by admin | Nov 14, 2022 | Human Resources
First came the pandemic, which was followed by The Great Resignation and the labor shortage, and now quiet quitting. Employers are challenged to attract and retain employees among all these upheavals, keep them engaged, and maintain a psychologically safe work environment.
Higher wages, hiring bonuses, increased benefits packages all sound like possible solutions. If your current retention strategy is not having the impact you want, it’s time to think beyond traditional financial incentives. Consider exploring emotional compensation, which Michael Lee Stallard, cofounder and president of E Pluribus Partners, a think tank and consultancy, believes will be increasingly important and valued by employees.
Emotional compensation is based on meeting seven universal human needs that allow people to thrive at work. They are respect, recognition, meaning, belonging, autonomy, personal growth, and progress. Stallard says that the resulting sense of connection from having these needs met engenders positive emotions and makes us feel connected to our work and our colleagues. Developing this connection dramatically increases an organization’s chance of retaining employees.
Let’s look at each of these universal needs with a focus on what managers can do. Since they work closely with their team on a daily basis, they are well positioned to take action. There are so many things that leaders in organizations can do to create a culture of respect. It starts, of course, with living the values. Beyond that:
Show Interest
Precisely, show your current staff the kind of interest you took in them when you were recruiting them to join your organization regardless of their tenure or how well you think you know them. Ask sincere, open-ended questions and listen carefully to their responses. You will probably be amazed at what you learn.\
Ask Their Opinion
Since they are closest to the work, ask about possible solutions to real problems. Listen to their answers and give feedback. If you can’t adopt their idea, let them know the business reasons why. If you can use it, give them credit publicly and if possible, reward them too. Being asked lets employees know you value their knowledge and intelligence.
Recognition
One of the simplest things a manager can do to express employee appreciation and recognition is to say thank you—and it costs nothing to do so. With all the hand wringing over employees quitting their jobs, employee recognition should be paramount on every manager’s task list.
Let them know their work matters. Let people know often how much value they and their work bring to your organization. Let them know they make a difference. Send personal, handwritten notes. You’d be surprised how powerful that can be. Silence, on the other hand, can send a negative message—that the work and the worker has no value.
Meaning
We all want to do work that matters—that has a purpose. Every employee wants to feel a connection to their organization’s mission and values.
Explain where they fit. Let each employee know how their work fits into the work of your department, and how the department’s work fits into the organization’s strategic goals, mission, and values. For example, describe to support staff, like procurement or accounting, how their work supports the sales and engineering departments, which bring in the organization’s revenue.
Talk more about why you do certain things in your department. It can make a big difference if people know not just that some tasks must be done but why those tasks are significant to the big picture.
Belonging
Make room for light-hearted fun in the workplace. When people are having fun, they are happier, friendlier and open, fostering workplace friendships. Workplace friendships taps into the basic need for a sense of belonging and removes any feeling of being in competition with coworkers.
Light-hearted fun has such a positive impact on productivity, engagement and retention. It lets employees know that they belong—belong to a team and an organization that values their emotional well-being. It also unleashes creativity, which can result in higher productivity.
Autonomy
Autonomy and flexibility are critical for retaining staff, especially now. In this world of virtual work, autonomy allows for a degree of control over one’s working conditions and processes. It includes the flexibility of where work and when is performed. Managers must examine what work hours, scheduling, and patterns are best for individuals and their teams; how work is organized and accomplished; and how flexibility impacts productivity and outcomes to meet the needs of all.
Employees must still be accountable to get the work accomplished and be available for meetings, calls, and other collaborative efforts.
Assuming you can offer your employees more autonomy, listen to them and understand their needs. One thing we learned during the pandemic: If employees are treated in a supportive and humane way, productivity doesn’t suffer.
Personal Growth
Employees want the opportunity to learn and grow. It’s one reason cited for them leaving their jobs. And it’s so much easier to recruit internally than externally, especially in tight labor markets.
Create a Learning Culture
Encourage your employees to be lifelong learners. It starts by modeling lifelong learning behaviors, such as sharing podcasts, TedTalks, and YouTube videos. Consider developing a resource library including books, articles, webcasts, podcasts, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Encourage employees to contribute to this resource and to share the things they are learning. It will keep them engaged and expand their professional and personal interests.
Progress
You’ve made growth opportunities available to your employees, but how do you know if progress is being made? Follow up with an employee once they’ve taken advantage of an opportunity. Ask them what they’ve learned, what needs clarification, if others might benefit, and how they might apply what they learned.
Such questions and feedback provide managers an opportunity to consider new assignments, projects, or tasks—perhaps a growth assignment—that could help prepare the employee for future roles with the organization, a way for an employee to progress.
Of course, employees must take responsibility for their growth and progress, but managers guide them through this journey and help set realistic career goals.
According to Gallup, employee engagement has declined for the first time in more than a decade, from 36% engaged employees in 2020 to 34% in 2021—and now 32% in 2022. What better time for organizations to focus on how to create the connections people want and organizations need?
By Cornelia Gamlem and Barbara Mitchell
Originally posted on HR Exchange Network
by admin | Nov 8, 2022 | Hot Topics, Human Resources
“What gets recognized gets reinforced, and what gets reinforced gets repeated.”
-Unknown
In today’s ultra-competitive work environment, the companies with the winning edge are the ones that have the best-trained and well-skilled staff. However, even the best employees cannot perform well (or may even jump ship) when they are not motivated enough. Praise and recognition provide the kind of positive experience that can increase employees’ morale, motivation and engagement, and renew their commitment to their organization. This is why employee praise and recognition in the workplace has to be an innate part of any company’s culture.
What is Employee Recognition?
Employee recognition is the acknowledgment of a company’s staff for exemplary performance. It is the timely informal or formal acknowledgement of a person’s behavior, effort, or business result that supports the organization’s goals and values and exceeds normal expectations.
Why Employee Recognition Matters
One of the biggest motivators for employees is to be held in high esteem by their peers. The best way of earning this respect is to be acknowledged for being good at what they do.
An increasing number of businesses are becoming proponents of mutual recognition, claiming that asking colleagues to praise each other helps to create a genuine atmosphere of positivity and fuels a sense of belonging and purpose. Employees thrive off acknowledgement and praise. Especially in the age of hybrid and remote work, it is not uncommon to experience feelings of isolation, so knowing that your co-workers appreciate you and value your input can help to effectively combat this.
But don’t just take our word for it – there’s plenty of data to back up the value of employee recognition programs.
One of the benefits of recognition and praise is that it helps create employee engagement. Workers won’t be engaged if they feel like nobody cares. A manager who praises is one who’s paying attention to the work and the worker. That personalized attention is crucial for the creation of an emotional bond between employees and the organization. And the strength of that bond, in turn, is behind higher productivity, lower turnover, fewer mistakes and accidents, and ultimately, higher profits.
Another benefit of employee recognition and praise in the workplace is that it can be the foundation of cultivating a culture of self-improvement. One of the best methods for staff recognition is to provide them with opportunities to learn and make themselves better at what they do. To take it a step further, it is also ideal to incentivize learning – reward those who have taken the time to focus on self-improvement.
There are countless ways to put employee recognition in the workplace into action; however, it all begins with company culture. A winning employee recognition program starts with having a company culture that advocates appreciation for top performers. This can be the foundation for solid staff engagement, continuous employee development, and an integral part of the company’s retention strategy for the future.
by admin | Sep 20, 2022 | Hot Topics, Human Resources
By all accounts, the United States is likely heading into a recession. Already, the country experienced two consecutive quarters of declining gross domestic product (GDP), which is a red flag.
Other signs include inflation, the cooling down of venture capitalist’s investment, a declining stock market, and varying interest rates. However, a strong job market persists, which throws off the usual domino effect, according to CNBC. Still, how people feel about their financial prospects matters, too.
Most Human Resources leaders are preparing for the worst. A recession is marked by an extended downturn in the economy, layoffs, unemployment, and lower consumer spending. For HR, recessions are magnified because they usually face the downsizing of their own department and the need to layoff talent, make due with less, and face the obvious consequences, which include having to constrict budget and lose talent pipelines for succession.
Therefore, Human Resources is usually keen on recession-proofing their business, and many have begun to do just that. Here are some ways to prepare for the coming storm:
Stick to the Budget
The pandemic made employees rethink their lives and shift their priorities. As a result, many were willing to leave the workforce unless employers transformed how they worked. The consequence was the Great Resignation. Whether one likes or hates that title, there is no question that the phenomenon of people quitting and a resulting labor shortage, which is also dependent on changing demographics, are real.
HR responded with signing bonuses and hefty pay raises. They plussed perks and benefits. With an oncoming recession, however, some of these tools for attracting talent must be curtailed or flat out stopped. Those with the future in mind are cutting back and avoiding risk when developing budgets.
Prioritize Employee Engagement and Experience
Smart Human Resources leaders recognize that the pandemic earned them their seat among C-suite executives. Business leaders are well aware that the talent churning out the work is vital to their success.
In many ways, employee engagement and experience is even more important in a recession. If there are layoffs, the people who remain become paramount. At the same time, they are likely overworked and stressed by the economy, not to mention the prospects of their organization. HR should step in and show gratitude and do what it can to keep up morale. Writing thank you cards and lending an ear are affordable ways to connect with workers.
Be Transparent
Transparency is of the utmost importance during a recession. Obviously, organizations keep their plans for layoffs under wraps until the last minute. However, they should be able to offer honesty to the employees who remain.
Obviously, they are going to be concerned for their own future, what these layoffs mean for the future of the company, and how their work life will change from this point on. Will they be doing more work to fill in for those who had been let go? Are there going to be freezes on annual raises? How grave is the situation?
Human Resources is the conduit for communication with workers. HR leaders can communicate forthrightly and encourage executives to do the same. They can set up town halls, similar to the ones they planned during the pandemic, with business leaders in their organization. This kind of approach is crisis management 101.
Be Prepared for Layoffs
Layoffs are already happening at a number of companies, including Peloton, Netflix, and Ford. Google announced a hiring freeze. So, realistic HR leaders will prepare themselves for the possibility of stalemate at best and layoffs at worst. Also, they will avoid layoff mistakes, like informing people they are being let go in a cruel way like, for example, over a group Zoom meeting. While no one wants a recession to happen, smart HR leaders are getting ready for the worst case scenarios.
By Francesca Di Meglio
Originally posted on HR Exchange Network
by admin | Sep 13, 2022 | Hot Topics, Human Resources, Workplace
Many young employees from Gen Z are taking to TikTok to express their frustration about the workplace and profess their practice of quiet quitting. Essentially, they are remaining at their jobs and still receiving paychecks and benefits, but they are sticking strictly to their the job descriptions and maintaining precise schedules.
On social media, some are bragging about doing the bare minimum because of their disappointment in their employer or simply as a lifestyle choice. Some older workers are suggesting this is a result of laziness or lack of ambition. Many in Gen Z argue that they are simply doing what is expected of them contractually, and nothing more, to maintain work-life balance.
The Phenomenon of Quiet Quitting
More than 3.9 million TikTok posts (and presumably counting) have addressed this phenomenon. Many explain that quiet quitting is really about setting boundaries and improving work-life balance or fighting the proverbial man.
“You’re not quiet quitting,” says Claudia Alick in a TikTok video. “You’re just resisting being stolen from. Unfortunately, that’s how capitalism works. That’s how they make a profit. The profit comes from you not getting paid your full value.”
But some career experts and even other TikTok users suggest that young employees are playing with fire. By never going above and beyond, they are making themselves vulnerable to layoffs at a time when budget is a concern. In addition, they might rule themselves out of promotions down the road.
Emily Smith, a TikTok user, reminds people that their boss might not know all their tasks or how long it takes for them to get everything done. She suggests having a conversation about what to prioritize and how to spread out the deadlines is a better route than quiet quitting. Others suggest this practice is bad news for employers.
“Experts say any lack of motivation among a company’s youngest workers can become a troubling sign. ‘Organizations are dependent on employees doing more than a minimum,'” says Mark Royal, senior director for Korn Ferry Advisory, according to a Korn Ferry blog.
What Should HR Do?
HR leaders should investigate the phenomenon of quiet quitting to determine whether it is happening at their organization. After all, a lack of employee engagement is top of mind in Human Resources. Thirty percent of those who responded to the latest State of HR report said employee engagement and experience is their top priority.
The pandemic forced people to rethink their lifestyle and reprioritize work. For many, family, friends, and personal pursuits have replaced work in the top spot. Some say that quiet quitting is the new checking out. Regardless, the Great Resignation has shown that employers, who do not take these shifts in culture seriously, will pay in a loss of talent.
At the same time, the top consequence of the pandemic, according to the respondents of State of HR, was burnout. That may be why TikTok users are leading the charge to demand better working conditions. Certainly, HR leaders are responding with different benefits, such as unlimited PTO and zen rooms, and policies like devising rules that limit calls and emails outside of work hours.
Even Goldman Sachs, famous for its 100-hour work weeks for associates, is requiring employees to take paid time off. Salesforce is testing work weeks with no meetings. Others are experimenting with four-day work weeks, flexibility in when and where employees work, and company-wide vacation days. This experimentation is part of the transformation of work that everyone is witnessing post pandemic.
The question becomes whether quiet quitting is an afront to employers that will degrade their ability to serve customers and innovate or is simply a new way of working that puts people’s personal lives and wellbeing above everything else. Perhaps, this is just part of the cultural shift and workplace transformation the country has been experiencing since the start of the pandemic.
By Francesca Di Meglio
Originally posted on HR Exchange Network
by admin | Sep 5, 2022 | Hot Topics, Human Resources
“Financial Wellness” is getting a lot of buzz these days — and for good reason! After all, today’s workforce is overwhelmed by mounting student debt and other rising expenses.
Financial wellness refers to a person’s overall financial health and is one of many factors that makes up employee wellbeing. We often think of wellbeing as related to physical and mental health, but financial stress impacts a person’s health as well. When employees are stressed about their financial situation it effects their productivity, attendance and engagement in the workplace.
Organizations are continually looking for ways to stay competitive and have an advantage in attracting and retaining qualified employees. With the current economic conditions, people are looking for jobs that offer more than just paid time off and health insurance. Therefore, many businesses have turned their focus to employee financial wellness programs to add value to their compensation packages. More than 51% of organizations offer financial wellness initiatives and 29% of companies are interested in launching financial wellness programs. Offered as a voluntary benefit, financial wellness programs send employees a valuable message, letting them know their company cares about them and is ready to extend a helping hand to those in need.
The goal of implementing a financial wellness program is to support and improve the financial health of employees by providing tools and resources to help them manage their current finances, protect against unforeseen financial hardships, and plan for a financially secure future.
Let’s take a look at some of the financial wellness solutions available:
- Educational Programs – An education-focused program that equips employees with the information they need to plan for emergencies using current employer benefits. Financial guidance sessions and financial education workshops are available via live chat that teach employees about budgeting, credit scores, retirement savings and savings accounts.
- Employer Matching Programs – A matching program involves an employer matching a certain percentage of contributions that employees make to their 401k, student loan repayment or a 529 (college savings) fund.
- Financial Assistance Programs – These programs focus on alternative stressors employees might not have considered as a factor in their financial health. These include medical bill zero-interest financing, medical bill negotiation, relocation assistance and stock options.
- Insurance Options – Employers can consider including alternative insurance programs such as long-term care insurance, pet insurance, adoption and fertility insurance, accident insurance, critical illness insurance, and life and disability insurance.
Over the past year, employee financial distress has intensified, which means it’s the perfect opportunity to bring financial education into your workplace. It won’t be easy. Reducing financial stress and improving financial health for your employees takes a comprehensive plan, but it will be worth the investment. Your commitment to prioritizing financial health will help improve the lives of your employees. Financially healthy employees are healthier and happier; they are better for the company’s bottom line.
by admin | Aug 23, 2022 | Human Resources, Workplace
The Great Resignation has paved the way for resignation remorse, according to a number of publications. In fact, 72% of the 2,500 U.S. workers surveyed by The Muse said their new role or company was very different from what they had been led to believe. For HR leaders still dealing with a labor shortage or simply trying to fill open positions, this news could help.
Ideally, HR professionals are tracking employees and can address issues before the valued employee decides to quit. Predictive analytics can prove beneficial in these cases. However, sometimes, there’s nothing HR can do, until and unless ex-employees realize they made a mistake.
Learn about how HR can capitalize on resignation remorse:
Court Departing Talent
Some employees are not a good fit, and it might even be a relief when they give notice. However, there are many employees that HR professionals and hiring managers wish would stay. Always make a person’s exit a positive experience.
To start, express disappointment when a valuable employee quits. If possible, see if there is any way to get him or her to stay. Conduct an exit interview to pinpoint the reasons the employee decided to quit. Sometimes, the answer will be as simple as receiving a higher salary. Often, there’s not much HR can do about that kind of resignation.
However, there are other reasons people leave jobs. Maybe they need more flexibility because they are parents. Perhaps, they want to a job that gives them more of a sense of purpose. HR professionals have an opportunity to share ways they could have accommodated those needs.
Even if the employees are still going to move on, they will know of the possibilities should they ever want to return. Of course, let them know they could always come back to interview again should there be openings that might be a good fit.
Create an Alumni Network
Speakers at the recent Employee Engagement and Experience event talked about the employer brand. One of the ideas that many companies have had is staying engaged with employees who leave the company. Previously, the idea was simply for the employee not to burn a bridge.
However, now some employers are reaching out and staying connected to former employees, who have had positive experiences. They ask them to spread the word about their time with the organization and recommend job candidates. HR leaders can stay connected on social media to promote the company and follow the achievements of their former employees. Sometimes, these groups of alumni form organically online. It’s just a matter of discovering them.
Stay in Touch
At top business schools, people always talk about proper ways to network. One of the biggest bits of advice is to connect with people regularly for the sole purpose of checking in. In other words, one should not reach out simply for transactional purposes.
HR professionals can come up with a schedule for dropping a note to stellar, former employees who could be an ambassador. Of course, they should follow them on social media, and they can celebrate new achievements. The point is to develop a relationship, so this ex-employee can either promote the employer brand or return to the company at some point.
Actively Recruit Alumni
Not every former employee is going to be a good fit for a comeback. Some will, however. They come back to the company with certain benefits to the employer. They know the basics of how the place works. Even if things must have changed while they were gone, they still have some contacts and basic institutional knowledge. They will not require as much training. Most importantly, they have likely picked up new skills in their time away.
As a result, HR professionals should use this alumni network to actively recruit for positions. Even if the alumnus is not interested, he may be able to connect you to others, who would be a good fit. The bottom line is that HR professionals should stay connected to former employees as part of a complete and innovative recruiting strategy.
By Francesca Di Meglio
Originally posted on HR Exchange Network
