by Janine Nicole Dennis | Sep 13, 2013 | HR Technology Trends and Tips
All of the technology in the world cannot make up for the human connection. Human Resources was put in place to represent and support the people of the company – whether they are in the candidate process, or full-fledged employees. HR Tech continues to evolve, but it should not act as a replacement for human interaction, only a supplement.
The biggest development in the wake of evolving HR Technologies is a sense of community. In regards to hiring, there has been emergence of social software features within HR Tech such as the sharing of candidates and commenting on a colleague’s interview notes. Pick a technology that allows you to amplify personal interactions not limit them. A good tool is only great if it can reinforce the human interaction and help to build a sustainable community with people inside the office and out.
As an HR professional or recruiter, you cannot let technology diminish your interaction with candidates or employees to the “just another cog in the wheel” mentality. These people ARE people are should be treated as such.
Use a tool that lets you get to know you candidates and include your employees. This is better for your company because you can guarantee you’re hiring or working with people who want to be there. By emphasizing community as part of your hiring brand, you can build a talent pool of passive candidates for when more jobs open up. I believe in collaboration at every level. Pay attention to companies that foster this kind of collaboration. They are usually the companies that are consistently building new & amazing features. It’s a team mentality.
It is immediately important for HR Practitioners to know that candidates are expecting more. Talent Branding, employer branding, candidate experience – they are all buzzwords for a reason. It’s because they are real. I’m a young professional and my experience with HR has always been positive, and in general I’ve been lucky enough to have a majority of positive candidate experiences. However, I know the stereotypes. HR is an evil department lurking in the back of a business to destroy people’s professional happiness. Companies don’t respond to candidates because they just don’t care, right? Wrong. Not anymore, at least. Social Media allows HR to be up front and center. They can build a positive brand for themselves by not only empowering themselves to get involved in the conversation, but by engaging candidates and fellow employees. HR is in a unique position because they understand what is at the heart of the company- the people.
This trend of candidate acknowledgement is beyond important. Talent is the lifeblood of your company, and if you don’t pay attention or appeal to them- you can forget about attracting the candidates you need.
Smart technology vendors understand the importance of relationships and allowing for collaboration. You want HR Technology that allows for transparency, ease, and efficiency. That’s the first step, you have to find something that allows you to achieve your goals but also live up to the expectations of the candidates.
Hiring is social. HR is social. Humans are social.
“Lexie is the Community Manager at SmartRecruiters. After graduating with a degree in Anthropology and Communications from the University of Kansas she decided she never wanted to stop talking to people. She believes in creating great workplaces, developing talent, sharing knowledge and using social media for good.”
Janine Truitt
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Sep 11, 2013 | HR Technology Trends and Tips
High potentials and high performers are not synonymous. By confusing the two we have set ourselves up for failure. While not an easy problem to solve, technology provides an opportunity to create success in our organizations.
In any organization, employee development and career development are critical to an employee’s engagement. Prepared employees can smoothly transition into vacant leadership roles. Promoting from within means your “new hire” already knows the culture and how your company works, in addition to inspiring other employees to earn the next open spot.
Identifying the right candidate is not simple. According to the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC), nearly 40 percent of internal job moves made by people identified by their companies as “high potentials” end in failure. In order to ensure your leaders are part of the 60 percent, you need to correctly identify qualified employees and ensure they are invested in your organization.
This process takes a lot of assessment and interaction with the potential candidate, but technology is helping us out.
Identifying high potentials
It takes more than top sales numbers or killer performance ratings to take on the next leadership role. Performance is a good place to start, but when we stop at performance, we might promote people beyond their level of competence and turn a high-performing employee into an unsuccessful manager (or director, or VP). The CLC says only 29 percent of all high-performing employees have what it takes to excel at the next level of the organization.
So what more does it take? The CLC defines high potentials as employees that display ability, engagement, and the aspiration to succeed in more senior critical roles:
- Ability—The intellectual, technical, and emotional skills (innate and learned) to handle increasingly complex challenges
- Engagement—The level of personal connection and commitment the employee feels toward the firm and its mission
- Aspiration—The desire for recognition, advancement, and future rewards, and the degree to which the employee’s desires align with the company’s plans for him or her
Employees that are weak in or missing any one of these three traits are less likely to be successful when promoted. Only one percent of your organization likely fits this definition of a high potential, so when you do identify these key employees, tracking and encouraging their success is critical.
The engagement challenge
Of the three traits named by the CLC, organizations can have the largest impact on employee engagement. Top talent is heavily sought after, so avoid losing yours to the competition by nurturing connection and commitment.
- Make recognition a priority. If your organization does not make recognition a priority, it likely isn’t happening enough. Make sure all employees know their contributions are valued, especially when those contributions are having major business impact.
- Align individual goals to company goals. Connection to an organization starts with understanding the organization’s business strategy. When individual goals are tied to corporate goals, individual contributions are more meaningful and company goals are more important to the individual.
- Clearly communicate corporate values. Do your employees know what your organization stands for? Do you? Clearly articulating your organizational values—and living them—is critical to business success.
All together now
Technology cannot replace your HR and/or business leaders’ assessment of an employee’s potential. What technology can do is provide opportunities to track employee success and engagement and allow employees to share accomplishments. Technology is giving us opportunities to create a more consistent recognition experience—which is a key driver of employee engagement—as well as insight intowhich employees have the necessary attributes to be a high potential. Know who your true high potentials are, and give them the tools to be successful.
Sylvia Klarer is the Director of Client Engagement at Achievers. She has over 25 years of experience in Human Resources. Sylvia joined Achievers from Aon Hewitt where she was a Senior Associate in the Talent and Engagement consulting practice. Her focus was to help organizations improve employee engagement and as a result positively impact business results. She has also held senior HR roles at Ceridian, Honeywell (formerly Allied Signal), Ernst and Young, and Ontario Hydro.
Janine Truitt
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Aug 27, 2013 | Human Resources
Building a culture should be founded on the principles of inspiring your employees to work towards a central purpose, values and vision that give life to your business goals.
As you build your team, you should of course be mindful of those knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes that lend themselves to success in your organization. In fact, you must define it to be able to seek it out. However, once you define it and seek it out – what does your workforce makeup look like?
It is my experience, that although companies speak about multiple profiles of prospective hires that would be the ideal fit for their culture; they end up hiring one specific type of individual. In time, these people become conditioned to the “way” of the company and in effect “drink the Kool-Aid”. They are not in control of themselves – they think, speak and behave alike. Essentially, they have become a little too engaged in the company culture and as a result they are cultish too.
Too much engagement?
Yes, too much engagement is entirely possible. We know the issues that arise with disengaged employees and we know the benefits of an engaged employee. I’m talking about over engagement whereby the employees no longer think for themselves- where no one dares to challenge rules, policies or procedures no matter how ridiculous they are. It is a condition by which employees have been suckered into believing the company’s every word and no one can counter their beliefs.
CULTure much?
Cults are groups of people with evidence of extreme devotion to a person, place, thing, idea or movement. If we examine the darker side of cults, they usually have a leader that spoon feeds them bits and pieces of disjointed or erroneous information. Often times, these leaders instill fear to keep their followers loyal, fearful, and ignorant enough so they don’t stray. The followers hang on the cult leaders every word never questioning his or her intent or purpose.
Just like a cult, some companies prefer like-minded people to enter their circle of trust. As such, you may hear of diversity and inclusion for superficial purposes, but in practice it will be non-existent. Innovation or creativity are usually curse words in these companies so beware the usage of them.
In more damaging news, this CULTure will inevitably chew you up and spit up you out if you are different, a disruptor, mover and shaker or change influencer. It usually appears in the form of warnings and eventually if they don’t think you have been brow-beaten enough it will turn into bullying. What’s even worse is the HR departments in these companies have usually had a sip of the Kool-Aid as well and will do very little to alleviate the situation.
What is HR to do?
Here’s the disclaimer- I recognize that not all HR departments would condone this behavior in their companies. I’m not speaking about every HR department. However, it is clear that nothing like CULTure could go on unless our HR friends in the organization allowed it. I have personally experienced this and many of my HR colleagues have experienced working in companies with this cult-like behavior. That tells me that my “well-intentioned” HR brethren were purposely sleeping on the job so as to please senior management and/ or others engaged in this behavior.
We are in the pleasing game, but not at the expense of turnover, bullying and other workplace atrocities. In HR, if you see something, say something or at the very least probe and investigate any signs of issues or upticks in turnover. Additionally, I see HR as a company culture originator and catalyst-which means any culture built upon a singular mindset, group of people, etc. is limiting and isn’t likely to bode well for your recruitment, retention or succession efforts in the long-term. We are living in a hyper-connected world where dissatisfied employees like dissatisfied customers will expose you and your CULTure online and beyond.
If everyone in your company is starting to finish each other’s sentences or are skipping to the same beat- it may be time to shake things up, rethink and redefine what your company culture stands for.
Ask yourself are you building a culture or a CULTure?
Janine Truitt
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Aug 20, 2013 | Life
I’ve had enough! I love HR Technology- I really do! However, there are some vendors that aren’t keeping up with the times and it is costing employers candidates and cash which isn’t a good thing.
More than once or twice in the past year, I have been contacted by family, clients, and friends about issues they have experienced in trying to upload their resume-in an effort to apply for a position. They see a job, they like the job, they attempt to apply- only to see the little icon spinning and spinning- never letting the candidate get any further than the first screen.
The issue?
Browser support is the issue or the lack thereof. One notable ATS vendor who shall remain nameless- has an issue with keeping up with the times. They are a global company that claims to put all of this money in R&D and yet they are supporting old browsers that make their candidate gateway incompatible with the latest browsers. This- in turn, prevents candidates from applying for jobs. Where there are no alternatives but to apply through the ATS, the candidate is left with no choice but to move on to the next opportunity. This is shameful! It is in the realm of where HR people and job seekers alike get annoyed and ask how is the technology helping me?
Something as simple as browser support should be the last thing hindering a candidate from applying. I get the reasons why you wouldn’t support old browsers, but not supporting the latest browser upgrades is ridiculous. For people to apply to companies using this ATS, there are disclaimers and all sorts of other “B” and “C” plans to make the candidate aware of the issues and yet sometimes the candidate is left in the dark with no explanation as to why they can’t get through – which is even worse.
Last night, the angry candidate was my father. He has been unemployed for two years and is looking to find something soon. He went to the website of a community college in NYC for a Security Director position. He created his username and password and it remained spinning- never fully logging him in.
Of course, he calls me irate and wanting me to check to see what the issue is. I had to explain to him that is the same garbage ATS I use currently and that none of his current browsers are supported by the system.
His response…
“Why do these companies have to make it so difficult for candidates to apply? It is very frustrating when you trying to look for the job and the road to applying makes it impossible to be seen.”
We can talk about ATS being blackholes and poor implementation, but these are not the issues. This is where the system is a dud and it is costing companies candidates. It is very disconcerting that this vendor proposes all the ways in which this system will provide a return on investment- particularly in the form of the quality of candidates you will be able to attract; only to find out it is actually working against your recruitment efforts. That can’t be true-if the vendors R&D dollars don’t lead to positive customer outcomes.
Not convinced this is a serious issue?
Here are the ways this problem is undermining your recruitment efforts:
1) Candidates will blame you not the technology. Nagging issues like browser compatibility give candidates the impression that your company isn’t keeping up-to-date.
2) Using this system, you won’t even have the ability to track where candidates drop off to fix the issue. The lack of insight into how often this issue occurs and how many candidates you lose- leaves you at a disadvantage in terms of quantifying the impact it is having on your recruitment efforts.
3) From a branding perspective, candidates have more to say about their jobseeking experiences than ever before. If they have difficulty applying on your website, please be aware that it could be blasted on social media or written up in an angry blog post like this.
4) Candidates can’t apply to your positions from their desktop, an iPad, or their phone. If they are kind enough to try more than once and still can’t get through- you’re in major trouble.
5) Poor candidate experience = perception of poor work environment from a candidate’s perspective. If the candidate experience is difficult, lengthy, troublesome- the candidate is thinking this is how you run business as well. You just lost a potential hire.
It seems many vendors have gotten this right with the exception of this one. A great institution missed out on a stellar candidate last night and I’m not just saying that because he is my dad. It has been and continues to be difficult for people to get noticed in today’s economy. This is a terrible thing to do to people and a very poor way to start off a candidate/employer relationship.
To the vendor in question- you know who you are. Please fix this browser issue finally- it is long overdue and costing your customers candidates. You’re supposed to be helping businesses attract candidates not detract them.
Janine Truitt
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Aug 15, 2013 | 2, HR Innovation
I had the honor and privilege of attending a regional TEDx East NYC talk here in New York City on Tuesday evening. The talk was on trade and innovation. There were three accomplished speakers on the roster and a room of professionals from various industries, walks of life and of which were almost completely monochromatic figuratively and physically speaking.
I was one of two people of color in the room. None of which precluded me from taking in the experience and meeting people, but it was intriguing and a moment-of-reflection kind of occurrence.
The first speaker was Nathan Eagle, CEO of Jana. His work involves connecting major corporations to customer bases in emerging markets for the purposes of marketing their products and services. In exchange, for the customer opting in to share their demographic information along with consumer preferences- he reimburses them money for towards their mobile airtime in their currency. Since people in these emerging markets spend 10% of their daily wages on mobile usage it is a valuable incentive to receive money to defray the costs.
In essence, by implementing something as simple as redirecting how corporations capture and utilize consumer data- he is putting the control as to how it is shared in the consumer’s hands- and creating wealth for people in emerging markets.
He piloted this in Kenya and the first year he did this, he paid out of pocket to these consumers. You know what it cost him? $240 dollars was the cost to reimburse these consumers. That is a negligible amount of money on his part for something with profound economic and human impact.
I’ll come back to Nathan in a second, but let’s examine the next speaker, Timothy Wu. His talk was about a scarcity and surplus and what innovators need to know from a societal perspective about solving problems for a society conditioned by surplus.
In his talk, he suggested that we have been a society of scarcity for several centuries whereby many needs were unmet and the ultimate goal of citizens was to achieve more- whether that was a better life, more money or possessions. Tim went on to suggest that we are no longer a society of unmet needs. He purports that we now have the resources, the money, knowledge and all other things that generations of the past worked towards. His feeling is that we are now a post-scarcity society entering the era of surplus.
The era of surplus is comprised of the notion that we are in abundance of information, knowledge, resources, money and all basic needs are met or overly met. This being the case, Timothy made the case that today’s innovators will have to solve the problem of surplus in the variety that it presents itself.
I took that to mean that innovators will have to simplify what was made complex by previous generations in their pursuit of having more. Those businesses that can seemingly give people more time in the day or provide a service or product that makes a complex process easier will be widely sought after.
How does this connect with Nathan’s talk?
Nathan is the product of a post-scarcity society. He could easily cater to helping big corporations extrapolate big data that lead to sales and make his millions, but instead he has decided to create and distribute wealth in countries where post-scarcity is laughable, because for all intents and purposes- they are still living in the nightmare of scarcity. Timothy’s perspective of an overall post-scarcity society is superficially intriguing until you realize that it isn’t true for the majority for emerging countries farless first-world countries like the U.S.
Scarcity of proper education, adequate wages to sustain a family, and access to food supply is still in abundance during what may appear to be an era of surplus in the U.S and even globally. Essentially, we are at a point where we have everything and nothing at the same time. As a society, the goal has become achieving equilibrium, because neither the extreme of scarcity or surplus works for us as a whole.
The last speaker was Simon Winchester. He is a newly branded citizen of the U.S. and rather educated on the fundamental reasons why the U.S. is a great place to live. His anecdotes and historical references are too vast to recall here, but what resonated was his pride in our past, present and future as a global innovator. He loves the U.S. and presented it in a way that left me with a renewed sense of enlightenment and pride in our country.
In summary, it was an amazing event with mind-bending concepts. To circle back to my observation about the lack of diversity in the crowd- I must say this- you don’t begin to truly level the playing ground until knowledge is shared consistently and abundantly with everyone. I am unique in that my entire life has been spent in search of answers and learning and I was brought up to seek that out. People that don’t do what I do are not less important, intelligent or innovative- it simply comes down to not being made aware of possibilities. Information is hoarded and cloaked in our society and it is shared sparingly to restrict certain groups of people from knowing and becoming more. Having a discussion with those that are already “in-the-know” doesn’t begin to solve society’s issues of fair and equitable knowledge transfer. A part of me left there feeling like the depth and importance of this particular conversation was limited to 70 people that it doesn’t adversely affect or have an effect at all.
On the bright side of things, these gentleman are asking life’s fundamental and human questions, creating the answers and sharing it. It is rare and if many more did what they are doing- we could all agree that we are truly in an era of surplus.
I asked myself some questions based on what I heard and I have to soul search for the answers:
1) As an HR practitioner, entrepreneur and citizen, how can I find a way to create and distribute wealth? Wealth in my terms could mean money but it could be in many forms of currency ( i.e. knowledge)
2) Am I living in scarcity or surplus and if it is the latter- how do I find a common ground where I live in neither extreme?
3) I’m always eternally thankful for what I have, but how can I fully appreciate the resources that I have?
The answers to these questions are emerging in my head and I’m glad I attended theTEDx talk to start the conversation.
Janine Truitt
The Aristocracy of HR
