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
Specific Plans for Your Employees
Most plans are created to fit every employee but not specifically each employee's specific needs. However, employers now are looking at adding more customized packages for their employees. In turn, this is helping with new hires. Keep reading this blog to learn about additional benefits.
Research shows that benefits drive the attraction and retention of employees even more than compensation. When implemented in the correct way, these perks can help draw diverse groups of workers. So if this is the case, why are so many packages not tailored to diversified workforces?
The short answer is because it’s easier to administer a one-size-fits-all plan. The burden of building customized plans means that packages are updated only once a year. As a result, modern workers needs go unmet, because life circumstances and coverage requirements can change at any given moment.
These packages need to go beyond baseline benefits such as medical, dental and vision. Employers should realize that adding more customized benefits could help the needle in the talent war.
For example, two new employees at opposite ends of the spectrum may require different kinds of benefits to meet their needs, but few packages are set up to accommodate these differences. While millennial workers may view offerings like pet insurance or tuition reimbursement as must-haves, these may not be relevant for everyone.
Blanketing all employees with the same benefits package risks failing to engage those prospects who have something amazing to bring to your business. An employee who has a baby mid-year, for example, might have to wait to get her life insurance adjusted or open a college fund because it’s not on the schedule.
But in some sectors, things are starting to change. Larger enterprise employers are now more likely to offer at least five kinds of benefits, including life insurance, pet insurance and disability coverage plus legal shield, identity protection, loan repayment, financial literacy and paid sabbaticals with more added all the time. We’re also seeing an uptick in new offerings such as workplace education and vacation planning or payment.
Now the same approach needs to be adopted in the mid-market. Employers need to make a concerted effort to understand their workforce. To learn and drive benefits package curation to consider a survey or evaluation exercise. HR leaders should also institute more frequent touchpoints, for example, every quarter, to assess the utilization rates of a benefits package.
Looking ahead, the workplace of the future will become even more diverse. As more workers continue to choose to work remotely, companies will need to accept hiring talent outside of the U.S. Which also means hiring managers will have to address perks and benefits that may fall outside of a company’s home state, or even satisfy alternative healthcare or benefits packages in countries with different requirements altogether.
Every employee’s situation is different and the industry needs to be ready to offer benefits and workplace perks that match key talent’s most important needs.
SOURCE: Lyubovitzky, Rachel. (2 August 2019). "It's time to put an end to one-size-fits-all employee benefits plans" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from: https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/opinion/the-case-for-personalized-employee-benefits-plans
Deepfakes in HR
Blame Forrest Gump. The 1994 movie used new technology to edit Gump's character into scenes to make it seem like he talked with John F. Kennedy or sat next to John Lennon — an editing magician's trick that won the film accolades.
That technology has evolved into what is now referred to as "deepfake" technology: a mix of AI and machine learning that allows users to alter videos, audios, and photos in powerful ways.
One deepfake example: A widely-shared video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that was doctored to slow down the speed of her speech, creating the impression Pelosi was impaired. Deepfakes can make it seem that someone is saying something or doing something they may never have — and that can create a new kind of security woe for employers of all types.
Just because deepfakes haven't showed up at your company doesn't mean they'll stay away forever, Randy Barr, chief information security officer for Topia, a global mobility management software company, told HR Dive; "We're going to start to see a lot more than this as soon as technology is readily available for people to use and try."
What can HR do now to ensure employees are safe?
It's all fun and photoshop until someone gets hurt
Deepfake technology can have positive purposes, such as in the creation of digital voices for those who have lost the ability to speak, or the David Beckham video that shows him explaining how people can protect themselves from malaria, using deepfake tech to look like he's speaking in nine different languages.
But unlike the altered content from Forrest Gump and Instagram filters, the audience isn't supposed to know that the deepfakes are manipulated pieces.
On top of that, the technology is often used explicitly to create trouble, Niraj Swami, CEO of SCAD AI, an AI consultancy, told HR Dive. "It stems from leveraging controversial material…offensive content or offensive perspectives," he said. When this material pops up in social media, it creates media confusion, he said, and many viewers react emotionally to the false information.
Some deepfake videos can be identified relatively easily, Barr said. "One of the simple ways of detecting it is if you look at the video, see how often that individual blinks, because [with] the current AI technology and deepfake, it's hard to impose the face over a body if the eyes are closed," he said. Other tips are to look for a mismatch in skin tone, and placement of the eyebrows and chin, he added.
Just as deepfake technology is becoming more sophisticated, so is the technology used to identify altered media, with improvements on both sides expected to continue.
How deepfakes can harm employers
Although most deepfakes thus far have targeted politicians and celebrities, the technology has been seen in the work environment — and it may be used with increasing frequency, experts said.
Imagine a CEO placing an urgent call to a senior financial officer requesting an emergency money transfer — except the CEO's voice was deepfaked by criminals, as Axios reported happening to a number of companies already. Deepfakes could be used to attack a company, Barr said; "[It] could be the evolution of how ransomware takes place."
Remote employees could use deepfake tech to disguise their identities and hand off work to subcontractors, Swami said. This could be concerning if the subcontractor is not supposed to be offshore or if the initial employee had a security clearance, but the subcontractor does not, he said.
For HR leaders, deepfakes could lead to tricky situations, Forman said. What happens if an employee finds an altered photo or video of them on social media that uses their company ID or picture? What obligation does the organization have to investigate? "It's becoming more difficult. You have workplace morale issues, compliance issues with your policy and procedures that all jump up because of deepfakes," he said.
Guarding against deepfakes
HR leaders are used to discerning fake information, from exaggerations on a resume to doctored emails, but as technology improves, it becomes more challenging to anticipate potential issues. While HR is not expected to analyze media for alterations, leaders can take steps to protect employees and the company from being manipulated by deepfakes.
Review company technology policies, said Forman. New technologies up the ante for the workplace and the employer and employee relationships because of the increased risk for misconduct, he said. An employer may want to take an existing policy regarding anti-harassment, anti-retaliation, and anti-discrimination, and make sure the guidelines address the new technology, he added.
Companies should decide how they would respond if a deepfake incident occurred, Forman advised. Although there may be no one right or wrong answer, being prepared to react to the threat is necessary.
"The biggest thing is awareness," Swami said. If employers see an incendiary video, they can't have a knee jerk reaction if it is presented as evidence of wrong-doing, he said. Managers might not be able to believe their eyes, so employers may need to ensure its managers gather more information. "You can't have a single source of truth."
SOURCE: DeLoatch, Pamela. (5 August 2019). "Keeping it real: What HR leaders need to know about deepfakes" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from: https://www.hrdive.com/news/keeping-it-real-what-hr-leaders-need-to-know-about-deepfakes/559475/
Summer Hours
Should employees have different hours in the summer? Will this make them work less or more? Continue reading today's blog to answer these questions! Read more
Disability Insurance
Disability insurance. Do you have it? New studies are showing that it could be more beneficial for employers to offer auto-enrollment plans similar to auto-enrolling into a 401k plan. Keep reading the blog post below to learn more. Read more
Paid Leave
Benefits can be one of the sure ways of attracting a new hire and paid leave is one of the most coveted benefits. However, this benefit can be a tricky one to navigate. Some employers are getting themselves into trouble in the process, facing accusations of gender discrimination or improper use of leave.
Here are four potential pitfalls of paid leave, and how employers can avoid them.
1. Be careful what you call “maternity leave.”
Employers have long been granting leave for new moms in the form of disability coverage. In fact, the top cause of short term disability is pregnancy. Disability insurance usually grants new moms six to eight weeks of paid leave to recover from childbirth.
Because this coverage applies to the medical condition or recovering from childbirth, it shouldn’t be lumped in with bonding leave.
Guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says leave granted for new moms for bonding must also be extended to new dads, so separating disability leave from bonding leave is crucial to avoiding gender discrimination.
2. Don’t make gender assumptions.
The amount of bonding time for new parents after birth, adoption or fostering must be granted equally for men and women. Companies that don’t provide the same amount of paid leave for men and women may find themselves in a discrimination lawsuit.
It’s not just the time away from work that matters, but also the return-to-work support provided. If new moms are granted temporary or modified work schedules to ease the transition back to work, new dads must also have access to this.
Some companies may choose to differentiate the amount of leave and return-to-work support for primary or secondary caregivers. That’s compliant as long as assumptions aren’t made on which gender is the primary or secondary caregiver.
The best way to avoid potential gender discrimination pitfalls is to keep all parental bonding and related return-to-work policies gender-neutral.
3. Avoid assuming the length of disability.
Be careful about assuming the length of time a new mom is disabled, or recovering medically, after birth. Typical coverage policies allow six to eight weeks of recovery for a normal pregnancy, so assuming a new mom may be out for 10 weeks might be overestimating the medical recovery time, and under-representing the bonding time, which must be gender-neutral.
4. Keep up with federal, state and local laws.
Mandated leave laws are ever-evolving, so employers should consistently cross-check their policies with state and local laws. For instance, do local paid leave laws to treat adoption the same as birth? Are multistate employers compliant? What if an employee lives in one state but works in another: Which state’s leave policies take precedence?
Partnering with a paid leave service provider can mitigate the risk of improperly administering leave. Paid leave experts can help answer questions, review guidelines and provide information regarding job-protecting medical or family leave.
They can also help flag potential pitfalls, ensuring leave requests from all areas of your company are managed uniformly and in accordance with state and federal laws, including the EEOC.
SOURCE: Bennett, Angel. (29 July 2019) “4 pitfalls of paid leave and how clients can avoid them” (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/list/pitfalls-of-paid-family-leave-and-how-to-avoid-them
Performance Management in HR
Does the HR department cross paths with other departments? What exactly is HR? How can your company improve this department? Keep reading this blog to find out some helpful tips to improve this department.
The impact those demands have had on recruiting, retention, learning, development, talent strategy, not to mention employee productivity and performance has left many HR professionals wondering… what exactly is HR’s value proposition and function?
HR traditionally manages those routine yet essential processes - recruiting, hiring, onboarding paperwork, legal compliance, harassment training, and workforce planning to name just a few.
This isn’t the rule, of course. HR leaders in many companies have done an excellent job at up-leveling their teams beyond the human capital management administrative processes to a people and culture-first approach that puts the “human” back into human resources.
Still, there is a prevailing problem I see many companies face: the old human capital management processes of the past aren’t flexible enough to adapt to the dramatic shifts in the way we need to effectively manage the workforce, deploy learning initiatives, develop talent, and deploy an overall human capital management strategy.
While there are several of these old processes that sit on my top five “time to adapt” list… one that currently stands out is performance management.
Performance management has evolved
Traditionally, performance management is a point-in-time event that happens annually or bi-annually alongside merit increases.
Over the years, however, multiple studies, statistics, and endless internal pulse surveys have revealed a new trend: a continuous performance management and feedback loop coupled with ongoing learning and professional development programs is crucial to engage and retain today’s modern workforce while giving HR teams a talent pool to meet the ever-changing needs of the business.
Learning & development teams are the linchpin
Having served in many different roles across a variety of companies - restaurant, hospitality, manufacturing, and a few more in between - I’ve witnessed the numerous ways HR and Learning & Talent Development teams engage with each other while serving their prospective divisions, departments, and employees.
What I know for sure is that the learning and development function can act as the linchpin to adapt the old performance management process to the new, continuous performance management cycles. L&D has a holistic view of the needs, gaps, and effective programs based on divisions, jobs, roles, etc...
With the right learning management or talent development platform, they can see the connection between goals, skills, competencies, and behaviors and how those can be effectively deployed continuously alongside the performance management cycles. Their function sees the employee experience during the time it matters most.
It’s time to integrate learning and performance management
“In an age where continuous learning is essential to drive new skills and behaviors, fewer than half of companies effectively link learning to performance.” This observation from The Brandon Hall Group hit home for me because it’s true - but it doesn’t have to be.
What then keeps HR teams from transitioning from one process to another? It’s a great question I challenge learning & development and HR teams with all the time.
What I’ve found is that (1) L&D leaders see the gap, (2) HR teams are constrained with competing priorities and an increased need for their function to address their existing functions (payroll, benefits, rewards, etc…) with the more strategic, higher-priority areas.
Starting your journey to shift toward a more agile, collaborative, and continuous performance management process requires these two teams to come together and recognize this transition as an important priority for both teams’ success.
By implementing a continuous cycle of performance and goals management within your organization, HR and L&D teams can:
- Measure the impact of competency and skills within your organization
- Support learning effectiveness and impact measurement
- Provides line of sight into skill, knowledge and competency gaps for employee and employer
- Unlock the maximum potential by aligning resources and focused training
- Establishes a direct link between employee performance review feedback and learning content to help close gaps
- Proactively plan for the future with a comprehensive view of your organization that lets you find the candidates who are most qualified for the job
There are many ways to adapt your performance management process to meet your organizations changing needs and your employees’ demands. The important thing to walk away with is that it’s an opportunity to bridge the divide between the HR and learning functions to deliver a more personalized, continuous, and effective performance management review cycle.
SOURCE: Brown, Matthew. (31 July 2019). "Why HR should connect performance management and learning" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/spons/why-hr-should-connect-performance-management-and-learning/559636/
Bad Hire Calculator
What may seem like minor costs when making a bad hire after the recruitment process can potentially be extremely harmful to a company. Lost productivity costs and hiring costs are two expenses that occur when making a bad hire. There is now a tool that can tell you just how much your company is spending on these bad hires.
- Many organizations don't know the true cost of making a wrong hiring decision, according to Thrivemap. Thrivemap developed a calculator that takes an organization's current headcount, annual headcount growth percentage and staff turnover rate and estimates that cost. The final cost estimate accounts for lost productivity costs, as well as hiring costs like advertising and agency fees, Thrivemap said in a press release emailed to HR Dive.
- As an example, the company calculated the bad hire costs for a company in the hospitality industry with 500 employees, an annual 5% increase in headcount and a 15% turnover rate. The costs added up to £406,038, or more than $500,000.
- Lost productivity is a cost that businesses experience often but shouldn't ignore, according to Thirvemap. The company said that research it conducted earlier this year found that workers who felt they fit their role and their employer's culture gave their productivity a 7.2 rating out of 10, compared to the 5.3 rating that those who felt they were a bad fit on both counts gave their productivity.
A 2018 Salary.com report said that turnover is at an all-time high, which puts more pressure on talent pros and hiring managers to avoid hiring mistakes. With turnover and the cost of attrition top of mind for employers, it might be prudent for talent pros to also consider the productivity costs that result from bad hires, too. One example from Thrivemap indicated that the difference in productivity between a good-fit employee and a bad hire can be as high as 36%.
Thrivemap points out that when HR can account for and calculate costs associated with its functions, in this case hiring, it comes closer to its proverbial seat at the table. HR must be able to understand financials, establish its own key performance indicators and show the top brass that it can hit those benchmarks for success, experts have told HR Dive. To stand a better chance of avoiding bad hires altogether, experts have said that talent pros can:
- Have a robust interview process with multiple people, diving deep into experience that is critical to the role;
- Use assessments related to the job;
- Thoroughly go through the reference process;
- Articulate the company culture.
In addition, any tools that can predict what bad hires are currently costing could help HR departments and talent professional make a case for adopting better sourcing and screening tools within their organizations. Investing in tools that can better identify hires with the right skills and who are the right culture fit might keep bad hire costs from becoming a chronic drain.
SOURCE- Bolden-Barrett, Valerie. (25 July 2019). “Bad hire calculator aims to estimate the cost of failed recruits” (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/bad-hire-calculator-aims-to-estimate-the-cost-of-failed-recruits
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.