10 trends that will shape HR in 2019
HR professionals across many industries have common challenges to face this year. Some of the biggest headlines of 2018 involved HR-related topics such as discrimination, harassment, diversity and workplace culture. Read this blog post from HR Dive to learn more.
As HR executives turn the page on a new year some will pause to reflect on just how much — and how little — has changed in the span of 12 months.
Increased attention on topics traditionally considered the realm of HR — discrimination, harassment, diversity, workplace culture — made workplaces the convergence point for some of the biggest storylines in 2018. Calls for equal pay, worker protections and better solutions for harassment and discrimination swirled through the boardrooms and shop floors of Google, Tesla, Amazon and CBS, among others.
In the U.S., political figures debated the historic number of people finding work and the policies driving that trend. Experts warned about the opportunities and consequences of artificial intelligence, robotics and other technologies. HR wasn't just an observer in all these developments — it had a lead role, both when things went wrong and when experts searched for success stories.
And through all that turbulence, some elements of the industry remain unchanged. "We're still the stewards of information and our people," Jewell Parkinson, senior vice president and head of human resources at SAP, told HR Dive in an interview. "That is going to be our role."
HR executives and teams across many industries have common challenges to face in 2019. Below, we've recapped what real HR practitioners and industry observers seeing on the horizon.
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The talent acquisition panic
For Ceridian's Chief People and Culture Officer Lisa Sterling, this year's challenging recruiting scene will haunt her into the new year. "The thing … that literally keeps me up at night continues to be the focus on attracting world-class talent to our organization," she told HR Dive in an interview. Sterling isn't the only one vexed by the talent acquisition panic.
"I've been in the industry 22 years, and I've had the most interesting year in 2018," said Scott Waletzke, head of enterprise recruitment strategy at Adecco Staffing, USA. "The utilization of technology is going to make it that much better."
Applications and resumes flooded recruiters' inboxes at alarming rates last year and technology has emerged as a much-needed solution to the deluge. "Tech is allowing our recruiters to have more valuable conversations with those candidates," Waletzke said. With these tools, hiring managers can place candidates in the positions where they are the best fit, according to Waletzke.
Of course, with hordes of candidates and low unemployment comes heavy turnover. And, as Sterling said, organizations need to find and lock down not just any workers, but the best talent for their business. This means companies need to provide a top-notch employee experience, starting with the application process.
"People are sharing on social media what those experiences are like, and in a tight labor market, retention is top of mind," said Jodi Chavez, group president, Randstad Professionals, Randstad Life Sciences, Tatum. Organizations can improve retention rates by amping up company cultures, offering training and creating a robust HR department to manage such initiatives, Chavez said.
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AI as a partner, not a threat
As Waletzke monitored conversations about tech throughout the last two years, he observed a radical shift. "The overall temperature of conversations completely changed. 2017 was robots are going to steal our jobs … now there is starting to be this embrace of technology," he said.
For HR, technology has transformed recruitment, in particular. "We're really looking at ways we can use AI or machine learning to automate the talent acquisition experience so we can dive deeply into the one-on-one relationships," Sterling said. Job search platform CareerBuilder has used machine learning to add a touch of personalization, CEO Irina Novoselsky said in an interview. Those searching on CareerBuilder for jobs at Disney might see the word "client" replaced with the term "guest," a standard swap of lingo for the entertainment company.
"It really is early in that curve of HR users having to become technologists," Novoselsky said. "That really shifts the conversation they're having and what they're looking for."
While these developments may speed up what can be slow, painstaking work, Triplebyte Co-founder and CEO Harj Taggar pointed out that the tech may make the process more efficient, but it does not address everything. "It doesn't help with bias — and in fact, it exacerbates [it]," he told HR Dive in an interview.
That's perhaps why some practitioners endorse a more steady, careful approach to new technologies. "It takes time to figure it out, so I think as recruiters and HR professionals we have to really embrace this change, go with it, try things, fail at times, figure it out, but be comfortable with it," Larry Nash, director of recruiting at EY, told HR Dive.
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Data insights continue to evolve
HR is by now familiar with the calls for data-driven insights — but those insights have to keep people at their core and can't just focus on financial or other success measures.
"It's not good enough to just reduce cost anymore," Art Mazor, human capital practice digital leader and the global leader for HR strategy and employee experience at Deloitte, told HR Dive in an interview. "That's old-school thinking."
Employers have learned the hard way that while working toward a metric may feel modern and effective, the results can be anything but if the focus is solely on improving the number and not on making real, substantive improvements or addressing the underlying issues.
More employers have opted to use data in an effort to better track their workforces, Sam Stern, principal at Forrester, told HR Dive in an interview. "But the problem is, usually the shortest path to success on that metric is to game the system. And to me, to be surprised by that is to be delusional. That's human nature."
Data has its limits, too. An employer can only slice and dice the numbers so many ways, and insights alone don't lead to a lot of change, Jim Barnett, CEO at Glint, told HR Dive in an interview. It's about what HR leaders do with those insights; change happens at the manager and individual team levels. For example, employers can monitor the employee lifecycle from onboarding to exit to get a clear view of why people leave — but without a deeper understanding of who is leaving and why, HR could miss key insights.
"Fundamentally, it comes back to understanding how your team is doing," Barnett said. "These fundamental things haven't changed over the decades."
The pendulum will likely swing back toward qualitative analysis partly to avoid the "paralysis by analysis" that some companies are experiencing, Chavez said.
"You could have all the data in the world and still have high turnover," she added. "There's still a human element. Do exit interviews. You won't see that on a data point."
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More pressure to become 'agile'
Organizations are increasingly being asked to shape internal operations in a way that mirrors external business trends. To that end, executives have taken to terms like "agile," with more than 80% of C-level executives in one survey calling agility the most important characteristic of a successful organization. But what exactly does that mean?
The term can lend itself to many definitions, but Cecile Alper-Leroux, vice president of HCM innovation for HR technology company Ultimate Software, said in an interview with HR Dive that in an HR context it's closely related to another idea that became popular in the HR world last year: flexibility. Agile organizations embrace contingent work forms, like contracting, to cover particular gaps that employee models may not be able to address. Ultimate Software has experimented with "flex teams," for example, that address business problems as they come up rather than focusing on one specific task.
There's an element of the gig economy in these arrangements; "People want to control their own destiny," Alper-Leroux said, explaining that an agile organization allows workers to do that to some extent, which means it also points to a new way to measure worker satisfaction. "We have to embrace a new set of metrics other than traditional results."
But teams don't always form organically. "There's a push to ensure the work can get done with the fewest barriers and how best to onboard people alongside their new counterparts in the workplace," Mazor said. Those "counterparts" won't always be people, either. "What can we do to influence positively that drive to productivity of the enterprise?"
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The role of culture in employer brand
Consumers are value-driven — meaning employees are now, too, Stern said. Employees and applicants are aware not only of an employer's advertising campaigns and brand communications, but the charitable giving an employer does, the messages it sends and the way it treats its partners and contractors. That info is simply more available now, Stern added, and people want to align with companies that share their values.
Societal shifts have partly enabled the rise of the employer as an "institution of trust," as well, Stern said. Some institutions have betrayed that trust in high-profile incidents, meaning employees are looking to companies to be less passive and to "show up" to certain moral events.
"The contract used to be an employer gives a job for life and a pension, so employees give their heart and soul and expect nothing else. And employers broke that contract," he said. "And employees have wised up. 'I need you to support my lifestyle because who knows how long we will have this relationship.'"
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A new focus on where the work is being done
As employers turn their focus to employee experience, more are considering exactly how and where employees do the work that needs doing, Mazor said. Do workers gather on a campus or at multiple, scattered locations? Do people use virtual tools, like video, to connect and collaborate? HR pros must keep these questions in mind as they design culture.
"It's no longer about redesigning process. It's really around reimagining the work," Mazor said. "How do we blend this mix of workers from so many different sources and blend those with the varieties of tech that are available to us in the HR space and more broadly?"
But that means HR may be held accountable for more aspects of the employee experience than it may have been in the past, including a functional tech experience — something more traditionally the purview of IT.
"Is it needed for the day to day and is it current? Is it glitchy? Does it shut down every three days?" Chavez said of employee tech. "Those are things people are leaving their organizations for." In other words, HR would be remiss to overlook the day-to-day tasks of the frontline employee.
And more employers are keeping an eye on the challenges facing their frontliners, from the work environment, to the tools used and beyond. HR managers will put themselves in workers' shoes in 2019 to ensure no part of the experience is overlooked. Because for all the fancy tech a company can employ — "if it doesn't work right, it won't matter," Chavez said.
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Potential for wage growth, but recession fears loom
The wage conversation will continue into 2019, Waletzke said. While employers may remain conservative concerning wage increases, some industries may “flex their wages up” because they are heavily competing for talent; either way it will be a topic of discussion in 2019.
"I think ultimately the focus then will shift to creating potentially other ways to attract talent, be it through different benefit packages or vacation time — alternative benefits to help attract people to the workforce," Waletzke added.
But as more outlets begin to speculate about a potential coming recession, that instinct to keep wages steady in the face of upheaval may feel justified, especially as automation and tech adoption enable some industries to phase out certain jobs entirely. Recession remains speculation, especially for 2019. The real question for employers is how they will approach the talent market in a potential economic downturn.
Some organizations will double-down on ensuring their employees will be more resilient and productive, Stern said, but "I think that will be a minority." A large cohort may instead go after automation and incorporate AI to streamline the work — and reduce the need to hire at all.
"It's less about people losing their jobs to robots and more people never getting jobs because robots already have them," he said.
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Leveling the playing field for women and minorities
Certainly, the push for gender equality was a dominating theme within the overall employment conversation of 2018. As that dialogue continues in 2019, that theme will likely extend, but may take on different forms. "I think you're going to see more on that," Sterling said. "Not so much on the #MeToo piece, but in neutralizing, leveling the playing field."
With this may come the continued examination of the C-suite. In 2018, the number of female Fortune 500 CEOs plummeted by 25%, according to Fortune. Addressing this disparity may cue the change Sterling predicted. Many experts have recommended that organizations with systemic gender bias or ongoing incidences of sexual harassment trigger a cultural revamp starting at the top. The theory goes like this: If the board of a company features a diverse set of executives who are compensated fairly, teams are more likely to imitate the example.
Even as the #MeToo movement fades, the impetus it gave to issues surrounding sexual harassment and gender parity will likely continue to spark discussions and change. One report found that closing the worldwide gender gap will take 108 years, but initiatives like equal pay laws, better parental leave policies and stricter sexual harassment laws may zip up that gap more speedily.
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Empowering managers to help employees
In 2019, HR execs can't afford to overlook one of their biggest tools in building an engaging culture: front-line managers. Employers will be looking for ways to put insights in managers' hands so they can lead to their teams to greatness. This shift in perspective is one reason why performance reviews have moved away from annual affairs and toward consistent, forward-looking talks, Barnett said.
"Now companies have really realized, it isn't about surveys or getting the number up. What this is really about is empowering managers to have thoughtful conversations with their teams," he added.
To ensure success, managers must be trained to have the right conversations. It's easy to tell employees they are doing well; it's considerably harder to get a problematic employee to change their ways, Barnett said. HR has an opportunity to educate and create real transformation in an organization through management personnel.
In turn, businesses are "really shifting [their] approach to workforce experience and how HR runs to drive those business outcomes. Not to support. To drive."
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Development and training to fill important gaps
Skills gaps have spurred employers, non-profits, universities and even local governments to enter the business of upskilling talent. Such efforts are essential to keeping demand in check and may even involve bringing those who once left certain areas of the job market back into the fold.
"What we are also seeing, too, is this idea of what we would call 'encore careers' — people who exited and want back in," Waletzke said, "those individuals will also need to be reskilled, and I think that is a huge topic that we need to stay at the forefront of. Those jobs can't be left vacant."
The focus on employee development has also changed the way managers talk to workers, Taggar said. Those in charge are pressured to provide increasingly continuous and structured feedback. "I think in general everyone wants that, but people aren't happy getting a standard review anymore. People want access to coaching… and all these things to develop their skills more than ever."
But skills deficits also mean recruiters can't rely on the same criteria to fill out their payrolls in 2019. That's a lesson Nash believes has been crucial to staying competitive."In addition to having some of these hard, technical backgrounds, it's really important [candidates] have certain mindsets that will enable to them to grow and change," Nash said. "Just having a growth mindset that things aren't static — they constantly change, and you have to embrace that change."
SOURCE: Moody, K. Golden, R. Clarey, K. (27 August 2019) "10 trends that will shape HR in 2019" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/10-trends-that-will-shape-hr-in-2019/545343/
4 Tips for Managing Organizational Change
Only 26 percent of transformation initiatives succeed, according to a McKinsey study. One thing most successful transformation efforts have in common is that change is driven through empowerment, not mandated from the top. Continue reading this blog post from Harvard Business Review for four tips on managing organizational change.
Launching major transformation efforts is a common way that business leaders try to get a leg up on the competition, or just keep their heads above water. But too many of these efforts fail. Change is difficult, and many people not only resist it but seek to undermine it. Unsurprisingly, then, a McKinsey study found that merely 26% of transformation initiatives succeed. Most successful transformations have one thing in common: Change is driven through empowerment, not mandated from the top.
In my research of transformative political revolutions, social movements, and organizational change, successful efforts not only identify resistance from the start but also make plans to overcome those who oppose the transformation. And it’s done not with bribes, coercion, shaming, or cajoling, but by enabling others within their organizations to drive change themselves. Here’s how they do it.
Start with a small group. Typically, leaders launch transformation efforts with a large kickoff. It makes sense: They want to build momentum early by communicating objectives clearly. This can be effective if a ready consensus already exists around the initiative. Yet if the desired change is truly transformational, it is likely to encounter fierce opposition; inertia can be a powerful force, even more powerful than hope or fear. So by starting with a large communication campaign, essentially presenting the initiative as a fait accompli, you are very likely to harden the opposition of those who are skeptical of the change.
Most successful transformations begin with small groups that are loosely connected but united by a shared purpose. They’re made of people who are already enthusiastic about the initiative but are willing to test assumptions and, later, to recruit their peers. Leaders can give voice to that shared purpose and help those small groups connect, but the convincing has to be done on the ground. Unless people feel that they own the effort, it’s not likely to go very far. For example, when Wyeth Pharmaceuticals set out to drive a major transformation to adopt lean manufacturing practices, it began with just a few groups at a few factories. The effort soon spread to thousands of employees across more than a dozen sites and cut costs by 25%.
Identify a keystone change. Every change effort begins with some kind of grievance: Costs need to be cut, customers better served, or employees more engaged, for example. Wise managers transform that grievance into a “vision for tomorrow” that will not only address the grievance but also move the organization forward and create a better future. This vision, however, is rarely achievable all at once. Most significant problems have interconnected root causes, so trying to achieve an ambitious vision all at once is more likely to devolve into a five-year march to failure than it is to achieve results. That’s why it’s crucial to start with a keystone change, which represents a clear and tangible goal, involves multiple stakeholders, and paves the way for bigger changes down the road.
That gap between aspiration and practical reality was the challenge that Barry Libenson encountered when he arrived at Experian as CIO in 2015. In his conversations with customers, it became clear that what they most wanted from his company was access to real-time data. Yet to deliver that, he would have to move from the company’s traditional infrastructure to the cloud, an initiative that raised serious concerns about security and reliability. He began by developing methods for accessing real-time data for internal use, rather than going straight to customer-facing features. That required his team to engage many of the same stakeholders and develop many of the same processes that a full shift to the cloud would have required and allowed him to show some early results.
“Once we developed some internal APIs, people could see that there was vast potential, and we gained some momentum,” Libenson told me. Experian not only successfully moved to the cloud but also launched its Ascend platform based on the new infrastructure, which is now the fastest-growing part of its business.
Network the movement. All too often we associate any large-scale change with a single charismatic leader. The U.S. civil rights and Indian independence movements will always be associated with Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi, respectively. In much the same way, turnarounds at major companies like IBM and Alcoa are credited to their CEOs at the time, Lou Gerstner and Paul O’Neill.
The truth is more complicated. King, for example, was just one of the “big six” of U.S. civil rights leaders. Gerstner gained allies by refocusing the company around customers. O’Neill won over labor unions by making a serious commitment to workplace safety. These examples show why, in his book Leaders: Myth and Reality, General Stanley McChrystal defines effective leadership as “a complex system of relationships between leaders and followers, in a particular context, that provides meaning to its members.”
Every large-scale change requires both leadership at the top and the widening and deepening of connections through wooing — not coercing — an ecosystem of stakeholders.
Consider the case of Talia Milgrom-Elcott, cofounder of 100Kin10. When she set out to start a movement to recruit and retain 100,000 STEM teachers in 10 years, she knew there was no shortage of capable groups working to improve education. In fact, she had worked with many people who were building myriad approaches to the issue. But they had never met one another. And so she created a platform for collaboration that brings together nearly 300 partner organizations through conferences, working groups, and networking. Today 100Kin10 is ahead of schedule to meet its goal.
Surviving victory. Often the most dangerous part of any transformation effort is when the initial goals have been met. That’s why successful transformation leaders focus not only on immediate goals but also on the process of change itself. If Wyeth had stopped at a 25% cost reduction, it would have soon found itself in trouble again. But because its employees embraced the lean manufacturing methods, the company was able to keep moving forward. In much the same way, if Experian had been satisfied with merely shifting to a new technology infrastructure, little would have been gained.
In some cases, the benefits of a successful transformation can last for decades. Remembering Gerstner’s IBM turnaround in the 1990s, one of his top lieutenants, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, told me, “Because the transformation was about values first and technology second, we were able to continue to embrace those values as the technology and marketplace continued to evolve.” After a near-death experience, the company remains profitable today.
SOURCE: Satell, G. (27 August 19)"4 Tips for Managing Organizational Change" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2019/08/4-tips-for-managing-organizational-change
Creating High-Performance Teams
Can having a plan for more than the hiring process help both future employees and current? Having a high-performance team is essential in creating strong work environments. Continue reading this blog post from SHRM to learn more about creating high-performance teams at your organization.
Every organization needs its teams to deliver a high level of performance to succeed in today’s business environment. Author Omar L. Harris offers clear guidance on how to hire for, support, and guide high-performance teams.
What are some tips to hiring employees to fit into high-performing teams?
My top tip for hiring employees to fit into high-performing teams is to understand the key mix of attributes that the high-performing team members possess. Look beyond IQ and pedigree and focus on more attitudinal attributes such as work ethic, passion, solution-orientation, and the maturity to productively manage disappointment and conflict.
What are the stages of forming a high-performance team?
The stages are:
- hiring the right W.H.O.M. (work ethic, heart, optimism, maturity),
- effectively onboarding each team member by getting to know them on a deeper level,
- helping them accelerate their learning curve,
- setting clear expectations of their roles,
- building trust between the team members by encouraging vulnerability and open dialogue, and
- crafting a clear mission with superordinate goals that bring the team together to achieve something that no one could achieve on their own.
What are the hallmarks of a high-performing team?
One hallmark of a high-performing team is a level of professional intimacy among the team members, meaning they know each other well both as professionals and as people and enjoy working together. A level of transparency and passion for the work being done that leads to productive conflicts resulting in better decision-making. An adherence to norms that define how every member works together. And an absolute focus on delivering results. The characteristics that make this happen are simply people who work hard, have shared passion, search for solutions with a sense of urgency, and have the maturity to overcome inevitable conflicts and disappointments.
How can senior leadership create a culture of strong teams?
Focus on creating a team of managers who love achieving results by putting their people in their strengths zones and developing their capacity and talents.
Do high-performance teams vary across companies, industries, or geographies?
I've had the opportunity to lead teams across the world in the U.S., Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, and people are the same all around the world. People want to be valued. They want to believe in the mission of their organization. They want to have opportunities to develop. So leaders who want to create high-performance teams anywhere in the world need to be able to tap into these commonalities and work tirelessly to create the condition for the success of their people.
How can leaders help struggling teams?
First understand the source of the struggle. Most issues occur during the team formation and team storming stages. And then level-up their own leadership skills to respond to the challenges of the moment. The best advice I can give is to look to deepen the understanding and connection with each member of the team and by improving each members focus and alignment, you improve the team dynamic by default. Lastly, recognize if the ingredients are off and make the necessary decisions to move poisonous people out of the environment.
What are other things to remember about managing high-performance teams?
Performance is relative and the goal posts must be continually stretched to keep everyone engaged. Also, plan for succession so as people on the team achieve results and receive greater opportunities, the next generation of team members are ready to step up and continue on the mission.
15 states where $1 million in retirement savings will last the longest
How much do you have saved for retirement? According to GOBankingRates data, employees who have $1 million in retirement savings can make it last for more than 20 years in Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. In this article, Paola Peralta writes on the importance of understanding what better retirement choices can do for your future.
Employees with $1 million in retirement savings can make it stretch for more than 20 years in Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, according to GOBankingRates data in an article from Business Insider. Retirees in New Mexico, Tennessee, Michigan and Kansas can also live on a similar amount of savings, data shows. Retirees with $1 million can expect their savings to last in average span of 19 years, GOBankingRates estimates.
Less choice could mean better retirement outcomes
The amount of income that seniors can replace in retirement is a good measure to determine whether there is a looming retirement crisis in the U.S., according to retirement expert Mark Miller in this article from Morningstar. However, it is hard to make generalizations, he explains. “I think it varies tremendously, depending which demographic group you’re looking at, you can do it generationally or otherwise,” Miller says.
Retirement requires a shift in thinking
As retirees needs change, they should be ready to adjust their mindset and modify their investment strategies, an expert in Kiplinger writes. Retirees should focus more on preservation and distribution after the accumulation phase, the expert writes. “In retirement, it’s important to think of your savings as income rather than a lump sum. It’s not all about achieving maximum return on investment anymore," the expert says. "It’s about how you can get the maximum return from your portfolio and into your pocket."
Employees nearing retirement? 12 features to look for in their next home
Seniors who intend to move to a new home in retirement should consider a property that offers low yard maintenance, a single-story open floor plan and easy access to loved ones and essential amenities, according to a Forbes article. They should ensure that the new house is cheap to maintain and won’t trigger a hefty tax bill, says one expert. “If those costs are low, it can be a great investment.”
SOURCE: Peralta, P. (15 August, 2019) "15 states where $1M in retirement savings lasts the longest"(Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/news/states-where-retirement-savings-will-last-the-longest
The case for expanding wellness beyond the physical
Can addressing mental health, financial wellness and substance abuse in the workplace help employees feel fulfilled both personally and professionally? Newly released data shows that employees who have access to wellness programs that address most or all of the five aspects of well-being are more likely to say their job performance is excellent. Read this blog post to learn more about expanding wellness programs.
Client's wellness programs that only focus on physical fitness may need to rethink their approach.
By expanding wellness offerings to include programs that support workers’ mental and financial wellness, employer clients can increase the overall wellbeing of their workforce. Newly released data from Optum and the National Business Group on Health shows that employees who are offered programs that address most or all of the five aspects of wellbeing — physical, mental, financial, social and community — are significantly more likely to say their job performance is excellent, have a positive impression of their employer, and recommend their company as a place to work.
Over the last decade, workplace wellness initiatives have evolved beyond health risk assessments, physical fitness and nutrition programs. Many programs now include resources to address mental health, financial wellness and substance abuse.
“[Employers] must commit to looking beyond clinical health outcomes,” says Chuck Gillespie, CEO of the National Wellness Institute, speaking at a webcast from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. “You want employees to be fulfilled both personally and professionally.”
Even though some clients address financial, social and community health, most still focus on physical and mental health.
However, there are benefit trends that address wellness beyond physical fitness. The emergence of financial wellness benefits — such as early pay access, student loan assistance and retirement saving plans — may help employees feel less stressed and more financially secure, which has shown to improve overall health.
But having a good wellness program in place isn’t enough — employers also have to make sure that the offerings are inclusive and personalized, and that the programs have successful participation and engagement rates.
“These programs need to be adapted to who you are,” Gillespie says. “Customization has to be a key factor of what you’re looking at, because everybody is not going to fit inside your box.”
Effective wellness programs use both health and wellness data points and best practices, while keeping an eye on developing trends. Multi-dimensional wellness — looking at aspects such as social and community — can help companies understand the needs of their employees better.
“Employers need to better recognize personal choices, and if the employees are in an environment where they are functioning optimally,” Gillespie says. “Smokers hang out with smokers; the cultural foods that you eat with family may not be nutritious; is there social isolation; do you contribute to your community. [Most benefits] are work-oriented, but for most people, their life is their home life. It’s important to look at the degrees of which you feel positive and enthusiastic about your work and life.”
SOURCE: Nedlund, E. (15 August 2019) "The case for expanding wellness beyond the physical" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/news/the-case-for-expanding-wellness-beyond-the-physical
Turnover Contagion: Are Your Employees Vulnerable?
How are you engaging employees? With employee retention top-of-mind for organizations wanting to stay competitive in today's market, employers need to find ways to ensure employees are engaged and happy at work. Continue reading this blog post from SHRM to learn more.
Employee retention is top-of-mind for any organization looking to stay competitive in today’s market. Despite swaths of technological advances, in our knowledge-based, global economy an organization’s key assets are still its employees. Considering this, substantial amounts of research have been published about potential predictors and causes of employee turnover. Most of this research can be classified into two categories: individual-level explanations (e.g., job satisfaction, person-job fit, etc.) or external and organizational-level explanations (e.g., unemployment rates, job demand, etc.). However, only having these two types of explanations ignores team-level and the inherent social aspects of turnover. Specifically, do the behaviors and attitudes of coworker's influence employee’s intentions to quit their jobs?
Quitting is infectious.
People regularly “catch” the feelings of those they work with, particularly in group settings. We’ve all been around someone at work whose sour mood set the tone for the day; their negative emotions dampened the mood of everyone else around them. Employee mood isn’t all that is affected. Surprisingly, the emotions of others influence judgment and business decisions – and this all typically happens without anyone realizing.
In a study on the spread of emotions, groups were created to judge how to best allocate funds in hiring decisions. A confederate (actor) was planted in each group and instructed to display one of four emotions: cheerful enthusiasm, serene warmth, hostile irritability, or depressed sluggishness. Not only did the emotions of the confederates spread to each member of the group but each group’s resulting judgments and behaviors were affected. In groups with a pleasant confederate, members displayed more cooperation, less conflict, and allocated funds more equitably than in groups with unpleasant confederate emotions.
In a related study, researchers looked into the contagion of social contexts on job behaviors. As it turns out, evidence suggests an employee’s decisions to voluntarily leave an organization is influenced by the attitudes and behaviors of their coworkers. They found evidence suggesting job embeddedness (how well employees feel they fit in with their job and the community) and job search behaviors of coworkers predict individual voluntary turnover. An employee’s job embeddedness is the relative strength of their organizational network; weaker bonds or links are easier to break. That is, if a coworker is low on organizational connection (e.g., fewer and weaker relationships with other organizational members) or engages in noticeable job-seeking behaviors (e.g., talking about an application or interview, expressing a desire to leave, quitting, etc.) their colleagues are more likely to choose to exit the organization. As can be imagined, this relationship is amplified when a coworker has both low job embeddedness and visible job-searching behaviors.
People leave organizations all the time. There are several reasons why employees decide to leave organizations - whether it be for personal (relocation of family member), professional (more pay, promotion, career change), or organizational (job or organization redesign). In fact, healthy businesses want some amount of turnover. However, in the case of turnover contagion, your employees are leaving simply because their colleagues are leaving. When a group of employees leave an organization in rapid cycle, it may be due to the influence of their immediate peer group and this should be cause for concern as turnover contagion is likely occurring.
The interplay of social contexts within an organization along with individual and organizational-level predictors adds more to our understanding of the complexity of employee turnover decisions. This is just one piece of the pie – and an important one. Understandably, more research needs to be conducted until just how this phenomenon works is understood, however, based on the evidence, organizations and leaders shouldn’t wait to act.
For one, it’s a tight labor market and has been for some time now. Overall, many employees are looking and leaving. There has been a cultural shift among workers where they feel increasingly less loyalty than before and are even more likely to job hop. To add to this, unemployment is at an all-time low and job growth is climbing. Meaning there are more open jobs than there are workers to fill them. It’s an applicant’s market. These factors, coupled with the sheer cost of replacing skilled employees – speculated to be a whopping 1.5 to 2 times an employee’s salary – should give pause to leaders when they suspect employees have caught the turnover bug.
On the bright side, turnover contagion can be minimized, and companies stand to reap plenty of rewards through emotional contagion. Just like negative emotions create a spiral of negativity, so too can emotions with a more positive valence. For example, leaders can use the infectious qualities of emotions to spread feelings of happiness by expressing gratitude or complementing someone. In addition, increasing job embeddedness and strengthen the bonds your employees have by building more connection with their team, leaders, and other departments can go a long way to reducing turnover.
SOURCE: Ford, A. (13 August, 2019)"Turnover Contagion: Are Your Employees Vulnerable?"(Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://blog.shrm.org/blog/turnover-contagion-are-your-employees-vulnerable
Older Workers Are a Valuable Talent Pool
Currently, Americans 55 and older make up less than a quarter of the nation's labor force, according to AARP. While many HR leaders have been focused on finding out how to meet the different expectations and needs of Millennials, they also need to be aware of the bigger demographic challenge ahead - the role of people over 55. Read this blog post to learn more.
Over the last decade, most HR leaders have been obsessed by the role of millennials at work and figuring out how to meet the different expectations and needs of these young workers.
Certainly, this has been important work. But, leaders need to be aware of a much bigger demographic challenge ahead: the role of people over the age of 55.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that in the next 10 years, the fastest-growing segments of the workforce will be for employees over 65. According to AARP, Americans 55 and older make up slightly less than a quarter of the nation’s labor force, but they filled almost half (49 percent) of the 2.9 million jobs gained in 2018—the biggest share of any age group.
This trend will continue. We are living longer and having fewer children. The fertility rates in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, and almost every other developed country are below replacement. As a result, populations—and our workforces—are going to get older.
Obviously, this has an impact on public policy, immigration, and healthcare investments. But the more interesting aspect for those of us in HR is the huge impact this will have on work.
Attitudes About Age
How do most employers feel about older people? They aren’t that thrilled to have them around. While older employees may be wiser and more reliable, they usually make more money than younger workers. Many employers believe older workers can’t keep up with today’s always-on digital workplace.
A few years ago, we asked employers whether age was a competitive advantage or competitive disadvantage in their company. Almost 60 percent of respondents said that age was a disadvantage. In other words, when a young employee competes with an older employee for a job, the young person wins.
This discriminatory perception was summed up perfectly by Mark Zuckerberg in 2007 when he said in an interview, “Younger people are just smarter.”
Forced Transitions
I’ve seen this in my own personal life. Many of my friends from college (we’re all in our early 60s) are starting to think about retiring, primarily because they’ve been forced out of their companies. Most of us will live well into our 80s, 90s, or longer, and as we age, work becomes one of the most gratifying things we do. But employers just don’t see it this way.
According to a recent analysis by the Urban Institute and ProPublica, more than half of workers over 50 lose longtime jobs before they are ready to retire. Of those, 9 out of 10 never recover their previous earning power. Why? Employers simply do not want them back.
Age Discrimination
Companies are now being sued for age discrimination. Recruiters have been caught saying things like “you’re too old for this job” or “we only hire people with less than seven years of experience.” Even Facebook has been forced to remove age as a criterion for job placements in its online advertisements.
The above are examples of explicit discrimination. However, in most companies, age discrimination is much more subtle. Older people have higher salaries, so they are just passed over for many positions.
New Ideas for Older Workers
But change is ahead. Not only does age discrimination fly in the face of most diversity and inclusion programs, but the reality is that employers really need older workers because of record unemployment rates and extreme talent shortages.
“Re-careering” programs—in which employers invite retirees back to work, give them training and new skills, and let them work part-time—are cropping up in companies such as Boeing, Bank of America, and Apple. I encourage all employers to invest this way.
Business leaders also need to keep in mind that baby boomers are the biggest buying population in the world and has as much disposable income as the rest of the population combined. These consumers want to do business with organizations that respect older individuals and don’t view age as a negative.
Think about your company’s attitudes about age. Older workers are often more stable, they understand how to work in teams, and they are likely to be more loyal over time. Generational diversity in workforces is also reflective of good corporate citizenship.
Now is the time for HR leaders to work to actively eliminate age discrimination in their workforces and view generational diversity as a valuable goal.
SOURCE: Bersin, J. ( 25 July 2019) "Older Workers Are a Valuable Talent Pool" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://blog.hrps.org/blogpost/Older-Workers-Are-a-Valuable-Talent-Pool
Tracking Employee Life Cycle
The HR landscape is constantly changing. With each new generation that enters the workforce, expectations change. Read this blog post from SHRM to learn more about tracking the employee life cycle.
We who study Employee Engagement are consistently looking for trends in hiring and the direct effect on retention. The Human Resource landscape is slippery, no other profession is tasked with such a diverse cycle of management skills. The ability to find great talent, train, engage and promote are an unenviable set of tasks. Recruiters mirror salespeople, Total Rewards professionals have to have an acumen for numbers and the disparate technologies that represent the progression from hiring through promotion can make one's head spin.
So, we stare down the inevitable:
How do we create a synchronized strategy from recruitment to retirement.... ????
Let's start with the job market....
As a new generation of talent enter the workforce are expectations changing?
Are those escalated in age better equipped with irreplaceable experience?
Is a recession coming?
Do elite talents have any interest in job-hopping?
Those who are great at what they do are probably not interested in switching jobs and there are others who simply do not have the proper qualifications. So, staffing professionals are tasked with finding people who are qualified, able to engage and humble in their entry-level financial expectations.
Prospective employees have a few simple expectations:
- A product/service they believe in
- Leadership that is visionary yet receptive to change
- A culture of transparency
- A manager they enjoy serving
Sounds simple enough but the ability to pull together these traits under a common mission is difficult. Companies are often great at producing quality products but lacking in employee development. Again, our staffers are called upon to sell the good qualities of the company while side-stepping what isn't working.
Sustaining Engagement....
Getting them in the door is one thing. Delivering on promises is another.
Once employees are trained, they need to develop the confidence to acclimate to the culture. Our extended HR team has to sustain the attraction of the hiring process with technology that is accessible and intuitive. HR is then called upon to make sure there is a vessel for strong manager/employee communication while keeping leadership abreast of the action in the trenches.
Take inventory:
- Does training scale to specific functional traits while enhancing soft skills?
- Is your Human Capital Management technology integrated and engaging?
- If employees and managers aren't on the same page, how will you know?
- Does your CEO recognize general employee goals?
Train, Reward, Challenge and Eliminate Silos!
Seeing departures before they happen.....
If exit interviews are part of your engagement strategy, you are a step behind. The popular counter is to have HR integrate "stay interviews". If you need to administer a survey for employees to validate your existence, your workplace relationships might be fractured.
Managers should have an accountability plan for their employees that is more parts celebration of achievement than calling out deficiencies.
Recognize in public, discipline is private.
If in every day you leave people with a firm understanding of what is working and where they need development, there is no guesswork. People know when they haven't performed to their fullest potential, calling them out twice a year doesn't work.
Ask yourself: do our hiring enticements continue through our day-to-day engagement proposition?
We all just want to represent something we believe in among people we respect and an ever-evolving challenge cycle complete with rewards at every step of progression.
Originally published on Dave's Weekly Thought blog.
SOURCE: Kovacovich, D. (6 August 2019) "Tracking Employee Life Cycle" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://blog.shrm.org/blog/tracking-employee-lifecycle
Employer-sponsored savings programs could be the future of financial wellness
An estimated 43 percent of hourly workers have less than $400 set aside in their savings for emergencies. For those workers, an accident or unexpected expense can be financially devastating. Read this blog post from Employee Benefits Advisor to learn more about employer-sponsored savings programs.
For 43% of hourly workers who report having less than $400 in savings set aside for emergencies, an accident or unexpected expense can be financially devastating.
But employer-sponsored savings programs could be a viable solution. Low- and middle-income employees who are more financially secure have been shown to be less stressed and more productive when they have an employer-sponsored savings program, which may lead to lower healthcare costs, better customer service and stronger attendance, a new survey from nonprofit organization Commonwealth finds.
The national survey of 1,309 employees earning less than $60,000 a year found that employers offering workers savings interventions at the time of raise, can positively impact their employees’ personal finances. Three-quarters of hourly employees surveyed believe that if their employer offered savings options at the time of a raise, they would be less stressed and more confident about their finances.
“There's a lot of talk about financial stress, but when you're really living paycheck-to-paycheck, that stress is about being able to pay your bills on time,” says Commonwealth’s executive director Timothy Flacke. “It's about cash flow, and that's a particularly acute form of anxiety.”
The report analyzes the potential effects of savings programs including split direct-deposit paychecks, low-interest loans and savings accounts — and compares how those programs alleviate employees’ financial stress. Workers surveyed believe if their employer-provided savings tools they would be happier and more productive. Moreover, the survey found individuals with more in savings were less likely to have financial worries than those with little savings.
One of the companies partnered with Commonwealth to link raises with savings is Minnesota-based education company New Horizon Academy. In the beginning of the year, the company piloted a new savings program that gives its employees the option to have the raise diverted through the payroll system to a savings account each pay period, instead of having it go into their normal checking account.
“Through this, our employees are beginning to build up some financial reserves in case of an emergency, or life circumstances that requires them to dip into a savings account,” says Chad Dunkley, CEO of New Horizon Academy. Although it’s too early to state results from the pilot program, the company hopes it will have a positive long-term impact on the financial health of its employees, Dunkley says.
“This is just one of those additional ways [to] stabilize our employees, so they can come into the classroom without the financial stress that certain situations cause when you're not prepared for an emergency, whether it's new tires on your car or health issues,” he says.
SOURCE: Nedlund, E. (19 August 2019) "Employer-sponsored savings programs could be the future of financial wellness" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/news/reduce-stress-increase-productivity-with-financial-wellness
Association Health Plans & Their Benefits
Many individuals do not understand various insurance terms and the plans available to them. Most employers have a hard time trying to find the best and the most affordable coverage for their employees. It is important you find an insurance company or agent that can break it down for you to get the best coverage.
We asked our founding partner and CEO, Jamie Charlton, to shed some light on Association Health Plans (AHPs) and also give their advantages and disadvantages.
What is an AHP, and How Does it Work?
According to Charlton, AHP or Association Health Plans are a conglomeration of smaller groups that come under the guise of a larger umbrella to leverage bulk buying power. They might not be small companies per se, but are those that come together under one industry or from the same geographic area to strengthen their negotiating power. They can be a group of manufacturers, printers or self-employed individuals from the same jurisdiction. An example of such an association is the Chamber Alliance.
Ideally, small businesses, including self-employed individuals in the same industry or geographic location, can merge to form larger groups to get healthcare plans as one large group. Coalitions are more or less the same as these associations, only that coalitions are groups made up of non-profit institutions such as schools. Associations are mostly businesses or organizations aimed at making profits.
AHP Expansion
United States (US) President, Donald Trump, issued an executive order to promote healthcare coverage in the US on October 12, 2017. The order aims at expanding access to small businesses to get the same competitive advantage as large corporations when purchasing health insurance. This order was meant to provide more affordable health insurance plans to as many individuals as possible. These individuals include farmers, wage earners and employees of any small business in the US.
Charlton has a slightly different view of this expansion. Though it has helped a few individuals, the expansion does not present any advantage as the rates keep going higher with age. He explained, “AHPs don’t have an advantage in the long run, unless they have a long-term sponsor.” AHPs have always been in existence, and the expansion is just political rhetoric that will give the plans some credibility.
Advantages of an AHP to Smaller Employers
There are some advantages that come with AHPs, both to the employer and the employees. These include:
- Negotiating power
- Spreading the risk
- Maintaining lower rates instead of lumping them into unverified age groups
- No charging different premiums to employees based on health status
- No charging different rates to employers based on the health status of their employees
- Healthy, younger groups will be fully underwritten
- Self-employed individuals with a few employees and those with no employees are also eligible
- Will not cherry pick or discriminate based on the status of an applicant pre-existing or previous health condition.
There are also some disadvantages. They include:
- Many of these plans might not allow single person groups.
- An individual must be a bona-fide member of a group and pay a membership fee.
The Role Saxon Plays in Helping the Employer
Saxon prides itself as a top provider of AHPs. The company has experts with knowledge of how this system works. Writing these plans for the last four years, Saxon can offer stable rates and consistent, professional assistance.
For more information regarding employee benefits and competitive benefits packages that fit your business strategy, you can contact Jamie Charlton at 513-573-0129 or via email at jcharlton@gosaxon.com.