There’s no denying that connection is a fundamental human need – one that doesn’t just go away when we’re working. And while distributed work provides benefits when it comes to well-being and flexibility, it can leave many of your employees feeling isolated and out of the loop. When you lack those meaningful moments of connection, productivity and engagement suffer.

The good news is there are simple, budget-friendly steps HR and business leaders can take to combat the belonging crisis.

In this on-demand webinar, Andrea Dumont, CMO at Enboarder, and William Tincup, president at RecruitingDaily.com, give an insightful discussion about the role workplace relationships play in creating meaningful moments across the entire employee journey.

In this webinar you will learn about:

• New research on the state of connection, trust, and belonging at work
• The risk of letting critical employee connections dissipate
• Nine tips for creating meaningful moments no matter where employees sit

This Program has been approved for 1.00 Webinar/Webcast/Podcast recertification credit hours toward aPHR, aPHRi, PHR®, PHRca®, SPHR®, GPHR®, PHRi and SPHRi recertification through HR Certification Institute® (HRCI®).

The post How to Design Meaningful Moments at Work appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Despite the headlines about tech layoffs, the war for top talent is more competitive than we’ve experienced in decades. Job seekers have more power over when, where and how they work – including how they engage with prospective employers during the recruitment and hiring process. 

Companies are competing furiously for talent, and while some companies have adapted to this highly competitive landscape, others are falling behind in terms of competitive offerings and a new level of authenticity needed to attract the best talent. But, one thing remains blatantly clear: a strong employer brand is a deciding factor for prospective employees.

Now more than ever, companies need a well-defined employee value proposition (EVP) to showcase they’re a values-driven organization focused on more than just profits. Coupled with a strong engagement strategy to target this message to prospective employees and a commitment to a positive and smooth candidate experience, EVPs will be a key ingredient to winning the ongoing talent wars.

What is an EVP and Why is it Important?

Defining and building an employer brand is not a task that should be taken lightly – it’s a meaningful way to showcase what your brand stands for, and can impact many facets of the business. While it’s often mistaken for sentiment about company culture and employee engagement, it is far more about what the employer offers to its employees; much like a product value proposition is to the consumers who purchase said products.  

The EVP is how businesses market their value to new talent and retain current employees. It’s the benefit employers offer to employees about why they should come work for their company. Think about the standard interview question “Why should we hire you?” and turn it around: “Why should you choose us as your employer?”

Your EVP sends a consistent message to customers, partners, the community, etc., about who you are as a company and what you represent. Strong employer branding exercises will consider a combination of company identity, mission, values and workplace culture. However, a succinct, impactful EVP will be the differentiating factor to elevate the brand above countless other companies vying for the candidate’s attention. 

If you don’t have an explicit and authentic EVP you’re communicating strategically to prospective employees, you could be missing out on the right talent to drive your business. Surprisingly, even though most people recognize EVPs as critical to a healthy talent acquisition strategy, 41.4% of companies still don’t have one established. So, the problem is not necessarily that companies don’t realize the importance of EVPs. The disparity lies between knowing it’s important and actually investing in creating one, which leads us to believe establishing and implementing an EVP is the main barrier. For the organizations that may have an EVP, they are often slung together in a few slides and don’t have the foundational research needed to be in tune with reality.  

How to Create an EVP

First, an EVP is part of a much larger discussion around employer branding. It’s not just what you can offer to employees, it’s what your company stands for. Here are just a few steps you can take to establish and implement your own EVP: 

Introspection:

Ask yourself what your company has to offer an employee. Why would they want to work for you versus another company with similar pay and benefits? What can you do for them in the long run? If this proves to be challenging to answer, consider asking existing employees via surveys, focus groups and interviews what they find most valuable and rewarding about working for the company. This is also a great time to reflect on areas of company culture that can be improved upon to attract more talent in the future, while creating a better overall experience for existing employees in the process.

Boil it Down:

Boil the answers down into a few simple sentences or a short paragraph, explaining what you offer employees. It’s easy to just mention good company culture and competitive pay, but it’s more constructive to make it unique to your specific company. Does your company offer flexible work hours (appealing to parents) or unlimited PTO (appealing to millennials)? Is the company involved in any community or charitable organizations? How can you demonstrate the company is a people-first organization with a focus on employee well-being and development?

Establish and Market:

Once the EVP is finalized, establish it within your company first, leading by example and ensuring it’s aligned with current organizational goals and culture. Next, develop assets to market it externally as a part of your employer branding and awareness efforts, careful to strategically target key types of job seekers who can become the future employees you want. It is important to target candidates both on and off the job boards so you are not only targeting active job seekers but also trying to reach them during their daily lives. To stand out, it is important to be proactive about bringing your message to them versus completely relying on the job boards to deliver the best hires. Evaluate the results regularly and tweak as necessary to make sure it’s authentic and resonating with internal audiences and external candidates. To answer ‘why should someone want to work here,’ an EVP is not something that should remain static. Just as the dynamics of the job market continuously change, companies should be aware of the evolving work environment, their employee sentiment, and tweaks to their values as time progresses and cultures and priorities evolve. 

When you break it down, EVPs aren’t as daunting of a task as they might seem, and can make all the difference in your hiring practices. 

The job seekers of today have different priorities and it is still critical to understand this is an employee-dominated market.  It’s not enough to just skate by, you need to stand out. Today, millennials have changed the workplace and Gen Z candidates are rapidly entering the workforce  looking for more than just a paycheck and simple benefits. They want to work for a company that has a mission and purpose, but also puts them first. Strong, authentic EVPs build trust, transparency and excitement about an employer brand – and in the end, will encourage the strongest candidates to apply regardless of the type of workers you need to power your business.

The post Without a Strong Employee Value Proposition, You Can Kiss Top Talent Goodbye appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

There’s no denying that connection is a fundamental human need – one that doesn’t just go away when we’re working. And while distributed work provides benefits when it comes to well-being and flexibility, it can leave many of your employees feeling isolated and out of the loop. When you lack those meaningful moments of connection, productivity and engagement suffer.

The good news is there are simple, budget-friendly steps HR and business leaders can take to combat the belonging crisis.

Join Andrea Dumont, CMO at Enboarder, William Tincup, president at RecruitingDaily.com, for an insightful discussion about the role workplace relationships play in creating meaningful moments across the entire employee journey.

In this webinar you will learn about:

• New research on the state of connection, trust, and belonging at work
• The risk of letting critical employee connections dissipate
• Nine tips for creating meaningful moments no matter where employees sit

If you can’t make the live session, please register to get on the list for a copy of the recording!

*UPDATE: Please note the date for this session has changed to March 9, 2023 at 5 pm ET

This Program has been approved for 1.00 Webinar/Webcast/Podcast recertification credit hours toward aPHR, aPHRi, PHR®, PHRca®, SPHR®, GPHR®, PHRi and SPHRi recertification through HR Certification Institute® (HRCI®).

The post How to Design Meaningful Moments at Work appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Not Valuing Soft Skills in Employees

Not recognizing the value of soft skills is one mistake to avoid when conducting employee skills assessments. Soft skills — such as communication, problem-solving and collaboration — are critical for workplace success and should be measured alongside hard skills required for job roles.

This can be avoided by encouraging employees to speak up during their assessments and posing questions that focus on their ability to perform less skills-based tasks within their role. An uncommon approach could include assigning a project or task in advance of the assessment, giving candidates an opportunity to demonstrate both technical and interpersonal skill-sets in a more natural setting than a traditional interview or assessment.

Michael Alexis
CEO, swag.org

Confusing Skills With Other Characteristics

You may be measuring skills in the hiring process and using this information to match candidates to jobs. Keep in mind, many skills can be trained. Other aspects of fit can be predictive of job success and long-term retention and can be very fair to diverse candidates.

Hiring teams have access to science-based candidate insights to help identify and hire the right talent. Virtual assessments with job simulations, like Modern Hire’s Virtual Job Tryouts, provide a realistic preview of a typical day on the job while measuring a host of job-related characteristics that are critical for success.

VJTs can even predict the success of a candidate in the open position and recommend them for the job; they can also predict the likelihood of the candidate not working out. By embracing science-based assessments, HR leaders can focus on hiring qualified candidates that are likely to have a positive impact on the organization, while increasing retention and reducing turnover in the new year ahead.

Eric Sydell
EVP of Innovation, Modern Hire

Basing the Assessments Solely on Job Performance 

While job performance is an important aspect of an employee’s skills and abilities, it is not the only one. Other factors, such as communication skills, problem-solving abilities and teamwork, can also be important indicators of an employee’s skills and potential.

To avoid this mistake, it’s important to use a variety of assessment methods, such as interviews, observation, and testing, to gain a comprehensive understanding of an employee’s skills and abilities.

Additionally, it’s important to ensure that the assessment is job-related and measures the skills and abilities that are necessary for successful job performance. Involving multiple people in the assessment process, such as managers, supervisors and peers can help with this problem. This will provide a more well-rounded view of an employee’s skills and help to mitigate any bias that may be present.

Paw Vej
Chief Operating Officer, Financer.com

Not Sticking With an 80/20 Formula

An over-reliance on skills assessments can lead to concerns when you hire new employees. A skills assessment doesn’t take into account work ethic, workplace experience or other pertinent information that hiring managers must take into account before hiring someone.

If someone scores well on the skills assessment, that should be part of the calculus of whether that candidate is worthy of being selected, but it should only be a small part of it. I think 20% is acceptable. Some might think 25% or 30% is more appropriate, but ultimately a candidate should be hired based on their performance at previous employment stops. Aptitude matters, but it isn’t the only thing that matters.

Brittany Dolin
Co-Founder, Pocketbook Agency

Turning It into an Employer Skills Assessment

Questions matter. Skill assessments have their obvious origins in employee and/or candidate evaluation. When labor markets are tight, as they have been for some time, prospective and current employees scrutinize the employer as much or more than they are being scrutinized at every turn in the candidate/employee lifecycle.

Skill assessments can reflect positively on a company, have a negligible impact or make a company look really bad. While I’m sure other responders will dive into the specific reasons this can happen (gender bias, lack of accessibility, etc.), my overall point is to remove any possibility that the tables can be turned on the employer.

Jeremy Ames
Senior Manager, Accenture

Basing Solely on Job Title or Tenure

Avoid basing the assessment solely on an individual’s job title or tenure. This can lead to inaccurate or incomplete assessments, as an employee’s job title or tenure does not necessarily reflect their current level of skill or proficiency.

It’s important to use a variety of assessment methods that provide a comprehensive view of an employee’s skills. These methods might include:

• Job performance evaluations
• Skill-specific tests or assessments
• Self-assessments
• Peer evaluations
• 360-degree evaluations
• On-the-job assessments
• Training and development opportunities

It’s also important to provide employees with clear criteria and performance standards, so they know what they need to do to demonstrate their skills and abilities. And be sure to communicate with the employee in advance on the areas and skills that will be focused on in the assessment. This will enable them to prepare adequately and be ready to demonstrate their skills.

Johannes Larsson
Founder & CEO, JohannesLarsson.com

Not Involving Employees in the Process

One mistake to avoid when conducting employee skills assessments is to assess employees on items outside of their job descriptions. We can avoid this by ensuring that the skills assessments are specific to the tasks and responsibilities associated with our employees’ jobs.

It is important to provide the team with clear instructions and guidelines on how they should complete the assessment, so they have a better understanding of what is expected of them. Involve your employees in the assessment process and ensure that their feedback is taken into account.

Christa Reed
Head of Job Market Research, JobSearcher

Not Giving Employees the Chance to Upset Your Biases

Let’s face it. We are humans, and every human is fundamentally a box of biases. These biases are not all inherently evil, as they are generalized predictions from the repetitiveness of previous experiences.

When you have two or three employees with a significantly shared trait repeat the same outcome, a manager would be naturally prone to associating such outcome (or skill or deficiency) with that trait and expecting another entirely different employee with that trait to repeat the same outcome. This is a bias.

But when conducting employee skills evaluations, strive to give employees an even playing field to upset these biases. Don’t be too quick to tap into the predictions of your existing biases. “Oh, he has X trait, he should automatically excel (or struggle) at Y skill”..don’t be too quick to assume. Strive to treat each employee as a new entity and give them a blank slate to prove their capacity and surprise you.

Lotus Felix
CEO, Lotus Brains Studio

The post 8 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Conducting Skills Assessments appeared first on RecruitingDaily.