recruiting – Page 3

March 27, 2019June 29, 2023

H-1B Visa Challenges: Utilizing AI to Close Your Talent Gap

Immigration reform and H1B visa programs

The H-1B visa approval rate dropped nearly 30 percent from 2016 to 2017, challenging employers and recruiters to find the right talent. Advanced technology, like artificial intelligence, can help.

Many organizations, especially those in technology, higher education and health-related industries increasingly depend on highly skilled non-U.S. candidates to fill positions left vacant due to a lack of experienced or interested domestic workers. A survey by Envoy Global, an immigration services firm, found 59 percent of companies planned to hire more foreign employees at their U.S. offices in 2018, which is up from 50 percent in 2017 and considerably higher than the 34 percent in 2016.

The reason firms are looking abroad: The U.S. is facing a significant skills gap, especially in STEM-related fields. Generational and technological shifts have created new roles, like mobile developers and programmers, that require significantly higher levels of technical or digital knowledge. Other countries tend to have higher quality math and science programs, and this rigorous education produces attractive candidates to fill the hundreds of thousands of new jobs across the United States.

The proposed federal changes to H-1B visa issuance, which include tightening qualification requirements, such as increasing minimum annual salaries, reducing the three-year duration, implementing more rigorous interview processes and limiting visas for family members and more, will make it even harder for workers to get approval to work here in the U.S. In an already extremely tight labor market, these changes add complications for hiring teams to be effective in their chase for talent. Few organizations are immune to the pressures of the H-1B crackdown. According to Envoy Global, 85 percent of U.S. employers surveyed say they have already felt impacts of the shifting immigration system.

Context Around the H-1B Challenge

Having worked across a variety of industries in my career, at privately held companies where visa sponsorship was not common as well as at Fortune 500 companies with and without visa sponsorship programs, I’ve found the immigration challenge is twofold. First, companies often don’t have the infrastructure and budget to support individuals with H-1B visas, since acquiring sponsorship is a long and capital-intensive process that requires involvement from outside immigration counsel. Second, the visa quota set by the government tends to run out so quickly that unless a company proactively applies for a certain number of visas a year in advance, it is left out of the game entirely.

The other element to the H-1B issue that companies must, but often don’t, think about is the well-being of the future employee. When a candidate emigrates to the U.S. to take the job, they must relocate, often with their families, which costs money and requires navigating cultural barriers.

Hiring organizations must decide if they will prepare these individuals with cultural training and help them find communities and schools for their children or leave them to their own devices. Figuring out where to help foreign workers and where to draw the line is never easy as there’s a natural inclination to help; providing support often takes a lot of time and effort from the organization.

U.S. companies are also facing geographic difficulties in sourcing talent. For hiring managers, dealing with restrictions of a candidate’s citizenship reduces the likelihood of finding the best person for the job. It may be that the perfect coding guru or IT specialist is not an American and needs sponsorship to work in the United States.

With tightening qualifications for H-1B visas, recruiting and attracting the right talent gets more difficult, and in some cases is seemingly impossible. Even when looking inside the U.S., IT jobs are easier to fill in metropolitan regions like New York and Silicon Valley. Companies based outside of major urban center locations are having a hard time attracting the talent they need without large hiring budgets and third party recruiting firms with high retainers to help fill those jobs.

Making concessions on skill requirements or a candidate’s experience based on low talent availability is never ideal. When applied on a larger scale and for contract or short-term roles, this brings a completely new set of challenges for hiring teams.

Some of these challenges include higher budgets and increased bids to reach the right level of talent; an inability to fill projects and requisitions quickly; and having to delay projects because the right domestic workers don’t exist or are hard to attract.

It’s also important to note that an HR team’s regular responsibilities don’t stop during the recruiting process, which can lead to either putting projects on hold due to constrained resources, or stretching employees too thin as the company tries to cover the work, which doesn’t create a positive work environment.

When restricted to the U.S. labor market, it can take a long time for companies to find qualified candidates. There have been many times in my career where my team has had to repost job openings several times before we found someone to fill the position.

Typically, teams can fill most positions within 90 days, but STEM roles can take up to six months or longer. In these cases, settling for a candidate that doesn’t have all the ideal capabilities, education and experience is unfortunately common because there’s a dire need to fill the role.

How AI Can Help

The tightening labor market will continue as unemployment rates hit all-time lows, coupled with the proposed H-1B rules. Human resources, consulting and professional services, IT, engineering, management, clerical and administrative gigs are all increasingly being sourced from outside the United States and the changes would affect these areas the most.

Being proactive and staying on top of legislation changes to understand how they impact the organization is the minimum baseline for success, as it helps companies proactively plan their workforce. However, this still doesn’t solve for filling roles that become vacant unexpectedly — so organizations also need a hiring strategy that utilizes technology and contingent labor to fill critical worker voids.

For example, AI mechanisms are aiding hiring managers in bringing in the right talent by making it easier to find, filter, interview and vet candidates on a variety of hard and soft skills. The matching capabilities bridge the skills gap by helping teams find domestic workers when H-1B visa rules make it tough to source abroad. The depth and breadth of candidate screening enabled by AI can help hiring teams find previously considered “nonexistent” employees and go beyond a candidate’s resume to determine if they are the right person for the job.

HR can now prioritize their time on reviewing the candidates that AI identifies, not spending countless hours trying to find the right candidates, sort through scrambled resumes and CVs, or deal with visa paperwork and other regulatory complexities. Not only will they be able to sort through resumes faster, but also get better-qualified candidates to interview more quickly, ultimately gaining an edge in the race for global talent.

Hiring departments across the nation are finding it challenging to uncover the right talent to bridge the growing STEM skills gap as attracting and supporting candidates from abroad is exponentially more expensive and harder than ever before. For U.S. organizations, not being able to find, attract and retain the right workers, especially those from abroad, to fill highly skilled or specialized roles stifles innovation and opportunity. Hiring teams at companies across all industries need to follow the H-1B visa changes, leverage emerging technologies and understand how to attract and acquire the talent they need — at the right cost — regardless of candidates’ country of origin.

February 27, 2019February 27, 2019

Reskilling: The New Trend in Recruiting

It doesn’t matter how talented your new hires are, or what stellar technology training they’ve received.

Chances are within a few years those skills will be obsolete.

Technology evolves so quickly that it is no longer enough to hire for the skills needed today. To stay relevant, companies need to hire people who have the ability to constantly learn new skills that may not yet exist. This focus on reskilling as a talent management strategy is already taking place, said Art Mazor, principal of Deloitte’s human capital management consulting practice, in Atlanta. “Most big companies today are focused on reskilling, and for good reason: The half-life of skills is two to five years,” he said. “That has huge implications for recruiting.”

With demand for talent at an all-time high, companies can’t expect to pluck these skills ready-made from the talent pool. They will have to create them in-house by providing employees with constant access to training, and incentives to continuously reskill.

Research from McKinsey found 82 percent of executives at large organizations believe retraining and reskilling must be at least half of the answer to addressing their skills gap, with 27 percent calling it a top five priority. And 74 percent of global recruiting firms say reskilling workers represents an effective strategy to combat the perennial skills shortage, according to Bullhorn’s 2019 “Staffing and Recruiting Trends” report.

“Reskilling is an important solution to the talent shortage,” said Vinda Souza, vice president of marketing for Bullhorn. She said that as long as there is low unemployment, companies need to consider what training they can provide to new and existing talent to constantly close new skill gaps.

To reskill someone, look for people with “adjacent skills,” said Jesper Bendtsen, head of recruiting for Thomson Reuters in Toronto. “Don’t just look for people who know blockchain or AI,” he said. “Look for people who work with related technologies that will lend themselves to your future needs.”

That talent pool may already be on staff. Bendtsen noted that employees who have been with the company for years may not have the exact skills you are looking for, but they know your culture, your customers and your way of doing business. “Start by looking internally at who might be interested and able to transition to a new role through retraining,” he said. An internal upskilling program can help companies close talent gaps while reinforcing their commitment to the existing workforce.

When recruiting externally, companies need to consider what skills they are looking for and how that impacts the recruiting process. New hires need to be willing and able to learn new skills and to tackle nebulous workplace challenges. Identifying these skills requires more thoughtful assessments of candidates’ soft skills and personality, not just their past history, Mazor said.

Some organizations are adding virtual reality, automated simulations and gaming tools to the recruiting process to observe how candidates handle unknown situations and learn new information to solve problems.

“These tools test their predisposition for handling challenges while creating a compelling candidate experience,” Mazor said.

Companies are also integrating hiring managers into this assessment process. At Thomson Reuters, for example, software engineers oversee candidates as they complete coding challenges, while asking questions about their process.

“The goal isn’t to see if they get the right answers, but to see how they tackle problems and use information,” Bendtsen said. “It’s an objective way to assess a candidate’s skills and ability to learn.”

This new approach to recruiting could make it easier for companies to look further afield for candidates who show an aptitude and interest in learning, even if they don’t follow a traditional academic or career path, said Tara Cassady, senior vice president at Cielo, a global recruitment process outsourcing provider in Milwaukee. “You want people who are curious, have an aptitude to troubleshoot, and who use technology to solve problems,” she said. These lifelong learners could just as easily come from tech schools, boot camps and online universities as from traditional college campuses.

Once they do find or retain these candidates, they are also investing more effort into retaining them, she said. From ensuring that interns have a clear path to employment, to making sure newly trained talent are given new assignments and competitive salaries, engagement and retention must be part of the reskilling trend, she said. “If you are going to invest in training talent, you don’t want to lose them to a competing firm.”

February 25, 2019June 29, 2023

Clamor Over SHRM Agenda Misses the Point

I’m sharing a ride with a colleague heading back to our hotel after work.

As we pull in to the hotel parking lot, the topic of a struggling restaurant there with service issues comes up.

I offer the following: “If I owned that place, I’d solve all the service issues by hiring nothing but people with criminal backgrounds who were recently released.”

Some of you may think I’m enlightened making that statement, others will think I’m crazy. It’s neither. I’ve just been influenced by the recent agenda of the Society for Human Resource Management. SHRM recently announced a partnership called “Getting Talent Back to Work,” which includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association and Koch Industries. The singular goal of this initiative is to encourage companies to take a national pledge to hire workers with criminal backgrounds

The average HR pro might think the controversy would be getting past America’s long-term tradition of refusing to hire those with criminal records. Instead, there was a small to moderate outcry related to presence of Koch Industries in the initiative. Owners Charles and David Koch — the Koch brothers — are active (some would say notorious) fundraisers and influencers in conservative politics.

Research Koch Industries and you’ll find environmental issues as well. But you’ll also discover an industrial business hurting for employees in a low unemployment/peak economic cycle environment.

Which begs the question: Will those with criminal convictions in their background care about the political leanings of the owners if they get a job at Koch Industries?

I think not. I believe they’ll be thrilled for the chance. But back to the evolving agenda of SHRM.

What should we expect from SHRM related to its agenda and politics? Should we be outraged when SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr. shakes the hand of an American president whose tweets spark widespread division? Should we expect that companies with the ownership background of Koch Industries never have the chance to partner with SHRM?

First, you must first understand the reality of SHRM. The DNA of SHRM includes the following components:

• SHRM leans conservative as an organization focused on helping companies perform better through progressive talent practices. SHRM serves its membership in this regard, as any company with strong internal HR talent has a better chance of marketplace success. But make no mistake, SHRM is directly aligned with the business community. Go to any SHRM legislative update and you’ll hear the pro-business focus. This conservative focus attracts partners with deep roots in the business community. SHRM’s affiliations are easy when the partner is a broad, vanilla association like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Companies like Koch become harder to evaluate for fit.

• SHRM is at its best when its initiatives merge business need, policy trends and inclusion. “Getting Talent Back to Work” is a good example of this. We’re dealing with the lowest unemployment in decades (business need) and immigration policy trends will continue to put pressure on workforce planning (especially in non-white collar jobs). Any SHRM initiative to relieve this pressure would seem to be a good investment of resources. But the real magic happens when SHRM can create these types of programs with an inclusion element. Rather than teaching HR pros how to recruit existing employees away from competitors, “Getting Talent Back to Work” attempts to bring new candidates into the tent. It’s the not the first example of inclusion most of us would list, but it’s a brilliant program when you step back and evaluate the convergence of business need, policy and demographic in need.

• SHRM doesn’t always move first, but when they move, it matters. SHRM’s a mega-association battleship. With hundreds of thousands of members, you’ll find a cross-section of America including comparable percentages of conservatives, liberals, Christians, atheists and more. Like any other association with demographics that rival the United States at large, SHRM is rarely first on any issue that involves societal change. But when SHRM moves, it matters. Hundreds of thousands of members are influenced by various SHRM media properties monthly, meaning SHRM opens minds on any issues linked to the world of HR.

SHRM’s not perfect. But an agenda that challenges HR pros to rethink traditional views that may be limiting in today’s world matters.

February 20, 2019June 29, 2023

The 6th Nominee for Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Diverse Discriminator

How many different ways can one employer discriminate? How about eight?

The EEOC recently settled a national origin and disability discrimination lawsuit against a staffing agency, brought on behalf of a group of Latino employees working at an Alabama poultry plant.

The eight different acts of discrimination alleged by the workers?

1. They were harassed, which included ethnic slurs, threats, verbal abuse and other abusive working conditions.
2. They were paid less than they were promised.
3. They were placed in more hazardous conditions.
4. They were denied bathroom and lunch breaks.
5. They received fewer hours of work than their non-Latino co-workers.
6. They had exorbitant relocation, housing and transportation fees deducted from their pay.
7. They were denied medical treatment and other accommodations (such as breaks or time off from work to recuperate) after suffering repetitive motion injuries to their hands, forearms and shoulders.
8. And, when they complained about all of the above, they were ignored.

According to Marsha L. Rucker, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Birmingham District Office, “We cannot allow any employer to prey on vulnerable workers by recruiting them and then subjecting them to such gross mistreatment.” Adds Bradley Anderson, the EEOC’s Birmingham district director, “The EEOC has made combating discrimination against vulnerable workers a strategic priority so that employers cannot profit from victimizing them.”

All of the above cost this employer $475,000 to settle the EEOC’s claims.

It also earned this employer its nomination as the Worst Employer of 2019.

Previous nominees:

The 1st Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Philandering Pharmacist

The 2nd Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Little Rascal Racist

The 3rd Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 is … the Barbarous Boss

The 4th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 is… the Flagrant Farmer

The 5th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 is… the Fishy Fishery

January 14, 2019June 29, 2023

Public Sector Employers Facing People Problems

At a time when careers in government are increasingly underscored with public and political pressure, Kirsten Wyatt is sounding the alarm about the public sector workforce.

“The government needs to wake up and realize there’s a talent war,” said Wyatt, executive director of the Oregon-based Engaging Local Government Leaders, a nonprofit promoting diversity, education and networking among local government employees on a national level. “If you’re going to be competing for entry-level or jobs you want to fill with talent you can then nurture, you need to put in more effort.”

Public sector agencies from the massive federal government to tiny rural townships face unique challenges when competing with private businesses for talent. Recruiting and retention is a recurring concern for the skill set often associated with public service employees. And it’s no secret that private sector companies typically offer substantially higher wages and more flexible work schedules. And there are other factors coming into play.

Prime among them is the so-called silver tsunami, a wave of baby boomers exiting the workforce into retirement. Studies show some 10,000 boomers retire every day, leaving a huge gap for public sector employers to fill.

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the average age of a full-time federal employee is 47.5 years, with 45 percent of the workforce over 50 years old.

The Congressional Research Service indicates 52 percent of public workers are age 45 to 64 compared to 42.4 percent in the private sector.

Federal workers are older than state and local government employees, too, studies show. Of those age 45 to 64, 56.7 percent are federal, 52.1 percent are local, and 49.7 percent are state employees.

In a 2018 survey by the Center for State & Local Government Excellence, public sector HR directors report higher numbers of retirements in 2018 over 2017.

Another challenge: Public agencies depend on tax base or bond-measure revenues to create new jobs and rehire for open positions. Hiring freezes are not uncommon even in flush economic times.

Nannina Angioni

“When taxpayer dollars are on the line, protections and processes come into play that an untrained, private sector employee would not even consider,” said Nannina Angioni, a labor and employment attorney and partner of the Los Angeles-based law firm Kaedian LLP.

Angioni said it can be costly and time consuming to find employees with public sector experience for entry-level positions given the increased ethical considerations, regulatory issues and legal obligations that typically don’t apply to private sector workers.

Still another challenge: enticing people to technology jobs. While millennials exhibit technological advantages being digital natives, it’s also one reason they are scarce in government workplaces with antiquated systems where they can’t sharpen their skills, said Kris Tremaine, a senior vice president focusing on the federal public sector at ICF, a global consulting and technology services company.

Although millennials will comprise 75 percent of the workforce by 2025, they currently make up only 10 percent of the federal sector technology workforce, said Tremaine.

Eighty-two percent of the Center for State & Local Government Excellence’s survey respondents indicated recruitment and retention as a workforce priority. They’re finding it difficult to fill positions in policing, engineering, network administration, emergency dispatch, accounting, skilled trades and information technology.

“When it comes to recruiting talent, you need to go where the talent is,” said ELGL’s Wyatt, adding that while many public sector HR departments continue to advertise jobs in newspapers, potential talent is hanging out on social media.

While Wyatt calls many job ads “boring,” she also notes successful efforts such as one produced by the city of Los Angeles for a graphic designer. The ad appeared as if a child drew it with a crayon. It went viral.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, human resources professional Jody Blake posts jobs on social media featuring eye-catching images of palm tree-lined beaches or building plans.

To fill vacancies in Fort Lauderdale’s 2,500-member workforce, Blake uses Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter and Indeed.

She’s had the most success with LinkedIn, especially for stormwater and wastewater engineers. She posts jobs on engineering group sites at no cost and uses LinkedIn’s Recruiter Lite program to maximize her efforts.

“I believe in getting the word out any way you can,” she said. “Even if people aren’t interested themselves, they may know someone who is.”

The public sector should take a page from the private sector in hiring practices, including internships, career fairs, meet-ups, events, social activities and using more technology, said Tremaine. Blake, meanwhile, also seeks people with a passion to make a difference. Jobs emphasizing social good attract millennials who want to be part of making a difference “such as in helping Americans stop taking opioids or climate change issues,” Tremaine added.

Wyatt said, “You can work in sustainability, be a librarian, police officer or an engineer and all work for a local government with that public service ethos at the core of your job every day.”

Millennials Embrace Collaboration

Human-centered open plan designs supporting teamwork where employees of different skill sets gather is important, said Tremaine.

While millennials skip from job to job often for higher pay, “some want clearer paths to growth and an understanding of where they fit in the organization,” Tremaine said, adding they prefer a coaching-mentor relationship to a boss.

Streamlining onerous paperwork and a protracted timeline involved in public sector employment may attract more employees, Tremaine said.

So too would the ability to leave a job and return “and not lose all of your benefits while drawing private sector best practices into the government,” she added.

Fort Lauderdale attracts many people looking for a switch after many years working in the private sector. While they made more money in private industry, they seek the security of the public sector, Blake said.

The city of Weston, Florida, took a different approach 21 years ago by outsourcing most positions per its charter.

“Probably 70 percent or more of a government budget is the cost is to pay employees,” said City Manager John Flint.

Only 10 positions for the city of Weston are in-house: six department directors, a city manager, two assistants and a clerk. An assistant city manager handles necessary HR functions such as insurance and payroll contributions.

Law enforcement is provided through the Broward County Sheriff’s Department. Other city jobs are filled by government outsourcing services such as C.A.P. Government, Calvin, Giordano & Associates, Municipal Technologies, and Weiss, Serota, Helfman, Cole & Bierman.

“All of the people here are by invitation and not by right. If the people assigned to us don’t meet our expectations, it is easier for us to replace them. I don’t have to spend my time managing people. I can manage the city and spend more time with our elected officials and residents,” said Flint, adding Weston’s approach offers greater flexibility and efficiency.

Some outsourced employees have been with the city before its incorporation in 1996 when it was a community development district, said Flint. When the city changes service providers (which hasn’t happened in a decade), Flint ensures the incoming provider retains the current employees and keeps their salaries and benefits at least equal to the previous provider.

Kaedian LLP’s Angioni said that once they are hired, many public sector employees stay in their job for decades for the perks of consistent work hours, minimal demands outside of their set schedules, union benefits, rights to reinstatement, pensions and appeal rights to disciplinary actions.

Career Moves

The public sector also offers the ability to try different careers while retaining benefits in one organization.

An agency might consider moving someone who’s been an analyst in community development for a few years into public utilities for another few years to increase their knowledge base and broaden their skills.

Such moves keep employees “engaged, excited and continually learning” while also giving departments “a fresh set of eyes,” Wyatt said. That’s important to retention, given the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on employee wages, benefits, training and development over a five-year span, she added.

To retain employees in one of the most difficult public sector jobs — solid waste collection — Greenville, South Carolina, Solid Waste and Recycling Manager Mildred Lee treats a crew to lunch monthly to show her appreciation and elicit their input.

She’s retained employees by leading an effort to convert solid waste collection from five to four days. A supervisory mentoring program for all frontline solid waste employees has transitioned two into management.

A 2018 survey by the Center for State & Local Government Excellence noted that more than 45 percent of the respondents offer flexible scheduling, 65 percent support employee development and training reimbursement, 37 percent host wellness programs or on-site fitness facilities, and 34 percent provide some form of paid family leave.

Wyatt said she receives increasing feedback about the value the midprofessional generation places on paid family leave.

Kansas City, Missouri, recently finished a one-year paid family leave pilot program. It was utilized primarily by male police officers. It’s the hardest job for which to recruit and is typically dominated by young men, said Wyatt.

“You look at the long-term impact that has on employee morale and loyalty and who you choose to work for with everything else being equal,” she added.

As the public sector starts to see the dismantling of retiree benefits, one useful tool may be adopting the Individual Medicare Marketplace for retiree health care programs, “a model generally far more affordable for retirees while offering cost savings for employers,” says Marianne Steger, director of public sector strategy at Willis Towers Watson and former health care director for the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.

Retaining employees has meant offering low-priced health insurance, a generous retirement plan, educational incentives, annual reviews typically with pay increases and the ability to start off at a good rate of vacation time accrual, said Fort Lauderdale’s Blake.

Blake offers advice to new hires on how to improve their profile to increase their promotion chances. Employees are surveyed on the work culture. Employees are called community builders while residents are called neighbors.

Wyatt and her husband Kent — both former public sector employees — founded ELGL after noticing local government education, training and networking was siloed based on job title. Its 4,000 members nationwide represent a cross-section of entry-level employees to mayors and city managers.

“It helps when librarians can learn from planners and cops can learn from finance directors,” said Wyatt.

Their organization provides collaboration and cross-departmental training through a technology network connecting public sector employees in one part of the country to others elsewhere to help deal with problems for which others have found solutions.

It also provides online content, monthly webinars, regional pop-up conferences and a national conference. Informal meet-ups are held on college campuses to introduce local government careers to college students.

Further, it focuses on increasing the number of women and people of color into local government leadership to reflect U.S. community demographics.

While there is much focus on age demographics in public service, Wyatt said what most people in a public service career want is no different than anyone else: “feeling recognized for a job well done, independence and learning something that takes them to the next step in their career.”

Wyatt has seen some members go through a career crisis as they contemplate a move to the private sector for more pay and better fringe benefits.

“They choose to stick with government,” she said. “They built a network that supports them and reminds them it’s work worth doing and that’s powerful.”

November 8, 2018June 29, 2023

The Automation of Performance Measurement

Performance measurement has long been viewed as a necessary but torturous part of the talent management process.

Historically, this process has been shaped by awkward and time-consuming end-of-the-year performance ratings that often feel more like criticism than coaching and rarely result in any meaningful changes in behavior. However, over the past several years the performance measurement process has been evolving.

“The big question today is, ‘Do we even need performance ratings?’ ” said Bhushan Sethi, performance management analyst for PwC. He noted that many Silicon Valley firms have done away with ratings all together, while other companies are rating employees behind the scenes. “They still go through the rating process to figure out raises and bonuses,” he said. But they are eliminating the annual sit-down review.

While some HR leaders applaud this evolution, others believe it is counterproductive. “Proponents of the ‘no ratings’ fad hyped the movement using selective company examples,” noted Marc Effron, founder of the Talent Strategy Group and author of 8 Steps to High Performance. However for every success story, he pointed to companies like medical equipment maker Medtronic, Conagra Brands Inc., and American Airlines, which reversed course and re-installed ratings after their financial performance suffered. Effron also pointed to a 2016 Gartner study that shows companies that eliminate ratings actually see a drop in employee performance because managers don’t know how to manage without them.

Let Robots Do It

While the jury may be out on whether ratings are a necessary part of performance measurement, most HR leaders agree that a once-a-year review on its own is not effective. Instead, they are encouraging managers to provide more real-time feedback throughout the year so employees can adapt their performance and identify opportunities for improvement before their output is affected.

“Employees who want to be higher performers benefit from clear goals and more frequent coaching,” Effron said. But only if it’s done correctly. “Leaders need to improve their capability to set a few, very big, very challenging, very aligned goals for themselves and their team members.”

The demand for more real-time performance measurement has sparked HR technology vendors to embed rating tools, social feedback loops, 360 degree reviews and other performance measurement features in their platforms, or as standalone solutions.

Also read: How Do We Use Performance Tools Including Performance Measurement to Keep Employees Motivated?

“The trend is toward slick, user-friendly mobile tools to provide real-time feedback,” Sethi said. He pointed to PWC’s own custom-built Snapshots tool, which lets employees provide and request rapid reviews on five performance characteristics, including leadership ability and business acumen. Many of the enterprise software vendors and smaller boutique firms are building similar performance feedback tools to expand their platform.

“It’s the next wave of HR technology,” he said.

Sethi predicts that the next evolution of performance measurement tools will be fully automated, artificially intelligent bots that use machine learning algorithms to rate employee performance based on data, such as sales results, projects delivered, and feedback from managers. An automated solution could take the human bias out of the rating process while freeing managers to focus on coaching their people to improve performance and close gaps on the team, Sethi said. “This would be a much better use of their time.”

November 7, 2018June 29, 2023

Hyatt Taps Into Virtual Reality to Hire 10,000 Young Workers

The unemployment rate may be at a record low, but there are still vast pockets of workers in the United States struggling to find jobs.

Global hotel chain Hyatt Corp. is tapping into one of these talent pools with RiseHY, its new community-hiring program, which uses virtual reality and gaming to introduce young people looking for career opportunities to the hospitality industry.

As part of the initiative, Hyatt hotels around the world have committed to hiring 10,000 “opportunity youth” — people ages 18 to 24 who are neither in school nor working — by 2025. According to data from Brookings Institute, 4.7 million young people fall into this category.

“This program is a labor of love,” says Jessica Schultz, Hyatt’s senior manager of community engagement. Part philanthropy and part talent development, RiseHY was designed to support the community while helping Hyatt fill its talent pipeline. “This is a pool of untapped talent who have skills and ambition,” said Audrey Williams-Lee, vice president of corporate HR and philosophy. “They could be a great fit for our organization.”

Immersive Hotel Tours

However, RiseHY is more than just a targeted recruiting effort.

Opportunity youth often come from disadvantaged neighborhoods and have limited work experience and education. “Hospitality jobs aren’t even on their radar,” Schultz said. When Schultz and Williams-Lee began designing the project, they knew they would need to close that gap and find a way to help young people imagine building a career in hospitality.

To give them a sense of what life would be like working in a hotel, they worked with a vendor to build a virtual reality app, called YouVisit, where candidates can take a virtual guided tour of a hotel, see what workers do and learn what’s required of different roles including room attendants, hostesses, wait staff and concierge. “The virtual reality lets them see what their career path could be, and to think about whether this is a good fit for them,” Williams-Lee said.

Gaming the System

Priyanka Jain

Interested candidates are also invited to complete an online assessment, built by Pymetrics, that uses artificial intelligence to assess a candidate’s skills and attitudes through a series of games and reasoning exercises. The games use neuroscience and reviews of past assessments to measure things like how well candidates multi-task, whether they can filter distractions, and their willingness to take risks, explained Priyanka Jain, head of growth and lead product manager for Pymetrics.

The system then determines where a candidate would be a good fit. “There are no good or bad responses,” Jain said. Rather, it helps the candidates and Hyatt understand where candidates are likely to thrive in the absence of a resume or past job experience.

The virtual reality app and game-based assessments are meant to ease these young people through the early recruiting process, but it is also expected to help increase retention and job satisfaction by ensuring the right people are put into the right roles, said Schultz. “It will create a better flow for our talent funnel.”

Once candidates are selected, they are either hired directly and given a mentor to support them as they ease into the role, or they are placed in a three- to six-month training program developed in partnership with community groups to give them the skills they will need on the job.

Once the training is complete, they may be hired by Hyatt or referred to other hospitality employers. “We aren’t just doing this for Hyatt,” Schultz said. “It’s about helping these kids find careers in hospitality.”

Expanding the program ensures every interested youth has an opportunity to find a job and that Hyatt doesn’t have to slow the program down during low hiring seasons, she added. “We expect to hire at least 10,000 youth, but this program will impact so many more.”

October 17, 2018October 28, 2020

Employers Find Sports Score Employee Engagement and Retention Points

employee engagement and retention, employee performance

The Major League Baseball postseason is well underway with some games taking place during normal work hours.

The Chicago Cubs had their midday National League tiebreaker on a Monday, while Game 3 of Houston Astros-Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series also was a mid-afternoon start. Games happening early in the day has both hurt and helped workplaces nationwide.

When sporting events occur during work hours, employers could face productivity issues, which can include employees calling in sick, leaving early or arriving late. But there’s an opportunity to flip that thinking and use such events as an employee engagement and retention tool.

Joyce Maroney, executive director of the Workforce Institute at workforce management software company Kronos Inc., studies workplace issues and ways to manage and engage workers. Maroney said one of the ways employers can avoid these issues is by making the sporting event available in the office, whether on TV in a break room or conference room, or an office-watch party with food provided.

“It can definitely be a tool to stimulate camaraderie, just as would be departments having gatherings during the holiday season, or doing a charity event together,” Maroney said. “All these things engage people at work and can make people feel like they’re part of something that’s a little bigger than just getting the job done.”

Maroney may be onto something.

A survey conducted in March 2018 by employee and recruitment agency Randstad U.S. said 79 percent of employees believe sporting events in the office “greatly improves their levels of engagement at work.” In the same study, 73 percent of workers say they look forward to going to work more when they participate in office sports bracket contests like college basketball’s March Madness tournament. Also, a 2017 study conducted by employee time-management app TSheets found that 68 percent of employees said watching games increases or has no effect on their productivity.

Chicago-based staffing and recruiting firm LaSalle Network embraces sports in its office. The big sporting events they consider as employee engagement and retention tools in the workplace are March Madness, the Olympics and the World Cup soccer.

Founder and CEO Tom Gimbel said doing this has resulted in better relationships with fellow employees and clients as they have a viewing party for the annual March Madness tournament.

“It empowers employees because they don’t have to sneak around to participate in something they enjoy,” Gimbel said. “It also makes our clients feel valued. We want them to know we appreciate our relationships with them. It helps builds trust.”

The Super Bowl, arguably the biggest U.S.-based sporting event every year, normally attracts over 100 million viewers annually. Even those who don’t consider themselves sports fans watch the Big Game.

Research conducted before this year’s Super Bowl by the Workforce Institute at Kronos and Mucinex found that nearly 14 million employed Americans planned to call out of work after watching the game. Another 25 percent of working Americans, 38.5 million people, said the Monday after the Super Bowl should be considered a national holiday.

https://soundcloud.com/user-745793386/talent10x-should-the-monday-after-the-super-bowl-be-a-holiday

Gimbel said companies that attempt to “squash the fun and energy” coming from a big sporting event are missing out on a great opportunity to engage their staff.

Looking at the current state of Chicago’s core sports teams right now, Gimbel might be planning a little something for his firm in February.

“We’re not ruling out anything for the Super Bowl,” Gimbel said. “If the [Chicago] Bears make it, who knows what we’ll do?”

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.

October 6, 2016June 29, 2023

My Second HR Conference: Finally Getting the Hang of It

I attended HR Tech this year in Chicago, and to a certain degree it was overwhelming — that is, there were so many companies and solutions it was hard to keep track until I’d had my morning coffee and then some. But throughout the meetings, interviews and lectures, I noticed a few key themes that just kept on coming up.

First of all: women in tech. The conference kicked off on Tuesday morning with four hours and four lectures on women in HR tech. The speakers mentioned unconscious bias in the workplace, expectation differences for men and women, and how when women are assertive it’s seen much differently than when men are assertive. Based on the reactions by women in the room and the whisper-comments people made to each other, this is obviously a reality for a lot of working women, especially in the tech sector.

Workforce‘s Rick Bell also commented on the theme of women in tech in his HR Tech blog: But I want to focus on one totally different angle. Rewind a few days: My friend calls me on the phone to give me very exciting news. Her company is sending her abroad for two weeks to work on a project. She made it clear this had nothing to do with that “lean in crap.”

(Note: I still don’t understand “lean in.” A dozen people have described it to me in very, very different ways. Media outlets either tout it as an effective strategy or as some classist dribble. I have too little interest in reading self-help books to read and interpret it myself. Anyway, this obviously came from a person who has one of those negative perceptions of leaning in.)

She could attribute it to something else, though: she asked. She emailed the team leader a while back. She said she was interested and would be willing to go even though it wasn’t technically her project. Out of the blue they contacted her a month later telling her she was going across the ocean.

At the HR Tech conference, the female leaders also echoed the importance of asking. If you don’t ask for something, you won’t get it. Good advice for women, of course, looking for opportunities to grow at work, but it can also be applied to anybody looking for an opportunity.

I also spoke with Caroline Turner, chief revenue officer of PowerToFly, a company launched in 2014 which connects talented women in tech to companies that value gender diversity and inclusion. She attended college as an athlete under Title IX, appreciated the equal opportunity this gave her and has that same passion for gender equality now in the workplace.

This conversation around diversity was very valuable, and one of the key points of interest for me was the importance of getting diverse talent in the door at the very beginning, when recruiting. Hiring people just because they’re diverse isn’t the best business move, but bringing in a pool of candidates who look different from each other can go a long way.

Second of all: rethinking recruiting. I noticed a lot of companies working in recruiting, and they’re looking to solve the same problem: how to hire the right people. But I liked the way Bob Schultz, general manager of the smarter workforce at IBM, described it in our interview. He mentioned the importance of taking a “holistic” approach to recruiting — that is, going beyond just past experience and the usual considerations. How about considering behavior and problem solving skills? IBM Watson has the capabilities to take the whole person into account in the recruiting process.

I liked the use of this word. Holistic. Just like companies are more often now taking a holistic approach to wellness (considering aspects like physical health, mental health, financial health, and beyond), apparently the same thing can be said about other business processes.