by Perry Oostdam | Aug 7, 2017 | Featured, Guest Post, HR Technology, HR Technology Trends and Tips
Campaign/FTC disclosure: This is a sponsored guest post. I will receive compensation for this post. I only work with companies I feel have great products, services, and offerings. In accordance with my blog disclosure statement, I will only work with and showcase products, thought leadership, events and/or companies I believe my readers will benefit from. I am not formally employed by Recruitee. All thoughts and viewpoints are created and written by Perry Oostdam of Recruitee. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Image courtesy of Recruitee
What works for one company may not work for another. This goes for the budget, policies, and recruitment software! With the abundance of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) available, it’s worth it to shop around and get the best fit for your specific needs. There are comparison tools that are handy, like Capterra’s list of the best ATS. Side-by-side features and ratings are a great research tool! However, it may seem like a daunting task to sift through the options if you don’t know what you are looking for. Read on to find out the questions you need to be answering in order to determine the right ATS.
1—Is it user-friendly?
Collaboration in the hiring process is crucial. Decide with your whole team if an ATS will work for your particular situation. You must find one that even the least tech-savvy of employees can use and interact with! This will increase the level of inclusion and employee engagement, as well as the quality of hires. It’s a win-win situation.
How to find the answer:
Pin down what it means to your team to be user-friendly. A great place to start is a resource or article that explains how and why recruitment software can benefit teams when it’s easy to navigate and use. When listing these requirements out, remember to include criteria that benefit both a) the users and b) the potential applicants. Here are some quick ideas to give you and your team some inspiration:
- Simple application process with no redundancy
- Application form can be completed on mobile
- Sourcing extension for auto-fill of candidate data
- Email inbox right in the platform
- Live support
2—Is it mobile optimized? (Bonus if it has an associated mobile app!)
In the first question’s details, I mentioned mobile application forms as a possible must-have. This isn’t something to take lightly! Even if you don’t tangibly see the results of your mobile-optimized application form, candidates and your hiring results will thank you for it. A whopping 78% of job seekers reported that they would apply for a position via a mobile device. This is a huge chunk of your talent pool! Some applicants will bypass applying for a job if it can’t be completed when they are viewing it on their mobile device. Why miss out on top talent this way?
Speaking of missing out, the hiring arena is fast-paced. You don’t want to lose a potentially great fit for your company because you are out of the office. I’m not saying stay connected 24/7. However, your team will benefit from an ATS app that allows custom notifications. This way, your ATS is essentially in your pocket, allowing you to pick up on important, time-sensitive opportunities. Candidates will appreciate the responsiveness, and your competitors will be left wondering how you nabbed top talent so quickly!
How to find the answer: Test it out on your phone! Does the application form hold up on a mobile device? Also, go to the app store and see if there is an associated app with the ATS at hand. Download it, and try it for yourself.
3—Is it customizable?
Not only should notifications from your ATS be customized, but the whole platform should be able to be tweaked to fit your exact needs. Extra features that aren’t necessary just waste space and junk up the interface. Find an ATS that is intuitive and allows for customization. This will not only benefit your hiring workflow, but it will improve the candidate experience.
For instance, mass emails can appear cold and impersonal. When you are already dealing with a sensitive situation such as rejection of a candidate, this can leave them feeling jaded, confused, and, worst of all, ready to retaliate. The candidate experience can have a large impact on employer brand and the way your company is perceived. Tweaking bits of the hiring process to show candidates that you care will work wonders.
How to find the answer: Look for options to customize your workflow, from interview setups to team management. Furthermore, look for the ability to personalize candidate interaction, such as emails with placeholders.
4—Does it track recruitment data?
With the pressures of recruitment to-do lists, analysis sometimes gets pushed to the backburner. However, constant optimizations can result in a genius hiring process! It’s worth it to track the right data and analyze your findings. Practical application throughout different stages of your company’s lifetime will get you better hires in less time. Not only do companies differ in their hiring needs, but hiring needs change and fluctuate as an individual organization ebbs and flows.
How to find the answer: If you think you don’t have time to track data and/or don’t know what metrics to include, find an ATS that offers data tracking and automated reports!
5—Is your data secure on the platform?
Recruitment software is making the right move: to the cloud. ATS, in particular, are best when cloud-based. This keeps sensitive candidate and user information safe and secure from hackers, viruses, and the like. Think of the cloud as an intangible file cabinet that doesn’t run the risk of catching fire, losing documents, or being broken into! Pick an ATS that has proper security procedures in place.
How to find the answer: Make sure your ATS is outside of the jurisdiction of the Patriot Act. Cloud-based software can be used globally. Additionally, in the terms and conditions, look for adherence to security protocols.
Ask these questions, but play around with them to ensure that they are right for your company. What works for a similar company may be way off when it comes to your needs! Sit down with your team and decide the make-or-break features that will fill in the gaps where your recruitment is lacking. Try out the free trials of a few ATS and use your experiences to make an informed decision. Your hires will be better for it.
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Author bio:
Image courtesy of Recruitee
Perry Oostdam is the co-founder and CEO of Recruitee, a collaborative hiring platform for teams of all sizes. Recruitee helps optimize the entire hiring process, from candidate relationship management, employer branding, and job posting to candidate sourcing and applicant tracking. The company has offices in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Poznań, Poland and works with companies around the world.
For more information on Recruitee and its features email them at sales@recruitee.com.
by Adam Rogers | May 18, 2017 | Featured, Guest Post, Sponsored Post
Campaign/FTC disclosure: This is a sponsored guest blog post. I will receive compensation for this post. I only work with companies I feel have great products, services and offerings. In accordance with my blog disclosure statement, I will only work with and showcase products, events and/or companies I believe my readers will benefit from. I am not formally employed by Ultimate Software. All thoughts and viewpoints are created and written by Adam Rogers of Ultimate Software. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Image courtesy of Flickr.
Many Americans spend more time with their colleagues than they do with their families, so it’s not surprising that the strength of these relationships is important to job satisfaction. Trust, respect, and communication are vital aspects of a positive employee experience, but far too often, these critical factors are ignored or largely overlooked by organizations—perhaps partly due to the innate difficulty of tracking these metrics.
And how important is that trust, really?
Can I Trust You?
According to recent research, extremely. 9 out of 10 employees think trusting their direct managers is important to remaining satisfied at work, but less than half of employees actually do. An April SHRM study learned that respondents were not content with workplace trust levels, even when reporting high job satisfaction. And Rapt Media found more than a third of US employees feel like their companies don’t care about them at all—likely contributing to the 69% of respondents who said they’re either open to other opportunities or already seeking another job.
These statistics are concerning, raising red flags about productivity, retention, and everything in-between. Two-way trust is a crucial aspect of a stable, satisfying and successful work environment, but establishing and nurturing this within an organization can be difficult. Trust is certainly multi-faceted, at work as in life, but experts agree that communication is required, including transparency and responding to feedback. When implemented correctly, these communications tenets are valuable strategies.
In fact, 75% of workers said they would stay in an organization longer if their employer listened to—and addressed—their concerns. Can you imagine the financial impact of a 75% reduction in attrition?
Leveraging Technology to Cultivate Trust
To build a high-performing culture based on trust and communication, employers must effectively uncover their employees’ true feelings and respond appropriately. Many organizations currently rely on annual performance reviews, which can be quite valuable for assessing employee performance against pre-determined goals and objectives. But when it comes to obtaining quality feedback and insight into the employee experience, these infrequent evaluations almost always fall short.
Fortunately, technology has caught up with this significant need. Basic online templates evolved to sophisticated pulse surveys that can measure employee experience in real-time. In addition to yes/no queries and other quantitative tools, these innovative solutions can also decode open-ended surveys with exceptional accuracy. UltiPro Perception™, for example, uses advanced natural language processing and machine-learning algorithms to analyze text-based responses and identify key workplace themes, like trust, as well as the respondent’s underlying emotions.
This highly strategic tool can be effortlessly deployed at regular intervals to assess employee sentiment, either for the entire organization or filtered by location, position, manager, etc. Patterns emerge and business leaders receive real-time, actionable analysis and instant insights to improve trust, satisfaction, and retention within the organization.
These surveys allow leaders to measure how their employees feel about the hot-button topics frequently blamed for job dissatisfaction, such as family-friendly policies, growth opportunities, or job flexibility. Armed with data-based feedback about what matters most to their employees, executives have real power to evaluate and address pain points—building trust simultaneously.
For 46% of organizations surveyed in SHRM/Globoforce’s 2016 survey, employee retention was the #1 workforce management challenge. But it doesn’t have to be that way. By actively listening and responding to employees, it’s possible for organizations to solidify a culture of trust and communication—improving engagement, productivity, and retention in return.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Apr 4, 2017 | Featured, HR Technology, Sponsored Post, Talent Management
Image courtesy of Ultimate Software.
Campaign/FTC disclosure: This is a sponsored product review. I will receive compensation for this post. I only work with companies I feel have great products, services and offerings. In accordance with my blog disclosure statement, I will only work with and showcase products, events and/or companies I believe my readers will benefit from. I am not formally employed by Ultimate Software. All thoughts and viewpoints are created and written by me. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
In the HR industry, we spend a lot of time talking about the best ways to engage the people that work tirelessly for us. The thing that we often overlook in the engagement conversation is: “communication.” While that may seem broad, let’s explore a bit. How likely do you think your employees are to share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns at work? You may be thinking: “I have an open-door policy” or “we periodically send out employee surveys.” All of this is a great start, but I would argue that between your open-door policy, employee surveys, town halls, and overall company culture lays a tremendous gap between what you think you know and what your employees truly feel.
Why the gap?
Understanding employee voice requires that you understand the various inputs and ways in which employees communicate. Encouraging your employees to speak up is admirable, but not nearly enough. If asked, many employees will describe a sense of fear around offering up ideas, thoughts, and concerns, whether solicited or unsolicited. While this sentiment is often based on unfounded perceptions of the consequences of communicating freely, it is just as often rooted in experiences where feedback led to negative outcomes such as low performance ratings, indifferent behavior by management, isolation, and even termination as illustrated in an HBR article, “Can Your Employees Really Speak Freely.”
Case and point, employees are fearful of speaking up. In turn, that fear presents a challenge for organizations that are desperate to thwart turnover and other organizational maladies to better retain their workforce. According to a 2016 survey by Xerox, 53% of employers cite retention of top talent as an “organizational priority” for 2017. In order to retain your people, you need to have some insight into their ideas, intentions, and behaviors. The pathway to rounding-up that information isn’t exactly a simple science without some heavy lifting by technology. The reason for this is: Much of your intelligence around what motivates your employees is likely lying dormant as unstructured data fueled by performance evaluations, pulse surveys, exit interviews, internal communication tools, etc.
While all of this information is lying dormant, organizations are left vulnerable and in a state of inaction. Without visibility for situations and actions brewing under your nose, many organizations will continue to wonder why they can’t get ahead where employee engagement and retention is concerned.
Luckily for the HR industry, one of my favorite HR Technology companies, Ultimate Software, has gotten into the data game specifically to assist companies illuminating the true feelings and emotions behind employee responses.
Ultimate Software has a new solution called UltiPro Perception™. They were kind enough to allow me to ask them some questions about their solution and how it can help you. Here’s the scoop:
Help me understand how UltiPro Perception captures employee sentiment.
UltiPro Perception uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to analyze open-ended responses within employee surveys. The solution’s sophisticated technology interprets text-based feedback to uncover the feelings and emotions behind employees’ responses. Leaders and managers can then assess the overall sentiment for individual employees, teams, or the organization as a whole. The solution also looks for repeated keywords to identify more than 70 workplace themes or topics, and over 100 emotions beneath the surface of employee answers.
Why is UltiPro Perception better than any other tool out there using sentiment analysis?
UltiPro Perception is uniquely built to analyze unstructured data and uncover not only what employees are saying, but also how they feel, about things like work environment, culture, and leadership. UltiPro provides managers with easy-to-understand, actionable insights that will have a true impact on improving employee retention and engagement.
Another key differentiator is that UltiPro Perception is part of UltiPro’s comprehensive HCM suite. Organizations can easily collect feedback from the right groups of employees based on location, supervisor, tenure, and more—essentially any data element within UltiPro. Most competitive tools have no or limited HRIS/HCM integration and lack enterprise-level requirements such as configurability options and proper role-based security. Other employee survey solutions typically require costly, manual processes or they rely solely on quantitative analytics, and therefore can’t give organizations a true understanding of employee sentiment before it’s too late to take meaningful action.
How does UltiPro Perception arm managers and organizations in being able to manage the Talent Management life cycle better (i.e. Recruitment through Succession)?
UltiPro Perception offers built-in survey templates to gather feedback throughout the employee lifecycle—from candidate, to new hire, engagement, post-learning, exit, and more. Surveys can be configured to automatically be sent once a specific work event occurs, such as a promotion or performance review.
Key driver analysis provides real-time, actionable metrics to help guide managers towards the most effective next steps. Combining these results with UltiPro’s predictive analytics tools and Leadership Actions, managers have powerful resources to support, coach, and retain their employees.
Regarding data and reporting, how simple is UltiPro Perception for HR practitioners new to sentiment analysis?
With UltiPro Perception, data collection, management, analysis, and the delivery of insights are all automated, with both standard and configurable reports available. Report-quality insights are delivered in plain English—no training required. UltiPro Perception’s easy-to-read, interactive reports are delivered immediately upon closing surveys, including the analysis of free-text responses. Reports are distributed based on the employee directory and can be tailored to individual managers or areas of the organization.
What are the long-term and short-term wins new customers can expect using this tool?
Short term—Organizations can immediately get a sense of how their employees currently feel about their work environment, leadership, and more. UltiPro Perception can uncover the organization’s strengths and key areas for improvement.
Long term—Organizations can utilize UltiPro’s workforce intelligence solutions, including UltiPro Perception, to uncover people challenges, predict outcomes, and recommend actions to drive better business results. Additionally, leaders can use historical benchmarking to assess how engagement scores are changing over time, in order to identify trends or patterns and determine long-term strategies to improve workplace culture and make better business and people decisions.
When will UltiPro Perception be available?
UltiPro Perception is currently available for purchase.
What is the approximate cost of the product?
UltiPro solutions are priced on a per employee, per month basis and costs various depending on a variety of factors, including company size.
Is there training or train-the-trainer opportunities available for organizations that need more?
Ultimate’s activation team guides all new customers through setup and configuration and Ultimate’s experts will also guide customers through executing and analyzing their first survey. UltiPro Perception is simple to configure and use, but if customers would like additional assistance Ultimate’s Services team will provide additional support to ensure customers are getting the most out of UltiPro Perception’s powerful survey and analytics capabilities. Ultimate also offers free learning resources for all organizations and their employees, including on-demand online training, webcasts, and more. Through Ultimate’s unique “People First” approach to customer service, all Ultimate’s customers have instant access to customer service experts, including a dedicated account manager and phone and online support.
You may be asking how you give a voice to the voiceless utilizing technology like UltiPro Perception. Here’s how you begin:
- Audit your company culture to uncover both intended and unintended practices that may deter employees from openly sharing their feelings and thoughts.
- Continue to find ways to include employees and their input in all aspects of your company’s operations
- Ensure that there are simple and varied ways for your employees to connect and communicate with you.
- Utilize sentiment analysis and machine learning technologies like UltiPro Perception to help you properly synthesize the valuable feedback you collect from your employees on a regular basis.
- Make sure you are prepared to act upon the information you receive and make sure all levels of management do the same. It isn’t just about acquiring a solution like UltiPro Perception to help uncover this information. You actually have to be willing to make the necessary changes as needed to ensure your employees feel heard.
Organizations can no longer afford to ignore all of the data points available to them. Employees are communicating in a myriad of ways all the time. It’s time we start to listen to them.
Get a sneak peek of Perception via UltiPro’s product tour .
Also, Ultimate Software will be hosting a free webcast on April 25th for you to learn more about this product. To register, click here.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Feb 16, 2017 | Featured, Generational Theory, HR Innovation, Society and HR
I have long had a love/hate relationship with the generation talk. The part I hate is simply boiled down to the fact that employers and marketers alike often think that generational theory provides them with a magic checklist with which they can compartmentalize people, subject them to certain conditions and reap the rewards by them behaving just as the theory proposed.
Generational theory at it’s best provides individuals with the language to describe the way they see and interact with the world. Humans like to group things. I think we like it because it makes it easier for us to process experiences or people by having a set of norms be attached to one group versus taking the time to sift through the multitude of difference.
Personally, I have been thrown in the bucket of Millennial based on when I was born and it never sat right with me. Depending on who is speaking, millennials are typically born between 1980-1995. This is the generation that is digital savvy, wants it all and is supposedly unwilling to work for it. A terrible generalization, but nevertheless I find it hard to identify with a generation that hasn’t really accounted for my personal experience. My very unscientific experience has been that I have very little if not nothing in common with someone who is 22 years of age in 2017. That is to say, my approach to life, work and even technology is vastly different than someone born in 1995 and it even differs the later you get into the 80’s as well.
I was always quietly frustrated with much of the generational talk as an HR professional because I never met one generation that spoke directly to me. That was until, I read Mashable’s: The Oregon Trail Generation: Life before and after mainstream tech. Reading this piece by Anna Garvey, my life and perspective was illuminated. She talked about the unique experience of people born in the late 70’s and early 80’s who lived in a time before the digital boom experiencing a largely analog life and who experienced adolescence at a time when technology was undergoing a major shift.
If you grew up in the late 70’s and 80’s in the US, Oregon Trail was one of the first games you learned to play on the old Macintosh’s so plentifully supplied to the computer labs of elementary and middle schools in the U.S. Playing games like this on floppy disks cascaded into the wonder of CD-Rom and the dial-up internet age that we all came to love in our adolescence.
Before I get too nostalgic, it is important to note that unlike our younger millennial counterparts, we grew up in a time where technology was a nice-to-have rather than a cornerstone of everyday life. It is my belief that this experience is unique and has shaped people born from 1978-1984 in a much different way than previously thought.
I have always struggled with the duality of appreciating the norms of analog life while also being incredibly excited and sometimes annoyed by how quickly technology has shifted everything we know. When asked, I would always tell people I felt like I was a little Gen X and a little millennial. Who knew someday that the Xennial Experience would become a thing. Xennials are essentially a hybrid micro-generation that encompasses both Gen X and Millennial qualities.
Consequently, when Anna Garvey’s article hit the cyberwaves online it went viral. Thousands of people shared her article across social media sharing that they felt similarly, but never had the language to describe the feeling.
As a result of all of this, I want to take it one step further. I have created a short survey to get a sense of how Xennials experience life and career. It is called: The Xennial Experience Survey and it is my goal to get as many people as possible born between 1978-1984 in the U.S. to take my survey.
Full disclosure: There have been several articles on this topic coining different names for this micro-generation. I am now seeking to put some data behind it to substantiate the claim that we deserve a generation that stands independent of Gen X and Millennial.
If you or someone you know was born between 1978-1984 in the U.S., please take and/or share my Xennial Experience Survey below:
I will be running this study all year. I hope to have some preliminary results to report in 2018. Thank you for participating. Stay tuned!
P.S. If you are interested in receiving my findings when they become available, please reach out to me at: Janine@talentthinkinnovations.com
P.S.S. I did a show about this topic of Xennials on my Ask Czarina Live show recently. You can watch the show by going to: bit.ly/XennialsTV.
by Maria Gee | Oct 11, 2016 | Featured, Guest Post, HR Technology Trends and Tips, Recruitment
Today’s Guest Aristocrat is: Maria Gee. “Maria Gee is The Content Manager for harri.com. A restaurant worker turned blog-writing-video-directing machine, she aims to educate and entertain those in the hospitality field. “
The restaurant industry is currently seeing one of the biggest technology shifts since the 1980s. With the recent emergence of ordering kiosks, mobile payment platforms and other innovations, it’s time to give your management system a needed overhaul too. Before you make the final decision on one of the many hospitality solutions out there for your restaurant, arm yourself with the following information:
Craigslist Doesn’t Cut It Anymore
Craigslist is known to be the go-to source for staffing in the restaurant industry. You publish a job post in the morning, and you may make a hire by the end of the day. Sounds great and all, but that’s not the best way to source candidates for your business. (Don’t keep your hopes up either; you probably won’t be that lucky every time.) You need a more reliable channel when recruiting talent. Find a hospitality online management system that can deliver you the quality and quantity. Also, when you are not looking to staff, have the resources to be proactive and scout out for potential hires. The shortlist of names will come in extremely handy when you are actually short-staffed.
Your Filing Cabinet Cannot Handle Any More Paperwork
Retire your filing cabinet immediately. Begin onboarding your employees via digital forms and applications. Going the paperless route will not only help you reduce waste, but you will be able to bring on new hires at a faster pace too. Hey, what’s not to like about that, right? The quicker you can handle that, the quicker that team member can add value to your business. Additionally, digital onboarding now includes e-signing and e-verifying features, which means you will be fully compliant with labor laws.
Communication is Vital
It’s crucial that your restaurant team stays connected. The best way to keep in touch nowadays is through messaging apps, since most hospitality professionals rely on their phones. In the group chatroom, update your crew on the latest updates. For example, let them know there is a seasonal menu change or a daily special. When everybody is on the same page, both your restaurant team and business will run smoother.
Connect with harri on Twitter and Instagram at: @jobswithharri and on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/jobswithharri.
