Category: Employee Engagement

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Employee Retention Strategies in a Tight Labor Market

Summary:

  • Effective employee retention strategies are crucial in today’s labor market, where there are more available jobs than job seekers.
  • Flexibility is a primary factor in retaining current employees, but it can mean different things for employees, depending on the industry and roles
  • Technology plays a vital role in gathering data and feedback that can help measure employee satisfaction and spot potential issues that trigger employees to quit.

The COVID-19 pandemic. The Great Resignation. Quiet Quitting.  

All of this has created a much tighter job market with low labor participation. Currently, there are around 10 million vacancies for just 5.7 million unemployed workers. The labor participation rate is at 62.6%, down from 63.3% in February 2020. This is the equivalent of 1.8 million fewer workers.     

All of this has made it trickier as well as vital for HR professionals to keep positive employee retention rates and hold on to their top talent, particularly since remote work has become more commonplace and sought after. Employees now have a much larger job market to find new opportunities, which, in turn, means tighter competition for talent. 

Webinar: How to Retain Hourly Employees

With more jobs and a smaller talent pool, how do you retain top talent and increase your chances of attracting new employees? There are several ways to boost employee retention, but what’s challenging is implementing a strategy that makes the most sense for your organization and people. We spoke with Jack Light, a labor economics Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, to provide us with more insight.

Understand why good employees quit and why they stay

It’s impossible to identify the best employee retention strategies for your specific circumstance without finding out what causes attrition. According to the Work Institute’s 2022 Retention Report, over 47 million employees voluntarily quit their job in 2021. This is the highest turnover rate since 2001 — when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began measuring this metric

According to the report, some of the most common reasons why people quit their jobs include:

  • A lack of career development opportunities
  • Stress due to a lack of resources or training
  • Prioritizing health and/or family – caring for dependents, personal health reasons, or health-related issues due to work
  • Searching for different opportunities that will give them a better work-life balance
  • Issues with their current work environment

These areas are well within leadership’s control, and they can quickly improve these conditions by implementing changes and using the right tools.  

It’s always easy to assume that compensation is the main motivation for employees to stay at a company. However, that’s not always the case. What’s valuable to your team is not always as apparent as you think. Beyond a competitive salary and benefits package, there are other areas that can be equally valuable to employees.

  • Fulfillment or finding purpose in a role
  • Job satisfaction
  • Workplace culture
  • Relationships with bosses and colleagues and teamwork
  • Company values
  • Processes such as onboarding
  • Flexibility

Once you understand what your employees value most, you’ll be more equipped to make changes and create programs that compel them to stay. 

Watch: How to Predict an Employee Flight Risk

Establish a feedback system

There are two sides to feedback that are crucial to employee retention. The first is feedback from employers about job performance. The second is feedback from employees regarding operations, policies, and colleagues. Both are key to creating a culture of employee appreciation.

And both are important and should be gathered and addressed promptly.

Employees value feedback that’s immediate and clear. It helps them improve their work, makes them feel appreciated, and shows how valuable their contribution is to the organization. 

Meanwhile, encouraging employees to provide feedback about the company and their tasks helps with retention, too. When employees are comfortable enough to share their thoughts on what works and what needs improvement, you’ll have a goldmine of insights on how to keep your best talent.

“The goal of gathering employee feedback is to try and surface low-hanging fruits that you can be actioning on that you may not otherwise be aware of,” says Light. “So it might actually turn out that a lot of your employees are struggling to get to work, for example, because there’s a bus route that’s been canceled. Or maybe you have a particular manager who many people are struggling to work with. Those are the sorts of things that are valuable from the perspective of an employee but can be quite difficult to find out.” 

That’s why having a healthy company culture that embraces feedback is crucial. And it shouldn’t stop at gathering employee sentiments. Another equally important part of the equation is the mechanism to act on them.

“If you don’t do anything with that data and that feedback, you’re probably going to get less and less of it as time goes on,” says Beau Grzanich, head of solutions at Workforce.com. Transparency is key here. You need to inform your employees about the actions you’ve taken based on feedback they’ve provided. Doing so will incentivize people to provide more information that can drive more results and benefits in terms of employee retention. 

The frequency of feedback is also important. Typically, companies do it regularly — quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. While this provides some structure, feedback tends to be more effective when it’s fluid and immediate. Moreover, it doesn’t always have to be in a formal setting. It can be casual, during quick catch-ups, or through automated tools like Workforce.com’s Shift Feedback and Rating feature. 

Engage your managers, and they’ll engage their teams

People leave managers, not companies. This popular phrase regarding employee engagement and retention is supported by data from Gallup that shows that “it takes more than a 20% pay raise to lure most employees away from a manager who engages them”. And it takes almost nothing to poach disengaged employees.

Empower your managers to engage their teams effectively. One way to do this is to take administrative and repetitive tasks off their plate. This makes it easier for them to focus on the people-centric aspects of their work.

Implementing the right technology can help managers work smarter and spend less time on tasks like scheduling, time tracking, labor forecasting, and payroll. As a result, they focus more on coaching their employees and understanding and addressing potential issues.

Offer flexibility

Employees tend to stay with a company that offers flexibility. Research has shown that flexibility at work is becoming increasingly important for job seekers, particularly among younger employees. But before you think about implementing policies around it, you first need to understand what flexibility actually means for your employees. 

Typically, people view flexibility as being able to control their work arrangements. This means having the option to work outside of the typical office setting and set hours, enjoying a flexible schedule, or being able to attend to important matters that typically warrant PTO or waiting until the weekend.

“An important thing to remember is that flexibility is often quite loosely defined. It’s much harder if you’ve got regular opening hours or you’re a retail store, and there are fixed tasks that need to be done and planned in advance,” explains Light. If that’s the case, how do you create a certain level of flexibility for hourly workers? 

Light says that offering a certain level of predictability is important for hourly workers. This means providing their schedules ahead of time, so they can plan their activities outside of work accordingly. In fact, data shows that employees who get their schedules a couple of days before their shift are more likely to quit compared to staff who receive their schedule at least 10 days in advance.

Create programs and perks that are valuable to your employees

Competitive benefits, incentives, and perks can compel employees to stay with you. But again, the key here is to know what types of benefits they find valuable. Game rooms, free meals, and company-sponsored gym memberships are all nice to have, but those perks are not always good enough reasons to keep employees from looking elsewhere. 

Get to know your employees to understand what matters to them. Consider that you have employees who are probably in different life stages. Looking at your workforce’s demographics is a good first step in determining what programs you can devise that will make the most impact. 

Your employees’ age group, seniority level, gender, as well as their personal circumstances will all dictate what they deem important. Some perks and incentives to consider:

  • Professional development. Opportunities for employees to learn new skills, such as training programs or attendance at industry-specific conferences
  • Health and wellness stipends or reimbursement. To cover costs of things like sports activities, healthcare, and mental health programs
  • Company culture. Activities, such as team-building games, that help establish a stronger company culture

Whether it’s additional time-off benefits, family activities, upskilling, professional development opportunities, or employee recognition programs, make sure that your benefits package includes items that make the most sense for your operations and where your employees are — both in tenure and life in general.  

While it’s not easy to figure this out, you can always drill down on data and employee feedback to determine the specific types of programs you should implement within the organization.

Enrich your onboarding process

Convincing and attracting new hires is just half the battle. The other half is making sure they stay. Employee onboarding sets the tone for a new hire, and you need to make it count to retain them. According to Gallup, 70% of employees who had a positive onboarding experience say that they have “the best possible job.” 

Employee onboarding is a crucial process where companies must deliver on what’s promised during the hiring process and integrate new hires into their role and the organization. Successful onboarding is not attained overnight. It is a process that can last through a new hire’s first year with the company. 

Here are some of the ways human resources teams can make employee onboarding successful:

  • Create a clear and intuitive onboarding roadmap. Define where you want your new hires to be at specific time frames, whether monthly or quarterly or what makes sense for your organization. Gather feedback about the process and iterate your roadmap and programs as you go along.
  • Incorporate onboarding programs that will help employees build initial rapport and cultivate healthy working relationships with other team members. It’s vital for new hires to feel included and part of a group.
  • Equip new hires with mentorship and training. New employees become more productive faster when they have the tools to learn and carry out their responsibilities.
  • Provide clarity when it comes to expectations and goals. Employees, especially new hires, become more efficient when they clearly understand their roles, career paths, and how they directly contribute to the organization’s overall success.
  • Use technology to organize onboarding files, keep track of employee details, and streamline new hire paperwork. This frees up time for more critical parts of onboarding. Besides, no new hire would want to deal with a pile of documents to sign and information overload on their first day of work. 

A well-structured onboarding process not only gives new employees a good first impression of the company but also plays a big part in reducing employee turnover. 

Maximize the offboarding process to benchmark market trends

On the other end of the employee life cycle, you must also pay attention to your offboarding process. While it is the stage where an employee transitions out of the company, it can still help with your employee retention strategy. 

You should ensure that any employee leaving the company has a smooth exit. So maximize exit interviews and use them to gather feedback on what you can improve and what departing employees think will make current staff stay. Use this opportunity to understand their motivation for leaving. Is it career advancement, a more competitive salary, or burnout?

You can also use the exit interview to gain insight into their new job and what other companies are doing to attract and retain employees. Inquire about what compelled them to move. Is it a generous sign-on bonus, more comprehensive learning and development, or the promise of a healthy work-life balance? 

“Exit interviews, in particular, are beneficial for benchmarking where people are going and what the wages and working conditions are gonna be like in the firms that they’re moving to,” says Light. 

With this information, you can create benchmarks on how the market is, compare it to where you stand, and strengthen your programs and processes accordingly.

Harness technology to boost employee retention

Data and feedback are crucial in strengthening your programs for retaining your employees.

“Something that’s particularly interesting at the moment is that the data is getting increasingly available in real time” remarks Light.

For instance, when an employee is coming in late more often, the right tool can help you identify this and address it before it becomes a real issue.

“Moving from the sort of survey done at fixed points in time to more proactively identifying when you need to be stepping in and checking in if everything is okay is super exciting,” says Light.

Furthermore, technology significantly contributes to the employee experience. It helps organizations streamline administrative processes so that managers can focus more on being on the ground with their teams and coaching their staff. It also helps employees perform their tasks better and more efficiently, allowing more opportunities for innovation or additional time for training and development.

Streamline workflows and improve the employee experience with Workforce.com

Workforce.com provides efficiencies around demand-based employee scheduling, time and attendance, and labor forecasting. It helps improve the employee experience by providing staff with a straightforward way of clocking in, accessing their schedules, and filing leave requests. It has real-time insights, shift rating and feedback, and an in-depth reporting functionality that can provide managers with actionable insights on key metrics. 

Book a call today if you want to know how Workforce.com can improve your workforce management and employee retention. 

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Tips for restaurant owners on getting more employee feedback

Summary

  • Collecting employee feedback gives staff a voice and catalyzes new solutions.

  • There are five main ways to increase the amount of employee feedback you recieve.

  • Keeping the communication channels open with employees will encourage them to provide feedback frequently, at any time.

Usually, feedback is perceived as something being given by the employer to their employees. However, receiving feedback from your employees could be a real game-changer for your restaurant.

Why is employee feedback important?

Feedback makes employees feel empowered. It provides them a voice and makes them feel like their opinions matter. Employee feedback catalyzes new solutions. It might spark new ideas that you can use for improving customer service, streamlining your kitchen processes, creating new dishes to serve, modifying your recipes, and more. Restaurant owners get invaluable insights from employees who have on-the-ground, customer-facing experience.

So, the big question is, how do you gather more employee feedback? Here are some tips:

1. Create a culture of feedback

You create a culture of feedback by making it easy for employees to give feedback at any time. Giving and receiving feedback needs to become a part of your organizational values for you to create this culture.

Give your employees a voice. You’ll only hear what they have to say if they speak up! Actively encourage them to provide feedback by telling them they have the power to communicate.

Nurture honest communication in the workplace, but also understand that this honest and open dialogue can lead to conflict. Learn to be comfortable with feedback that may be difficult to hear and create an environment that allows both managers and employees to communicate without hesitation.

View employee feedback with the perspective that running your restaurant is a team sport. View your employees as your allies and build rapport with them. The stronger your rapport is, the more comfortable they’ll feel contributing their ideas to your business.

Creating a culture of feedback is a team effort. While collecting employee feedback is critical, don’t forget to give them your feedback using the right tools and applications. The right tool should let you provide employees with regular shift feedback regarding performance levels, areas of opportunity, and workplace success.

By giving your employees feedback, you’ll inadvertently encourage them to provide their own feedback, since they will feel they need to reciprocate and fit in with the feedback culture.

2. Allow employees to give feedback anonymously

Giving feedback anonymously is sometimes a safe way for both employees and restaurant owners to bring the truth out into the open.

Some employees may not be comfortable sharing honest feedback in person. This could be for several reasons. Maybe they have a strong complaint against another employee and don’t want to talk about it openly. Perhaps they disagree with you on something but don’t want to risk their job, or it could be something else.

One way to do this is to create Google forms/surveys that ask confidential questions, allowing employees to leave their feedback anonymously. Such feedback surveys with the right questions can give you invaluable written feedback to improve how you run your restaurant.

Your feedback surveys can ask questions that are usually unspoken, like: What were some of your pain points while working this week? How challenged do you feel at work on a daily basis? What are some things you’d like to change about running this restaurant and why? Is there any training you’d like to receive from us?

Another tactic you can use to collect feedback anonymously is to create a suggestion box. Using apps like Culture Amp, it’s possible to create an online suggestion box where employees can leave their feedback anonymously. Alternatively, you could create a physical box where people can drop an anonymous note with their feedback.

3. Set up regular feedback sessions

Set up regular feedback sessions and meet your employees in person. These interactions can teach you more about each employee’s sentiments because they give you body language cues that you can’t get from strictly written or vocal feedback. Make sure you set up both group and individual feedback sessions that are face to face to collectively gather a variety of perspectives.

Make your feedback sessions specific by creating focus groups. For instance, you could have one focus group just for collecting feedback about your customer service and one just for your restaurant’s interior decoration.

A popular Mexican restaurant chain, Chipotle, started hosting ‘listening sessions’ for employees. This was during the time when racial tensions were intense due to George Floyd’s death. Leadership at the business set up virtual chat sessions to listen to employees voice real-life concerns.

Organized by store leadership, these sessions asked employees questions like “What are the three words that describe how you’re feeling?” or “What is the one thing you want executive leadership to know?” and “What should we be doing to create and cultivate a better world?”

The notes from these sessions resulted in all of the change initiatives, both internal and external, that Chipotle decided to implement. One of the goals of these initiatives was to hire 10,000 employees to support growth through and after COVID. Chipotle launched a ‘We are hiring’ campaign and hired 8,000 new employees through it.

4. Incentivize employees to provide feedback

Elon Musk says, “A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.” If feedback is as valuable as gold, giving incentives to employees to provide feedback seems like a good bargain. Provide both monetary and non-monetary incentives to your employees for providing their feedback.

A few examples of non-monetary incentives could be to offer them a work shift of their choice for many weeks in a row, a mentoring or training program to help them with professional development, or quite simply, free meals at your restaurant at the end of their shift.

Make the process of seeking feedback more fun by ‘gamifying’ it. Giving and receiving feedback should be seen as a fun exercise that your employees look forward to. You can do this by giving employee bonuses proportional to the quality and quantity of feedback provided by employees. Another option is hosting ‘employee of the month’ competitions, with feedback being a solid determinant of who the employee of the month should be. Doing gift giveaways (like giving t-shirts or other goodies) for employees that take feedback-giving seriously could also be a good idea.

5. Have a simple shift feedback tool

Employees should be encouraged to leave feedback on every shift when they go to clock out. However, staff won’t feel the need to do this if giving feedback is a difficult and tedious process. Usually, mobile time clock apps are the best way to open up an efficient avenue for employees to provide regular feedback.


A shift feedback tool should allow you to gather actionable data on what went well during shifts and what did not go well. It should also give staff the option to leave additional notes for shift managers. For instance, wait staff may leave some negative feedback on a certain day because poor scheduling resulted in a short-staffing issue. Or kitchen staff may leave positive feedback if they had good communication with the wait staff on a day with unusually high sales. Employees can also use this opportunity to justify their actions in case any customers have complained about them.

All of this information your employees provide can be used by managers to pinpoint frontline issues in scheduling, burnout, and engagement.

Keep communication open between employees and owners

Open the lines of communication with your employees so they’re able to provide feedback at any time. Feedback shouldn’t just be viewed as a distracting exercise that needs to be completed on brief occasions; it should be encouraged and built into your workforce management system.

To discuss how you can encourage your employees to give more feedback, get in touch with us.
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Casinos scramble for post-pandemic talent as business rebounds

Eureka Casinos, talent, hospitality

Casinos across the United States were among the hardest hit businesses as the hospitality and travel industries suffered through the pandemic.

Conventioneers and gamblers disappeared and unemployment soared as the iconic Las Vegas Strip looked more like a ghost town than a glitzy, bustling entertainment mecca. And the numbers tell a bleak tale.

Gambling revenues slid by 31 percent in 2020, according to an annual report by the American Gaming Association. By comparison, the report noted that the industry’s economic tumble in 2020 far outdistanced the 8.4 percent decrease during the Great Recession. And, the Las Vegas unemployment rate reached 30 percent at the height of the pandemic, according to reports.

Business and employees slowly return

But the casino business is bouncing back. Employees are now being snapped up to fill thousands of vacant positions as the Las Vegas unemployment rate has slipped back to single digits. Many of them will be working the conventions — the Society for Human Resource Management and HR Technology Conference among them — that are finally returning to in-person events in Las Vegas this fall.

Along with the mega-corporations that line The Strip, Eureka Casinos appears to have weathered the storm and is shaking off the pandemic’s effects to fully reopen for business. With Nevada properties in Las Vegas and Mesquite and a casino in New Hampshire, Eureka Casinos is the only employee-owned gaming company in the United States. That distinction puts Eureka Casinos in a unique position to entice job candidates in a desperate battle to staff up as visitors return.

The battle for talent

The scarcity of good talent is particularly acute as casinos rush to re-staff, said Eureka Casinos Chief Operating Officer Andre Carrier. Any casino’s growth is tempered by its ability to field a qualified workforce, he added.

To be competitive in talent acquisition, Carrier said Eureka Casinos instituted hiring bonuses and is offering employees flexible hours and dual rates to fit staffing needs and schedules. But their key competitive advantage is employee ownership, he said.

“It means that our employees are provided with a long-term retirement benefit with no direct contribution,” he said. “This is an exceptional benefit and one we hope allows us to not only to retain our talented people, but attract future employees.”

Also read: Allied Universal boosts its hiring as demand for security services surges

With an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, employees take on an owner’s mindset, which means a stronger sense of buy-in to the business and each other, Carrier said. It became especially valuable as COVID-19 swept across the industry.

“The pandemic was an unimaginable crisis with much of the company’s business closing for nearly three months,” Carrier said. “The challenge was to establish new systems to care for the physical, financial and emotional needs of the employee owners rapidly and effectively.”

Research has shown that companies with an ESOP are less likely to lay people off and keep employees working than conventionally owned businesses. Employee ownership has helped Eureka Casinos build a family style atmosphere for employees among the massive gaming conglomerates.

Building employee engagement

Engagement was a huge priority for Eureka Casinos throughout the pandemic, Carrier said. Being a mega-corporation would have impeded their ability to focus on the needs of their 600 employees, 70 percent of whom are hourly.

“One of the main ways we kept our employees engaged throughout our three-month closure was a weekly drive-through food pantry,” he said. “Many of our employees volunteered to pack food baskets and pass them out, and we had volunteer drivers deliver baskets. This was just one more way that we came together as a family business.”

Producing videos on the expected timeline for the state’s shutdown, answering common questions and preparing employees for a return to work kept everyone updated, Carrier said.

Carrier said employees were paid “for as long as possible before any need for unemployment” during their closure.

“We also allowed employees to use paid time off if needed and paid for health care benefits while we were closed,” he said. Some departments remained on duty during the entire closure, he said, noting how the engineering team worked to fabricate all the Plexiglas dividers that were a requirement for reopening.

Vaccinating employees

Once vaccines were approved, Eureka Casinos worked with government agencies and local hospitals to develop a vaccination center and a process for employees and the community to get vaccinated. They created a reservations platform and staffed the center as well, he said.

Also read: EEOC says that employers legally can offer incentives to employees to get vaccinated in almost all instances

A rewards program also was established for employees wanting to be vaccinated.

“Any employee who gets vaccinated receives a cash bonus,” he said. “Once the company reaches two specific overall vaccination thresholds, additional bonuses are paid out to vaccinated employees.”

Tight talent pool

Carrier told Las Vegas television station KTNV that the pool of available worker talent in Las Vegas will remain tight as venues prepare for the second half of 2021. “This is arguably one of the most difficult times ever to find new people to join your company.”

But Carrier is optimistic that his casinos will fully rebound in large part because of their employees.

“Having hope for the future is a core value for Eureka Casinos, and the pandemic taught us how important that value is.”

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The link between employee engagement and good brand image

employee engagement

Companies can spend millions of dollars on campaigns promoting their brand each year. But aside from building connections with potential customers and nurturing relationships with existing ones, there’s another side of branding that businesses need to pay attention to — employee engagement and perception. 

Kay Phelps, director of British workplace communications company PR in HR, discussed the impact of employee engagement on a company’s brand and why authenticity is especially essential these days for elevating brand perceptions.

Good branding comes from within

When employees find purpose in their roles and feel valued, they can be a company’s greatest brand promoter. But if they are not heard or treated well, what they have to say can be detrimental to your brand image. 

“Employees who are engaged are likely to spread positive thoughts around your brand — be it through word of mouth or social media,” Phelps said. Engaged employees are also likely to interact with their company’s social media pages, therefore boosting the reach and engagement of the brand via digital channels.

Kay Phelps, director, HR in PR
Kay Phelps, director, PR in HR.

Leaders also need to recognize that there are online platforms where employees can air out their experiences with the company, whether positive or negative. “Combine this with the potential for posts on social media, not only should employers be motivated to treat staff well for their wellbeing, but to protect their image too,” Phelps added. 

According to a Glassdoor survey, 86 percent of employees and job seekers research company reviews and ratings to decide on where to apply for a job. Further, a negative reputation can cost a company as much as 10 percent more per hire. 

Bad employee reviews not only hurt the perception of potential hires but can also discourage customers from doing business with a company. 

“If staff feel that their employers genuinely support them and take their views into account, they’ll be more likely to go to them first with any problems instead of heading online to air their opinions,” said Phelps.

Also read: How technology can help your employee engagement strategy

Authenticity is essential

Customers are paying more attention to how brands are living up to their core values and treating their people. A Stackla report said that 86 percent of consumers say that authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support. 

“After last year, people want to see that brands care about their people and their customers — not least in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, wellbeing and health and safety,” Phelps said. 

Phelps sees this as a huge opportunity for companies to be talking about their successful programs that promote employee welfare. However, she cautions about the dangers of claiming to have such initiatives without clear actions, “Companies should take action before talking about it in their comms. Your messaging can’t be ingenuine. It must reflect real action and support in these areas. Fail to do this and you’re likely to be called out by onlookers or your employees,” Phelps explained. 

Also read: Human capital management: Considerations to better engage employees and promote diversity

Empowering your biggest promoters

“Part of understanding why people want to associate with your brand is being able to recognize their struggles and when you do this, you can create targeted messaging that addresses pain points and provides solutions,” Phelps said of boosting brand awareness, and the same principle can also be applied to creating a better working environment for your employees. 

According to Glassdoor, employee voice is three times more credible than the CEO when it comes to talking about working conditions in the company. 

Phelps says that a reason for poor brand awareness is unclear messaging. Just like customers, employees tend to be disengaged when expectations for their role are unclear. When not addressed this leads to confusion and conflict, resulting in poor performance and worse, a bad company review. 

The second reason is assuming knowledge on the part of the target audience. “Companies need to be able to get their messages across to the ordinary person in a clear and simple way. If a person is confused, they’ll simply turn off,” Phelps explained. 

Just with managing the workforce, managers should not assume that their employees know it all. They need to lay out all essential information for their people to do their jobs well. Open lines of communication are a must for fostering a culture of trust in the workforce. Employees need to feel a certain sense of safety that allows them to raise questions and concerns without fear of being shut down. 

Companies should prioritize enabling their employees to perform at their best. This means providing them with the right tools and platforms that will allow them to be more efficient. Tools that enable them to collaborate, make data-driven decisions, and just generally make admin work easier are essential to keeping them engaged. 

What employees have to say about a company is just as crucial to what customers think about the brand — sometimes, even more. Employee engagement can resonate outside the organization and can either make or break your business. Given today’s business landscape, taking care of your employees is essentially protecting your brand image and bottom line.

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Is work from home not all it’s cracked up to be?

coronavirus, remote work, COVID-19, remote workforce

Three weeks ago I returned to the office. That return matched my start date at Wickens Herzer Panza. I decided that it’d be difficult, if not impossible, to learn a new firm and its systems, and build camaraderie and teamwork with my new co-workers, if I’m working remotely. Thus, I made the decision to break free of my self-imposed COVID-19 cocoon and start working most days in person in the office.

I thought about this decision as I read this article in the Wall Street Journal: After Covid, Should You Keep Working From Home? Here’s How to Decide.

Consider these conflicting stats.

  • 54 percent of employees say that they would want to work remotely if permitted post-COVID-19.
  • Yet, over 60 percent of employees report that remote work has increased their time spent in meetings and their work hours, and nearly 50 percent report that it has decreased their work-life balance.
In other words, employees are in favor of remote work as a concept, but in practice, they may not understand that it is doing more harm than good.
Without a real physical separation between work and nonwork, people won’t ever stop working. They will be on the clock 24/7, ultimately burning themselves out at great cost to themselves and their employers. The most recent episode of Depresh Mode with John Moe expertly addressed this issue.
What does this mean for your remote employees? It means that they are likely working too much, some to the point of burnout. If you value your employees’ mental health and wellbeing, factor it into your decision when and whether to bring your employees back to your physical workplace, at least part time. They might think they want to keep working remotely, but they may not necessarily know what’s best for them.

In the meantime, if your employees are going to continue working remotely, consider these tips to help them maintain the balance they need to avoid overworking and burning out.

1.  Set a schedule for your employees and strongly encourage them to stick to it. Alternatively, make available technology that allows employees to designate when they are available and not available. In either case, it must be clear to managers, supervisors, and coworkers that these boundaries must be respected except in the case of a 911-level emergency.
2. Require that employees take breaks during the workday, including a lunch break.
3. Prioritize days off so that employees can recharge their batteries.
4. Remind employees who might be struggling with their mental health of the services you have available for them, including an EAP and counseling and other mental health services via your health insurance plan.
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How to choose which remote work employees to bring back

coronavirus, remote work, COVID-19, remote workforce

For the past year, an astounding 44 percent of employees have been working remotely full time, and two-thirds of employees have done remote work at least one day per week. With vaccination rates on the rise and offering a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, employers are starting to plan for bringing employees back to the physical workplace.

These decisions involve a lot of key questions an employer needs to answer in planning for where employees will work in a post-vaccine, post-pandemic world.

Here are four questions to think about.

1. How have employees performed during the pandemic while working remotely?

Has an employee been less productive, as productive, or more productive? Have they stayed connected and in communication? Can you trust them to continue to work remotely, or do they need closer monitoring? Have you gotten more productivity out of employees during the pandemic because of the resulting blurring of work time and personal time (i.e., if one’s home is now the workplace, do they ever really disconnect from working)?

2. What is an employee’s preference?

Do they want to continue working remotely, would they prefer to return to a physical office or workspace or do they want some type of flexible or hybrid arrangement? Do they have long commutes that eat into their available working time, and will remote work create greater productivity as a result?

3. Does remote work makes sense for your business moving forward?

How interactive do your employees need to be in performing their jobs? Is their work highly collaborative, and being with people, in person, will assist in getting the job done quicker and at a higher quality? Or does your business involve production processes that cannot be done or effectively managed remotely? Or can employee “get it done” just as well without being face-to-actual-face with others?

4. What about high-risk employees and working parents?

COVID-19 more disproportionately severely impacts older people and people with certain underlying health conditions. And, working parents who lost child care during the pandemic had other reasons to remain at home. Thus, separate from stay-at-home order and social distancing rules that have kept everyone home, these employees have a greater reason to have worked remotely and remain remote. As individuals are vaccinated and schools and childcare reopen, these concerns should melt away, but employers still need to be mindful of not discriminating on account of age, disability, and parental/caregiver status as they bring employees back to work and reintegrate them into the workplace.

COVID-19 has changed how most businesses think about work from home. That genie is likely never going back in the bottle. Each business will have to answer all of the above questions in deciding what work from home looks like for them and their employees as we move into a post-pandemic world and workplace.

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4 ways that health care organizations can build resilience

build resilience

Health care organizations faced numerous challenges when the pandemic hit. Residents in care facilities faced a high risk of contracting the coronavirus as many are between the vulnerable ages of 80 and 90 years old with underlying conditions. 

Beyond the physical stress, residents and staff alike experience mental health challenges. Employees are burdened with adapting to new ways of working, such as dealing with absences, implementing new health protocols, and the emotional toll of seeing patients  affected by the virus. At the same time, residents can also pick up such cues and feel the burden themselves — restrictions such as limited visits from loved ones added to the toll too. 

“Care organizations in particular have been under immense strain. We’ve never asked them to do more to protect the most vulnerable members of our society,” said Bryce Davies, general manager of Workforce.com UK. But there’s another story here, and that’s human ingenuity and creativity can be used to help us all adapt. It’s called resilience.” 

The ability of organizations to bounce back from challenges and show resilience is what can help them thrive during a pandemic. Davies identified four core areas of resilience that can help businesses navigate through this time.

Keeping communication lines open

Communication is key for both staff and patients or customers. But with the pandemic, keeping communication lines open tends to become challenging given restrictions and volatile work patterns. This resulted in information getting diluted and not being communicated to the right person at the right time, which prevents teams from adapting quickly to circumstances. 

“Identify your mission-critical communication channels and build redundancy into these,” Davies said. The speed of communication channels should also be considered and identify possible causes of delays. 

Open and transparent communication lines are vital to empowering staff to step in and take over in case of a teammate’s absence or operational changes. Furthermore, it’s also critical to documenting processes, which lessens onboarding time and equips teams to stay agile. 

Ensuring safety on shift

Fatigue is detrimental to the safety of patients and health workers alike. When care facility staff is exhausted, they are more prone to making errors, forgetting things, having difficulty processing information and reacting slowly. 

Workforce managers can prevent their staff from experiencing fatigue through efficient scheduling and leave management. However, staff schedules can be difficult to plan and subjects staff to work in shift patterns, which fail to account for other factors such as demand, leave and time for training.

“Try planning your schedule out as far in advance as possible to lock in both the time for leave and training,” Davies explained. Monitoring annual leave balances throughout the year also helps allocate resources accordingly and make sure the staff gets enough time off to curb the effects of stress.

Also read: How leaders can boost employee retention by respecting work-life balance of hourly workers

Technology such as Workforce.com provides managers oversight into all the essential factors with staff scheduling. Minus the paperwork, managers can use the platform to make better decisions when creating schedules and ensure that time off, training, and demand are accounted for. 

Promoting financial security

Labor costs and demand are difficult to control and forecast. If not managed properly, it can drive up expenses, resulting in the organization becoming less financially agile. This can make team members feel insecure about the company and may cause them to leave. 

“Build a mock schedule well in advance and cost it using employees’ base pay and overtime to help predict cost. Test different scenarios,” Davies advised. Identifying key demand trends and indicators can also help in forecasting costs. 

It’s also crucial to pay close attention to the variance between schedules and actual timesheets. Investigate probable causes of overspending and optimize your operations to address them. 

More importantly, health care organizations should have a way to proactively manage demand and cost rather than acting on issues after the fact. Having access to labor analytics is vital to do that. Workforce.com captures real-time costs and revenue throughout the day, allowing managers to react quickly and make cost-effective decisions on the fly.

Also read: Labor analytics and reporting starts with access to the right data

Demonstrating HR compliance

Complying with labor laws is a must, but keeping up with changes can be tough. 

“Promote compliance as a culture, not as one person’s job,” Davies said. Integrate compliance to every part of workforce management. Ensure that processes and systems are designed to stay at pace and adhere to labor laws. 

Companies can start with digitizing their documents so that files can be remotely audited and monitored. Compliance can also be accounted for in creating employee schedules. Workforce.com’s employee scheduling platform factors in labor laws and alerts managers if a schedule is at risk of violating regulations. Legislation that affects payroll is also crucial for companies to pay close attention to as it impacts labor costs and treatment of overtime and holidays. 

Also read: The rundown on wage law compliance: What organizations should know

When systems are integrated for labor compliance, all activities are tracked and fixing potential noncompliance risk would be quicker. 

“Resilience is something that we can build into all of our businesses, and it’s never too late to start,” Davies said. Recognizing the gaps is half of the battle. The other half is finding the right solution to address them. 

Workforce.com has been partnering with businesses in different industries to help them engage their teams, safeguard their finances and stay compliant. See our solutions in action and book a demo with us today. 

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How leaders can boost employee retention by respecting work-life balance of hourly workers

employee retention, engagement

Employee retention is a continually evolving metric for businesses and HR departments worldwide, set as a central guiding principle for maximizing profitability while simultaneously decreasing the expensive means of employee turnover and new hire training. 

You could even argue that employee retention statistics are among the top markers any business could use to project its growth and overall health. So why is employee turnover such a big problem for companies? 

Employers don’t always set proper expectations

One of the most common problems employers run into with high employee turnover is the simple fact that they don’t set appropriate expectations for their hourly employees. While many have focused conversations about the expected number of hours worked, uniform policies and job duties, unanswered questions left on the table can be the dividing factor between employees going or staying for the long haul. 

Setting the precedent of days worked is a significant factor for many individuals, as most have outside priorities that can tie them down and change their availability. Effective communication is the lifeblood of any organization. 

Having conversations about upcoming work events, potential scheduling conflicts, and holiday expectations is a simple way to ensure streamlined problem solving and proactive decision making. While unexpected situations are inevitable, stressors will always exist where systems do not. 

Placing greater emphasis on employee expectations and companywide strategies can facilitate greater teamwork and minimize stress for all parties involved. 

Build trust to improve productivity

Assumptions can crush employee morale, workplace productivity, and trust. When employers can set clear expectations, they can eliminate many of the common false beliefs created due to starting a new position at a new company. Leaders must be on high alert to ensure this has no place in their new hire’s thought process. 

Prioritizing continuous and straightforward conversations with employees will cost you nothing on the front end and save you much more on the back end. Employee feedback is crucial for success, but if leaders and managers aren’t asking for that feedback, they may never get it. 

The first step of giving feedback is asking for feedback, as this opens up the door for effective communication and will build trust with your employees. Plus, employees who can provide their input will feel a part of the company’s decision-making process and perceive it as an individual investment in the company’s future.

When leaders don’t ask the questions to get the answers they’re looking for, trouble starts to brew and may not show its ugly head for days, weeks, or even months down the road when an employee begins to act out of the norm. 

Flexible leadership 

The last piece of the puzzle involves company leadership, as this is a continually evolving role with its fair share of highs and lows. Being a flexible leader is crucial for maintaining integrity and high employee retention outcomes, as it facilitates high-level thinking and empathy towards your employees. 

No one could have foreseen the unpredictability and chaos that 2020 has placed us in, so having a flexible approach to scheduling hours may be the deciding factor for workers who have children at home to take care of or another job to get to. Simple things like allowing someone to be flexible with their structured hours to enable them to pick their children up from the babysitter may be the reason why they decide to stay around for the long term.

Hours can always get made up, but personal responsibilities will always weigh heavier than a previously desired set number of hours to work. 

Retaining employees versus hiring new ones

As with nearly everything in life, it will always be your responsibility as a leader to implement these strategies. Knowledge is useless without application. Keeping your existing employees happy through consistent communication is the fastest way to company growth and prosperity. 

Technology can also be a great way to streamline scheduling changes and unexpected work events, as workforce management applications can make a big difference in eliminating unnecessary costs and time. Implementing these steps will lead you down a prosperous path of success and a fruitful career in leadership.

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Tipped restaurant and other service workers at high risk for ‘maskual harassment’

construction, mask, mobile technology, COVID-19
Everyone has been hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Service industry employees, however, have been hit particularly hard. Many are out of work. And those who are able to work are working fewer hours and earning less in wages and tips.
Moreover, according to this survey (h/t: NPR), a majority of service industry workers are being forced to choose between earning valuable tips and staying safe by wearing a mask.

Consider these statistics regarding tipped employees:

  • 78 percent report experiencing or witnessing hostile behavior from customers in response to staff enforcing COVID-19 safety protocols.
  • 83 percent report that their tips have declined during COVID-19, with two-thirds reporting a decline of more than half.
  • 58 percent report feeling reluctant to enforce COVID-19 protocols out of concern that customers would tip them less.
  • 67 percent report actually having received a lesser than usual tip after enforcing COVID-19 protocols.
  • 84 percent report being within six feet of at least one person who is not wearing a mask in every shift, and one-third report being within six feet of 30 or more maskless individuals on every shift.

The kicker: 37 percent of tipped workers reported that their employer had not conducted mandatory training on COVID safety protocols and 69 percent reported that their employer is not consistently following all COVID safety protocols.

This is unacceptable. Restaurant workers are on the front lines of this virus working inside one of this pandemic’s most dangerous spreading environments.

They shouldn’t have to be de facto safety sheriffs, enforcing mask mandates and other health rules. Yet, that is the position in which many of their employers have put them, which, according to the above survey, is often without training or the enforcement of COVID safety rules.

Employees should not be placed in the position of enforcing COVID safety rules with a customer, especially when they risk the loss of tips and revenue as a result. Employers, do your part. Train your workers and set up a system of enforcement that takes your front-line workers out of the enforcement equation.

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How to cultivate innovation in the workforce

Innovation is key to an organization’s success, but what is it really? Workforce.com recently caught up with Victor Assad, managing partner of InnovationOne, LLC and author of “Hack Recruiting: The Best of Empirical Research, Method and Process and Digitization,” to discuss how companies can foster innovation and see actual results from doing so. 

DEFINING INNOVATION IN THE WORKFORCE

Workforce: We always hear that innovation is key to success in an organization. But what does it really mean? 

Victor Assad: It means that an organization is churning out innovations that drive financial value in products, services, or new business models for its customers in a manner where it leads its peers. Typically, for companies to do that, they have to know what their customers need, and secondly, they need to have great cultures of innovation that are very transparent and very agile. 

WF: How can companies start innovating and see actual returns or impact from these activities?

Assad: Organizations need to first think through where they need to innovate. What is their desired end state, and how quickly do they need to get there? Is it new products? Is it new services? Is it a new business model? Is it digitizing their processes to move more quickly? Or a combination thereof?

To get that vision, they need to reach an agreement among the executive staff and articulate it to their workforce and external partners. It’s important to articulate it so often and so fervently that executives feel nauseated by talking about it. And when you’re nauseated talking about it, then they have made a good first step. 

The next thing is to share data on new technologies, social-economic trends, and marketing trends with the workforce and external partners, who can also be customers. Invite employees and partners to get involved. Executives have to make sure that their middle management is on board with this and that they will be leaders who will entertain questioning and allow people to collaborate, go off on their own, come up with something and experiment. They need to have a well-known process to move ideas forward. Everyone has to know that process, and it has to be credible. Meaning, everybody that makes a suggestion is going to get a response. It might be yes, It might be no and here’s why. 

Finally, organizations have to overcome what I like to call, the graveyard of innovation. And that is to get your organization’s attention to commercialize your innovation. Different functions like marketing, sales, manufacturing, service centers, and quality assurance are all focused on making the numbers for this quarter. You have to work very hard to get their attention to produce this new innovative product and develop a market for it.. That’s very different from what all those functions do for a mature,  profitable product. 

WF: Innovation takes time and resources. What return or value can organizations gain with innovation activities?

Victor Assad

Assad: At Innovation One, we have an index that measures innovation. And organizations that score on the top quartile have 22 percent higher financial measures like profit.

In addition, they attract the best talent. They lead in the market. And when they keep these cultures going, they have all sorts of significant financial returns and other good things that happen to them. 

TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

WF: Are there certain types of technology that can help with innovation?

Assad: Every company these days needs to be a digital company. Helpful technologies include big data analysis, (true) artificial intelligence, digital project management software, and chatbots to accelerate communications. Coronavirus, the digital era, our politics have exposed every organization’s weak points. And the first ones to figure out the new normal are going to be the winners as we re-emerge. 

Remote work and the pandemic uncovered that there’s a false narrative about innovation — which is you have to work together, face to face, to be innovative and collaborative. While there are advantages to that, you can also do it digitally. There are tools for whiteboarding, internal crowdsourcing, and project management. I’ve been to virtual meetings where you have 60 people, and you can all go into digital breakrooms and come back as if you’ve had a day at a conference. 

According to a study from McKinsey, companies that lead in adapting these digitization tools, not just in R&D, but in sales, marketing, supply chain and across the HR platform — the early movers get the best returns. 

WF: How can organizations find the right type of technology to invest in?

Assad: Artificial intelligence and digital technology are tools, not a strategy. What’s important for the chief people officer and the executive team is to determine what’s important for talent strategy in the workforce. Do you want to get rid of all the paperwork and have more digital streams of information? Terrific. Prioritize that.

The advice that I would give is to only buy digital tools that are 80 percent out of the box. Don’t buy something that they say would be under development and given to you in three months by the time they will launch it for you. Buy 80 percent out of the box and go in there knowing the criteria for your needs, whether it be to improve your recruiting, talent management, driving out bias, or improving diversity and inclusion. 

Companies need to be very good at using an approach to involve the workers to put in place new technology. Digitization efforts may fail, and technology may not be used broadly when there’s a lack of worker involvement and  collaborative culture. 

INNOVATION IN HIRING TO RETENTION 

WF: Is there a connection with HR or workforce management tools and how innovative an organization is?

Assad: Yes, there is. HR has the same tools that have been available to different functions like sales and marketing and R&D. It’s time HR use those same tools to build an employee brand for new employees and current employees. These tools are data analysis, artificial intelligence and chatbots.

Technology now can help in finding, tracking, and screening the best talent without bias. 

So what’s the leading cause of bias in the hiring process? The human being. So human beings have an incredible amount of unconscious bias that is there to protect us. It may be something we experienced. It may be something that we have been taught as children or culturally taught.

But research shows that we make decisions in five minutes about somebody, and we spend the rest of the interview trying to verify that decision we made. And you need to break that. A great way to break that is through a structured interview where you’re going to see if somebody has the competencies you need on the job. You need to be trained to interview this way. 

Another way is to use artificial intelligence before the interview. There are tools that go on the internet, and they take the competencies that you need and find those who exhibited those competencies by where they worked or what they put on their online resume. This is very different technology than  a LinkedIn  or an Indeed search. 

The artificial intelligence technology ranks results from top to bottom candidates. It gives you the ranking, but you don’t see a job candidate picture. You don’t see a name until you’ve picked a group of candidates based on the competency and experience matching. And then, you can unblind it, learn more about the job candidates, and reach out to them. 

It’s not going to protect unconscious bias in the interview. Hopefully, structured interviews will. It’s also actually fantastic for matching people who are already in your applicant tracking system but haven’t applied for a job opening. It can find that talent in an instant where a recruiter would be hunting for many hours inside their applicant tracking system.

Another area where technology can help is by quickly providing information to staff. Most HR (and IT) organizations get the same 20 questions regardless of the company. A chatbot can answer these common questions, like when does open enrollment begin? How do I get into a VPN when I have lost my code? Where do I get information about onboarding? Chatbots or intelligent digital assistants curate these data and enable employees to find answers quickly in Teams or Slack, allowing HR staff to focus on other matters. 

These technologies can foster innovation from the get-go by helping find the right talent. While others equip them to have easy access to information, allowing them more time to focus on activities for innovation. 

FOSTERING A CULTURE OF INNOVATION 

WF: Culture is an essential element in innovation. Why is it necessary, and how can companies foster that?

Assad: Without innovation companies will fall behind the competition in our fast changing, digital world. Protecting the status quo is a sure bet for failure. The empirical evidence shows that companies seldom become innovative from one great idea or technology. It takes a culture of innovation. Innovation requires an evolution of ideas that are continually developed by their workforces and external partners, aligned to common goals. Executives foster this by continually articulating their strategies for innovation, deploying innovation goals, sharing competitive information, promoting real time learning, inviting employees to suggest ideas and collaborate, and providing an easy and well known process to advance ideas, prototype, collect data, and make decisions rapidly.  

A lot of organizations these days have only a compliance culture. Do what I tell you to do and don’t ask questions. Companies employ this to assure goal attainment, quality and reliability because nobody wants a pacemaker that won’t work. No one wants to fly on a jet where the engine is going to conk out. We need to have good reliability. 

Companies can have both predictable quarterly results and innovation. It is a matter of focus. HR has a big role in this culture change by realigning the goal setting and performance management systems to motivate and reward innovation and quarterly goal achievement. When executives prioritize excellence for this quarter’s goals and their best innovation projects, great business outcomes are achieved.