How COVID-19 has changed the recruiting tech stack
The rapid shift to telework for many office-based employers is not only forcing companies to conduct recruiting virtually, but also making them reconsider every aspect of their talent acquisition strategies. After implementing additional technology solutions amid the pandemic, experts suggest that some changes will be permanent.
While the talent acquisition function tends to lead technology adoption among HR groups, interviews were still commonly held face-to-face at some point in the process and deliberation over candidates often took place in in-person meetings. But recruiting leaders may find that digital processes offer new advantages and end up keeping them even when they return to their offices.
Improving the function
While many organizations scrambled to put together online fixes for manual or in-person processes during the pandemic, improvement took a back seat to maintaining continuity. Now that change is not so rapid, business leaders are focusing on how to improve in these conditions.
Recruiting is no different. Existing technology solutions can address strategic imperatives that were top of mind before the pandemic, such as workforce data, candidate experience or recruiter productivity. More importantly, these technologies can still be deployed while everyone is working from home.
"I think as you start to look at how things like machine learning can be applied, there's a lot of opportunities," Mark Brandau, a research principal, global industry analyst at Forrester, told HR Dive. "The ones I gravitate to are things that automate the process."
Scheduling, communicating with candidates and optimizing job board spend — the same way marketers do with online ad spend — represent the "low-hanging fruit" when it comes to recruiting technology, Brandau said. The tools are usually simple to use and do not depend on the technical maturity of the organization for adoption or implementation.
Having every single recruiting activity occurring within some sort of technology also allows for better data collection. While organizations are trying to collect as much as possible, it's a challenge to validate data entered by people and also can be subjective, such as a hiring manager's perception of a candidate after a first-round in-person interview.
"Something we suspected before the pandemic is organizations don't have a lot of necessary data to make adaptive forward decisions," Brandau said. "That includes candidate data and [talent] market data."
Having better data by having more widespread technology will allow talent acquisition leaders to be more informed about the metrics that matter and how they can improve the function's effectiveness. Efficiency gains, like being able to immediately schedule an interview, can improve the candidate experience and save recruiters time.
"They either want to automate [sourcing and screening] more because of high volume or they want to find better quality candidates," Brandau said. "So they're focused on automation and quality of time" to improve the caliber of candidates entering the funnel and their experience.
Expanding into onboarding
In a pre-pandemic interview process, once a candidate accepts a job offer, after the initial excitement from both parties subsides, there is often a hand-off to a different colleague to manage the onboarding process. Today, with remote work as the norm and more automation coming, there is an opportunity for talent acquisition to bolster, if not completely own, onboarding.
"Once a client understands and gets wind of what's possible with onboarding, especially as a part of a bigger HCM transformation, when you tie in learning and procurement and other things that can happen and goals within onboarding," Brandau said, "they start to light up because they see it way more transformative beyond talent acquisition."
Being able to seamlessly move into value-add onboarding activities without the possibility of a clunky handoff can pay off in many ways. It can boost a new employee's preparedness and excitement. It can also serve as an extension of a company's brand, Brandau said, noting the connections between candidate experience, employment branding and the overall branding of a company. Tactically, onboarding automation can include signaling procurement for a new computer or other supplies a new hire may need.
Organizational leaders often are interested in automating the first steps of onboarding to support a new employees' alignment with organizational goals and maximize the experience of their first 90 days, including what training they may need. "So there's a lot of there's a lot of immediate benefit, as opposed to longer term benefit, when you think about ROI and visibility and brand reinforcement, that's why they gravitate that way," he added.
Finding new sourcing channels
Another opportunity for remote recruiting teams is expanding the geography and scope of sourcing channels. When recruiters no longer need to travel to career fairs and instead interact with prospective employees virtually, they can speak to more candidates. And when candidates don't need to play email tag to schedule an interview, they move the process more efficiently.
SOURCE: Kidwai, A. (14 May 2020) "How COVID-19 has changed the recruiting tech stack" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/how-covid-19-has-changed-the-recruiting-tech-stack/577953/
Employees feel less connected working remotely but say work quality is improved
Dive Brief:
- Two recent surveys provide different impressions of how U.S. workers are adjusting to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, one painting a picture of engaged, productive employees and the other reporting disconnects
- Most employees in a KPMG survey said they felt prepared to transition to remote work and that their teams are collaborating better as a result of the changes. More than half (54%) said their productivity had improved since the transition, while 64% said the quality of their work improved.
- But most younger workers in particular have found the transition difficult, according to a survey by software platform Smartsheet. More than 90% of both Generation Z and millennial employees in that survey reported difficulty working from home, while more than 80% of both groups said they felt less connected. Half of respondents in both groups said they found it hard to get status updates.
Dive Insight:
As remote work becomes routine for companies that can afford to make it work during the pandemic, experts have questioned whether the trend will continue after the threat of the novel coronavirus has passed.
Early research showed many employees, at least, believe this will be the case. A survey conducted in early April by OnePoll and Citrix found more than a third of employee respondents believed their organizations would be more relaxed about remote work following the pandemic. Similar to the KPMG and Smartsheet surveys, however, employees had a mixed reaction to different components of the remote experience. For example, a third of the OnePoll/Citrix respondents said they felt overwhelmed by their remote work situation.
Even before the arrival of the pandemic in the U.S., a January survey by Robert Half found that employees felt deterred from taking advantage of remote work perks over concerns about technology and fears that distractions would hurt productivity.
Telework, reduction of hours and other impacts of the pandemic are also compounding employees' stress levels, an April 7 Gallup report found. Even so, more than half of respondents to a Gallup poll included in the report strongly agreed that they had a clear plan of action, a figure that rose by 15 percentage points since mid-March.
Employers are taking steps to address issues that may affect remote workers during the pandemic. Education company Chegg, for example, is offering childcare reimbursement worth up to $500 per family to employees who are working parents. Vendors are also pitching solutions to employers ranging from "wellness boxes" full of snacks to virtual, video-game like representations of their offices.
Emotional stability and autonomy can be important predictors of whether employees can successfully transition to remote work, a 2018 study published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology found. Besides providing support, employers also need to prepare employees by giving them the proper equipment, sources previously told HR Dive.
SOURCE: Golden, R. (27 April 2020) "Employees feel less connected working remotely but say work quality is improved" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/employees-feel-less-connected-working-remotely-but-say-work-quality-is-impr/576809/
5 talent trends to watch in 2020
Although 2020 is a new year, talent may still seem comparable to previous years' trends. In 2020, employers can expect to see talent management move into a more proactive role. Read this article to learn about the five talent trends to watch for in 2020.
2020 may herald a new year (and decade), but today's talent trends will likely seem familiar.
Employer branding, diversity and inclusion, empowering managers and developing employees all remain priorities for talent pros. For example, HR Dive identified "talent acquisition panic" as one of the driving forces of 2019 — and while recruiting won't necessarily remain in a panic state, most experts agree that it will be a strategic focus for all company leaders in 2020.
But experts also said that certain trends may rise in importance in the new year, and five, in particular, will likely stand out.
Talent management will move from reactive to proactive
The workforce now encompasses a large swath of employees, independent contractors and even robots, requiring a new approach, Michael Stephan, Deloitte's US human capital leader, told HR Dive in an interview. "It's going to change the way HR business partners approach … workforce planning," he said. "Not just how many heads you need, but 'where is the best place to access this particular talent?'"
That means employers will need to move from reacting to talent needs to anticipating them, Mark Brandau, principal analyst at Forrester, told HR Dive. "Most organizations look at it from a reactive perspective and not enough time is done on planning," he said.
Expect more proactive talent strategies that encompass tech's undeniable impact on work. Kristen Ruttgaizer, director of human resources at Igloo Software, agreed that employers will have to put more effort into initiatives that draw candidates in over time, such as solid employee experience.
Diversity and inclusion efforts provide a good example of what this shift may look like, as a successful D&I initiative requires that an employer address "the entire employee life cycle," according to Randstad US's report on 2020 trends. Talent is no longer about simple efficiencies; it's now a driving force for C-suite decision-making, Stephan explained.
Contingent hiring will be more integrated
While employers may no longer be in panic mode about talent acquisition, the rise of contingent worker hiring has complicated recruiting by introducing a new variable: When you need more help, do you hire an employee or bring on a contractor?
Employers are "trying to figure out the workforce ecosystem or strategy that cuts across the different sources," Stephan said. "They realize how important figuring out that ecosystem is to that future strategy. They're in rapid investment mode."
In other words, recruiters are starting to press third-party vendors to provide offerings that would allow them to see both employee and contractor availability from the same place, Brandau said. "Why aren't they in the same place and with a nod toward skills?" he said.
Some of this transition also may include adopting development structures that create "gig-like" models within an employed workforce, WorldAtWork's CEO Scott Cawood said in his Top 7 Workplace Predictions emailed to HR Dive, giving workers opportunities to work on a project-by-project basis and understand how their career will develop in the long-term.
'Super jobs' will become more prevalent
Employee learning and talent management are more intertwined now than ever; learning was the No. 1 trend in one of Deloitte's 2019 human capital trend reports. But that push is driven in part by the looming talent shortage and heightening competition. As employers adopt tools that can do some of the work that talent would previously be hired to do — think robots in Amazon warehouses — they're also inadvertently creating "super jobs" that require skill sets that cross multiple domains, Stephan said.
"A package organizer now has to be an expert in robotic tech," he said. Someone who is managing fellow organizers may now have to combine those key leadership skills with minor capabilities in robotics. To make up that gap, employers began to lean heavily on employee development — but how does a company balance necessary development time without disrupting the work?
"People need to be able to do their job and have access to knowledge when doing their job," Stephan said. A global manufacturing company that works on elevators once had a 3,000 page manual, he explained. Now, employees can use an iPad to search for ways to resolve issues on the fly, educating the worker while keeping them productive.
"They're having to adapt to a really fast changing market," Brandau said.
It's not all tech-driven. The rise of super jobs also has forced employers to redefine leadership development and what it means to be a leader in an organization that requires each worker to have a broad swath of skills, Brandau added.
'Agility' will give way to 'adaptability'
Last year, "agility" was the buzzword of choice. But employers and experts have made a semantics shift toward "adaptability" as employers consider how to best prepare for the future of work.
"When you think of agility, you think of being able to bend an arm in a certain way," Brandau said. "But adaptability is an intelligence of...which way do I need to bend and why?"
The concept is not wholly different from agility, which requires an employer to be ready for the rapid changes descending upon the business world, but it does require an employer to more seriously consider how its people work and behave. "Adaptable is about living and breathing around networks," Stephan said.
A company's culture may need to adopt a philosophy about "failing fast and learning fast," he continued. After all, a workplace can't be "adaptable" if its people aren't ready — though Brandau predicts this will continue to be a hurdle for employers to overcome.
"You have to have a workforce that is ready to adapt to change. We hate change," he said. "Adaptive workforces thrive in change. How do you do this in real ways?"
Employers will have to use data to dive local — whether they're ready or not
To find talent faster, some employers have invested in data and "workforce sensing" to get a more accurate assessment of the local talent market. The pressure to do so — and quickly — has only risen in recent years as employers grapple with talent gaps. That data can inform the type of tech an employer needs or even a new location strategy, Stephan said. And that doesn't even account for HR's use of internal data to gauge employee experience.
Unfortunately, HR teams aren't exactly prepared for this deep dive, even if the branding around it has been centered on employee experience, Brandau said. "HR and these areas have not typically been very good at dealing with data," he added. "How are managers going to deal with an intelligent suite? They aren't ready for it."
Employers that want to improve their workforce sensing capabilities will need to invest serious time into understanding external data sources. Where are the "pockets of workforce capabilities"? "Our clients really aren't there yet," Stephan said. But this talent market might just push them there.
SOURCE: Moody, K. (08 January 2020) "5 talent trends to watch in 2020" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/5-talent-trends-to-watch-in-2020/570026/
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
The talent textbook: 4 ideas for giving better feedback
Managers enjoy giving good news during a review, but how can reviewers take the sting out of negative feedback or even constructive criticism? Read this blog post from HR Drive for four ideas on giving better feedback.
"You got a promotion! You get a raise!" It's almost as fun for managers to say it as it is for employees to hear. Giving good news during a review is easy, but how can reviewers take the sting out of constructive — or negative — feedback?
Coaching an employee who needs to improve or who isn't quite ready for more responsibility, higher pay or leadership opportunities is perhaps the most difficult aspect of performance management, so in this installment of the Talent Textbook, we'll offer four guiding principles from experts for giving better feedback.
Many talent experts today recommend retiring the annual performance review and replacing it with frequent feedback instead. Unlike annual reviews, continuous feedback sessions can lessen anxiety for managers and workers both, making the conversations less formal and more focused. They can help send the message that the company culture is one of listening and responding to workers' needs — and they help talent pros and managers minimize the risk that workers will be dissatisfied with or surprised by the discussion.
"That feedback should be coming constantly," said Jim Flynn, CHRO at Sitel Group. "Everyone should know where they stand constantly."
Flynn believes that frequency transforms the feedback session into a chance to reflect and recalibrate on priorities and goals. It can also ensure that workers are aware of their progress toward a pay increase, promotion or increased responsibility because their manager has reminded them more recently.
For Jodi Chavez, group president professional staffing group at Randstad Professionals, Randstad Life Sciences, focusing up frequently keeps managers better informed about workers' desires and expectations, potentially preventing turnover and keeping the feedback session from devolving into a bidding war.
"If an employee has a desire and a belief that they want this promotion or to be in that role, there can be instances where you won't be able to undo their desire to leave," she said.
"It can be easier if you catch that earlier on in the process — so constant communication, so they know what you're looking for and you can keep coaching them, is important. It only becomes an issue when no one knows that it's a desire until later in the process."
Just as you wouldn't assess business goals and objectives only once a year, talent pros should expect to assess people often to curb employee disappointment, Flynn said, and this is especially true for employees early on in their careers.
#2: Give a heads up and an open ear
There's still stress for talent pros and managers even when preparing to deliver feedback in a more casual session: Will they feel insulted? Will they disengage afterwards? The fears are relevant, so that's why the way reviewers deliver feedback matters as much as the frequency.
Chavez and Flynn agree that managers and talent pros should begin conversations with what they're going to cover in the session. They can continue to be transparent with workers by providing the reasoning behind the feedback and their expectations for the future, Flynn said.
"I think the old sandwich approach, employees see through that," Flynn said, referring to the tactic of "sandwiching" a criticism between two compliments. "I would rather be more upfront and honest, and that should be the manager's approach to everything."
In that same realm, honest feedback should never come with bias or malice attached. Jeannie Donovan, VP of HR at Velocity Global, wrote in an email to HR Dive that "clear is kind" when it comes to constructive feedback. Whether the manager is discussing goal setting or areas that need improvement, the employee's pay grade or their potential for a future promotion, Chavez said the same principle applies: stick to the facts and strive for objectivity.
"For new talent managers, I think it's important to stay very factual and to hear the employee," she said. "Don't lead with false promises, just very cut and dried — 'The role that you're in and the experience that you have puts you at this level [of pay.]'"
That's not to say that a manager should shut down further discussion, Chavez said. Discussing an employee's strengths and listening to their desires can help them visualize a realistic and reachable future for themselves within the organization.
"It's really important to sit down and talk about the positive things that the employee brings to the table — it's a non-defensive position to put the employee in," Chavez said. "Try to understand what is important to them, and let them tell you. 'I may not be able to be a supervisor, but I'd still like to learn more about how to manage people' — once you know that as a manager, giving them pieces that help fulfill that helps them stay engaged."
#3: Support your managers
Talent pros should focus on workers when they consider their feedback best practices — but managers need their attention and expertise, too. As Flynn put it, "sometimes you have to carry cold water warmly" when delivering feedback, and managers need encouragement, support and guidance from talent pros to pull it off.
"A good HR business partner should understand when those difficult conversations could be occurring," he said, noting that this partnership goes both ways. "If a manager is aware that it might be a tough conversation, it's always a good idea to give your HR business partner a heads up so they can be attuned."
Providing tools or suggestions for approaching reviews can help managers to execute conversations with employees with clarity and mutual understanding. For example, Donovan coaches her managers on the "stoplight exercise," which can be helpful when an employee is making a case for a promotion. She said that managers can take a pen to the job description for the role their charge would like to be promoted into — highlighting current responsibilities in green, responsibilities they have a slight grasp of in yellow and tasks they've never touched in red.
"This is a straightforward way to identify strengths, weaknesses, and gaps to assess readiness for that promotion. Further, if this exercise yields gaps, the results indicate where exactly to focus on growth," she wrote.
Donovan echoed Flynn's belief that managers and talent pros should partner in the feedback process, and that debriefing afterwards is as critical for retention as it is for employee satisfaction.
"Have that second set of eyes to be aware and look for signs of disengagement or other harmful behavior," said Flynn. "Some managers are hands off, so if they've had that difficult conversation make sure you're maintaining that personal connection and increasing your frequency of touch."
#4. Shift the focus forward
The last thing constructive feedback should sound like is a lecture. Reviewers should reiterate that the feedback is in service of plan to get that employee a promotion, salary bump, conference excursion, a chance to lead an internal workshop or whatever the goal is in the future, Chavez said.
"They should feel positive about what they have contributed and what they can continue to contribute," she said. "[It's about] what you can do to help foster that growth for them."
Flynn's approach is similar, keeping the conversation productive and goal-oriented: "I probably spend 25% of the time talking about past performance, and goals reached and past behavior, but I like to focus more on what are the strengths, what are weaknesses and where the potential is."
With the future in mind, Chavez points out that a transparent, frequent and collaborative review process could prevent promising talent from leaving down the road. It can even have ripple effects across an organization, according to Donovan, who saw that workers had a clearer vision of their goals when she transitioned to more continuous feedback.
"As a result of our laser-focus on more frequent performance conversations, our employees have a roadmap of what needs to be done and when, and this approach lends itself to higher productivity and a general sense of purpose across the board," Donovan wrote.
SOURCE: Fecto, M. (10 April 2019) "The talent textbook: 4 ideas for giving better feedback" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/the-talent-textbook-4-ideas-for-giving-better-feedback/552276/
Culture is key to attracting younger talent, but you can make it mutually beneficial
According to an article in Harvard Business Review, six in ten millennials are ready to change jobs at any moment, creating a great opportunity for recruitment. Read this blog post to learn how organizations can attract younger talent.
Millennials with jobs are more likely to be looking for a new job than any other generation in the workplace, according to a Harvard Business Review article by Brandon Rigoni and Amy Adkins. They report that six in ten millennials are ready to jump ship at any given time.
This is a challenge for keeping workers, but it’s also a golden opportunity for recruitment. For the most part, these are bright workers who are deconstructing the great American job search.
Firms can seize this opportunity by honing their HR brand to appeal to younger generations and balancing this with assessments that assure a good match with most new hires.
Compensation is still important, but millennials are looking for jobs that are in sync with their values and can help define who they are. Getting hired has become a matter of personal identity.
As an employer, you are being evaluated more than the candidates. How will your firm make the cut? And if you do, will you hire the right people?
Major corporations have overhauled their approach in the scramble for talent.
- General Mills began using virtual reality headsets to allow candidates to see themselves working inside General Mills, including using the company’s gym.
- Two Volvo engineers recently built a Baja racer for collegiate competitions to attract young engineers to the legacy truck builder.
- General Electric’s humorous “What’s the Matter with Owen” television campaign said bupkis about GE products. Instead, Owen touted the company’s geek chic HR brand as a bespectacled new employee being effusive about his job of programming life-changing technology to help people.
- McDonald’s eschews traditional media to engage 16 to 24-year-old candidates via Snapchat, offering “Snaplications” and video clips of young McDonald’s employees talking about their jobs.
Not everyone can serve up cold brew coffee in a corporate cafeteria. Still, there are practical steps most firms can take to enhance their HR brand for millennial and Gen Z values.
Does your organization operate with a high degree of transparency? Is it socially responsible? Do employees have paid leave for volunteer work? Are young team members valued and encouraged to contribute to relevant and visible projects and products?
Are there ways to present your products and services to be more relevant and important to society? For example, a textile manufacturer might not actually make exciting products anyone can buy, but its fabrics are used in the space program or to save lives in emergency rooms. Maybe a law firm has a pro bono clinic for low-income families.
Yes. HR needs to make your employer brand attractive to these talented but fickle job seekers, but this doesn’t mean that everyone who’s attracted to your organizational hipness is going to be cool for your company.
There are two tools to make sure both parties get what they want. The first is assessments.
Talent acquisition assessments greatly improve your odds of hiring an individual who is well matched to your company’s needs. The best are scientifically valid and EEOC compliant, focusing on the candidate’s motivation and likely work traits as compared to the job description. You’ll save a lot of money in not having to re-hire for a position.
The second tool is the “Shared Success Model,” which is a process hiring managers can establish that aligns individual development plans with organizational strategies to identify where overlap exists and where there may be gaps.
It has five components:
- Individual needs—What is important to the candidate, both professionally and personally? What aligns with their values and interests?
- Individual offer—What value does the organization bring to the candidate?
- Company needs—What does your organization require for success now and in the future? What do you need from your leaders and employees?
- Company offer—What is your corporate value proposition to the candidate? What opportunities do you provide? What culture do you provide?
- Plan—Analyze the gaps and overlap between each quadrant. Develop and implement a plan that balances your grid for shared success.
As younger candidates seek more of a cultural match, the Shared Success Model is a good way to make sure the culture you promise is a culture that supports your mission and business model.
SOURCE: Warrick, D. (8 October 2018) "Culture is key to attracting younger talent, but you can make it mutually beneficial" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.benefitspro.com/2018/10/08/culture-is-key-to-attracting-younger-talent-but-yo/