communication – Page 11

February 19, 2019June 29, 2023

Do You Know How to Spot an Employee at Risk for Violence?

Early Friday afternoon, Henry Pratt Co. informed one of its employees, Gary Martin, of his termination.

Shortly thereafter, he opened fire with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson, killing five of his co-workers and wounding five police officers. Martin himself was the sixth casualty, killed in a shootout with police.

After the news of this tragedy broke, reports surfaced of Martin’s history of violence —s ix prior arrests by the local police department for domestic violence, and a decades-old felony conviction for aggravated assault.

All of which begs the question, should this employer have known that Martin was prone to violence, and, if so, should it have taken added measures in connection with his termination.

A criminal history of violent arrests and offenses is not necessarily a predictor of workplace violence. Still, there are certain warning signs for which an employer can look to help determine whether an employee is at risk for potential violence.

According to ESI Group, these warning signs include:

A chronic inability to get along with fellow employees
Mood swings and anger control issues
Expressions of paranoia or persecution. Being a “victim”
A history of problems with past jobs and and/or personal relationships
An inability to get beyond minor setbacks or disputes at work
A fascination with guns, weapons, or violent events
A sudden deterioration in work habits or personal grooming
Signs of stress, depression, or suicidal ideation
A major life problem, such as divorce or legal problems

If one more of these red flags surface, it is recommend that you refer this employee to an employee assistance program, for assessment and treatment.

If you are compelled to fire an employee who you think poses a risk of violence, it is recommended that you take further steps to mitigate against the risk of your termination transforming into a workplace tragedy.

ESI Group recommends the following:

Consider a professional threat assessment
Consider using a neutral manager or outside security consultant to carry out the termination
If there is manager or supervisor who has been the object of threats or anger, that person should not be the person to conduct the termination
Have security nearby—not in the same office, but close enough to hear signs of a problem and to act
Do not take a break. There are numerous instances of an employee asking for a bathroom break or time to compose him- or herself, and using the break to retrieve weapons
Wait until the end of the workday to terminate, if possible. This protects the dignity of the fired employee and minimizes the number of employees on hand should a situation escalate
Minimize any reasons why the employee would have to revisit the workplace. Mail a check; have uncollected belongings sent to the person’s home via a delivery service
Allow the person as much dignity as possible, but be brief and to the point. Do not get into a back and forth
Emphasize any severance benefits and outsourcing help that may be available. Some organizations decide they will not contest unemployment or offer the option of resigning.

As with most issues in the workplace, the proverbial ounce of prevention really matters. While there exists no foolproof way to protect your workplace against these kinds of tragedies, a few preventative steps can go a long way to putting you in the best place to deter and respond.

February 4, 2019June 29, 2023

Workplace Wellness Dominates at Employer Forum

One perk of working in a city as big as Chicago is the conferences, big and small, that provide learning opportunities, ideas, and free coffee and bagels in the morning — especially the everything bagels.

The Midwest Business Group on Health held an employer-only forum on wellness, well-being, and engagement Jan. 23, giving me the chance to hear what employers had to say, chat with my table mates informally about workplace health, and listen to several experts speak on different health-related topics.

Many more ideas came up in the seven-hour forum, but here are the major takeaways that any employer should be aware of:

The Workplace Wellness Debate: Ryan Picarella, president of the Wellness Council of America, spoke about rethinking the approach to workplace wellness and building inspired organizations. Even though health care costs are going up and even though organizations are spending more money on health and wellness than before, population health is declining. Something needs to change in wellness strategy.

One topic he brought up was the debate over the value of workplace wellness. He thinks it’s fun to debate, and I agree! The reputation of workplace wellness goes up and down through phases, from something that’s celebrated to something that gets analyzed in “Workplace Wellness Programs are a Sham” articles. Where does the truth lie?

I happen to land on the more skeptical side of this (as I do with many topics), unlike Picarella who is more optimistic. That aside, one point he brought up is hard to argue: No matter what side of this debate you’re on, what we can agree about is that having happy, healthy employees is important, and something needs to be done to improve employee health.

He gave a lot of behavioral-science-based ideas for improving wellness programs, like by thinking about what motivates people, how environmental factors impact employees, and where employees’ sense of purpose lies. Workplace wellness programs need a foundation that addresses people’s basic needs like food and shelter. A program that addresses something like the importance of nutrition or going to the gym without acknowledging that some people won’t be able to focus on that if their priority is keeping the lights on or putting food on the table? That won’t do.

Another idea he shared is simple, but I find it to be strong. It’s one of those statements that’s obviously true, but I can see organizations and people not following it in practice in more areas of business than just wellness. More wellness activities and programs aren’t always better, he said. Rather than think about adding another thing, and another thing, and another, think strategically about the value add.

Persuasion Vs. Manipulation: Part of this event was a roundtable discussion about the role of trust in wellness. When someone communicates to you, the message may sound like persuasion or as manipulation, depending on how you feel about that person. Even a neutral message can read as manipulation if you do not trust the party providing the information.

Everyone in the room had discussions with their tables and then with the whole room about how to build trust in the workplace.

I love this discussion because there are so many deterrents to trust now, like with data privacy. Bring in wellness programs to that topic, and you get health data privacy, which is something people can be understandably sensitive about.

Without going into too much detail, the audience response here was interesting. One person spoke about employees worried about where their biometric data was going. The organization responded to this concern by making it crystal clear to employees what the company could see, what they couldn’t see, how the data was protected, and what they’d need to talk to the vendor about for answers.

Another audience gem: One person suggested including compassion in your messaging, and making sure your vendors do, too. At the organization, some employees had complaints about how rude a vendor was in answering questions and addressing concerns. The organization responded by reaching out to the vendor with this issue and suggesting that the call center employees go through compassion training.

In conclusion, be direct, transparent, and comprehensive.

Also, my initial big-picture reaction to this issue of trust: Isn’t a certain amount of skepticism healthy? Why should any employee blindly trust their employer? How much trust is realistic for employers to expect?

A piece of career advice that has stuck with me over the years is that even though loyalty and working hard are important, you need to look out for yourself. Don’t blindly believe that your employer always has your best interests in mind. If you feel guilty about quitting when you need to move on with your career, remember that at the end of the day if an employer comes across financial trouble, they may very likely lay you off. It’s just business as usual. Both sides can respect each other but acknowledge the reality that their employment contract is business, not personal.

The idea I’m trying to get across here — as somebody who sees that direct correlation between trust and loyalty — is that employers should want and expect employees to ask questions, be curious and even be skeptical when it comes to workplace matters that concern them. It gives both sides a chance to build a professional level of trust.

What do you think? What wellness-based conversations do you think more employers should be having with one another?

January 25, 2019June 29, 2023

Labor Issues a Costly Concern During Acquisitions

When a company is considering a merger or weighing the idea of an acquisition, it is crucial to assess the impact on operations and, specifically, on labor and employment issues.

Deal attorneys and bankers focus on the underlying value analysis and purchase documents, which clearly are important.

However, liability for labor and employment issues can be created by acts or omissions and rarely is avoided solely by virtue of indemnification clauses or seller warranties in deal documents.

Put simply, our legal system operates in large part to protect the “little guy,” which in the employment context, means the employee, not the company. This means that, despite the iron-clad separation of entities from a financial perspective, if operations continue following deal closure, an acquiring entity may be held liable for workplace obligations agreed to by the seller-predecessor or for acts or omissions creating liability prior to the close of the purchase.

The Employee’s Right

How can this be, you ask? Remember the little guy. If they felt like they were wronged before the deal closed, they will chase both companies (especially if the selling entity was in financial distress). From a legal standpoint if, from our employee’s perspective, nothing changed after the deal closed — same physical office, same managers, same processes — it is possible the buyer may be found liable for the wrongdoings of the predecessor entity.

The idea is that a company should not be able to escape liability to its employees solely by changing its corporate name and closing a deal. Someone needs to make sure the little guy’s wrongs are righted. The way the courts often do it is by extending that liability to the “new” entity. The question is, how does “NewCo” avoid this? Ensure labor and employment are key components of due diligence, including the following:

Wage and hour. If you are the seller, conduct internal policy and practice audits on wage and hour issues as part of due diligence. These audits can reveal existing procedural violations that could mushroom into “bet the company” class actions if not cured (or expressly carved out of the purchase price!). Some examples of such issues are pay stub compliance, meal/rest break issues, and employee or contractor misclassification. One of the most frequently overlooked areas of exposure is unpaid vacation or paid time off for employees of the selling entity — all of whom would technically be terminated (and thus owed these monies) in an asset purchase. Even if the buyer hires every one of them.

Employment agreements. Know your obligations to employees, no matter the role. High-level executives who are key to the transition often have change in control or severance provisions in employment agreements that trigger significant payouts in an asset deal. If the buyer wants to retain these folks, the terms of new employment should be agreed-upon before closing. The buyer also should be conscious of any restrictive covenants — if key personnel are departing as part of the deal, make sure you are protecting your assets by limiting their ability to go across the street and start a competing concern. Even in California, noncompetition arrangements are available for limited purposes in the context of a purchase or sale of a business.

Turnover/hiring practices. Prepare yourself for WARN Act obligations, which require extended notice/payout periods, even if employees are not going to miss a day of work because they are being hired by NewCo. Diligence should include a discussion of which entity will be handling WARN and COBRA notices. And once NewCo takes over, to help avoid the type of pass-through liability described above in the context of an asset deal, it should follow standard hiring practices for each of the “old” employees. Assess them like any other new hire, and ensure all paperwork is completed to establish the new business relationship.

Labor union issues. Make sure you know about the seller’s union agreements or activity. Ask whether there have been organizing drives or union activity. If there is any organized labor, ask to see all collective bargaining agreements and review all grievances. The CBAs may contain clauses obligating the buyer to assume the terms contained therein and the seller to expressly disclose the potential of a deal. If you are not planning to transition the organized operations to NewCo post-close, you may be responsible for posting a bond to cover the withdrawal liability for the multi-employer pension plan into which the seller previously contributed. This can be hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars, and it is held in escrow for five years.

Immigration. Understand your employee base. Does the selling entity have employees for whom it has sponsored work visas? If so, there needs to be an assessment of transferability and a discussion regarding that process. Does the deal involve international payments or taxes or transfers of operations that will necessitate analysis of non-U.S. issues?

Any company considering a merger or acquisition is acutely focused on the potential effect on its balance sheet from a pure numbers standpoint. It is axiomatic that a business’s largest asset (or liability) can be its workforce. Remember that effectively transitioning operations requires careful planning and educated decision-making as to how, or if, NewCo will be adopting the prior workforce and the policies and practices that applied to it. In order to make responsible decisions regarding the value of any prospective transaction, and the risks associated with it, both sides should look beyond the balance sheet to the people on the ground.

As these issues highlight, diligence regarding matters of potential exposure stemming from the labor and employment function is crucial when assessing the true net impact of a potential deal on your company’s bottom line. The little guys can have a huge impact; don’t overlook that in your focus on the paperwork.

January 11, 2019June 29, 2023

Public Sector Workplaces Turning to the Cloud

When Alex Smith was hired as the chief human resources officer for the city of Memphis in 2016, she had never previously held a public sector job — one of the reasons she was selected.

City leaders wanted to bring fresh eyes to the team to address the ongoing problem of how to attract and retain the best talent to city jobs. Smith found that many of the city’s human resources processes were still paper-based and data was stored in siloed databases, which added time and confusion to hiring and talent management.

“I knew we needed to automate some of these processes,” said Smith, who previously held private-sector HR jobs with Brightstar Corp. and Target Corp. One of her first suggestions was to implement a cloud-based HR technology system that would streamline hiring and better manage candidates and employee data. After some negotiating, the chief information officer and head of finance agreed, and they adopted a cloud-based human capital management system from workplace software giant Oracle.

“It was a huge win,” Smith said.

The technology eliminated many of the manual tasks like copying addresses into multiple databases and producing monthly trend reports.

“Now I can focus on tasks that matter the most and I can track hiring data in real time,” she said. It also streamlined the candidate experience and helped her expand the city’s social recruiting and brand recognition. “It is helping us to be more proactive in attracting talent,” she said.

A few years ago, this kind of story — of a public sector agency investing in cloud-based HR technology and social recruiting platforms — would have been unusual. The public sector has a reputation for being slow to adopt HR technology to empower workers and streamline HR tasks, said Sean Morris, a principal at Deloitte covering human capital trends in the public sector. “There is a history of under-investing in human capital by government due to limited budgets.”

Public sector HR people also don’t have a seat at the funding table, which means there is no one to champion their cause, said Sean Osborne, vice president of product management for public companies for Acendre, a cloud-based talent management software company that serves the public sector. “We often find that HR doesn’t have the budget or authority to effect real change.”

Even when these agencies have funding for technology upgrades, the siloed nature of government agencies and opposing funding priorities can quickly push HR investments to the end of the line, Smith added. “If HR is competing with the police or fire departments for project funding, police and fire will always win.”

This lag effect is about more than just money. There is also a change management challenge. In government, many senior leaders and IT staff have been in those roles for years and they have a set way of doing their jobs and making decisions. Moving to the cloud is a completely different way of managing technology and data, and there is a lot of resistance to change, especially from employees who fear their jobs will be at risk.

Technology and Talent Are Getting Old

These delays have had a long-term impact on recruiting talent management trends across the public sector. Many public sector agencies still rely on paper-based recruiting and onboarding steps, which are cumbersome and can add weeks to the hiring process. “Millennials and Gen Z don’t understand why it would take that long,” Morris said, noting that the negative experience may cause them to look elsewhere for work. These organizations also lack tools and transparency to effectively support career development, or to use people analytics as part of business and talent decisions. All of this is making it difficult for public sector agencies to attract and retain talent, said Morris. “That has put them in the situation they are in now.”

That situation is a rapidly aging workforce and a recruiting environment that makes it difficult to attract and retain young talent. Data from the Office of Personnel Management shows that less than 7 percent of the federal workforce is millennials, even though they make up 35 percent of the workforce nationwide; and 44 percent of federal workers are over the age of 50, which means they are inching ever closer to retirement with few younger staff ready to take their place.

“If HR is competing with the police or fire departments for project funding, police and fire will always win.”

— Alex Smith, CHRO, City of Memphis

This combination of aging talent and outdated technology is making it difficult for them to compete for young talent, said Daniel Torrens, global public sector HCM strategist for SAP SuccessFactors. “Candidates have a lot of choices today, and public sector organizations haven’t been building their brand or engagement strategies.”

These pressures are forcing public sector agencies to shift their attitude about cloud-based HR technology and to prioritize these transitions as they consider their future talent development and workforce management needs.

“Government CIOs no longer question whether they should move to the cloud, it’s all about, ‘How do we get there,’ ” Torrens said.

That’s good news for vendors. Torrens noted that four years ago, these agencies were still paying off their on-premise solutions and wouldn’t even consider a move to the cloud. But in the past 18 months that has changed. “We are having a lot more conversations about how to build a business case and get funding to adopt the cloud.”

Talent Needs Force the Issue

Fully 81 percent of public sector respondents now consider the cloud to be one of the top three technologies for ROI potential, according to the 2018 SolarWinds “IT Trends Report.” Almost as many (79 percent) see cloud as a top three solution to achieve productivity and efficiency benefits.

To support these interests, many public sector organizations, including government, education and health care, have adopted a cloud-first policy to replace legacy systems and design new more agile service-based solutions, said Sherry Amos, director of market development for education and government at Workday.

HR is also gaining more visibility in decision-making as public organizations acknowledge that talent management is a strategic issue that needs to be addressed. “In the past, finance drove all of these acquisitions,” Amos said. “But HR now has a seat at the table.” This is giving public sector HR leaders an opportunity to shape the future of workforce management and the technologies their organizations will use to support them.

This is where the challenge of moving public sector HR into the cloud shifts to the vendors, Morris said. The decision to move to the cloud is only the first in many steps for public sector clients. “If a vendor wants to support customers in the government cloud space, they have to federalize their tool.”

FedRAMP and Title 5

The majority of government organizations have to meet a very unique set of rules and requirements for adopting any cloud-based solutions, and they rely on vendors to adapt their systems accordingly. These include ensuring all data centers meet FedRAMP, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program requirements, which include an extensive list of rules for security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring of cloud products and services.

“Meeting FedRAMP is a high barrier to entry in this space,” Osborne said. Vendors also have to adapt their platforms to meet Title 5 rules regarding administrative personnel, which cover issues such as pay schedules, job titles and priority hiring for veterans and people with disabilities. It can take months and a significant financial investment to adapt current HR platforms for a public sector workplace environment.

The majority of civil government organizations have to meet a unique set of rules and requirements for adopting cloud-based solutions.

Vendors also face a ton of pressure to get it right — because if they screw up things like data security it could result in national security risks. “Any time you move a large swath of data to a new environment you have to do your research because no system is foolproof,” Morris said.

The challenges are significant, but the effort to meet regulations and cater to this clientele is clearly worth it. “The federal government is the largest employer in the country,” Osborne said. And since most of these agencies are only just now considering cloud-based HR technology solutions, the commercial opportunities are bountiful. “The time is ripe right now for public sector organizations to move to the cloud,” said Eva Woo, global vice president of solutions management for SAP SuccessFactors.

Public Sector Tipping Point

The enormous sales potential is causing vendors across the HR technology industry to pay closer attention to the needs of public sector clients and to prioritize meeting regulatory requirements and adapting their customer management processes for a public sector environment. That includes adapting their sales and marketing strategies for longer procurement cycles.

“It can take two years just to secure funding and execute procurement,” Amos said. Public sector clients also tend to pursue a phased approach to their transition to the cloud, starting with low-risk systems to demonstrate safety and performance before moving to more mission critical systems that support HR and finance.

Morris noted that SAP and Oracle were among the first HR cloud-based solution providers to embrace public sector clients and their regulatory and procurement needs, though other vendors have been quickly following suit. He believes that the next three to five years will see a flurry of cloud-based HR projects across the public sector, including local and federal government, education, health care, and other agencies that need a better, faster and more transparent HR solution to deal with their recruiting and talent management needs.

Morris encourages vendors to make the continued investments in meeting regulations and to hire people with experience in public sector HR and IT who can help them navigate the complex procurement process. “The public sector is a massive market, but you have to play the long game,” he said. These agencies know they have to make investments in cloud-based HR solutions, but they will need vendors who can help them get there.

Vendors may also need to provide more IT support and education. City of Memphis’ Smith noted that many public agencies don’t have the head count or expertise to manage a cloud transformation on their own, so they will rely on vendors to fill gaps. “Having partners who will support training and change management needed on these projects is very important.”

These clients may have more needs than private sector companies, but the vendors who can support them and prove they understand how the public sector environment works will be will be best positioned to win these clients in the future.

November 9, 2018September 5, 2023

Meet Your New Colleague: Artificial Intelligence

communication with artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is increasingly people’s interviewer, colleague and competition. As it burrows its way further into the workplace and different job functions, it holds abilities to take over certain tasks, learn over time and even have conversations. Many of us may not even be aware that who we’re talking to isn’t even a “who” but a “what.”

In 2017, 61 percent of businesses said they implemented AI, compared to 38 percent in 2016, according to the “Outlook on Artificial Intelligence in the Enterprise 2018” report from Narrative Science, an artificial intelligence company, in collaboration with the National Business Research Institute. In the communication arena, 43 percent of these businesses said they send AI-powered communications to employees.

Many candidates don’t even realize that they’re not speaking to a human, according to Sahil Sahni, co-founder of computer software company AllyO, which uses an AI-enabled chatbot to speak to candidates and answer questions in the recruiting process.

Based off data from AllyO’s applicants, he found that less than 30 percent of candidates think that they’re speaking to something not human. The other 70 percent either did not disclose what they thought or believed there’s a person behind that chatbot.

AllyO does not disclose up front to the candidate that they are not speaking to a human. However, if they were to ask outright if they are speaking to a person or an AI-enabled chatbot, the system discloses that information. “The goal is not to goof anyone here. The goal is to have the best candidate experience. Lying about it is not the best candidate experience,” Sahni said.

Candidates don’t behave differently when speaking to an AI as opposed to a human, Sahni added.

“When you’re a job seeker, it’s not like you’re calling customer service to complain about something. You’re at your best behavior,” he said. “You tend to be a lot more tolerant, you tend to be a lot more respectful, no matter what the process might be.”

Dennis R. Mortensen, CEO and founder of New York-based technology company X.ai, also has access to conversations between people and machine agents, and his team spent the past four years assembling a data set of more than 10 million emails on these dialogues. Their findings have similarly found that people don’t communicate differently just because they’re speaking to a robot.

Giving X.ai’s own personal assistants Amy and Andrew as an example, he said, “It would be very easy to imagine that I will treat them like machines and remove any level of emotion otherwise applied to a traditional conversation with a human, or that the system as a whole would not leave any room for empathy toward the machine. I am happy to say that it is not the case.”

This is not to say that everyone treats a machine with respect. If people tend to be more aggressive or rude with a real person, that same communication style can be seen in how they converse with a machine. The same trend goes with people who are neutral or overly friendly in how they speak to others.

Also read: Artificial Intelligence, Automation and the Future of Talent Acquisition

How potential employees actually speak to AI is a different conversation than how potential employees should speak to AI, he added. That is, it’s unclear whether how a person treats a machine says anything about how that person would treat other people, and it’s unclear whether something like a person being rude to a machine agent should impact their job prospects.

“We can certainly agree that we do care if it’s a human recruiting coordinator,” Mortenson said. But machines have no feelings or emotions and cannot be offended, so it would be easy to argue why employers shouldn’t care. Ultimately, “I do think we should care even if it is a machine,” Mortenson said. “I understand why we might care a little bit less, but I don’t think we can just discard that as a signal.”

He gave the example of a report which found that this technology could have implications on how kids learn how to communicate and teach them that speaking harshly or impolitely to people has no consequences.

“In real life there’s a penalty to being an asshole,” Mortensen.

Limits and Capabilities of AI in the Hiring Process

Machine learning allows AI to gain knowledge over time and learn from its interactions, much like a person would. That being said, even though it has the ability to mature in its own way and become more humanlike over time, that still doesn’t make it human, and there are certain questions that a person might have to answer, for example, questions about company culture, according to Sahni.

AI systems are capable of taking this into account. For example, AllyO can recognize when a candidate asks a question that cannot be answered by a machine and brings in a person who can answer that question, Sahni said. This way, the candidate can have a positive experience and not feel like they’ve lost out by not speaking to a real person.

“If the process is objective, AI knocks it out of the park. If the process has any subjectivity to it, AI does really well looping in the hiring team,” he said. “A good AI system typically has human support behind it.”

Much like people themselves, AI has the potential for bias, according to Eric Shangle, director of people operations at AI platform Figure Eight, based in San Francisco. For example, Wired reported in July 2018 that Amazon’s facial recognition software system Rekognition confused many black members of Congress with publicly available mugshots and that facial recognition technology’s problem in detecting darker skin tones is a well-established problem.

One reason why a tool may be biased is training data bias, Shangle said. From the developmental side of machine learning, the creator of a tool must input a data set to train the algorithm, and if it does not use a diverse data set, then an employer using the tool may come across bias blind spots.

“What are the biases of this tool?” is a legitimate question for employers who are looking to purchase a machine learning tool such as facial recognition software, Shangle said. A recruiting tool may, for example, have a bias toward college-educated job seekers.

David Dalka, founder of Chicago-based management consulting company Fearless Revival, agrees that AI has its limits. He has a more traditional view of what recruiting should look like, arguing that companies should invest less in technology and more in human recruiters who work at the company long-term, know the company culture and know what kind of person would be a best fit for the job, rather than look for trendy keywords or job titles in résumés.

“I’m not opposed to AI tools if someone built the full data library of all the factors and stopped focusing trivially on things like job titles,” he said.

He suggested that companies should more carefully consider the attributes that matter in a candidate — Do they read any books? Are they naturally curious? What are their skills and degrees? — and consider how they would weigh these attributes in an AI system. Ultimately AI is simply a tool that analyzes content.

“This idea that some wizard will magically create this black box that will hire the right people without you thinking of these things is a fallacy,” Dalka said.

This article originally appeared in Talent Economy.

June 1, 2017June 29, 2023

OMG! Ur Hired!

Millennials and their Gen Z successors have little time for thoughtfully crafted emails or telephone pleasantries.

These digital natives grew up texting and often consider other formats to be cumbersome and outdated. So it should come as no surprise that they think text messages are a completely appropriate way to communicate with recruiters and their future workplace peers.

A recent survey from Yello, the talent acquisition software company, shows 86 percent of millennials “feel positively about text messages being used during the interview period,” and a similar HeyWire Inc. survey shows 67 percent of employees are using text messaging for business-related communications.

While it may seem like an overly casual environment to connect with potential hires, texts offer a lot of benefits — especially in a recruiting setting, said Jason Weingarten, co-founder of the Chicago-based Yello. “Text is faster, it’s easier and it’s more personal,” he said. It can also solve many of problems that create a negative candidate experience, including delays in communication, lack of follow-up and overly generic form letters.

“There are many points in the recruiting process that are very stressful for candidates,” he said. “Getting a quick response or update can ease some of that anxiety.”

It can also be handy for recruits who have another job and don’t want to communicate via their company email or phone, said JoAnne Kruse, chief human resources officer at American Express Global Business Travel. “They are lot more responsive via text, and it’s an easy way to move the process forward.”

A Strange Bunch

Besides convenience, texting is a great way to get a sense of a candidate’s personality, said Jack Barmby, CEO of Gnatta, a customer service software company based in the U.K. His developers and support staff use text messaging to talk to each other and to potential new hires. “It is the underpinning of how we communicate,” he said.

The company uses Slack, a cloud-based team collaboration tool for its text platform, creating different conversations for different projects, teams and topics. Participants post project updates, questions and comments that others in the group can see and respond to.

“It’s more efficient than email because users can quickly scroll through posts, find those that are relevant, without getting bogged down in a bunch of ‘reply-all’ email chains,” he said. There are no formal rules for use, beyond the basics — don’t be a jerk, and don’t post comments that are not relevant to the topic. “Otherwise it’s very organic, and we encourage people to let their personalities flourish.”

Gnatta also uses it as a vetting tool for new hires. When a candidate makes the hiring short list, they are invited to join one of the casual Slack channels, where Gnatta employees talk about what’s going on in their lives. The recruits get a chance to see how the team communicates, and the team gets a sense of their personality, Barmby said. “The ‘shine’ of the interview comes off, and they have a chance to be themselves.”

Inviting candidates to engage via text helps his team determine who will be the best cultural fit for the organization, and it ultimately becomes an extension of the onboarding process. He admitted that some candidates are turned off by the process because it adds a week to the decision, but others love the opportunities to connect with potential peers. “Developers can be a strange bunch, and not everyone is a good fit,” he said. Spending a week chatting with the team is a great way to decide who will fit in.

For all its conveniences there also are risks to using texts in recruiting. Companies need to be thoughtful about the information they share via text and how those communications can be tracked, Weingarten said. “If you get audited, you need to be able to show the source of the texts, how they were sent, and what messaging you used.”

Recruiters shouldn’t put too many rules around how texting is used. Where recruiters are looking for better, faster and more personal ways to engage with talent, texting is a cheap and familiar solution that can add real value to the process.

“Text is the next iteration of how we communicate,” Kruse said. “It can be a hugely helpful way to quickly connect with people, is a style that they prefer, so why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?”

Sarah Fister Gale is a writer in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 3, 2014June 29, 2023

2014 Game Changer: Danielle Weinblatt

Danielle Weinblatt Game Changer 2014 — Danielle Weinblatt

While pursuing her MBA from Harvard Business School, Danielle Weinblatt was looking for a way to solve the various problems she thinks plague the interview process. In 2011 she used her previous experience as a hiring manager to help her launch Take the Interview to eliminate her perceived lack of communication between managers and recruiters, coordination issues and transparency with candidates throughout the interview process.

Weinblatt, 31, created the company’s interview management platform, which uses video interviews and data analytics to help clients make well-informed hiring decisions. More recently, Take the Interview launched a new interviewing platform powered by Google Glass with hope that wearable technology will soon transform the recruiting industry.

February 18, 2010June 29, 2023

Employee Engagement Workers Want Feedback — Even if It’s Negative

The best way to drive employee engagement is for managers to accentuate the positive in employee performance. The second best engagement approach is to focus performance discussions on employee weaknesses. Worst choice: Give no feedback at all.

That is the synopsis of “The Relationship Between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes,” by Gallup Inc. More than 1,000 U.S. employees were interviewed for the report. Gallup broke management styles into three categories, based on employee perceptions:

• Managers who focus mostly on employee strengths
• Managers who focus mostly on employee weaknesses
• Managers who focus on neither strengths nor weaknesses

Thirty-seven percent of employees say their bosses concentrate on strengths, while 11 percent say their managers focus solely on negative characteristics. Gallup says 25 percent of employees surveyed fall into an “ignored” category, in which their supervisors address neither strengths nor weaknesses. Twenty-seven percent of people did not express strong opinions about their managers either way.

The differing approaches reflect back varying levels of engagement. Sixty-one percent of employees in the “strengths” group report being engaged in their jobs. Still, 38 percent of those workers remain disengaged despite the positive feedback, perhaps because they believe the praise is not sincere, according to Gallup. About 1 percent of employees whose managers are focused on strengths are considered to be “actively disengaged,” meaning they may act out on their job frustration.

By contrast, engagement is considerably lower—just 45 percent—for employees whose managers focus primarily on negative characteristics. One-third of such workers are disengaged. Most alarming: 22 percent are deemed to be actively disengaged.

The worst engagement scores can be found in the “ignored” category, where only 2 percent of employees are highly engaged. Fifty-seven percent report being not engaged and 40 percent are actively disengaged.

So while emphasizing strengths gives the strongest boost to engagement, even negative feedback is better than no feedback at all, according to Gallup.

“We found that it is better for managers to dwell on some aspect of employee performance—even if it is a focus on negatives—than to avoid the matter altogether,” says Jim Harter, a Gallup research scientist and co-author of the report.

Harter says negative feedback “at least lets people know that they matter,” while neglecting them can be far worse.

Engagement—or lack of it—carries huge implications for how well companies achieve their business goals, especially amid recession, Harter says.

“The growth trajectory for companies with highly engaged workers, on average, looks really good when compared against their competitors. These types of companies are holding their own while their competitors are dropping off” on key variables, Harter says.

Organizations with high engagement scores exceed their peers in nine areas of business performance, including customer loyalty, profits, productivity, quality, turnover and absenteeism. For instance, organizations with the highest engagement scores in Gallup’s database have an 83 percent chance of achieving above-average business performance. By contrast, organizations at the lowest levels of engagement have a 17 percent chance.

The report is based on Gallup’s Q12 Index, which measures a dozen factors that are known to affect engagement.

Workforce Management, February 2010, p. 10-11 — Subscribe Now!

January 8, 2010January 27, 2020

CDC Urges Swine Flu Vaccinations

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday, January 7, urged Americans of all ages to get vaccinated against the swine flu, saying it wanted to prevent a possible resurgence of the disease in the coming weeks and months.

Though supplies of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine were sporadic during peak flu activity this fall, health officials said there are now enough shots for widespread inoculations.

Health officials said they had 136 million doses available for ordering by the states to supplement what they described as an already ample supply of the vaccine. States could then disburse the medicine to county health departments, doctor offices, hospitals and retail clinics. Most employers with physician-run work-site health clinics would also be eligible to receive the vaccine.

Sixty million people already have been inoculated, but health officials said they wanted to remain vigilant to prevent a resurgence of the flu in the coming weeks and months.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of immunization and respiratory disease for the CDC, said the nation faced a similar situation during a flu pandemic at the end of 1957 when health officials saw a decrease in flu activity and stopped encouraging further inoculations. The deadly flu returned with a vengeance in early 1958.

“They had vaccine, but they didn’t encourage its use and yet they did go on to see that increase in mortality,” Schuchat told reporters during a conference call Thursday.

Schuchat said it was not clear whether swine flu would return but that further inoculations were warranted to prevent people from getting sick. Young children, adults with respiratory illnesses and seniors in particular should get the shot, she said.

Flu activity peaked in late October but remains above normal levels, officials said.

—Jeremy Smerd

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May 6, 2009June 29, 2023

Employee Engagement in Tough Times, Part Two

Tough times make it essential that organizations get the most out of talent at all levels. But those that focus exclusively on employee engagement are likely to be disappointed by the extent to which improvements in this area translate into enhanced performance. To maximize individual and team contributions, engagement alone is not enough. The commitment and discretionary effort offered by engaged employees can easily be squandered if leaders do not also enable them to succeed by putting them in roles that fully leverage their potential and providing them with the workplace supports they need to carry out their responsibilities.

A path to performance
The drivers of employee engagement and employee enablement can be organized around four major themes, representing a “path to performance” for generating business results through enhanced levels of employee effectiveness.

Also read: Employee Engagement in Tough Times, Part One

Organizations first need to clarify strategic objectives to promote understanding and line of sight at all levels. They need to instill confidence in leaders and ensure appropriate market positioning and focus on customers and quality. Next, organizations need to align structures with strategy and ensure that resources, decision-making authority and support from co-workers are adequate to put employees in a position to succeed.

With the structure in place, organizations then need to attend to getting the right people “on the bus,” providing training to enhance employee skills today and development opportunities to build capability for the future. Finally, organizations need to motivate high levels of employee performance through appropriate performance management systems, along with compensation and recognition approaches that reward employee contributions.

Below we highlight key considerations in each of these areas in challenging economic environments.

Key considerations in a downturn
Leadership and direction:
Leaders need to help employees understand that the company has a coherent strategy that will allow it to succeed in the current business environment. They must communicate that both the company as a whole and its individual divisions are making progress relative to strategic objectives, and that all employees have a role to play in helping the organization carry out its plans. To win trust and confidence in a downturn, leaders are well advised to:

• Communicate, communicate, communicate: In the midst of change, communication channels in organizations often dry up. Yet in times of uncertainty, employees are most in need of communication. If leaders are not meeting this need with credible messages, gossip and rumor often fill the vacuum.

• Be transparent: As employees are asked to make sacrifices for the organization, it is important that they have a sense that decisions are being made rationally and equitably and that the changes will result in increased organizational effectiveness and the eventual betterment of the work environment.

• Enlist supervisors: If middle managers and first-line supervisors are supportive of senior executives, they can foster high levels of confidence in the organization’s leadership and direction. If, on the other hand, middle managers and supervisors signal to employees through their words or actions that they lack faith in organizational leaders, employees’ trust can be expected to decline rapidly.

Work structure:
Faced with challenging economic environments and competitive pressures, many organizations have reduced headcounts without reducing the amount of work to be done, resulting in higher workloads for remaining staff. To promote efficient execution of key tasks, leaders need to ensure that employee efforts are backed by efficient processes, adequate resources and support from co-workers:

• Solicit broad input: While effective job and organization design is part of the solution, so too is harnessing the creative ideas of employees at all levels. To draw out improvement suggestions broadly, organizations need to ensure that leaders and the organization’s overall culture encourage employees to come forward with innovative suggestions for improving the way work is done and reinforce the value of employee creativity by appropriately translating ideas into action.

• Clarify must-win battles: In high-workload environments, leaders must clearly state which personal goals and priorities are critical. Doing so allows employees to focus their efforts on essential, value-added tasks.

• Make sure managers wear “enterprise hats”: In transition environments, some managers and employees may be inclined to hunker down and focus on the achievement of individual or departmental priorities. It is imperative that organizational cultures, performance management systems and hiring and promotion processes reinforce the need to balance local concerns with broader organizational concerns.

Capability:
Faced with a difficult economy, some organizations may be tempted to shift their focus away from training and career development activities. But doing so is a big mistake. Recognizing that personal development and growth are among the most important drivers of engagement and enablement, organizations should instead:

• Be surgical in training and development cost reduction: In tough times, organizations are often forced to make cuts in training budgets. In doing so, however, organizations should identify and protect high-value training offerings and training that is focused on high-potential employees.

• Emphasize the role of line managers: Through coaching and regular performance feedback, supervisors can help employees identify developmental needs and enhance their skills. Supervisors also serve as mentors and sponsors for employees by helping them understand organizational expectations, develop supportive networks and work the informal systems that are a part of every organization.

• Promote equity and fairness: Where promotion opportunities are constrained, it is important that leaders effectively communicate the resources that are available to help employees manage their careers and clarify how promotion decisions are made. These messages build employee trust that development processes are fair and equitable.

Rewards:
In high-workload environments, employees are very sensitive to compensation issues. Acutely aware of all they are contributing, they can be expected to pressure their organizations to balance rewards and contributions. Managing rewards in a downturn requires that organizations:

• Focus on rewards, not just ratings: Many organizations spend an agonizing amount of effort to ensure that managers comply with prescribed distribution curves for performance ratings. But what is the value if the highest performer still receives only marginally more in merit or incentive pay than the average performer? Instead, organizations need to ensure that performance ratings translate into differentiated rewards.

• Clarify reward philosophies: In partnership with WorldatWork, Hay Group recently undertook a study of compensation practices and policies by surveying top compensation managers in member companies. Notably, more than two-thirds of more than 1,200 respondents rated their pay-related communications to be “not effective” or only “marginally effective.” Not surprisingly, these respondents also expressed much less favorable views of the motivational impact of their compensation systems. While 91 percent of respondents indicated that their companies have a pay philosophy, nearly two-thirds indicated that “about half” or “less than half” of employees understand it.

• Leverage tangible and intangible rewards: Especially when compensation budgets are tight, organizations need to think more broadly about the value propositions they are offering to employees—that is, the totality of financial and nonfinancial returns employees can expect based on their contributions.

Conclusion
Organizations that manage dynamics in all four “path to performance” areas successfully during the downturn are likely to foster the engagement and enablement necessary to cope with economic challenges and set the stage for enhanced performance when the economy recovers. When it comes to employee issues, a downturn is not the time to take your eye off the ball. For organizations as for individuals, character is revealed in tough times. The organizations that continue to put people first in tough times will win loyalty for the future.