by using relevant hashtags.

Recruiters can also use social media marketing to participate in the trends that will allow them to attract new talent. Some of these trends can include ephemeral content, live streaming, and avatars.

Encourage Social Justice

When compared to previous generations, Generation Z is much more socially aware. They need to work for companies that are dedicated to social responsibility. This is why it’s a good idea for businesses to highlight their efforts to give back to the community.

Promoting sustainability initiatives, taking part in volunteering opportunities, and also donating to nonprofits and charities that are doing socially responsible work are a few ways organizations can demonstrate their commitment to social justice. Additionally, companies can show examples of their social responsibility efforts on their social media and website.

Equitable Pay and Transparency Related to Salary

No matter what generation you are a part of, salary and benefits are typically the most important considerations when seeking a new job. Generation Z is not different in this way. However, they do value fairness as well as transparency regarding compensation.

For this reason, a business should be upfront about the pay structure and benefits package that accompanies an available position. Organizations should also make sure their salaries and benefits are fair for all employees. Providing benefits like paid time off, healthcare, and also retirement plans can do a lot to attract and retain talent.

Efforts in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Generation Z is also very much concerned with DEI. They want to be employed by an organization dedicated to ensuring an inclusive and diverse workplace.

This is why companies need to display their DEI efforts. A few ways this can be done are to hire candidates that are diverse, implement DEI training programs, and encourage an inclusive company culture. It’s also a good idea for a business to include a DEI statement on its website or social media.

Emphasize the Availability of Development Opportunities

Another thing that is extremely important to Gen Z is having opportunities to grow and develop in their careers. They want to work for organizations that offer these sorts of opportunities so that they are encouraged to grow personally and professionally.

It’s, therefore, a good idea to highlight your learning and development programs. You can demonstrate your company’s commitment to employee growth by offering training/development opportunities as well as mentoring programs.

The post Building an Employer Brand That Attracts Gen Z appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Today, the best employees are looking for businesses that advertise themselves as employee-centric and supportive. Most people want to work for businesses that can improve their work-life balance and value social well-being. 

As a recruiter, you can take advantage of this trend by focusing on social well-being and balance during the recruiting process. 

Benefits of Social Well-Being

Employees around the globe have had enough toxic work environments that undervalue their efforts or disparage their identity. Employees are jumping ship, and are looking for businesses that value social well-being. 

Meeting the demands of today’s employees can be tricky. However, creating a supportive work environment can help your business land more talented applicants and find your dream candidates. Better social well-being can also improve your business’s brand, too, as everyone wants to buy from a business that values its people. 

Companies that cherish their people are also more open and honest. This can help employees discuss workplace health concerns and improve the lives of all employees. Employees that feel supported will willingly come forward with issues like workplace safety concerns and won’t feel intimidated by managers or HR. This can help business leaders run a safer, healthier business and minimize the risk of lawsuits or high staff turnover. 

Survey Your Current Benefits

You can’t authentically advertise your business as employee-friendly if you don’t have robust benefits and programs that improve social well-being in the workplace. However, that doesn’t mean you need to convince the finance department to spend a fortune on new employee wellness programs. Instead, audit your current programs to ensure you’re making the most of your current offering. 

If, after surveying your current benefits, you find that your business is behind competitors, you can pitch low-cost benefit programs that target younger employees and have a high ROI. Consider initiatives like: 

• Fully/partial gym membership funding
• Subscription to apps for meditation/mindfulness
• Flexible working hours
• Resource/affinity groups at work

Most of these programs only cost a few dollars per employee but make a major impact on your recruiting efforts. Paying for wellness apps or offering flexi-time shows that you care about employee wellbeing, even if you’re working on a limited budget. 

Advertising Yourself

Advertising yourself as an employee-centric employer is about more than listing a few perks and benefits at the bottom of a job listing. Your entire listing should prove that your business cares about the health and well-being of your staff. 

Start by writing more inclusive job descriptions. Using language that promotes diversity and inclusion ensures that you gather applications from all demographics. It also shows that you are aware of how a person’s background might impact their experience at work. 

Avoid using personal pronouns and reconsider your “values” subheading. Instead, focus on performance-based descriptors and role-specific language. If in doubt, reach out to the department you’re hiring for to gather more research so you can write a comprehensive, inclusive advert. 

You should try to publish your job adverts in non-traditional venues, too. Job forum sites like LinkedIn and Indeed will yield hundreds of applicants, but you need to go above and beyond the normal sites if you want to find the right employees. Consider posting to forums like Black Jobs or your state-wide autism society website. These sites help you find employees who are traditionally underrepresented in some fields and can help you exceed your DEI targets. 

Mental Health-Friendly Application Processes 

Applying for a job is a time-consuming, taxing process. Prospective applicants are looking for employers who value their time and will turn away if faced with unnecessarily convoluted forms and questionnaires. 

Revise your recruiting process to become more mental-health-friendly. Start with the basics, and ensure that applicants do not have to re-write any information that is already included on their CV or resume. Make it clear that you are willing to make reasonable accommodations before the applicant begins the process and try to minimize the rounds of interviews that applicants must go through. 

These steps show that you value applicants’ time and well-being. A robust, mental-health-friendly process may also save you time, as you won’t have to dig through forms or discard unnecessary information every time you open a new application packet. 

Final Thoughts

Businesses that value social well-being appeal to today’s applicants and will draw the most talented prospective employees. As a recruiter, you can take advantage of this trend by writing inclusive adverts and highlighting perks like flexible work hours, wellness programs, and affinity groups in your workplace. Try to make the application as straightforward as possible, as your application is a reflection of your entire business. Make sure applicants don’t have to repeat information and try to cut down on the number of interview rounds you plan on holding.

The post The Benefits of Focusing on Social Well-Being in the Recruiting Process appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Digital recruiting is popular, too. Over 67% of prospective employees use social media to find new opportunities and 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn to find and evaluate talent. 

After all, recruitment is a form of marketing your company — just with an audience of potential new hires. It’s one of the most common recruitment mistakes to not harness digital marketing. However, creating a digital marketing campaign that attracts talented employees can be tricky. You need to make a few key strategic decisions and should tailor your content to suit the talent you want to attract. 

Digital Marketing Basics

Merging your recruiting efforts with digital marketing can help you land great talent. However, if you’re new to digital marketing, it’s easy to get lost in technical jargon and complex editing programs. 

Instead, stick to the basics of effective digital marketing by creating a clear, well-strategized plan. At minimum, this plan should include key details like: 

• • • Budget
    • Goals
    • Target audience
    • Tone and voice

Establish these parameters before you start posting to social accounts or writing for a blog. A clear strategy will get everyone on board and save you plenty of headaches in the future. 

Inclusive Content

All of your digital content should be intentionally inclusive. However, inclusivity is paramount during recruiting campaigns, as exclusive content will turn talented employees away from your business. 

You can create inclusive content by highlighting existing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in your workplace. This is something that major brands like Virgin Atlantic already do well. 

As part of their recent digital recruiting campaign, Virgin Atlantic updated their gender identity policy so all staff could present their true self while on board. They highlighted these changes in their “See the World Differently” campaign and highlighted the experience of current employees. 

You can follow suit by assessing your existing policies and highlighting any areas that you’re particularly proud of. Prospective employees care about working with businesses that share their values, so your inclusive content is sure to garner attention online. 

Benefit-Based Content

Employees care about the benefits packages they will receive when working for you. Sixty-three percent of prospective employees look for careers with great benefits during their job search. As a recruiter, it’s your job to get the word out there about the benefits your business offers to employees. 

Start creating benefits-based content by surveying your current employees. Ask them which benefits they value the most and which make the biggest impact on their day-to-day lives. Use these insights to plan a series of posts, blogs and video content based on the benefits you offer. 

You may need to expand your benefits in order to attract the best talent. For example, many employees today are interested in working for companies that actively promote mental health services. You can help employees choose the right mental health professional for their specific needs by funding treatment from licensed psychiatrists, psychologists or psychotherapists. 

Make the most of your robust benefits policy by interviewing willing employees and foregrounding their testimonials. This will present your business as an authentically people-friendly workplace. 

Social Media 

Social media is often underutilized by recruiters and hiring managers. However, if you want to find talented younger employees, advertising on social channels is a must. 

Consider investing in paid content on Instagram and Facebook, as over 79% of employees have used social media to start their job search in the past year. Be sure to do your market research first, as you need to meet the genre conventions of each social media platform. 

If you’re planning to sponsor posts on Instagram stories, try to create visually appealing, data-driven content. Content that grabs users’ attention and quickly gives them key details is more likely to resonate with job seekers than content that contains too much information. 

If you’re advertising on Facebook, consider including further information in your post. Posts on Facebook tend to be lengthier than Instagram posts, as users can quickly scan for key details on Facebook. 

Once you’ve run your sponsored campaign, utilize your account insights to determine which posts were the most effective. Facebook and Instagram allow you to see how much engagement each post receives. You can combine this with data from Google analytics to see how many referrals you receive from your social media pages. 

Tailor future content based on your findings to increase your reach and engagement next time around. For example, if your data shows content videos of employee experiences perform well, try to create more posts that foreground your current staff. 

Conclusion

Digital marketing can take your recruiting campaign to the next level. Start by covering the basics: create a clear budget, identify your target audience and establish a voice you want to establish. This will get everyone on board and maximize the effectiveness of your campaign. 

When it’s time to start creating content, consider pushing material that shows off your commitment to DEI and benefits. Employees today want to work for firms that share their values and support their well-being. Creating content based on your existing policies will convince talented employees that you’re right for them.

The post How Businesses Are Utilizing Digital Marketing Campaigns To Hire Employees appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Moving to largely virtual workspaces offers an abundance of new opportunities, ranging from global market expansion to the cost-efficiency of switching from an in-person to a fully remote workforce.

However, digital transformation doesn’t always come easy for HR and recruiting departments. Every transition is always riddled with its own complexities, especially when your line of work directly affects an entire organization. In this article, we’ll offer tips to help HR and recruiting teams navigate this transition and continue implementing their skills in a new, digital business environment.

Maintaining Communication in the Midst of Transformation

One of the biggest challenges when transitioning into the digital sphere is maintaining effective communication. HR teams not only need to keep in touch with each other — without any in-person meetings, for remote teams — but also keep their stakeholders in the loop about new internal processes and how to reach out for HR support.

Determine what channels you’ll use to support your traditional HR processes. For instance, if you once accepted reports of employee disputes in your physical office, you could implement and share an email form or chatbot that does the report intake for you.

In this example, your new digital communication channel can actually save your team a massive amount of time. Choose digital alternatives that increase your efficiency, but aim to consolidate your communication channels as much as possible to ensure your team doesn’t have to jump between too many platforms during their work day.

Speed Up Recruitment With Modern Technology

While communication can be difficult during digital transformation, recruitment can actually become easier and more effective than ever. Virtual recruitment software is reducing the amount of work that needs to be done early in the recruitment process, so recruiters can focus on making the best hiring choices toward the end.

Virtual recruitment funnels in larger volumes of applicants than ever before. However, while this would have been difficult for recruiting teams to manage in the past, companies can continue leveraging technology to screen resumes, shortlist the best candidates and maintain their standards of hiring without having to manually sift through every application.

AI-driven recruitment software can support virtual hiring even further. As job candidates make their way through the interview process, AI can analyze data, sentences and even facial expressions to help you identify the best fit for your team.

Embracing Social Media in the Hiring Process

Social media apps have become popular marketing channels for many digital teams. By embracing paid social media ads and choosing the channels their candidates are using, companies can stand out to potential applicants rather than getting drowned out by other listings on a job search site. However, this isn’t the only opportunity for recruiters to use social media in the hiring process.

As more companies are affected by digital transformation, using social media platforms, especially LinkedIn, for direct outreach has become key to winning the best candidates. Incorporate outreach messages to job seekers into your social media marketing strategy.

LinkedIn even allows you to screen each potential applicant’s background before you reach out, so you don’t waste your time recruiting anyone who’s a poor fit.

When hiring for some departments, like marketing or journalism, asking applicants for other social media handles, like those on Instagram and Twitter, can also be appropriate to gauge communication or content creation skills.

Enhance Employee Motivation

HR teams are often faced with declining motivation in their workforce when digital transformation first occurs. On top of having to learn new technologies, employees may struggle to return to their typical level of productivity when they enter a new working environment.

However, going digital doesn’t have to make employee management harder. With the right digital workforce technology, you can keep employee motivation, engagement and happiness at an all-time high.

For example, employee recognition software can reward team members, who receive points when they complete certain tasks or goals (like recruiting KPIs or sales contracts signed). Once enough points are compiled, they can trade them in for a reward of their choice, whether that’s a gift card, work perks, swag or other real-life prizes.

Enter the Future of HR and Recruitment

Digital transformation is inevitable in every field, and it can help HR and recruitment teams work far more efficiently than ever before. However, navigating the transition requires your department to tackle the difficulties that you may face with the right technologies.

HR teams must identify the communication tools that can replace their in-person communications, as well as find software that can keep their employees productive and engaged. Recruiters, on the other hand, should embrace software that automates parts of the recruitment process and identify the social media channels that can help them stand out to their ideal candidates.

The post How HR and Recruitment Are Impacted by Digital Transformation appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Yet, there are certainly challenges that go along with these advantages. One of the core hurdles is remote operations can expose companies to greater cybersecurity vulnerabilities. When employees aren’t in a shared office environment, there often aren’t control measures in place to keep everyone safe. Therefore, it’s vital for recruitment firms to devise and establish a remote cybersecurity policy that maintains security no matter where employees happen to be working.

This in itself can be a difficult task. So, let’s explore how firms can establish a remote cybersecurity policy.

Identify the Risks

Before you can develop robust remote policies to avoid being hacked, you need to have a clear idea of what the prevalent risks are. Each business has a different approach to remote working, so it’s important to take a tailored approach to establish to what extent each can be a factor in your company. 

Some of the common issues to consider include:

Mobile Network Use

Remote work can mean employees may feel able to work wherever they like. This might include public spaces such as coffee shops and libraries. Unfortunately, if employees use public networks in these areas, this can present security risks for potential network breaches. It’s important to establish whether their free-roaming behavior is appropriate.

Camera Hacking

Camera hacking is one of the newest threats for those who utilize video conferencing applications both on laptops and phones. As such, hackers could gain valuable data from remote employees discussing sensitive company matters. Criminals can gain access to a camera either from the user downloading a virus from a phishing email or through unsecured networks and devices. It’s important for employees to keep their antivirus up to date, maintain strong password practices, and be clear on what suspicious links look like.

Unsecured Home Wi-Fi

While the network in the office may be secured, the same isn’t always the case for home networks. Employees may not have secure password or encryption practices on their home internet connection. Indeed, they, their partner or children may have shared the family password with visitors and other parties. This could be problematic for company security and it’s important to focus on this as part of your policy.

Consider Appropriate Resources

It’s certainly understandable to focus a portion of your policy building on the behavior of your employees. However, the company’s security shouldn’t be their responsibility alone. Indeed, it’s not unusual for businesses to feel switching to remote practices is a good way to reduce overheads by passing equipment purchase and internet service costs to workers. You need to consider how this is putting your company at greater risk. You have a responsibility to all stakeholders to create a quality remote cybersecurity policy that include providing your workers with the resources they need to protect data. 

This may include issuing company laptops for business use only. You’ll also find this approach supports a more secure policy on limiting the use of personal devices at work. Indeed, it can be a good way to restrict the types of applications and files employees can download onto the work device. This also ensures your information technology department has remote access to monitor all activities of the laptop’s user and to update security patches frequently. 

Alongside equipment, it can be wise to include other provisions in your policy. If you’re happy with workers operating from public spaces, providing access to virtual private networks (VPNs) can reduce vulnerabilities. Indeed, in some instances providing a separate secure internet connection at home for each of your remote workers may be appropriate.

Adapt Training and Offboarding

Cybersecurity policies can’t just be a set of standards and rules for your employees to follow. It’s also about making sure your workforce has the knowledge to behave both to the letter and in the spirit of the protocols. The policies should empower workers to behave safely rather than simply demand they do so. As such, your approach should include providing cybersecurity training and effective offboarding. 

Educate your workers on how to independently spot and handle potential cybersecurity risks. For remote workers, a combination of e-learning modules and video lectures can be effective. Simply dictating what to do isn’t enough, though. They need to understand why their actions matter. You don’t need to go too in-depth, but give them explanations for the actions you want them to take. Your training should also be refreshed and updated every 6 months or so.

Alongside training, your remote cybersecurity policy needs to include practices for when workers are leaving the company. A consistent offboarding process helps your workers transition from your company in a smooth and secure manner. The policy here needs to include processes for reclaiming company assets, like laptops and external hard drives. This is as important for the employee as it is for the company, as good offboarding prevents potential legal issues resulting from breaches occurring when they’re no longer employed by the business. Help them to understand how to act in interim periods and collaborate on effective security procedures.

Conclusion

Remote working can be positive for both businesses and employees. However, it’s important for recruitment firms to establish practical policies that mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities as a result of staff actions. This should be guided by a good understanding of the specific risks your business faces. Incorporating protocols to provide workers with appropriate resources and solid training can also reduce the potential for breaches. No company can be 100% safe, but it’s important to take consistent steps so all stakeholders can benefit from the advantages of remote ops. 

The post How Recruitment Firms Can Establish a Remote Cybersecurity Policy appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Unfortunately, for those companies that are having a harder time, it can also make the process of finding, hiring and retaining new employees even more difficult. Well-established employees can more easily manage the bumps in the road as their company adjusts, but new employees — especially remote ones — have more challenges to face. So if the remote onboarding process is a mess, it can make a new employee’s life even more stressful, resulting in poor company culture, decreased productivity levels and lower retention rates. 

The onboarding process is already essential for any company, so if the remote onboarding process is lacking, it can spell disaster both for the new employees and existing staff, and can negatively impact a company’s overall success.

This article will discuss why the remote onboarding process is essential, common challenges new remote employees face and tips for implementing a better remote onboarding process. 

Why Onboarding is an Essential Process

Onboarding can make or break a new employee’s experience. Everything they see, hear, do, and everyone with which they interact plays a part in how the process will turn out. It is a critical moment or a series of critical moments that can decide whether the employee will stay engaged and be happy or become disengaged and eventually leave.  

The onboarding process helps new employees acclimate to their new role, to the company’s culture and philosophies and to every aspect of the company as a whole. It can help create more engaged, creative and productive workers that are committed to helping the company succeed. Just as importantly, it can make them feel like important members of the team — like they matter and are part of something that matters. 

Common Challenges New Remote Employees Face

With remote employees, the onboarding process is even more critical because remote work environments naturally create a disconnect between the employees and the company they work for. This is because they don’t as easily have that sense of community and engagement that they would otherwise get in an in-office environment. It’s also much easier to feel lost and confused when first starting as a remote employee for a new company because of communication barriers. 

Even with a decent onboarding process, remote employees are still more likely to struggle and face more challenges than they would if they worked for a company in person. Overall, remote employees have a harder time:

• • Balancing their work life and their personal life
  • Disconnecting from work at the end of the workday
  • Managing workloads 
  • Meeting deadlines
  • Dealing with feelings of isolation and loneliness
  • Feeling engaged 
  • Having a “team spirit” mentality and feeling like a part of the company culture and community

To mitigate the likelihood of these challenges for remote employees, companies must implement better remote onboarding processes for new hires. Furthermore, they must continually check in with employees even after they’ve settled in. Good, consistent communication and employee appreciation are key in remote work environments to keep employees engaged and satisfied. 

Tips and Strategies for Better Remote Onboarding 

There are numerous things a company can do to improve its remote onboarding process. The key is to keep the four C’s of onboarding in mind when developing a strategy: Compliance, Clarification, Culture and Connection. Everything you do when onboarding a new employee should fall within one of these four categories or work to improve these areas. As long as you keep this in mind, it should help you develop a successful remote onboarding process. 

Tips and strategies for better remote onboarding and helping your employees feel more welcome include:

Establish Online Access Immediately

The worst part of any onboarding process is being told everything you need to do but not being given immediate access to accomplish those tasks. This can be even more frustrating for remote employees who fully rely on digital access to get set up and settled in. So step one in your onboarding process should be to ensure your new employees have everything they need to fill out digital HR paperwork and access necessary company apps, tools, systems and their company email. 

Use Engaging Visual Learning Materials

Visual learning tools such as YouTube videos, slide-based courses and presentations and even quizzes can greatly improve the remote onboarding process by making it more clear and more engaging. Videos are especially useful with onboarding processes because they are highly informative and engaging but can also use visuals to help new remote employees feel more connected to the company.

As such, it could be helpful to make a collection of youtube videos that cover everything a new employee would need to know. They can easily access and watch them whenever they need guidance.  

Reach Out Before Their First Day and Check-in Regularly

Just because your new employee has completed all of their onboarding tasks and read or watched everything you asked them to does not mean they are settled and ready to go. So even after they’ve completed their onboarding tasks, it’s important to keep the lines of communication open.

This allows for them to ask any questions or simply chat about the company and their new role. It’s especially important to check in right before their first official day to see how they are feeling and to continue checking in even after they have started. 

Make Sure They Are Set Up for and Comfortable With Making Video Calls

In the remote work environment, video calls are necessary. This is how you and your employees will have meetings and even connect with clients, so it’s important to make sure your new employees know how to use your video conferencing software or app.

This can include helping them feel comfortable being in front of a video, tips for using the app or software, as well as how to be professional on video calls, such as by setting up virtual backgrounds if they don’t have a professional home office to work in. 

Be a Good Communicator

Poor communication or lack of communication overall is one of the biggest downfalls of the remote work environment, and bad communication during the onboarding process can be particularly detrimental. So when developing your remote onboarding process, make sure to focus on developing better communication skills.

This can include having more empathy, being better at checking in and saying hello in the mornings, consistently using messaging apps to build relationships and overall learning how to better communicate through video and messaging tools, as it can be much different than communicating in-person. 

Prep Yourself and Your Teams

One of the best ways to improve the remote onboarding process or any onboarding process is to treat bringing on someone new like a big deal. Think of it like prepping upper management and your teams for a new project.

You want everyone to be ready and fully prepared to take on this new project — the same should apply to bringing on a new employee. You should get people excited and prep them for this new person and their role and encourage everyone to welcome them, offer them guidance and help them feel at home. 

Encourage Networking

Making professional connections and networking in person is much easier than doing so as a remote worker. Additionally, networking is an important part of growing as an individual professional, but it can also help companies grow and establish partnerships with other professionals as well.

So part of the remote onboarding process should be offering guidance to your new employees on how to virtually network to help them feel connected and grow their professional community. 

Wrapping Up

Overall, the remote onboarding process should be about making your new employees feel as welcome, engaged and comfortable as possible. Keep it professional, of course, but remote onboarding often requires going that extra mile to establish good working relationships. 

The post Strategies for Overcoming Common Remote Onboarding Challenges appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

This makes it vital to showcase your company values during the recruitment process. These core principles of your business are great communicators about what is most important to your organization. Your ability to get this across in an impactful way can mean the difference between finding the right new hires and introducing the wrong people into your team.

Let’s take a look at how to share your company culture when recruiting.

Using Marketing

Recruitment marketing is among your most powerful tools to express your values. It can both draw the engagement of a wider range of candidates and represent your company’s principles. These efforts could take various forms. 

Some of these include:

Social Media Channels

Your company’s social media platforms are the top-of-funnel access points for your recruitment. As such, it’s important to make sure your channels and the brand voice being used are reflective of your unique values. Don’t just post job vacancies. Instead, start discussions on subjects representative of your core principles.

Engage with your audience on subjects that matter to you both. Having given an impression about your shared priorities, you can then link to further recruitment marketing materials. This can both act as an enticement to engage further and a demonstration your company is keen to express its values. 

Company Website

Your website is likely to be a central point of engagement during the recruitment process. It is a key source of research. You must include elements to direct visitors’ attention to content surrounding your values. 

For instance, blog posts can discuss your commitment to maintaining employee wellbeing. Highlight the mental health accommodations you implement to support workers and help them navigate their challenges. This could include divulging your approach to more flexible schedules, access to dedicated quiet spaces and your openness to emotional support animals. The key is to give a sense of how your values apply to everyday working life.

Video Content

Making recruitment marketing video content can be one of your most effective tools. It’s a way to quickly and clearly provide a virtual representation of how your values are reflected in your working environment. Perhaps most importantly, such videos can be posted to your social media, your website and linked to in your job listings.

These don’t have to be lengthy films. Gen Z candidates in particular are focusing on using Instagram and TikTok to search for jobs. As such, it can be wise to stick to short-form formats that can be consumed on social platforms. Give a behind-the-scenes glimpse into your business. Showcase some of your ongoing sustainability efforts. Help the public see your business could be something they’d want to be a part of.

At Recruitment Events

Recruitment events are great opportunities to connect with skilled candidates that are actively looking for roles. However, they can also have a reputation for being quite impersonal. They are, after all, methods designed to quickly showcase opportunities, connect with many potential candidates and attract applications. Finding opportunities to demonstrate your values during these events can make a more meaningful impression on visitors.

If the recruitment event is happening at your company premises, give visitors access to employees. These representatives of your company are the best communicators of how your values fit into both their day-to-day activities and their overall experiences. One of the ways too many businesses sabotage their recruitment events is by not utilizing their workers effectively. Interacting with a fully engaged worker is a great resource for potential candidates. 

Where the recruitment event is run by a third party, your time is often more limited. As such, it’s vital to make your values part of the initial impression. If environmental responsibility is among your priorities, sustainable branded swag can represent your organization’s commitment to protecting the planet. This could include mugs or caps made from recycled materials. Don’t forget to ensure your company leaflets are printed on renewable resources. These can be a great passive way to reinforce your principles long after candidates have left the event.

During Interviews and Onboarding

Recruitment doesn’t end with a candidate making an application. There is still ample opportunity for talented individuals to disengage with your business. As such, it’s important to extend sharing your values to both the interview process and even employee onboarding. After all, once you’ve attracted the best candidate, you still need to retain them. 

One approach is to make your interview more of a multi-faceted discussion. Make sure each interviewee feels welcomed and supported in ways reflective of your company culture. It may be wise to include not just managers during the formal interview but also employees who could be their colleagues. This not only gives candidates a chance to ask relevant questions but also shows that your business values employees’ input.

During onboarding, company culture and values should be present in all areas of the process. Human resources (HR) staff should talk through the range of benefits the company offers and how these relate to your core principles. Buddy systems with colleagues could be in place to demonstrate a commitment to ongoing support. Find opportunities to implement actions that keep reinforcing how central your ethical standards are to the business.

Conclusion

Your company culture is a key driver of your organization. It is, therefore, important to recruit candidates that are attracted and committed to these elements. Utilize your recruitment marketing to start discussions and showcase your principles. Recruitment events should show how your values apply to day-to-day operations and leave a lasting impression. When you make efforts to put your values front and center, your business, your employees and your consumers stand to benefit.

The post How to Share Your Company Culture During the Recruitment Process appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

We’re going to take a look at 4 key strategies you can use to future-proof your workforce.

Relevant Recruitment

Too often, human resources (HR) departments focus their recruitment on the immediate needs of the company. This is understandable to an extent. After all, there may be elements of unexpected turnover and HR must respond to meet specific demands. However, it’s still important to take the long-term approach in identifying candidates with future-relevant skillsets.

There is a range of skills that ensure employees can adapt to the evolving digital landscape. This includes not just basic digital literacy but also using software and hardware tools with a creative mindset. Soft skills such as emotional intelligence can also ensure employees can interact with colleagues and consumers with greater empathy. This is especially vital as workplaces become more positively progressive and inclusive.

As such, when planning a recruitment campaign, it’s important to clarify more dynamic needs. Establish the immediate requirements for the department but also what skills will be valuable in the future. Adjust searches and recruitment literature to reflect future-proof candidate personas.

This doesn’t mean your candidates must possess all these abilities now. But it’s worth identifying growth potential. During interviews and application screening, ask questions about what skills candidates are interested in developing further. This gives you insights into how your company and the candidate could evolve together.

Bolstered Culture

Your company culture is an integral part of your workers’ experience. It feeds into their satisfaction and can encourage them to be more innovative. Having a poor company culture will see your worker retention plummet. As such, making cultural changes can be instrumental in future-proofing your company by keeping your workers more meaningfully engaged.

Creating a positive work environment is essential for strong company culture. Take the time to assess how your company supports and respects your workers at all stages of their journey with you. Consider how you can make the hiring and onboarding processes smoother and clearer. Build trust among your staff by being transparent when making key business decisions. Find ways to authentically align your company values with the environmental, ethical and social concerns of the contemporary workforce.

Among the most important ways to future-proof your company culture is a commitment to diversity and inclusivity. This isn’t simply about making entry-level opportunities available to a wider range of candidates.

You need to establish ways for employees from all backgrounds to actively influence your company culture. Leadership must avoid making cultural decisions autonomously. Ensure a selection of workers from all levels of seniority can make an impact. This not only keeps your business relevant but also shows employees their views are valued and respected.

Accessible Development

There is a tendency to think that workers with consistent skills in a certain area are most valuable staying in their current positions. This neither results in worker satisfaction nor ensures the company can keep up with the changes in the business landscape.

Indeed, a recent study found that 94% of employees would work for a company longer if it invested in their learning. It is, therefore, mutually beneficial to create accessible development programs.

This should begin with creating transparent paths for progression. You can best future-proof your workforce here by designing it around oncoming needs. Focus on rising technological fields such as machine learning.

But you should also offer training in skills that empower employees to be effective no matter what department they move into. Problem-solving, conflict resolution and communication will always be valuable as workers progress through levels of seniority.

Importantly, these development programs must be designed to support all workers on their paths. Those who aren’t comfortable in traditional academic environments may need more hands-on learning.

Provide relevant mentors for employees from marginalized socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. This commitment to inclusive education makes sure you not only get the most from your workers but also makes for a stronger overall culture.

Intelligence-Led Decisions

Company leaders and HR professionals have vital expertise in maintaining a workforce. However, it’s important not to operate in an echo chamber. Regularly gaining alternative sources of intelligence can be key to better understanding changing needs. This allows you to make more informed decisions that keep your workforce future-proof.

This can include working with business intelligence and data analytics consultants. They can help you to identify the most relevant sources of information in forecasting the direction of the market and your company.

This may involve assessing the evolving demands of your core demographics so you can recruit the right staff to meet these. It could also influence where recruitment should be focused to meet your company’s scaling ambitions.

That said, it’s also important to gain intelligence from your staff. They often have more nuanced insights into how their roles and the nature of the industry are changing. Seek their input and build their suggestions into your solutions.

Gathering this data could revolve around anonymous company surveys or just positive workplace conversations between leadership and staff.

Conclusion

Future-proofing your workforce helps to make certain you can meet the changing needs of your industry and retain your valuable staff. Wherever possible, utilize a range of HR strategies that best suit how your business is evolving.

Recruit for relevant skillsets, enhance your company culture and make sure development programs are accessible. Remember to seek outside intelligence to bolster your leadership and HR expertise. Your time, energy and attention here are vital investments in ensuring the longevity of your company.

The post Four Key Strategies to Future Proof the Workforce appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Despite being counted out because of their age and expected to thrive despite the lack of specialized support, older employees are steadily increasing in the workforce. Recruiters and human resource teams play an integral role in ensuring older workers are valued, treated fairly and equipped with everything they need to thrive in their roles and well after they’ve retired.  

Learn the Needs of the Older Workforce 

Ageism isn’t talked about nearly enough in companies. This could be because company leaders honestly believe it isn’t happening in their workplaces, they can’t prove that it isn’t, or they aren’t in tune with their older workers. 

Many older individuals in the workplace are transparent about their experiences with being looked over for a role or getting demoted because of their age. Or how horrible it was working for a company that didn’t have any empathy or resources tailored to their unique needs.  

The last thing you want to do is deter older employees from your company because of an age-based bias. Instead, learn the needs of your older workforce and ensure they’re accommodated. 

For example, older-aged employees may be living with a disability like a hearing impairment. If you learn how this affects them, you can provide the equipment and assistance they need to feel good and thrive at work. 

Older employees might also prefer a hybrid work environment to be more satisfied and productive in the workforce. If you can find out about their lives, values, and needs, you can offer them a role and schedule that fit all of them.  

Take time to converse and connect with older workers so that you can understand their needs and offer what’s necessary to accommodate them. 

Provide a Comprehensive Benefits Package 

Your younger workers want excellent pay and solid benefits, and your older workers are no different. A considerable amount of older individuals aren’t ready for retirement. This can be attributed to low pay, a lack of retirement options and a hollow benefits package at the companies they work for.  

To ensure your older workers don’t have to stay in the workforce longer than they want to, pay them well. Consider their experience, work history, skillset and everything else they’ve picked up over their years of life that can add value to your company. 

Also, offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes solid retirement options and resources. 

For instance, offer health insurance options that are mindful of their age and supportive of their mental health. If you can’t provide the best health insurance plans, walk them through how to sign up for or switch to Medicare to have enough health and wellness support. 

Also, provide your older employees with excellent retirement plan options. Be sure they understand all the details about each plan and how to stay on track with their savings goals. You could even offer a phased retirement option where they can reduce their hours and workload until they transition into full retirement. 

Ultimately, your older workers will feel better about being at and producing for your company if they’re paid well and receive a fantastic benefits package. 

Ensure Your Older Workforce is Represented in Leadership 

One of the best things you can do to support older workers in your company is to hire them as leaders and leaders who understand them. Of course, there are companies with older leaders stuck in their ways, unsupportive and blind to the needs of their entire workforce. 

However, there are also older-aged employees in leadership roles who understand, empathize with and genuinely listen to those who work under them. Get these leaders into your workforce. 

Hiring the right leaders who know how to inspire, connect and get the best out of both older and younger staff members only benefits your company. They’ll be able to create those deep personal relationships with your more senior employees that are necessary to facilitate helpful solutions for them in and outside the workplace. They can also inspire younger workers into believing that they can do anything at any age, including leading workforces.

Conclusion 

HR can ensure an extensive support system at their companies for the increasing older workforce with a bit of effort, intention and willingness to learn. Start by talking with your older employees to discover their needs, paying them well and providing them with an exceptional benefits package.  

Also, be sure your older workforce is represented in various leadership roles and has an inclusive company culture to lean on to continue achieving personal and professional goals. 

The post How to Best Support Older Workers appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

It is paramount to consider the immediate and long-term value of digital HR tools. In doing so, HR managers and recruiters can identify tools that simplify talent recruitment and improve employee engagement. Plus, they can use these tools across their small business operations, without the risk of compromising any business data or systems. 

Get Started with Digital HR Tools

Before you start using digital HR tools, there are many factors to consider. These include:

1. Personal Branding

You need a personal brand that drives top candidates to roles with your company. That way, your business is well-equipped to attract quality job candidates now and in the future. 

Implement your personal brand into your hiring process. For instance, you can include details about your business’s mission, values and goals in your job descriptions. You can also capitalize on mobile recruiting. 

Examine your personal brand and keep it up to date. Perform market research to see how your brand ranks in its industry. With periodic reviews, you can find out how your brand stacks up against the competition and update it accordingly. 

2. Innovation

Look far and wide for digital HR tools you can use to drive innovation. These tools can transform your talent recruitment. They can help you bolster your hiring and onboarding processes as well. 

Consider a job candidate’s perspective as you search for innovative digital HR tools. It can be beneficial to view job candidates as consumers. For example, you can use digital HR tools to build recruiting roadmaps around job candidates. This can help you engage with candidates like never before.

Don’t forget to showcase your business innovations to job candidates, either. If your business offers innovations like career advancement programs or other unique perks to employees, you can highlight these benefits in your job postings. Additionally, you can highlight your company’s close-knit culture to candidates. These innovations put your business in a positive light. And they can help your company stand out to top candidates.  

3. Automation 

Explore digital HR tools you can use to automate your recruitment. These tools use artificial intelligence to help HR managers solve their hiring puzzle. 

You can integrate automation tools into different aspects of your recruitment. Some HR managers use these tools to promote job openings to candidates around the world. Others deploy these tools to source candidates via LinkedIn and other social networks. HR managers can even implement automation tools to quickly screen candidates. 

Evaluate a wide range of automation tools. This enables you to find an automation tool that complements your business operations. Next, you can deploy this tool across these operations. You can then manage the tool and use it to optimize your recruitment. 

4. Cybersecurity

Select digital HR tools that put security front and center. These tools ensure sensitive business information remains protected against cyberattacks. 

Use firewalls, email filters and other cybersecurity tools. Also, encrypt sensitive business data and verify company software and hardware are updated regularly. This helps limit the risk of costly and time-intensive data breaches. It helps you avoid lawsuits and other legal problems that can crop up due to data breaches, too.  

Implement a cybersecurity awareness training program. You can use this program to teach workers about cyberattacks and the dangers associated with them. The program enables workers to gain insights they can use to guard against cyberattacks and data breaches. Update the program regularly to ensure employees can use it to consistently protect your business.

5. HR Processes

Revamp your HR processes. Now represents a great time to review these processes and their respective strengths and weaknesses. Then, you can decide what processes work well and what ones don’t. You can next choose digital HR tools to eliminate or improve myriad processes. 

Every HR process should support your ability to connect with top job candidates and keep your employees happy. If a process is more trouble than it’s worth, brainstorm ways to improve it. If necessary, you can revise the process. Or, you can remove it altogether. 

Review your HR processes in conjunction with “bad recruiting” practices. Your HR processes should create opportunities for your company to engage with job candidates from any location, at any time. Conversely, if your processes cause problems, they can hamper the candidate experience. In these instances, candidates may shy away from roles at your company. Even worse, they may choose roles with your industry rivals. 

The Bottom Line 

Small businesses need help to compete with major corporations and other big brands. Fortunately, digital HR tools can level the playing field. 

Before you implement digital HR tools, consider your options closely. Seek out tools that support your small business operations and allow you to differentiate your brand from its competitors. As a result, you can find the best digital HR tools for your business. And you can get the most value out of these tools.  

The post Digital HR Tools for Small Businesses appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

It is paramount to consider the immediate and long-term value of digital HR tools. In doing so, HR managers can identify tools that simplify talent recruitment and improve employee engagement. Plus, they can use these tools across their small business operations, without the risk of compromising any business data or systems. 

Get Started with Digital HR Tools

Before you start using digital HR tools, there are many factors to consider. These include:

1. Personal Branding

You need a personal brand that drives top candidates to roles with your company. That way, your business is well-equipped to attract quality job candidates now and in the future. 

Implement your personal brand into your hiring process. For instance, you can include details about your business’s mission, values and goals in your job descriptions. You can also capitalize on mobile recruiting. 

Examine your personal brand and keep it up to date. Perform market research to see how your brand ranks in its industry. With periodic reviews, you can find out how your brand stacks up against the competition and update it accordingly. 

2. Innovation

Look far and wide for digital HR tools you can use to drive innovation. These tools can transform your talent recruitment. They can help you bolster your hiring and onboarding processes as well. 

Consider a job candidate’s perspective as you search for innovative digital HR tools. It can be beneficial to view job candidates as consumers. For example, you can use digital HR tools to build recruiting roadmaps around job candidates. This can help you engage with candidates like never before.

Don’t forget to showcase your business innovations to job candidates, either. If your business offers innovations like career advancement programs or other unique perks to employees, you can highlight these benefits in your job postings. Additionally, you can highlight your company’s close-knit culture to candidates. These innovations put your business in a positive light. And they can help your company stand out to top candidates.  

3. Automation 

Explore digital HR tools you can use to automate your recruitment. These tools use artificial intelligence to help HR managers solve their hiring puzzle. 

You can integrate automation tools into different aspects of your recruitment. Some HR managers use these tools to promote job openings to candidates around the world. Others deploy these tools to source candidates via LinkedIn and other social networks. HR managers can even implement automation tools to quickly screen candidates. 

Evaluate a wide range of automation tools. This enables you to find an automation tool that complements your business operations. Next, you can deploy this tool across these operations. You can then manage the tool and use it to optimize your recruitment. 

4. Cybersecurity

Select digital HR tools that put security front and center. These tools ensure sensitive business information remains protected against cyberattacks. 

Use firewalls, email filters and other cybersecurity tools. Also, encrypt sensitive business data and verify company software and hardware are updated regularly. This helps limit the risk of costly and time-intensive data breaches. It helps you avoid lawsuits and other legal problems that can crop up due to data breaches, too.  

Implement a cybersecurity awareness training program. You can use this program to teach workers about cyberattacks and the dangers associated with them. The program enables workers to gain insights they can use to guard against cyberattacks and data breaches. Update the program regularly to ensure employees can use it to consistently protect your business.

5. HR Processes

Revamp your HR processes. Now represents a great time to review these processes and their respective strengths and weaknesses. Then, you can decide what processes work well and what ones don’t. You can next choose digital HR tools to eliminate or improve myriad processes. 

Every HR process should support your ability to connect with top job candidates and keep your employees happy. If a process is more trouble than it’s worth, brainstorm ways to improve it. If necessary, you can revise the process. Or you can remove it altogether. 

Review your HR processes in conjunction with “bad recruiting” practices. Your HR processes should create opportunities for your company to engage with job candidates from any location, at any time. Conversely, if your processes cause problems, they can hamper the candidate experience. In these instances, candidates may shy away from roles at your company. Even worse, they may choose roles with your industry rivals. 

The Bottom Line

Small businesses need help to compete with major corporations and other big brands. Fortunately, digital HR tools can level the playing field. 

Before you implement digital HR tools, consider your options closely. Seek out tools that support your small business operations and allow you to differentiate your brand from its competitors. As a result, you can find the best digital HR tools for your business. And you can get the most value out of these tools. 

The post Digital Tools for Small Businesses appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

These results are rather shocking but echo an infamous 2004 study that found clear evidence of racism and prejudice in the hiring process. 

Nonetheless, recruiters and hiring managers have worked hard to combat bias. But what more can be done to ensure that your company isn’t affected by bias in the hiring process?

Utilize AI Technology

When you’re skimming through a vast net of applications, it can be almost impossible to give every application the attention it is due. Your assessment might even be affected by your mood or how busy you happen to be on that particular day. This makes it all but impossible to remove unconscious bias while reviewing applications and heightens the need for automation. 

AI technology can give hiring managers a head start in the review process. It can also ensure that your diversity and inclusion initiatives aren’t accidentally undermined. This is because AI programs are proven to follow ethical, objective assessments that reduce bias and ensure that all candidates are assessed on the relevancy of their materials. 

Be Intentional

Knowing that unconscious bias exists is one thing, doing something about it is entirely different. As a hiring manager, you must actively seek to combat industry biases when hiring and should intentionally translate positive intent into actions and results. 

Here are a few ways you can be intentional about addressing bias during your next hiring phase:

Set Diversity Targets

Your hiring and recruitment team must intentionally seek diverse candidates who are traditionally underrepresented in a particular role within your company. You can do this by viewing your competitor’s hiring data, to see where exactly you are lagging. 

Advertise in New Venues

Not all candidates use the same job boards. You may unwittingly be missing out on attracting diverse talent simply because they aren’t aware of your opening. To overcome this, you should research job boards that promote diversity and should consider attending new kinds of career fairs that help employers overcome bias in the hiring process.   

Educate Yourself

The standards that hiring managers held ten years ago are outdated and often harm diversity and inclusion efforts. To overcome this, you must understand that candidates are choosing to present themselves and their identity in different ways, as gender-fluid fashion is helping folks become more accepting of themselves and their identity. 

As a hiring manager, you should always strive to better yourself and your understanding of people. As such, you can dive into learning about diversity in recruitment by learning from experts and can start to read or listen to social thinkers and authors like Judith Butler, Ibram X Kendi and Robert Mcruer. 

Avoid Microaggressions

Recruiters and hiring managers often forget that DEI in the hiring process is about more than “looking good,” it also ensures you attract the best talent to your business. However, to ensure that you don’t put off the best candidates from applying to your company, you must become aware of microaggressions and how to avoid them. 

Of course, you should always respect the candidates that walk through your door. But microaggressions usually occur when you act on stereotypes that stem from unconscious beliefs about a person’s race, gender, disability or sexuality. To avoid microaggressions,  work towards a universal set of questions and should think twice before making any assumptions about an applicant’s personality or ability based on their identity. 

Take a Standardized Approach

You want to give yourself the best chance of accurately assessing candidates based on their ability rather than irrelevant areas of their identity or application materials. To do this, you should take a standardized approach to your materials and assessments. 

The easiest way to achieve this is to use a blind assessment. This means that you will remove all identifiers from a candidate’s materials and will only use a pre-formatted CV that allows you to focus on an applicant’s relevant skills and experience. 

You should also change the way you advertise for a role, as gendered or unnecessarily exclusive language will put off applicants who would otherwise do well in their role. To do this, you must review application materials and look out for unnecessary language that might seem like “fluff” or puts candidates off. 

Finally, be sure to structure and standardize your interviews long before an applicant walks through your door. This will ensure that unconscious biases won’t affect the interview and will help you intentionally direct the conversation towards the applicant’s abilities and experience, rather than their identity.

Conclusion

Reducing bias in the hiring process is all about educating yourself and making intentional efforts to combat unconscious bias. You can do this by standardizing your interview questions. Partake in diversity targets which will make it clear that your company has a clear commitment to improving diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. 

The post How to Reduce Bias in Hiring and Recruitment Processes appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

It’s no secret that the workforce is changing quickly. The traditional office space has been replaced by a mix of remote work and on-site collaboration with more companies moving towards this remote model every day. The trend isn’t just about saving money — it’s about attracting talent in an increasingly competitive global market for top performers.

To fully attract and retain talent effectively, it’s important to examine the remote workplace trends that happen today and adjust your HR team accordingly.

Remote and Hybrid Working Environments — The New Norm

All-remote and hybrid working environments are becoming the new normal for businesses. It’s no longer a question of whether you should allow your employees to work remotely, but how to implement it successfully. For organizations still adjusting to the pandemic, sustaining an all-remote workforce continues to pose challenges that can impact the structure and performance of your company.

The ultimate goal for most businesses is to enable employees to get their work done without jeopardizing the business’s success, no matter where they are or what time zone they’re in. However, several vital challenges can arise when establishing an effective remote working environment.

This includes productivity loss due to lack of communication tools, poor management, and burnout with little flexibility. For all-remote companies to survive and thrive, it takes dedicated commitment from team members across all departments.

Heavy Reliance on Video Conferencing Technology

As the popularity of remote working arrangements continues to grow, remote technology improves as a result. Most companies now rely heavily on video conferencing technology, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

Video conferencing allows employees to communicate in a more personal and productive way. It also allows companies to connect with talent across the country, or to potential employees who may otherwise be unavailable due to their geographic location. As part of the remote work package, companies are increasingly offering video conferencing equipment and software licenses so that workers can stay connected from wherever they choose to work.

From now on, video conferencing technology will continue to play a significant role in enabling companies and workers alike.

New Initiatives to Drive Employee Engagement and Retention

As modern workplaces adapt their strategies to building better-performing teams while reducing turnover, new initiatives are being implemented to keep remote workers engaged and happy. Below we’ll address a few of these initiatives:

Offering company-wide support for wellness programs and services

Offering a company-wide support program can be a way to show employees that you care about their wellbeing. By providing both physical and mental support, companies create an environment where remote workers feel supported in all areas of life. Another way to support wellness is offering gym memberships, fitness classes, or catering healthy food delivery options.

Offering incentives for employees who want more flexible hours

Remote working arrangements give organizations the ability to offer additional flexibility to their employees. One way to take advantage of this flexibility is by providing incentives. This could be in the form of more vacation time, a flexible office location, or a cash bonus for working from home and managing employee work expenses.

Encouraging remote workers to attend company events and meet-ups

Even if your employees work remotely, it can be beneficial to join in on company meetings or conferences. These virtual opportunities allow employees the chance to connect with their colleagues on a deeper level. To facilitate these connections, companies are now offering programs to cover travel costs so that all employees have an equal opportunity to participate in group activities together.

Offering training and professional development opportunities

Remote work makes it easier to hire people with niche skillsets who may not have been available locally. This allows companies to cultivate these unique skills further by offering additional learning resources such as online courses, seminars, tutorials, etc.

These initiatives can help employees feel like their organization cares enough to assist in their growth while also adding value to the business. When employees are supported emotionally and professionally, they tend to stay much longer because they care deeply about being part of your team’s success.

In Summary

The future of work will likely be increasingly remote. To prepare for this, companies need to invest in digital tools and technology to have a flexible workforce. They also should look for opportunities to provide professional and mental health support to all employees as they can continue to work in isolated settings. By doing this, companies can retain their talent while also positioning their company for scale.

The post A Comprehensive Rundown of the Remote Future of Work & Retention appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Though this began as a temporary solution, many businesses have found that remote work is a sustainable idea, and a good number of businesses are choosing to stick with the remote model for the foreseeable future.

Transitioning to a remote workforce is ultimately up to you, but before you decide to start recruiting remote workers, you need to consider the pros and cons of this dynamic.

Converting Your Business To Remote

One of the reasons why companies were so hesitant to transition to a remote workforce is because of productivity concerns. Managers worried that employees would not be as productive if they worked on their own in an unsupervised area. While this is typically not true, it is still a possibility. Your company will need to lay down ground rules and the right processes so you know what to expect before recruiting for your first remote position.

To start, you will need to consider how managers will communicate with remote workers. Will daily check-ins be necessary? If so, will that be via call, email or instant message? Also, at what times should these check-ins occur?

You’ll also need to set guidelines about what is allowed and not allowed, even in a remote workspace. The rules should be the same or close to what you have in the office, so if office workers have a set lunch period, it should be the same at home. If it is an expectation that in-office employees are to be cordial to clients, then remote employees should be expected to maintain absolute professionalism during calls and video chats from home as well.

You’ll also need to consider how new remote employees will be trained when they can’t see their managers face to face. A smart idea is to go with a screen-sharing utility that will allow management to follow along with the employee as they train. This same technology is useful for supervisors who need to check in on agents to ensure that they are keeping busy and completing their work properly.

Costs

There are many pros and cons as far as costs are concerned for remote employees. On the plus side, the more employees you have working from home, the greater price reduction you will see at the office concerning your utility bills and lease agreement. However, on the other side of the coin, if employees are not careful with internet usage at home, they could create a larger bill that could negate everything you saved. Set ground rules for internet usage to avoid an issue.

A great perk that your company could show within its promotional materials is how your transition to remote work is helping the environment. Just the fact that employees do not have to drive to and from work greatly reduces the number of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.

In addition, remote arrangements can also be more sustainable by conserving energy and refraining from lighting an entire office since employees work at home. With that said, employees can still waste electricity at home, so HR should send out an email about being environmentally conscious at their residences as well.

From a recruiting standpoint, the ability to hire remote employees can be a godsend as you can bring on employees from anywhere in the country. For companies that have exhausted the local talent pool, that could open a whole new world.

However, if you do hire employees from other states, you will have to consider potential costs in that regard as well. Different states have unique health insurance guidelines, tax rules and laws, so if following these requirements will impact your bottom line, then you’ll have some decisions to make.

Employee Wellbeing

The main benefit of having everyone working in one office is that it is easier to observe your staff and ensure that they are healthy and safe in all possible regards. When everyone is remote, however, that can be a bit more difficult, so you will need to know how your company will handle specific scenarios.

For instance, many working parents will need to care for their kids before they go to school in the morning. If they have an early work schedule, the task of trying to juggle work and family can sometimes take a toll and mental exhaustion can be the result. In those cases, your company could always offer flexible schedules where employees can start later or leave earlier as long as they complete their work.

On that note, even if your organization allows flexible schedules, there should still be expectations and protections set forth for when employees should be at their desks.

One of the biggest protections you should create from the beginning of a remote arrangement is protecting against cybercrime. We rarely think about the potential of a cyber-attack in the office because, in the back of our minds, we know that the IT team has the situation under control.

However, when employees are working from home, a lack of antivirus software and proper protection can allow any number of cyber-attacks, from phishing scams to viruses, to infiltrate the business network. Before your company recruits remote workers, your tech team will need to look at how to keep everyone in the organization safe and secure.

In the end, remote work is a great option that can allow companies to save money, help the environment, and hire from anywhere, but it is not a decision to take lightly. Consider the pros and cons listed here and make the best decision for your business.

The post Recruiting Remote Workers? Consider This. appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

When you work in human resources (HR), you wear a lot of hats. You’re both entrepreneur and coach, teacher and cheerleader, psychologist and fortune-teller. You have to select the right employees, and you have to formulate strategies that will promote not only their success but the success of the organization as a whole. 

Now, more than ever, that includes cultivating a workplace environment that prioritizes employees’ mental health. However, that’s not always an easy proposition, especially if company leaders don’t necessarily recognize the link between workers’ mental wellbeing and the business’s bottom line. 

But the fact remains that supporting employees’ mental health makes good business sense because when employees are happier and healthier, they’re also more motivated, more productive and more engaged.

Why Engagement Matters

If you’re running a business or leading a team, you might not be too concerned about the issue of employee engagement, as long as the team or the company is meeting its metrics. Unfortunately, that’s a thought trap that’s easy to fall into, especially for senior leadership, who may spend most of their workday pouring over financial data instead of interacting with junior staff “on the ground.” 

But HR pros know that engagement is far more than a “fluff” issue, a tertiary concern compared with the real meat of keeping a business afloat and thriving. 

The reality, though, is that engagement impacts almost every aspect of organizational performance, from increasing profitability to reducing turnover. More engaged employees are not only more motivated and higher performing, but they also have been shown to boost the motivation, loyalty, and performance of those around them.

Employee Engagement and Wellness

Given the traits of the highly engaged employee that we’ve already identified above, it’s perhaps not surprising to note that engagement and employee wellness are strongly linked. This is particularly true when it comes to employees’ mental health. 

And yet, studies show that mental health issues are one of the most significant challenges businesses face today. In fact, according to a recent McKinsey study, 96 percent of companies reported that they had begun to offer additional mental health resources in the wake of the turmoil engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these efforts, though, only one in six employees stated that they felt benefitted by those initiatives.

Making It Work

Even if studies such as that by McKinsey paint a somewhat bleak picture of the state of employee engagement and mental wellbeing today, there is hope. It begins with understanding employees’ needs today and meeting them where they are now.

For many employees, this means full- or part-time remote work. And while the virtual workplace may be a necessity for large segments of the workforce today, that does not mean that it’s always easy. In fact, remote work can take a significant toll on employees’ mental health and that, in turn, can have a highly detrimental impact on engagement as well. 

Remote work, by its very nature, can be severely isolating, which can instigate or exacerbate employees’ sense of loneliness, depression and anxiety. 

That’s why nurturing employees’ mental health means taking special care of your company’s remote workers. Just because your team may be working remotely some or all of the time, for instance, doesn’t mean you have to give up the social aspects of the workplace. It’s imperative, for instance, to build in routine one-on-one interactions into the remote workday, as well as regular team meetings through video conference. 

Stay Connected

Similarly, a great instant messaging tool that includes forums not just for work-related conversation but also for private and team chats can help your employees feel less disconnected and far more supported. 

Better still, your virtual workplace can be an incredible platform for celebrating holidays, rewarding employee performance, and in general fostering that sense of belonging that remote workers need. In an environment in which loneliness, depression, isolation and anxiety are a significant risk, cultivating such continuous connection with and among your team members can be the protective firewall your employees need. 

You can support your employees’ mental wellbeing and engagement by seizing every opportunity to allow your team to celebrate special occasions “together,” from virtual holiday parties to online company game nights, to monthly employee appreciation events, complete with awards, both large and small.

Recruiting for Wellness

Supporting employee wellbeing and driving engagement isn’t just about managing established employees effectively, it’s also about building wellness into your recruiting practices. For example, you can harness the power of social media to begin cultivating harmonious and healthful relationships with promising candidates and new hires alike. In the process, you can both promote your company’s wellness benefits, from discounted gym memberships to access to mental health services.

And the more you build employee quality of life and well-being into your company brand, the more likely you are to attract premium candidates. After all, talent will go where they feel most cared for, not simply as a productive employee, but as a valued and valuable human being. 

The Takeaway

Nurturing your employees’ mental health isn’t just the compassionate thing to do, it’s also the smart thing to do. Employees who are healthy and happy in both mind and body are also more engaged, resulting in greater productivity, higher performance and less turnover.

Supporting your employees’ mental health isn’t a one-and-done process, however. It begins at the recruiting phase and continues through the employee’s entire tenure, extending into the physical and virtual office space alike.

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