In the workplace, and from a business perspective, having a diverse workforce is no longer a question. The world is interconnected and due to the huge advances in international travel and communication, people easily move and work across borders. This article serves to remind people of the pros and cons to having a diverse workforce and provides five recommendations for recruiters and managers on how to manage one. Yes, having a diverse workforce may sound obvious, but it’s not so straightforward to manage as some might think.
Struggling with Human Nature
Diversity means difference in all manner and form. The antonym to diversity would be uniformity. In the workplace, diversity refers to the composition of your workforce – people of dissimilar background, culture, experience, psychical and mental characteristics, etc. Whereas uniformity would involve cloning Mr. One & Only – we all think the same; we all do the same; we all look the same…how boring! Why is having a diverse workforce so important? And what can backfire if people are too different? Let’s explore.
In an article about the challenges of having a diverse board, WSJ sums-up brilliantly the benefit and obstacles: diversity leads to more out-of-the box thinking; yet, it also creates contention and disunity. Although this is an article about how diversity can backfire on company boards, the same obviously applies to employees and large to small project teams. WSJ reports that if a company has a board of like-minded individuals, the following arises:
“They look at problems—and solutions—the same way. There’s no one to challenge prevailing ideas, or to speak out on issues important to certain groups of customers and employees.” Read the rest of this entry »
Which is the way to go: direct hiring or recruitment agency? Both have their advantages. Businesses today continue to take a long hard look at their bottom line and there’s been a definite trend towards cutting out the middle man and hiring direct.
By Jens Trulsson
It is now best practice to afford a prospective employee the same consideration you would a client or customer. In a world where reputation is all, every organisation should factor this into their recruitment strategies.
A prospective employee handled shabbily by a recruitment consultant can have a disproportionately negative impact on a brand reputation thanks to mediums such as Facebook and Twitter. Conversely, a positive candidate experience, whether the candidate is successful or not, can help enhance the organisation’s brand.
However, taking the hire function in-house doesn’t guarantee a great candidate experience. The offer process is a traditional agency area and it’s a make or break stage of the process that affects what opinion a candidate takes away with them.
HR’s biggest challenge is to bridge the gap from transactional function to strategic partner. HR teams should identify skill gaps and predict where business growth lies by identifying the right employees with the abilities and vision to move the business forward. Actually identifying the suitable talent to enable this type of strategic hiring is the biggest hurdle to overcome for in-house teams.
The agencies’ edge have been their early adoption of the available online tools and strategies. Employing resources such as LinkedIn and applicant tracking systems are simple ways of improving candidate identification.
In-house teams have the potential to out-perform agencies, especially for volume hire and middle management roles. There will always be a place for a third party where very specific skills and experience are required and industry sensitivities dictate a more tactical approach. Agencies, executive search companies and head-hunters have the networks, tools and negotiation skills that are just not practical for companies to have on the payroll.
The value for an organisation is having a skilled, experienced and well supported in-house recruitment team on board. Direct hire can be about much more than improving your bottom line if done well, it can make real strategic difference to an organisation.
As we move forward, it has quickly become common for the modern workplace to relax in order to stay competitive.
In a world now dominated by startups and “Google” environments, things like allowing a relaxed dress code and being able to enjoy the occasional beer at work are the new norm.
So what are some fun alternatives you can consider to create a hiring edge? Here is a list of some unique options that should appeal to a wide variety of candidates: Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of years ago, we asked a number of FTSE 250 HR directors the question: “Given the option, would you rehire your workforce or would you start again?”
While the response to the survey wasn’t huge, it was sufficient to draw a few conclusions – not least because a huge 68% of respondents said they would choose not to take on their existing personnel again.
But I wasn’t as shocked by this finding as you might think. Once upon a time, I asked a chief executive client which members of his sales force he would hire again based on what he knew now. In addition, I said that, if he could name more than 25 out of 100 of them, I would give him an eye-watering discount. He got as far as 17. Read the rest of this entry »
2012 is here and after over 20,000 meetings with companies held by Universum’s team throughout 2011, we’ve had interesting discussions about what to expect this year. The first impression is that our colleagues in Africa, Asia and US are feeling that the competition for talent is getting fiercer, while the European colleagues see a market where employer brands are getting more innovative and competitive. All in all, we see seven trends that might shape 2012:
1. New players will take up the space left by those that retreat due to the uncertain market conditions.
We’re just in the second week of the year and we are already seeing new companies jumping into the world of employer branding. But would this represent a fiercer competition in the talent market? In the stock market there’s a term dubbed “shake out weak hands” which happens when oscillations in the markets make those that don’t truly believe in an investment to get rid of it. 2012 might be the “shake out weak hands” for employer branding and talent attraction: those companies that don’t yet truly believe in the benefits will withdraw and focus on short-term recruitment, while those that have defined their long-term goals will keep working strategically and aim to be the ideal employer of their talent groups. Read the rest of this entry »
By Nikki Hall, chief HR officer at SHL in Recruitment, Managing people, Business lifestyle
“Trends 2012: Talent management” was first published on HRZone
It’s been difficult for the HR industry to keep pace with the multitude of employment law changes this year – a situation compounded by the turbulent economic situation in Europe.
The UK Government’s reference to ”six years of austerity” was no empty threat and businesses are continuing to make redundancies, undertake restructuring and redeploy staff as a result. But while unemployment rates soar, talent gaps also continue to exist.
Forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggest that a huge 2.8 million people – many of whom are aged between 16 and 24 – will be out of work in 2012, some 200,000 more than forecast in 2011. And such a scenario is only likely to result in companies being even more inundated with job applications than they already are. Read the rest of this entry »
Print ads, brochures, Facebook, campus events. Finding the right communication channels has mainly been guesswork. Not so anymore: a new Universum survey shows just what channels grab student attention, and at what stage of the game they are most effective.
By Fred Cohn
Sometimes the medium really is the message. Corporate recruiters can’t help but understand this: any time they devise a communication strategy, they might well contemplate Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum. They have a choice of numerous channels for reaching job prospects: print and television ads, brochures, social networks, career fairs, campus presentations, job boards, and above all, company Web sites. They also know it’s important to choose the right channel. It doesn’t matter how strong the employer branding message is, unless it’s transmitted through the correct carrier it won’t reach its full effect. But until now, there has been very little reliable data to help them choose the proper pipeline. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s important to reiterate the obvious: unhappy employees spread bad news about you as an employer; unhappy employees make for unhappy customers and spread bad PR about your company’s products and services; unhappy employees perform poorly and badmouth you as an employer scaring off potential hires or top talents. If you hear something bad about a person – would you choose to be their acquaintance? Probably not! You would most likely avoid that person altogether. The same applies to employers that have bad reputations – who enjoys being around something that smells fishy? Nobody!
All communication professional understand the principles of the ripple effect, the huge potential and huge detriment that a simple message can do: to become either a company’s dream scenario of brand idolization or a devastating earthquake of brand deterioration. Thus, it couldn’t be simpler – start with your primary asset: your employees. Adopt the inside out approach to your branding activities; ensure that you have happy employees – it will result in positive and proactive brand ambassadors; ones that believe in your company’s products and service; people who feel excited about going to work and performing their best; employees that will try to encourage their friends to join them; your top performs will know people on par to their level of expertise and professionalism, i.e. brilliant people know other brilliant people.
So what can be done? How can you be better with your internal employer brand?
1) Be honest – don’t pretend to be something you’re not! Everyone hates liars or pretentious performers.
2) Focus on your strengths instead of your weaknesses – nobody is perfect, so nobody expects you to be. But don’t be shy to talk about what’s positive about working for your company instead of another.
3) Be inspirational and aspirational – aim to set an example, be a good role model and continue to try making your company self improve. Again, nobody is perfect, but nobody likes slackers and a “I don’t care” attitude.
4) Show compassion and you’ll get loyalty. If you’re a friend who doesn’t care, you’re not a friend at all. The same applies to you as an employer – neglect your staff, treat them like machines and only think about the bottom line, and you’ll get very few people who care about you in return and who will be willing to fight for you when times get tough.
5) Communicate, interact and get feedback from your people on a daily basis via multiple channels: face-to-face, email, video, conferences, notice-boards, events, newsletters, magazines, phone calls, etc. It’s better to over communicate than say nothing. You have to work on your friendship with your employees – if you don’t talk and listen to them, they’ll become distant and reserved and will decide to befriend somebody else.
Lovisa has a background as a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and was the global director of research and consulting at Universum.
By Lovisa Öhnell
Tracking your external employer brand comes naturally for most sophisticated employers, but tracking your internal employer brand is less common. Universum’s research indicates that there is a very strong correlation between the satisfaction an employee feels with his or her employer and the perception of the employer’s brand.
So far I have focused on external measurements of employer attraction and employer brand here. But it is equally important to track your internal EB, what we call your Employer Identity. There are two reasons for this. First, you need to ensure that what you communicate externally is in line with your employees’ perception. Your employees are your strongest brand ambassadors. For example, employees are seen as a more trustworthy source of information by a potential jobseeker than HR professionals or corporate communication material. So in order to build a strong external brand, you need to track your Employer Identity and align it with your external communication. If your employees communicate a different story than yours, you are “in effect” throwing away your money.
Attribute association
The second reason why it is important to track your internal brand is that there is a strong connection between brand affiliation and satisfaction. In Universum’s Professional Survey, we ask how satisfied the respondents are with their current employer and which of 40 attributes they associate with them. Respondents who are satisfied with their employers also associate them more closely with the 40 attributes than the employees who are not satisfied. In the US Professional Survey, the average association for all attributes was 52 per cent, compared to only 39 per cent for the less satisfied employees. The biggest differences between the groups were for the attributes “Leaders who support my development” and “Good work/life balance”. Thus, these attributes are tightly linked to employee satisfaction.
Almost every employer tracks organisational health and provides feedback to managers. Universum’s survey is instead an employer brand survey, asking employees about their perception of the employer, rather than about their immediate surroundings in the organisation. This information about your Employer Identity should be tracked continuously, compared both to your peers and to your external image. The results should be used to develop the employee value proposition as well as enhance communication, both internally and externally.
Christopher Van Mossevelde
cvm@universum.se
Joao Araujo