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Understanding the Relationship Between Mental Health and Workplace Productivity

The Coronavirus took a significant toll on employee mental health. According to a Qualtrics study of more than 2,000 employees from March to April 2020, 42 percent of people believe their mental health declined since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

As employees attempted to find stability at the start of the pandemic, productivity declined. That study also found 28 percent of workers reported difficulty concentrating, and 20 percent said tasks took longer to complete.

This highlights the critical relationship between mental health and a productive workplace. Here are a few things to keep in mind as an HR manager or business leader as you look to return to pre-pandemic productivity levels.

Remote Work Does Not Decrease Productivity

A lot happened at the start of the pandemic. Not only the shared massive work from home (WFH) experiment, but local businesses closed (including gyms and other places of personal solace). Schools went virtual, and many cities went into some form of lockdown.

As such, most workers experienced significant disruptions in all aspects of life, understandably leading to a decline in workplace effectiveness.

Remote work isn’t necessarily the cause of changing performance levels. Owl Labs’ 4th annual State of Remote Work report found that 77 percent of respondents thought working from home would make them happier after the pandemic ended.

What’s more, 23 percent of full-time employees are willing to take a pay cut of 10 percent or more to work from home at least part of the time.

It’s not just employees who stand to benefit from remote work; 74 percent of survey respondents said they’re more likely to stay with an employer that allows them to work from home. Moreover, WFH could also help with recruiting, as 59 percent said they would choose one potential company over another due to remote options.

Consider how your employees handled remote work in the past six months—not just in the early months of the pandemic. If their productivity increased, it’s likely because the stress from the pandemic’s first few weeks passed as your team member’s adapted and became more comfortable and happy working from home.

American Workers Were Already Stressed

While it’s easy to pin current stress levels on COVID-19, Americans experienced high-stress levels before the pandemic—which means their concerns likely aren’t going to fade away once it ends.

A 2019 survey by Gallup reported that 55 percent of Americans reported feeling stressed, while 45 percent said they feel worried a lot.

Even if the pandemic were to end next month, your team members would still likely report high-stress levels. Not only are your workers concerned about their own careers and lives, but the financial situations and lives of their loved ones.

Understanding the pervasive nature of stress can help you mitigate causing any unnecessary work-related anxieties.

Poor Mental Health Can Lead to Physical Issues

Whether your team plans to go back to the office or not, mental wellness still needs to be a key component for managing employees. Our mental state affects how we think, feel, and work. Not only can poor mental health lead to lower productivity, but it can also lead to higher rates of absenteeism due to physical issues.

According to the experts at HealthMarkets, stress can lead to:

Heart disease and hypertension
Asthma
Depression
Headaches
Digestion issues

Another recent survey from Ginger.io found 43 percent of employees reported becoming physically ill due to workplace stress.

Bottom line, poor mental health leads to physical manifestations, which hinders your teams’ performance.

Promoting overall wellness starts with focusing on mental health. As a manager, you can make sure employees aren’t experiencing stress due to their roles and responsibilities. Explain mental health benefits and encourage staff to take advantage of them, which brings us to our next section.

Offer Employees Mental Health Support

When it comes to mental health support, don’t hesitate to offer assistance or simply start the conversation. The Qualtrics study reported that 57 percent of workers are comfortable with their manager asking them about their mental health and 41 percent want them to ask. Yet, many leadership teams are falling short. According to the Ginger.io survey, 63 percent of workers think their company could do more to support their mental health.

Workers also felt like companies that invest in employee mental health will be more resilient, with 93 percent of respondents agreeing that “companies that survive COVID-19 will be those who support their employees’ mental health.”

This also ties back to the Owl Labs survey mentioned earlier. Workers who feel cared for will give back to employers with loyalty and increased productivity.

Check-in with your team, ask them how they’re doing. Most importantly, help them understand their benefits and the mental health support that’s available. Encourage those struggling to take PTO and seek assistance.

Prioritize Mental Health to Increase Productivity

Too often, managers try to optimize employee workflows in order to increase productivity, especially in this WFH environment. However, sometimes the answer to increasing productivity isn’t to push forward but rather to step back.

Focusing on the mental health of your team members can increase their longevity and make them more resilient in times of crisis.

The pandemic has taught employers and employees a lot about each other. Teams understand how their leadership addresses and supports mental health, while employers comprehend how stress limits productivity.

Hopefully, we remember these lessons long after the pandemic ends and create a healthier workplace.

Succession planning for competitive advantage

“In the fast-paced, highly competitive commercial environment firms, of all shapes and sizes, need to be proactive, strategic and precautionary in ensuring current and future leadership needs are met.” Succession can be a manageable and smooth transition or a major firm crisis. Staff mobility and staff turnover are inevitable.

People get sick, they die, they resign and retire, they get fired and headhunted, they immigrate. The glaring question is, why are so many firms not planning for this inevitability?

What should this plan look like?

The inevitability of every key position needing to be filled at some foreseeable and/or unforeseeable point in time necessitates a strategic and well-thought-out plan (including contingency plans) for the eventual replacement of these roles either internally or externally.

Start with the identification of key jobs, positions, and individuals critical to the business continuity of the enterprise (currently and potentially in the future).

Search and find multiple suitable successors for these key jobs, positions, and individuals based on different types of competencies.

Analyse your talent holistically. Compare probable successors and rank them.

Initiate all talent transitions through manager self-service actions like promotion, transfer, and job change.

Create talent development plans to bridge any skills deficits and create a rich pipeline of available talent.

At the end of the day, the selection, hiring, and induction of staff into a new role (and in some instances a new firm) very often takes an unanticipated amount of time so you want to be sure you have your best foot forward at all times.

5-year plans change constantly, abruptly, undoubtedly

A succession plan is a living, breathing plan. It should be a continual and integral part of the ongoing strategy of the firm.

Succession planning ought to be ready to meet both unexpected and planned changes in talent needs and available talent and geared towards constant realignment with ever-changing business needs.

Some of the talent needs for the future do not exist yet. Roles become obsolete, firms grow, and consequently, growth and replacement positions need to be filled.

A solid succession plan prepares your company for all contingencies, with a constant aim of business continuity and mitigating talent mobility risk.

Common mistakes

First, don’t assume that the second in command is the best potential successor.

Never forget that roles and firms are constantly changing. Succession planning is future-orientated and needs to account for a changing business environment.

The critical success factor to any succession plan is matching the firm’s future leadership needs with the career aspirations of potential successors. The “perfect” successor may not be interested.

The best way to retain talent is to provide constant learning and growth opportunities. Succession planning needs to trickle down to lower levels in order to create a pipeline of talent.

You can’t always rely on finding a “ready right now” successor. The best candidate might just be someone who will be ready soon but needs a bit of extra induction and higher-level learning opportunities to groom them.

Every firm is different. There is no one size fits all succession plan, even within an industry or sector. What you need is a plan tailored to suit your firm’s distinctive culture, structure, and priorities.

Succession planning is an investment in your company’s future!

And finally, don’t half-heart it, don’t put it off, don’t flog it off to HR, and don’t push it off until next week.

Doing More with Less: How to Embrace Volume and Emphasize Experience

“Doing more with less” is one of many buzzy phrases being bandied about in 2020. At the same time, as organizations commit to running leaner in this “new normal,” the volume of applications per job opening continues to escalate.

This leaves talent acquisition teams with the unenviable task of reviewing and responding to the increased volume of candidates, each vying for the same limited number of positions. It’s frustrating for everyone involved: recruiters with only so many hours in the day, hiring managers eager to fill openings, and stressed out candidates looking for a job.

On the surface, it would appear that something needs to give, especially as recruiters look for ways to make hires without creating extra work. But doing more with less doesn’t have to mean sacrificing the candidate experience.

Fill in the Black Hole from All Sides

Since the last major recession, technology has come a long way. From clumsy applicant tracking systems to advanced solutions with intelligence and automation built-in from end to end. For the last few years, much of the conversation in recruiting has focused on how these tools can help recruiters reclaim time in their day and improve efficiency. And it’s true, that is absolutely what’s been happening – until Covid-19 showed up.

Now, the market has shifted, and recruiters find themselves inundated with applicants rather than sourcing from the far corners of the internet. Those job seekers who are applying are getting antsy, discouraged by current economic conditions, and hoping to hear back from potential employers quickly.

That’s where the candidate resentment comes from, a metric that was already rising before the pandemic struck – which is why the first step in embracing the volume involves increased communication.

Communication has become infinitely more manageable in the last decade. Take the mass adoption of smartphones, which grew from 35 percent to 81 percent between 2011 and 2019. Or the pervasive introduction of chatbots, now popping up everywhere from retail homepages to customer service centers.

Staying in touch with candidates throughout the process is a must, provided the messages are simple, transparent, and personal. Tech can help here without adding extra administrivia to the recruiting team’s workload, working on setting up checkpoints when candidates hear from the organization: immediately after applying, a week or two later, as they advance, or when the position closes.

Double Down on Quality – and Engagement

Of course, there’s more to delivering a positive experience than just the occasional update. A high volume of applicants necessitates continuous interaction, allowing recruiters to double down on both quality and engagement.

Doing so requires a combination of adaptability and automation. The former for ensuring systems and processes are flexible enough to manage unique workflows while still adapting responsively – the latter for making the entire experience as seamless as possible while keeping candidates well-informed.

Knowing recruiters don’t have a second to spare these days, achieving such results means implementing a cohesive, multi-channel approach that accounts for everything from recruitment marketing to offer letters and onboarding.

Intelligent automation can facilitate pretty much every step of the process, setting expectations along the way, and maintaining the connection between candidate and recruiter. Done well, these types of engagement plans support the evolving hiring needs of the business, building out diversified talent pools and making sure that candidates feel valued regardless of whether they get hired.

With intelligence added into the mix, recruiters can extend their reach, creating targeted strategies for different talent pools and developing a sought-after talent pipeline.

The right solutions make this possible and inject a much-needed element: speed. Speed is everything in today’s recruiting environment. Handling a large volume of candidates will require some level of technology, whether that’s for bulk processing, faster decision making or an improved experience, which leads to one final thought.

What to Look For

Achieving all of the above and doing more with less means rethinking what’s already in place. In some cases, legacy solutions like those mentioned before or the ones that existed during the last major recession, do more harm than good.

Even with updates and integrations, a patchwork of technologies doesn’t necessarily result in the best experience. Candidates continually griping about having to enter the same information repeatedly are not a fallacy – it’s a real, ongoing issue recruiters complain about.

Look for a platform that accounts for quality and engagement through communication, adaptability, automation, and speed. While it might not feel like the right moment to make significant changes, it’s the perfect time to embrace the volume – and a new approach.

Workplace Trends We’ll See in the New Year

As we close out what will undoubtedly be an unconventional year, it leads me to wonder what 2021 will bring. What industry trends will come to light based on the experience of an almost year-long pandemic which has impacted our daily business and personal lives? What movements and shifts will remain as remote work settles in as the new norm?

While 2020 brought us a year that no one could have predicted, we have a chance to chart our course and plan accordingly as we move into 2021.

Before sharing what I believe are the most important trends shaping our industry in 2021, let me first acknowledge remote leadership’s vital importance. This in itself will not be a short-lived trend, but instead, will become even more rooted in our regular business practices as we push forward into the new year.

It is critical to remember that as employees continue to work from home, and more companies evolve this circumstance into a permanent organizational structure, leaders must find ways to connect and engage with their workforce regularly, using technology to its fullest potential. Corporate monthly emails won’t cut it.

Leaders will need to interact more frequently to maintain a company culture that attracts and keeps its top talent. We all need to realize that 2020 changed the way we do business, not only with our customers but also with our employees. And it is our responsibility to adapt to this change, becoming dynamic virtual leaders who set positive examples for our employees.

With that guidance in mind, below are what I believe will be the top three trends that advance our industry, and even more so evolve the way our country and the world executes business operations in 2021 and beyond:

The Increased Availability of Talent.

With the rise of permanent remote positions, the good news is that geographic barriers no longer exist for who and where a company can hire. This new reality opens up the landscape of previously unattainable talent, who before were limited due to geographical restrictions, yet possessed the desired traits to complement your business.

This opening of doors across the country and globe makes the talent pool both larger and more competitive. Additionally, the focus on hiring the best talent regardless of location will provide the added benefit of serving as a retention strategy for top performers. Since employees who work remotely have flexibility as to where they live, the concern over location is eliminated.

Looking into 2021, top performers can and will work for your organization, no matter where they are.

A Rise in Gig.

Individuals are increasingly looking to work on their own terms, and I expect the gig economy will witness a sharp spike in numbers in 2021. This is already evident in the passage of CA’s Prop 22, which classifies drivers for app-based transportation and delivery companies as “independent contractors” rather than employees – a type of model anticipated to go nationwide.

As a matter of fact, it is predicted that in the new year, gig jobs will outnumber traditional office-based, nine-to-five jobs. As flexibility becomes a priority for many formerly full-time, office-bound employees, companies will see the fastest way to reach their desired results is by using a mix of contractors, freelancers, and full-time employees.

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion are at the Forefront.

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) is more important than ever. With a volatile year coming to an end, companies need to put an even greater focus on DEI in 2021 – identifying their individual and collective perspective, identity, values, and culture, and then evaluating how the dynamics of DEI can adapt and strengthen their business strategy.

Just as remote work and the gig economy have established themselves as mainstays, so has employees’ desire to work for a company that promotes their core values openly, addressing how leadership, management, and employees collectively contribute to the company’s culture surrounding DEI efforts.

No one could have predicted the events of 2020 and how they would affect our lives, business, economy, and the world. But we can learn from the unexpected, identify how the events of 2020 have forever changed the way we do business, and most importantly, find the positives that may not have otherwise been uncovered.

We now have access to more talent, greater flexibility in our day-to-day operations, and a strong focus on inclusion in the workplace. We can embrace these attributes starting today, knowing they will make our businesses stronger and more successful.

New and Improved Enterprise-level Hiretual

We are looking at the recently updated Enterprise-level version of Hiretual. We’ll go through a bunch of different stuff so you see what it all does. Don’t forget to take a look at the video for more detail!

Let’s start with the dashboard.

The dashboard offers quick access to messaging and insights, as well as reporting. One example of the insights tab is a list of the top majors, titles, and skills for a specific area. Within the dashboard, you can also integrate your email or ATS right into the tool. All very useful, and nicely laid out for easy access.

Build your Booleans

The exciting part is the Boolean string builder. There’s a quick mode. Simply enter a title and follow the builder suggestions to customize your boolean string to your specifications. This is phenomenal. Smart mode allows the AI to do it all for you, or you can also go into JD mode and paste the job description, allowing Hiretual’s AI to parse that data and build the string. Simple and so easy, and puts you more into the driver’s seat when building your searches.

Projects give you access to the AI Sourcing tasks. Here you get the full power of their AI. Start with a job title, and the tool will begin to prompt you to further refine, with suggested skills, length of experience, distance, as well as keywords you’re looking for. You’ll see in the top right corner the number of potential matches. Within the sample candidates, you can let the AI know if their suggestions are or aren’t a good fit.

This will allow for better suggestions, finding more candidates that are like your “good fit” selections.

Good tool. The redesign is sleek, and also gives you more control over your searches.

On Recruiting Women in the Tech Industry

It is no secret that the tech industry is male-dominated and rife with gender bias. Companies like Google and Yahoo have recently come under criticism for biased hiring and promotional practices. Although studies show that women make up over half of the overall workforce, 75% of technical positions are still held by men.

As companies, there is a lot that can be done to bridge this gap and move toward a more balanced, inclusive workplace.

The effort to recruit women in the tech industry is something that has to touch every part of an organization for it to be truly successful. Securing C-level commitment to gender inclusivity and building a thorough plan of action are two of the major steps required to move forward in overcoming these disparities.

From widening your geographic search area to changing how job postings are written, bringing more women into tech is a deep-seated problem. A lack of women in advanced positions within companies is a two-sided issue that has to be addressed from both an upper level and a ground-floor hiring point of view.

While HR professionals must investigate how they are recruiting for positions, managers must be aware of unconscious bias in promotions and training. Additionally, high-level executives must be invested in bringing more women to their level, establishing a truly functional presence in upper management.

Gendered Language and ATS Systems

Writing job postings and calls for applications is a delicate balance of making positions and companies attractive to potential applicants, and being transparent about the challenges of the position. You want to draw in the most qualified candidates while being upfront about the requirements of a job. However, the language employed in the advertisement for technical positions is consistently male-oriented.

For a long time, studies have shown that we use extremely gendered language to discuss men’s and women’s achievements and capabilities differently.

Words such as “aggressive,” and “dominant” are going to attract more male applications than job postings that utilize more gender-neutral or feminized language. Keywords to focus on include words such as “creative,” “compassionately” and “sensitive.”

Being aware of the language used in your job postings factors not only in the conscious choices that job searchers make but the effect that ATS tracking has on hiring practices.

Most companies use some variation of applicant tracking systems (ATS) to manage the often high volume of job applications received for a single position. Since these systems rely on your use of keywords, context, and requirements, how you build your job postings is even more important than ever before.

With job searchers working to build their resumes to break through ATS algorithms, websites like Indeed and LinkedIn use it to suggest job postings to potential employees.

This means that the implicit bias in the job postings that you are creating carry through across your recruiting platforms, reducing the diversity of your applicant pool.

Organization-Wide Initiative

The effort and dedication to building a more gender-diverse workplace cannot only be approached from an HR hiring perspective. C-suite executives, managers, and recruiters alike must be committed to building a more inclusive workplace.

This starts with the impression that a company gives to potential applicants as well as the public, and continues all the way to the elevation of women to high ranking positions within an organization.

Addressing gendered language, and the effect it has on your ATS requirements is an excellent start to diversifying your hiring practices. You can take this a step further in our new and increasingly remote workplace by hiring the best employees regardless of geographic location and timezone.

Not only does this broaden your potential choices, but it allows you to evaluate applicants based on their eligibility, compatibility, and skills first and foremost.

In the time of the coronavirus, companies are having to adjust their hiring practices to include flexible work schedules and locations. As this progresses, take it as an opportunity to overhaul how you appeal to potential applicants and evaluate their eligibility for a position.

By opening up remote working opportunities you can offer your organization new and innovative ideas. However, these initiatives only work if you are transparent and open about your hiring practices and culture.

Transparency

There is a lot of talk in hiring circles about transparency, whether it is in regards to set practices, gender proportions in the workplace, or compensation. However, transparency means being willing to share the plans and methods you put in place to correct and reverse gender bias and being willing to fail.

Companies such as Unilever and Salesforce have made their strategies extremely accessible, and have openly shared their strategies and the results, both good and bad.

Transparency also means being aware of how different groups search for jobs and addressing as many concerns as possible to attract a wider pool of applicants. Studies have shown that men and women search for jobs differently, with men focusing mainly on compensation statistics in their searches.

Women, however, look for more nuanced information regarding company culture, the experience of female employees, and how promotions are determined. Building transparency around hiring, promotion, compensation, and recruitment practices into accessible company materials means including information on a variety of points, not just compensation statistics.

With hiring methods also having to change in response to public health concerns, companies have an opportunity to update their overall approaches and seek out new methods that will increase the diversity of their organizations.

By building organizational transparency, changing how jobs are advertised, and engaging all levels of management, companies can begin to attract more women to open positions. They must follow this up by providing active support to employees, including providing mentorship opportunities, promoting female accomplishments, and encouraging innovative ideas.

By actively supporting your employees, you can carry your diversity initiative past the recruitment phase, and help create a more inclusive industry.

Employee Resource Groups Can Open Doors And Minds

2020 was a watershed year for so many reasons – some good…some bad. One positive that emerged from the summer was the cultural conversation shifting to that of equality and justice in all facets of life. This important dialogue rose to prominence in the workplace as well, where we collectively took a hard look at diversity at all levels of business.

My company, DailyPay, actually did a study this summer and it was revealed that 60% of those polled look for a company with diversity in leadership when deciding on when job searching, and 63% of respondents say having women in corporate senior leadership roles is good for business. Those numbers are certainly encouraging.

However, a great way to ensure your voice is heard in your company is to set up an Employee Resource Group (ERG). Having a safe space to share and voice opinions and create professional growth opportunities is empowering. ERG groups have the ability not just to inspire and enlighten its membership, but the company as a whole.

When employees feel like they have a seat at the table, it strengthens their connection to the company and their coworkers – and it makes it a more attractive place to work. ERG groups also are a great resource for your company to create events and internal programs that will help educate and inform the staff which can have a major impact in connecting with a wider and more diverse audience.

An inclusive and welcoming corporate culture

But it’s not just about driving revenue. It’s about establishing an inclusive and welcoming corporate culture which are among the top priorities for today’s job seekers.

From Day 1 at DailyPay, championing diversity has been a value we keep sacred. The first (ERG) – DailyWomen – which I co-chair, was formed back in 2016 when the company had just 22 employees and was in early development stages.

The following year DailyGay, a group striving to strengthen and broaden relationships among LGBTQIA+ team members, their allies, and the organization at large through sustained, healthy and supportive dialogue, was born.

In 2019, The DailyNoire Employee Resource Group was formed for African American/Black employees who work to create an inclusive environment for all African American/Black employees at DailyPay via diverse initiatives, networking, cultural events, and social gatherings.

A foundation of open communication

These groups have provided a foundation of open communication with senior leadership that is critical during these challenging times. It’s so important to know that your ideas matter and to have a supportive community within the company.

On a personal level, DailyWomen has given me an opportunity to share what I’ve learned during my personal career path and hopefully provide some guidance to the next generation of female business leaders in Fintech, an industry previously dominated by men. But those days of exclusivity are hopefully ending in all industries. Because when we tell prospective candidates about our company’s diversity and the importance of ERGs, it signals our commitment to inclusivity.

Because today, through the empowerment of the ERGs, our members, and our allies, there are no barriers that can’t be broken.

Join our Webinar on December 9th!

If you’d like to learn more about how to form an ERG, register for the December 9th Webinar.

“Make Your Voice Heard: How to Form an ERG” is a timely webinar focused on giving you the tools to effectively form employee resource groups & affinity groups. Panelists will share best practices and lessons learned, and help attendees to understand all of the company’s stakeholders, including consumers. Moderated by William Tincup, President & Editor-at-Large of RecruitingDaily.

Register and join the conversation!

The tell-tale signs of a toxic workplace

Recruiting new members of staff is always a two-way process. You are looking for the right potential employees and assessing their strengths and weaknesses, but they are also evaluating you. The best candidates will have other options available to them, so you need to avoid giving off any signs that they might regret coming to work for you.

There are many such warning signs that businesses can give off during the recruiting process, even as early as at the job description stage. Using insubstantial and vague phrases can be taken to imply that there is a lack of clarity either about the role or within the company in general.

When it comes to the interview stage, this lack of clarity can come through in the way that process is managed. Did it take a long time to arrange the interview? Was the candidate met with confusion when they arrived? Did the interview not start on time? Were the interviewers unprepared and bluffing their way through the questions? All of these are major red flags.

A key part of a job interview is where the tables are turned and the candidate gets to ask their questions. This is a chance to assess their enthusiasm and curiosity of course, but it is also their big chance to find out if they are risking joining a toxic workplace. If they ask about the company’s values and the interviewer can’t describe them with any confidence, what does that say about how those values are embedded?

Even worse, if the interviewer’s answers are vague or evasive, that implies that they have something to hide about the role or the workplace culture. If you want to attract the very best talent, these are the warning signs you cannot afford to give in your recruiting process.

Find out more in this guide from Resume.io.

Recruiting from the Middle of Nowhere

Recruiting from the Middle of Nowhere: 2020

What’s old is new again. I have been thinking that a lot this year. The remote workplace is finally mainstream. Not by choice, but by necessity. Let’s look at what’s different.

Companies that once fought the trend – some of the largest brands in the world – are finally joining in, spare a few.

What’s the fuss, and why did it take a pandemic to right the ship? To give employees what they have been requesting for years? Was it lack of control, lack of trust, lack of technology, losing face-to-face collaboration, or some combination of all these things?

10 years ago, I wrote a two-part article entitled Recruiting from the Middle of Nowhere. It was meant to promote to our industry that recruiters and talent sourcers could work from literally anywhere and still maintain productivity, important relationships with customers, peers, and candidates.

My geographic location was rural northeast Pennsylvania. And my plan worked…at least for a while.

Two things happened that put the genie back in the bottle.

The first was The Great Recession. That was followed almost immediately by Carly Fiorina, CEO of HP, recalling all remote employees back to the workplace.

That appeared to be the dog whistle that queued other employers to do the same, and many seized the opportunity. It was a “see, I told you so” moment for those who grudgingly went along with remote workforce experimentation.

HP’s announcement started a cascade of ‘return to the office’ announcements from other companies which ultimately threw the brakes on the remote workforce movement. And for the most part, sent it back to the deep freeze for years.

“Virtual Recruiters Achieve Virtually Nothing”

Really? That was one of the first pieces of color commentary I received from my article. I found the ignorance of the statement stunning. I wondered what was driving it, and I soon found out. It turned out to be my brother-in-law. He was a Human Resources VP at a major tech company in APAC at the time, and was also in the early stages of a divorce from my sister. Unbeknownst to me.

In addition to stalking me on social media, he also unleashed some of his acquaintances to provide ‘feedback’ on my work. How nice.

Despite that, I learned several things. First was that you cannot take early criticism of your work personally until you understand what is driving it. Unfortunately, I also learned that there were also others out there that genuinely held similar views.

Secondly, some remote workforce managers probably made poor hiring selections for their teams. Or they failed to effectively manage them.

The third lesson was that there were still plenty of managers who were thrilled with the performance of their remote teams, and that was all I needed to validate the premise of my article.

“Location. Location. Location.”

It may be true in real estate, but less so regarding proximity to your present or intended employer’s physical location. Many of the companies I have dealt with over the years prefer to have you within driving distance of the site for occasional on-site meetings.

However, if your manager is open-minded and the corporate culture supports it, anywhere is okay with them. If you have the skill-sets they need. In other cases, not being near can make the difference between getting an ideal job or not getting it.

Many will argue this point, but I have lived it for 15+ years now and have been informed several times that I live too far away to be effective “We really need you to at least be on the west coast for this position”, etc.

Being de-selected from the hiring process over distance doesn’t make sense anymore. On the other hand, when you are chosen for a remote role over all others, and when you bring that much to the table that distance doesn’t matter, it’s a great feeling.

Nonetheless, I think we will soon see a wave of both people and companies wanting a blend of on-site presence as we return to a new normal.

Socialization is an important workplace component. The “shine” of full-time remote work will begin to fade for many soon if it hasn’t already.

For a deeper look at current remote workforce charts and statistics, look at a report by buffer on the ‘State of Remote 2020’

10 Years and a Pandemic

So, thank you 2020. If for nothing other than shifting the mind-set regarding the remote workforce in an incredibly positive direction.

I never thought it would take 10 years and a pandemic to finally move the needle to where it should have been years ago. It has also taken an evolution in online meetings and collaboration platforms to get people to understand and adapt to the concept.

That perhaps is a larger piece of what was missing in the past. But here we are at long last, stepping out of the tunnel and into the light.

And to set the record straight once and for all…virtual recruiters can accomplish virtually anything!

Managing Cost Per Living Pay For Remote Workers

Remote working has been steadily rising over recent years. Due to the pandemic, more people than ever are now working from home. This has shown, to all those who previously had differing opinions, that remote working is viable and can have benefits for companies.

It is a trend that will continue to rise, but from that comes a conundrum – should remote workers be paid different salaries based on their location and cost of living?

Geographical Location

When working remotely, your geographical location greatly impacts your cost of living. If you’re living in a metropolitan area such as New York or London, you’ll have a higher cost of living than if you were in a remote rural area.

Companies such as Facebook recognize this and remunerate their remote employees based on their location. Mark Zuckerberg recently said that around half of Facebook’s workforce is expected to work remotely in the next five to 10 years.

He continued “Our policy here has been for years — is already — that [compensation] varies by location…We pay a market rate, and that varies by location. We’re going to continue that principle here.”

Employees will be able to move from the expensive Bay area to anywhere they choose, but it could well come with a pay cut depending on where they move to.

This approach does have its benefits. For one, it widens the talent pool available to companies. They aren’t limited to those who live in the local area, or those who are prepared to move for the job. This allows access to the best candidate for the role, and is not limited to the best candidate in a certain location.

In turn, the spectrum of people you will have applying for your roles broadens, bringing more diversity and new perspectives to the table which could otherwise have been overlooked. Secondly, it allows companies to be cost-competitive, offering a package that reflects the going rate in the prospective employee’s area. Balancing their costs as they are able to pay more for those in metropolitan areas and less for those in other areas.

However, others argue that it is unfair to pay people different amounts for the same job solely based on the remote worker’s location. If they are adding the same amount of value to the company, and completing the same tasks at a high standard, then why should they be penalised due to their location?

This tactic can also have a knock-on effect on the morale of workers. If some workers feel like they are being paid significantly less than others, this may have a negative effect on their work output and attitude. When the salary has been set and the job has been accepted, ensure that you’ve carried out thorough DBS background checks on future employees before they start their role, to make the joining process as smooth as possible.

General Market Trends

Other companies turn to the general market to decide what to pay a remote worker. With this approach, companies examine the standard going rate for a specific role across the market. Here, salary is based on factors such as seniority, responsibility, experience, and skill set.

It removes the fluid nature of the pay scale and makes it more fixed, focusing on the specific job role rather than the employee’s location. Doing this imbues the role with value no matter where the employee is working from, and should instill a sense of pride in the worker. Having a positive effect on their work output as they feel a valued member of the team, despite being remote.

If they feel satisfied with their salary they are likely to put more effort into their role. As with most roles, there is likely to be a banding system depending on the role, this allows space for some flexibility based on the specific employee.

Legal Considerations

When deciding how to set salaries for remote workers, it is key that you think of any potential legal issues the decisions may cause. For example, if your policy ends up discriminating against a particular group or gender, say targeting working mums under an assumption that they are “more likely” to choose to work remotely in order to spend more time with their children and work around child care, this could result in unwanted legal action.

If your policy ends up impacting a specific group significantly more than others, even if unintended, you could find yourself in a difficult situation. Pay equity is still a vital consideration.

Conclusion

It has become increasingly clear with the flexibility that remote working affords workers, and the cost benefits it has for employers, that it is a working model which is here to stay. Whatever route you decide to take with remote workers’ salaries, it is important to be transparent about how you have reached that decision and why.

Communicate your decisions with prospective employees so that they feel respected and valued. This will help to keep morale and trust high. When creating salaries for remote workers, remember to be as fair as possible, and as competitive as can be.

What HR Can Learn From The Social Dilemma

Netflix’s latest documentary The Social Dilemma” tells a story of data gone mad. Of data being used to personalize ‘the truth’ so that everyone’s truth is their own to the point. The idea of an objective truth becomes obfuscated – it almost doesn’t exist anymore.

The combination of hyper-connectivity at the scale that comes from social media, the addictive habits of engaging with it, and the incredible ability to personalize what we see, listen to, and believe. This combination sometimes creates a feeling of satisfaction at best (think Spotify and the beauty of being able to listen to the music I like without any effort) and at its worst, a fractured society.

So what’s the relevance of that to HR?

HR has been on this journey to do the opposite. To introduce an objective standard of truth, given the risks that come from personalized decision making, when it comes to things such as hiring and promotion.

The risk of hiring decisions being made by individuals based on their own views means we see hires being influenced by unconscious biases – something that can be easier to identify than fix. ‘Mirror hiring’, and companies that hire for “culture-fit” also leads to homogenous company culture and mediocre output and products.

Consider the decline of so many legacy Fortune 500 companies over the last 50 years. Do you think Kodak and its ilk would have crashed as quickly if they had a genuinely diverse set of opinions and experiences at their leadership level?

Is it no coincidence that in The Social Dilemma, most of the protagonists (if that’s the right word) sharing their regrets and insights on ‘how the heck did we get here? ‘were mostly young white men?

From my own experience of being HRD at a leading digital tech company, engineers were hired based on two data inputs: their coding ability, and their ‘fit’ with the team. The former is readily tested using objective tools, but the latter is largely tested through having coffee chats with the team.

Or to put it another way – 100% subjective; 0% objective data. Is it any wonder then that you end up with more of the same when you use the personal opinions of humans to drive these decisions? People are so scared of data amplifying bias, and humans can be pretty good at it too.

Bias in the recruiting process has been an issue for as long as modern-day hiring practices existed. In order to address some concerns, the idea of “blind applications” became popular a few years ago. With companies simply removing names on applications and thinking that it would remove any gender or racial profiling.

It made a difference, but bias still existed through the schools that people attended, as well as past experiences they might have had. Interestingly, these are two things that have now been shown to have no impact on a person’s ability to do a job.

Away from computer screens and smartphone addictions, when it comes to hiring, HR needs to do the very thing that social media has rendered mute. It has to ensure that there is objective truth on every candidate. It has to do this for every new hire, every promotion.

Ironically, it is what social media weaponized – ‘data’ that can only, truly help us achieve this. I talk often about “objective data” – that is data that has been collected without input bias – and it is only this data that help us disrupt bias that comes from putting humans in the decision-making seat.

This objective data builds a truly holistic picture of an individual when helping inform hiring decisions. Decisions that will shape a company’s culture, and it’s future. The data seeks to understand who you are. Not the school you went to, or the degree you hold, but how you think and behave, and most of all your intrinsic traits.

It was Facebook’s homogenous culture that encouraged technical brilliance over ethical thinking that ultimately created the issues discussed in The Social Dilemma. If only they’d used their skills to invest in objective data that set aside its technical bias and hired for humanity. We might not be questioning it in the way we are.

Data Miner’s “Easy Button” update is here

Data Miner’s new “Easy Row Finder” update makes Data Scraping simple and easy

Data Miner’s update is finally here! There has been a need for an easy-to-use, painless way to scrape data, and Data Miner has come to the rescue. They have made the tool so simple, that basically “a caveman could do it.”

What’s new? Well, you can pull data off of any website with one click. If you need to map your columns and rows differently, there are easy recipes to follow with zero coding experience needed. The addition of the Easy Row Finder to their custom recipes is a huge time saver. What used to take a minimum of 15 minutes to create (at least for LinkedIn) can now be done in less than one. There’s no need to test and check and make sure everything works. It just does.

Easy. Simple. Quick.

Plus, Data Miner is available as a FREE Chrome extension. You can get it here. For a look inside the tool and how to use it, check out Dean’s video below!

Combat to Corporate: Recruiting, Onboarding and Retaining the Veteran Employee

Recruiting, Onboarding and Retaining the Veteran Employee

When looking for new members of their team, employers are often looking for people who bring a unique and valuable combination of skills, experience, and character traits. Military veterans should be at the top of their list.

Particularly during the pandemic environment, where businesses are operating with uncertainty, prior military talent brings skills of resilience, problem-solving, leadership, and tenacity to navigate turbulent times.

Let’s take a look at some of the best practices for sourcing, onboarding, and retaining a veteran employee.

Sourcing and Recruiting Veterans

Social distancing guidelines have created challenges for people working from home. They have also presented certain obstacles for employers who have been looking to introduce veterans and service members to their companies.

Tips for finding and hiring veterans include:

Where are the veterans? Participating virtually by introducing your company and jobs to workers online (in virtual career fairs and online job boards) has become a popular option to replace the in-person experience in 2020.

Veterans today are increasingly skilled in participating and representing themselves in these forums. Additionally, they come ready with questions and resumes to pursue career opportunities.

Build your awareness. For a recruiter or hiring manager unfamiliar with military jobs and experiences, it’s crucial to help them become versed in basic military terminology. They should understand specific differences, such as: what it means to be ‘enlisted’ vs an ‘officer’, as well as what a ‘weapons mechanic’ or ‘logistician’ is trained to do.

What’s more, knowing which leadership skills that someone who’s managed 150 Army privates has developed. Or, realize what an ‘MOS’ (military occupational specialty) means and how the experience of multiple ‘PCSs’ (permanent change of station) affects a military family.

Overall even a cursory understanding of military jargon and skills gives the employer an appreciation of transferrable experiences veterans bring to the private sector.

Speak their language. First, ensure your application process and website attract the veteran candidate. These individuals are typically driven by values and commitment to the mission. As a result, they will seek meaningful work after separation from the military.

Confirm that your recruiting materials promote the values and culture of your company. Additionally, ensure that you highlight your commitment to serve (your clients, communities, industries, etc.)

These will matter to a veteran seeking employment.

Onboarding Veteran Talent

Onboarding has changed dramatically due to the remote work environment. No longer will you be able to walk your veteran employee around the office and introduce them to their new team members. However, there are ways to ensure they feel welcome.

Here are some tips for onboarding veteran employees:

Brief them on the company culture. Undeniably, the military culture is very family-like. They live, eat, and work alongside people who have become their close friends and family. Teach your new hire about your company culture. What do people do for fun? How do they stay connected and maintain high morale? What service projects do employees support?

The more you can connect them to the culture and mission of the company, the closer you bring them into the fold of the talent base.

Set clear expectations. In the military, jobs and tasks are spelled out with granular specificity. Processes are standardized and expectations are not open to interpretation. In onboarding new veteran talent, be extremely clear about the processes, unwritten rules, and systems to be successful at your company.

Similarly, spell out where they should go for help. Encourage them to ask questions during the onboarding process, and show them what a typical career path can look like at your company.

This investment in effort up-front will set them up for success.

Check-in often. Touch base with your veteran employees more often than you might think necessary. The first few weeks on a new job – especially when working remotely – can feel isolating and uncertain.

They might resist proactively reaching out for help or asking questions, but when you check in with them, they could be more forthcoming about struggles or frustrations.

Retaining Your Veteran Talent

As veteran employees grow and contribute to the company, your goal will be to develop and keep them.

As you seek to retain veteran employees, remember to:

Give them opportunities to serve. When someone takes off the uniform, their desire to serve a mission greater than themselves remains.

Enlist them in serving critical initiatives at the company or getting involved in community service to foster their positive feelings for their employer.

Include their family. To veterans, their families have supported their commitment and sacrificed alongside them while on active duty. They continue to be an important support system for them as veterans.

Inviting family members to participate in special events and recognizing them for their service is a great way to build goodwill and show your support of veteran employees.

Leverage their leadership skills and training. When the company or the team struggles, lean on your veteran employee for guidance. They have been battle-tested in unimaginable ways.

While your company may not be facing life and death challenges, their ability to show resilience, adaptability, and tenacity can inspire their colleagues and provide leadership as the company weathers the storm.

To sum it up, recruiting, onboarding, and retaining veteran talent may require slight modifications to your current systems. However, the rewards are exponential in terms of growth, leadership, and value-add to your company.

Best Practices for Successful Diversity Hiring

What’s the secret to great hiring? Over the years, I’ve seen some great and some not so great hiring practices and processes. If you want to build a strong, high-performing, and diverse team (making the best hires), here are some ideas you should consider including in your hiring process.

Please keep these high-level principles in mind as you continue reading:

Transparency is crucial on both sides (candidate and employer)
Understand and accept that different types of people can succeed at every job
A successful match must be made on both sides (candidate and employer)

Okay, next let’s talk about some practices that will remove barriers to finding the best hires for your team.

Include the salary range in your job posting.

It’s shocking how much time is wasted by not being transparent with salary ranges. No one wants to get far along in the interview process, only to find out the salary expectations are not a match.

Your jobs should be market-priced based on the responsibilities, how it fits in your company, and your industry and company’s asset size. Sharing the range in your job posting will ensure that only people who feel the pay is an acceptable match will apply.

Diversity Impact: Stop asking for salary history which can adversely impact diverse segments who may have been underpaid in their prior roles. Pay fairly for your position based on its worth to your company. Don’t base the value on a candidate’s historical compensation.

Include benefits, work environment, and company culture details in your job posting.

Potential employees have different motivations and needs. Understanding your company’s work environment and culture will help them evaluate the job fit beyond job tasks and responsibilities.

Highlight company benefits that speak to your company culture and showcase what’s important to your workforce. Examples include paid time off, short and long-term disability leave, pregnancy/parental leave/adoption support, special veteran benefits, etc.

Diversity Impact: Each employee has different personal values and will need varying types of support depending on their personal situations, family structure, stage in life, or career. Including this content in your job posting or on your career website can help diverse groups of people see themselves within your company.

Experience – don’t make too narrow or wide and allow for transferrable skills.

It’s important to determine what experience and education are essential to perform the role, and what areas you can provide training for.

To allow flexibility in considering transferrable skills or related experience, list your experience requirement like this: Minimum of __ years of experience in _____ or related experience is required.

If your company uses some custom special secret software – don’t list it! Think instead about the foundational experience, like what type of coding language or similar software experience would help them learn your system quickly.

Diversity Impact: We all traveled a different career path. Building your team with a diverse set of personalities, backgrounds, and experiences will enable you to capture insights you may be missing in order to adapt and thrive in the future.

Allow for flexible qualifications by considering a combination of education and experience.

We traditionally list a level of education required to be “qualified” for a role. Do you consider work experience comparable to education? What about certifications?

By allowing a combination of education and experience, you enable candidates with varied career paths to qualify for consideration. To allow flexibility in educational background, list your education requirement like this: Bachelor’s Degree in ______ or a related field. Or an equivalent combination of education and experience is required.

Diversity Impact: By allowing a combination of education and experience, you open the door for more diversity in your applicant pool. Not everyone can afford or will choose a traditional college experience. Depending on the candidate, they may have more or less education, including certifications, degrees, or even on the job training.

The depth and length of a candidate’s experience are equally important.

Instead of looking solely at the number of years someone has done a job, seek to understand the depth of experience held within those years. Be careful not to overstate the number of years required to qualify for your job.

Instead, focus on the depth of meaningful experience you are seeking through interviews or skills assessments.

Diversity Impact: Don’t exclude younger candidates, those moving to a new field/industry, or those who are “overqualified”, instead take time to evaluate and understand their experience.

Limit the use of preferred qualifications and the number of knowledge/skills/abilities (KSA).

Often managers build a wishlist of the ultimate candidate in their mind. We call this the purple unicorn syndrome. Candidates often share that they think their application will be passed over if they don’t meet ALL qualifications. Therefore they didn’t apply.

Only list the required minimum qualifications and eliminate all the other noise. You can give extra credit to candidates with preferred qualifications during the evaluation process.

Diversity Impact: Candidates self-evaluate in different ways. For example, many women will not apply for a role unless they feel 100% qualified (see chart below). Candidates may also avoid applying if the qualifications are unclear.

Why Women Don’t Apply for Jobs Unless They’re 100% Qualified from Harvard Business Review

Don’t miss out

When striving to attract a diverse applicant pool, be careful and thoughtful about what you include in your job postings. Include your salary range in your job posting to save time and make better matches.

Talk about your benefits, culture, and work environment to help everyone see how they can find a place in your company. Don’t exclude people with different work history, industry experience, or educational backgrounds.

Instead, allow flexibility in your experience qualifications (options to accept transferrable skills and related experience) and accept a combination of experience and education. Don’t assume years of experience equate with a depth of experience. Only list the absolute minimum qualifications for your role to allow for a diverse group of candidates to apply and be considered.

These recommendations will open your application to a more diverse applicant pool. Diversity hiring matters. A more diverse hiring practice will bring unique perspectives and strengthen your teams, so don’t miss out.

After all, building the right team will make or break your company.