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Do Not Underpay Employees – 3 Reasons Why

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Everyone wants to save a buck nowadays, and companies are no different. I am in finance so I understand. I am always looking for ways to help save the company money or find more efficient ways to function in order to be “leaner” overall.  That being said, here is one place that you do not want to “skimp” too much – what you pay your staff. Do not underpay employees!

Inspire Hard Work

When an employee is making a salary that makes him/her happy, it creates a stable happy environment for everyone. This will keep the employee working hard which will create an overall positive atmosphere in the office. Hard working employees will motivate each other to keep improving as individuals, and as a whole organization.

Keep Your “A” Players

If you underpay your employees, they are likely to eventually seek out employment elsewhere. By making sure they are paid adequately, you are able to retain your “A” players and also inspire others to work hard and improve as well.

Appeal to the Best Prospects

Keeping the best employees and having a happy work environment will appeal to the best potential applicants when you have new positions available.  Your reputation as a great employer will help attract the best applicants for jobs based on how your current employees feel. This could be through word of mouth or other networking avenues.

These three simple motivators demonstrate the importance of fair pay for your employees. When you are ready to hire your next “A” player, please contact us to learn more about how our applicant tracking system can streamline the hiring process.

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Combat Employee Poaching

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I have a friend who does hiring in the service industry. Let’s call her Jane. There have been many times where Jane and I have gone to a restaurant to have a meal or have decided to run our errands together while catching up. Nothing out of the ordinary.

However, Jane always has her business cards on the ready. They’re fun and funky; they contain Jane’s contact information and her company’s career website. She’s in Human Resources so Jane wanted to add a little “something different” to her business cards by using the careers site.

Oh, I almost forgot, Jane’s always evaluating the customer service employees that she encounters.

“I really appreciated your patience with us,” or “Your customer service skills are great,” and then with some type of go-go-gadget arms and a swirl of magic, her business card appears in the hands of this employee – your employee!

That’s called employee poaching.

Employee poaching is the art of luring good employees away from their existing place of employment, usually a competitor, with intention to hire the employee at their organization. It is real. If your employee is visible to the public with a great skillset, chances are high that someone has attempted to poach this employee.

There are all types of articles you can read about the legal limitations and the ethics surrounding employee poaching, but I am focused on how to protect your employees in the event poaching does occur.

The best line of defense with this threat is developing a good employee retention plan. An employee retention plan helps you to articulate your retention strategy to management as well as employees directly. For some employees, the sheer notion that a company has thought highly enough of their employees to create a retention plan begins to earn the employer bonus points. The plan itself will only get your organization so far, the content must be valuable as well as the follow through consistent. So, what type of items would go into a retention plan?

Supervisor review

Most employees leave an organization because of management, not because they did not enjoy the work or the organization. One way to keep an eye on this would be to schedule bi-annual or annual supervisor reviews where you ask the employees to review their supervisor. There are assessments you can utilize to help with this. What you should be looking to understand is, “what is the supervisor doing well,” “what could he/she do better,” and “how could he/she do that [thing] better”. Then use this information to help improve and motivate the supervisor.

Skill utilization & development

Is the employee showing interest in developing other talents in an area that would be helpful to your organization? Does he/she have a passion for something? Often these skills or talents will come up in casual conversation. Sometimes they will appear when an employee is given a special project. Keep an eye out for exceptional skills, and then engage the employee by allowing the employee to utilize the skill and/or continue to develop that skill.

Appreciation/recognition

Often employers think this must be done with grandeur and cost a fortune. It doesn’t. In fact it should not be something expensive as employees may be turned off that the money is not going toward a bonus or was not paid to them in a monetary way. There are very simple things you can do. Set monthly or quarterly goals and if the employee meets or exceeds that goal, do something special like providing lunch, car wash, a tank of gas, workplace conveniences, etc. If you have a group of employees that meet the goal they could spend an afternoon doing an off-site activity together. Keep in mind, if the goal is exceeded by a large amount the token of appreciation should also be increased. The employee must know that you are happy he/she is part of your organization and that he/she is valuable to you.

The very best way to protect against employee poaching and to build your employee retention plan is to create relationships with your employees. When employees understand they are valued and they feel as if engaging in open conversation with their employer is possible, great things can happen. You will not be able to keep all employees from being poached, but creating a retention plan is a good way to begin to protect your assets.

For more ideas on how to keep your employees engaged, check out my teammate’s post here. Or learn how the powerful software solution like ExactHire, can help you build a strong foundation to better engage with your employees–starting on Day 1.

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Working From Home

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Most Americans wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, pack lunches, drop off the kids, drive to work, work, eat lunch, work some more, drive home and pick up the kids every day. The rat-race, Groundhog Day, déjà vu…. whatever you call it — it can be a drag. And if the employee is dragging, his/her work most likely is too. In this modern day and age, telecommuting is becoming a major benefit to employees and employers. Since the vast majority of the workforce is already using technology and SaaS (software as a service) programs, it is easy to transfer the daily workflow into the home office environment.

Gone are the days of loathing traffic every day! You can even work in pajamas!

You can mow the grass, go swimming, buy groceries, clean the house, or any other number of activities on your lunch break. Some practical benefits include reduced transportation costs, elimination of travel time, and comfortable clothing. These simple pleasures are translating into employees working longer hours, enjoying that work more, reducing personal stress-levels, and increasing productivity. To the dismay of some traditional thinkers, employees will work without micro-management. They might even work better that way.

Rush-Hour Relief

It is common to lose an hour or more each day during the commute to and from work. After an hour of public transit or driving alongside a myriad of road-rage, close-calls, and stop-and-go traffic the average employee can be grumpy or worn-out by 8AM. The employee has been up for hours without producing any work yet. On the other hand, an employee that telecommutes merely rolls out of bed and opens a laptop while brewing that first cup of coffee. Emails can be read in leisure while awakening the body and brain for a great day of working from home.

Balance

Job satisfaction is much higher when the employee has some control over the environment and daily schedule.  Working from home can make the joys of juggling children, a relationship, and work a lot easier.  Doctor appointments? Kids have school/ activity obligations? Need to get dinner started early? Somehow, these tasks are a lot easier to accommodate when you are operating from your home. Telecommuting is a wonderful way to ease the responsibilities of adulthood. However, going into the office two – three days a week can really improve the general office demeanor. Most of us like some personal interaction with our co-workers, at least when we aren’t missing our child’s game just to ‘show face’ at work. Workers are happy to get into the office and see their co-workers, maybe go out to lunch or meet up after work. And the office can be fun, especially on those days when Martha brings homemade cookies or Katie brings her famous lemonade. Balance can be just as important for the workplace as it is for the home life.

Technology

Smart phones, tablets, 3-D movies, touch-screens, and a little thing called the internet have all made our personal lives better. Businesses are also benefiting from the new technologies that are available today. Companies that utilize cloud-based data centers and SaaS applications are saving money on hardware and equipment. At the same time, these types of technologies allow employees to save time and money by working from home.

ExactHire provides SaaS recruiting and employee onboarding applications. For more information, please visit our resources section or contact us today.

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Candor & Accountability: Dynamic Duo for Employee Engagement

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Hopefully you’ve been in an organization…maybe right now…where you felt as though you were on the precipice of something exciting. Maybe you can tell by an intangible buzz or rhythm to how things get done on a daily basis…all the pieces have finally fallen into place and work is productive, a fine-tuned machine. If you’ve ever read Jim Collins’ Good to Great then you might consider this the “Flywheel Effect” in which, through diligent effort and discipline, an organization may turn the arduous task of spinning a giant, heavy flywheel into a task that later requires less effort simply thanks to the momentum that was gained by pushing the wheel steadily from the start. I guess you could call it the “snowball effect,” too.

This spirit of teamwork and focused discipline doesn’t happen by accident, but rather through successful employee engagement. I could probably brainstorm ten to fifteen different core attributes that tend to lead to this coveted internal synergy, but I’d rather just focus on two in this blog. Two things that organizations should do, and conversely that employees should do in return, to start moving that wheel.

Candor is King

For those that know me well, they know that I lovingly embrace the virtue of candor. While I’ve always been wired this way, it wasn’t until I read Winning by Jack Welch a handful of years ago that I really understood how an organization could use frankness as a competitive advantage…simply by creating a culture that understands it as an expectation. Now there’s a fine line that can sometimes be drawn between being direct and being too abrasive, so care should be taken in crafting the appropriate delivery of information to employees.

Nevertheless, for an organization that is at least somewhat transparent and doesn’t try to placate its employees with vague, general statements, it is highly likely that its efforts will be rewarded by employees who appreciate being respected and trusted to handle the truth. I mentioned setting expectations earlier…for this type of culture to work it is imperative that individuals understand into what they are getting themselves. An environment of candor works when you are candid in the moment, as well as candid about the company’s expectations of its teammates and operations.

Accountability…Is It Really That Hard?

My niece is a junior at Indiana University, and will be doing her first internship this summer…her first taste of the real working world. Recently, she and I were chatting and, in one of my more forthright moments (no surprise), I decided to lay some advice on her and indicate that all she really needed to do to be more successful than many others in the working world was to just follow through. Period.

How often do others (hopefully not you, too) say they will have this report to you by Thursday, or that they’ll text you about getting together for lunch, or that they’ll get back to their co-workers about that research by next week at the latest…only to never actually do what they promised? I get that things happen and circumstances change…so what always impresses me is when one follows up prior to the deadline to acknowledge that he realizes an item was due by tomorrow, but that XYZ happened and now the new deliverable date will need to be moved to next week. That’s okay, too…because he communicated the change to me instead of just allowing the deadline to come and go without saying a peep.

Does your company follow through with the little promises it makes (maybe without realizing it) regularly? More importantly, is it up front with employees when something can’t happen as originally planned…including the reasons why? That’s a true measure of showing your employees they matter and deserve to have an explanation for why you may have fallen short on your part.

Accountability makes your reputation, and instills trust in your organization. What other core principles does your organization practice to further engage employees?
ExactHire sells Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications that organizations may use to improve job fit across the organization. For more information, please visit our resources page or contact us today.

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Ideas to Improve Employee Retention in Your Organization

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Congratulations! You have hired a new team member, and this person appears to be the answer to your organization’s needs. As a leader, you can envision this new employee having a bright future with your company for the long term. This person will complement the organization’s goals beyond your greatest expectations…at least in your vision. How do you connect your vision of long-term achievement with your new employee’s formulating vision of achievement? From the beginning, effective communication about goals, culture and environment with your new team member helps ensure a true collaborative environment in which your new team member is motivated to commit to a productive tenure and reward your employee retention efforts.

How to Keep Your Employees Engaged

Even with a job market that is the most competitive in decades, employees come and go, and the cost of turnover for an organization is a financial and human capital hit that can sink the strongest of ships. Even the brightest employees with tremendous potential can and will leave if their needs are not met. Take a moment to look at some data about the financial repercussions of employee turnover. According to a Fall 2012 report shared by CBS News, for all jobs earning less than $50,000 per year, the average cost of replacing an employee amounts to fully 20% of the person’s salary. More than 40% of jobs in the United States fall into this category. One employee’s departure can cause bruising, but if frequent turnover exists in the work environment, it can cause bleeding that can be fatal to the morale of the employees and ultimately, decrease the lifespan of the company.

What will you and your team do to keep that new asset on board? Organizations can provide various perks to their employees. Affordable benefits, time off, and flexible scheduling are ways to help an employee maintain a work-life balance. Establish a consistent time to meet with your new employee to acquire his/her perspectives while you are sincerely listening more than talking. Often, some of the most important observations can be made by viewing nonverbal language in addition to listening to the details of verbal dialogue.

Use Pre-Employment Testing as a Hiring and Retention Tool

Ultimately, an employee wants to feel challenged and appreciated. Challenged? Appreciated? How do I help my new employee, or even my current employees, feel challenged and appreciated you might ask? Excellent question. Having insight into an employee’s cognitive and behavioral skills can help you, as a leader, effectively mentor the new employee during the initial acclimation phase and throughout his/her career with the organization. Current employees can benefit from mentoring, as well, after receiving feedback from 360 degree evaluations and leadership assessments. To acquire this insightful information about your employees, consider using employee assessments. Pre-hire assessments are excellent tools to help leaders identify strengths and potential weaker areas of candidates. These assessments can be used, in conjunction with interviewing and application screening, to help make a hiring decision, and in addition, identify ways for managers to help nurture new employees’ strengths and coach them as they improve or compensate for weaker areas. Assessments can also be given to an existing team to acquire a better understanding of the team’s motivators and help in succession planning and management promotion.

ExactHire offers a comprehensive selection of pre-employment testing tools that can help you and your organization acquire the necessary insight to lead, and not just supervise your team, while planning for a solid future of growth in your organization. These 360 degree evaluations, leadership and workplace team assessments, along with management potential evaluations are just a few types of assessments available to you. These tools can give you, the leader, a solid foundation of knowledge and insight to help you create an empowering relationship with your team.

For more information about employee assessments available from ExactHire, please contact us today.

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What Did You Do Today? Avoid New Employee First Day Nothings

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When you were a kid, did your parents ever ask you, “What did you do today?” Typically the answer, “nothing,” would roll off the tongue and away you went doing something else. Or, maybe you now ask your children this same question as you have gotten older.

What if someone asked one of your new hires what they did with your organization on the first day of work? Would the answer be “nothing?” Would that response be justified? If I spent my entire first day filling out forms, being told to read this or that, and setting up my desk I would most likely answer with “nothing” as well.

Use the Pre-Boarding Time Period

So how do you onboard your new employees in such a way that their answer will be far from “nothing?” My advice would be to take advantage of the pre-boarding time frame – that time span from when the new hire signs the offer letter to the point where he/she starts the first day. However, you do have to be cautious not to overwhelm the new hire with so much information that he/she doesn’t have time to get through it all, either.

An easy way to keep the balance is to have the new hire complete much of the new hire paperwork in advance of the first day. Our OnboardCentric employee onboarding software can help with that. The new hire logs into a portal that contains all of your company’s new hire paperwork. The individual completes the forms assigned based on position/department/division. This portal can also contain handbooks and other supplemental information that you want all new hires to review. Depending on how long a new hire normally spends filling out paperwork and reading information on his/her first day, you could free up that entire amount of time.

Warm Fuzzy Feelings for New Employees

If you provide a new hire with any type of uniform or apparel pieces, you could be reminded to gather sizing information via a task reminder in your onboarding software platform and have those garments available upon arrival. Giving the new hire the impression that you have been anxiously anticipating his/her arrival and inclusion as part of your company, can help create the “warm and fuzzy” feelings for the new hire. First impressions can help employees determine if they see themselves as a “lifer” or if your company is a stepping stone. The OnboardCentric portal also helps encourage the assertive hires that your company does truly move at a fast pace, accepts technology, and promotes forward movement.

Free up new hires’ first day so when they report back home, they have something more to say than “nothing.”

If you’d like to schedule a live demo of our employee onboarding software, please contact ExactHire. 

Employee Onboarding: Make the First Days Memorable – in a Good Way!

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We always hear that first impressions matter. Immediately our minds gravitate toward meeting people in business and social settings, interviews or even sales calls. Why don’t we think of the first impression we make when we add a new employee to our company?

The goal at any company should be that the new prospect will be so impressed and wowed by his/her first day that he/she goes home and tells someone that it was the “best first day on the job EVER.”

Instead…what we often hear is that new employees spend most of their first day filling out papers, watching safety videos and learning about insurance and benefit elections. How impressive is that? At the end of that day, my bet is that many new employees go home frustrated and exhausted, but not exhilarated.

While, admittedly, the first day is not totally indicative of your company’s culture, I believe that it at least needs to fit with your culture. Remember that it is a journey on which the new employee is beginning to embark.

So how do you get there from here?

Take an honest look at your recruitment & employment brand

Examine the messaging that you use to correspond with applicants from your applicant tracking system. Be sure that you are selling your company, your culture and the uniqueness of your organization.

Do you have any videos or testimonials from current employees? Make sure that you communicate with applicants throughout the selection process so they feel valued – using existing resources such as these makes it easier. There is nothing worse than an applicant applying for a job in your company and feeling his/her information fell into a black hole.

Remember, applicants will tell their friends and family when they have had a great or a bad experience.

The selection and hiring process will be the first impression a candidate has of your company and will [hopefully] set the expectation that working for your company will be different – in a good way!

A positive employee onboarding process

After you interview the candidate and he/she accepts your offer, consider some the following ideas of how you can make the first day at work unique:

  • Put up a welcome sign with the employee’s name on it.
  • Have a welcome reception so new employees can meet their coworkers.
  • Identify a mentor that can help the new hire with his/her transition to your organization. This is especially helpful for allowing the new employee to learn about your company culture.
  • Have co-workers take the new employee to lunch on the first day. This will also help with acclimating the employee to the area including schools, day care, dry cleaners, where to go to lunch, etc.
  • Make sure to point out unique things about your company that new hires should know – such as, history of how it got started, attitude on community service, awards won, etc. Take it to the next level and create a fun and informal company culture guide book to hand out to new employees.
  • Send a gift or card to the new employee’s home soon after his/her first day so his/her significant other feels connected to your organization. This could be as simple as pictures taken on the first day or a dinner certificate to a local restaurant.
  • Spread out some of the drudgery of completing all the initial paperwork so it is not so overwhelming for the new teammate. Consider the use of employee onboarding software to streamline the process.
  • Have new employees complete a short bio form that asks them interesting personal facts such as hobbies, where they grew up, etc. Then, distribute these forms to all employees so they can immediately feel connected to the new hires and find some common ground and conversation starters. You could store all employee information forms electronically so new and existing employees alike could read them and learn about their colleagues.
  • If you used an employee assessment to help determine the candidate’s potential for optimal job fit during the hiring process, then this would be a great time to review those results with the new employee, as well. The net effect is it will help shorten the learning curve.

I’m sure many of you have developed your own great ideas on how to make the first day at work memorable. Please share ideas that have worked well for your organization by submitting a comment.

 

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