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Moving The Onboarding Process Away from Spreadsheets

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There are two types of people: those who love spreadsheets, and those who are hopelessly disorganized. Ok, perhaps that’s an over simplification, but I’ve yet to come across a highly organized person who doesn’t have a solid grasp–and a tinge of excitement–for creating and using spreadsheets.

That being said, in some instances your favorite spreadsheet application, whether it be Sheets, Excel, Numbers, or something else, is being made obsolete by the emergence of new SaaS platforms. These process-specific solutions can organize data and present insights far easier than through the use of spreadsheets. Employee onboarding is one of the latest processes to transition from a spreadsheet-driven labor of love to SaaS empowered, laborless process.

Employee Onboarding with Spreadsheets

Listen, I get it. I still love spreadsheets too. I can control how my data is organized and who can change the document. I can always build onto a spreadsheet as my processes change and, more than anything, I’m comfortable with my spreadsheets. But control and comfort aren’t everything!

Sometimes you need to let go of absolute control, get a little uncomfortable, and take a step (or leap) forward to improve your outcomes. Let’s take a look at how employee onboarding software can help you get better results by abandoning spreadsheets, back-and-forth emails, and the timesuck of data entry. To illustrate, we’ll use a dramatized scenario of employee onboarding that you may find familiar.

Monitoring New Hire Progress

You’ve just finished hiring for a hard-to-fill position and as hiring manager you couldn’t be happier. The new hire meets all your requirements for qualifications, fit, and potential. In order to ensure that your new employee’s onboarding experience goes as smoothly as possible, you turn to you trusty spreadsheet.

Your organization has a number of activities and tasks planned for new hires. You and others will use the spreadsheet to monitor each employee’s progress through the  onboarding process.

Tracking New Hire Paperwork

The first step is for the new employee to complete the new hire paperwork. You’ve organized this paperwork in nice little packets that you deliver to the employee. After delivering the paperwork, you enter “yes” in the appropriate cell under the column heading “Delivered”, followed by “in progress” in the cell under the column heading “Paperwork”. Progress!

Delivering Reminders to New Hires

You’ve asked the employee to complete the paperwork in two days and submit to the HR coordinator. But on the second day, you receive an email from the coordinator stating that she hasn’t received the paperwork–she’s colored the “in progress” cell yellow in your shared spreadsheet. So you send a helpful reminder via email to the new hire. And cross your fingers.

Coordinating Oboarding Duties for HR

Alas, on the third day you see that the shared spreadsheet is still showing paperwork as “in progress”. So you color fill your “in progress” cell with red and craft another message to the new hire, letting him know that the paperwork must be completed today. Drats!

Fifteen minutes later, you receive a reply from the new hire stating that he has, in fact, submitted his paperwork. So you email your HR coordinator to confirm this. She confirms via email and apologizes for not updating the spreadsheet. You go back to the spreadsheet, change “in status” to “complete”, color the cell green, and move onto the next item…but not before sending another email to your new hire, apologizing for the mix up.

Recap

Emails: 4
Data Entry: 5
Outcome: New hire completes paperwork on time, but questions whether HR has it all together. You’re stress level is high and you haven’t even finished your morning coffee. You curse the stars.

Employee Onboarding with Onboarding Software

After hiring your new employee, you change the candidate status to “hired” within your applicant tracking system and the new employee immediately appears in your employee onboarding software. Your new hire receives an email that invites him to login to the platform.

Upon logging in, the new hire sees a dashboard with a list of required tasks to complete and their respective due dates. As the employee completes each task, the associated status changes to complete. If the new hire is close to missing a deadline, an automated email and in-system reminder is triggered.

As hiring manager, you can easily see the status of all items. Your HR coordinator has visibility as well, ensuring that your entire onboarding team is on the same page.

Recap

Emails: 1, plus any reminders (all automated)
Data Entry: 0 (after initial setup, new hires receive required tasks based on role, location or other criteria).
Outcome: New hire completes paperwork on time and is impressed by simplicity and ease of system. You smile behind your warm mug of coffee as you review the real-time status of multiple new hires at a glance. Success!

Beyond the First Few Weeks with Spreadsheets and Calendars

As a forward-looking HR professional, you know that onboarding is more than just the first few weeks. So in your spreadsheet you’ve included line items for employee engagement activities to occur over the course of each new hire’s first year. And you’ve even gone one step further: you created calendar events and reminders that align with the activity due dates in your spreadsheet. The calendar will alert you of upcoming tasks,  and the spreadsheet will help you report on your team’s efforts. Very slick!

Recap

Data Entry: Track activities for each new hire in spreadsheet. Create calendar events and reminders for each new hire.
Email: Compose and send emails with instructions/calendar request to each new hire. Remind and support HR team via email ahead of each activity.
Outcome: You succeed (sometimes) with engaging your new hires within the first year, but you’re constantly managing calendars, emails, and your master spreadsheet.

 

Beyond the First Few Weeks with Onboarding Software

When initially implementing your onboarding software, you replicate your existing onboarding process for new employees within the system. This includes scheduling all engagement activities, reminders, and emails for both new hires and other employees involved in the employee onboarding process. Once this work is completed up front, the system automates all necessary communications and status changes. Additions and edits to your onboarding process are easily achieved by adjusting workflow settings, and you can easily report on your efforts through the system.

Recap

Emails: Compose as many email templates as you need, once. Edit templates as needed.
Data Entry: During initial setup, plan employee engagement activities based on role, location and other criteria. The system takes it from there.
Outcome: HR saves time and effortlessly ensures that the onboarding team is ready and prepared to execute on an employee engagement strategy. New hires are never blindsided by calendar or email requests on short notice.

Choosing Employee Onboarding Software

Whether you’re ready to move your onboarding process away from spreadsheets or not, it’s probably a good time to start looking at your options for employee onboarding software. This is especially the case for organizations that are battling employee turnover. The use of spreadsheets is time-consuming and will take away valuable HR time that is better used in engaging employees. So if your organization is looking to deploy a comprehensive employee engagement strategy, employee onboarding software is likely a must.

On the other hand, if you’re organization does little in the way of employee onboarding or engagement, you may not need onboarding software–though you better have one heck of an ATS to deal with a lot of rehiring!

 

ExactHire provides applicant tracking software and employee onboarding software designed to help SMBs grow efficiently by reducing turnover and maximizing the time of HR professionals. To learn more about our solutions, please contact us today.

7 Steps to Reform Your Company’s Work Habits and Effectiveness

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I’ve been trying to get in the habit of reading professional development-oriented books more regularly lately. Not surprisingly, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg caught my eye for that very reason. Of course, trying to lose that last 10 pounds might have initially fueled my interest in this book, too.

Let me say that this book is TRANSFORMATIONAL. No joke. While the neuroscience behind habit formation and reformation alone is already interesting to me, I never would have anticipated reading such a rich tapestry of interwoven stories and cultural knowledge as a means to comprehend the science behind our daily rituals. Here’s a teaser of the topics awaiting you in this work:

  • The presence of kebab vendors and their impact on the potential for restless citizens to riot.
  • The astounding ability for patients with brain injuries resulting in no short-term memory to still find their way home.
  • The Mad Men-esque story of how strategic advertising focused on habit cues launched Pepsodent into early toothpaste dominance.
  • The investigative research that turned the Febreze product from forgotten to famous.
  • The path from habit to addiction, and the moral questions surrounding the culpability of individuals stuck in the habit loop.

And just as individuals can slowly develop habits over time, whether positive or insidious…organizations are susceptible to the same tendencies as a group. This blog is about taking responsibility for organizational behavior and introducing small steps that can help form and reform positive workforce habits. These seven steps–now applied for the workplace–are inspired by concepts discussed in The Power of Habit.

1 – Identify your employer’s habit loop(s)

According to Duhigg, the “habit loop” is comprised of a cue, a subsequent behavior, and the realization of a reward. As simple as that sounds, it isn’t always obvious to us which cues trigger undesirable behavior habits. Moreover, the anticipated reward is sometimes obscured in a collection of different possible incentives.

Company Work Habit Changes

For example, in the book Duhigg recounts the story of a woman who had an embarrassing nail biting problem. Once she took the time, with outside help, to understand her habit loop, she realized that her cue to trigger the nail biting behavior was boredom, and her reward for doing so was the reassurance of pressure on her fingertips–something solid to ground her in an otherwise stressful day.

While scientific research tells us that innate habits never completely go away, we have learned that they can effectively be overwritten with new behaviors–as long as the behavior follows the same cue and leads to the preferred reward. For the nail biter, keys to change involved noting the number of times each week she had the urge to bite, and then replacing the biting behavior with tapping her fingers on her leg instead. With time, she was able to completely overcome her urge to nail bite by tapping her fingers anytime she became bored. After all, this new behavior still rewarded her with the pressure she craved on her fingertips…but in a more socially acceptable way.

What organizational habits bog down your employer? Do you suffer from

  • toxic communication styles,
  • the tendency for managers to skip 1-on-1 conversations with direct reports,
  • a culture of cutting corners when it comes to quality, or
  • inadequate and rushed employee onboarding processes?

Toxic communication styles could manifest in a number of different ways. But let’s say a common instance is managers who publicly undermine their direct reports by individually faulting them in internal communications and company-wide meetings. The cue for this behavior could be something as simple as the manager receiving a monthly report of goal progress from senior management, and the manager’s reward may be striving to look (arguably) good in the eyes of the C-suite.

It’s up to you to determine a positive behavior to replace this demoralizing and destructive blame game. For example, the manager might instead seek out the direct report to discuss the matter individually, and then together, come up with a plan to improve the goal progress the following month.

You might also explore tweaking the cue (in this case the email received with the monthly goal report) to make it less inflammatory and/or a means to remind the manager of the appropriate behavior that should follow.

Improved Habit Loop | Employer | ExactHire

2 – You gotta believe

While it’s true that habits can change, there’s a powerful obstacle in the way of habit transformation…cravings.

Duhigg explained how the repetition of the habit loop over time builds up anticipation of a reward in advance of actually receiving the reward. So, aside from simply altering cues and changing behaviors, a key element to overcoming bad habits is having the belief that it is indeed possible.

For the attendees of Alcoholics Anonymous (according to the book), that often boils down to the simple belief in an agnostic “higher power” plus a built-in support system to encourage you that you can succeed in conquering addiction.

For employees in your organization, fueling the belief in eventual habit change can happen in a number of ways:

  • Messaging from senior management that enthusiastically verbalizes belief in the new task at hand and the strength and ability of its employees.
  • Citing examples of past instances when the employer has realized positive change and what it took to get there.
  • Anticipating pitfalls that could lead to falling off the proverbial bandwagon and making plans about how to avoid those missteps in advance.
  • Empowering employees to be a part of the process by actively involving them in ideation, execution and evaluation of change management.
  • Pairing employees with peer buddies or mentors to whom they may turn when the urge to revert to past behavior resurfaces.

3 – Don’t underestimate the impact of small wins

An easy way to fuel your organization’s collective belief in the ability to change long-ingrained habits is by creating opportunities for frequent and attainable small wins. In Duhigg’s book, he details how Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps builds confidence in himself with pre-race rituals that form mini-habits on which he can build larger habits that enhance his performance and help him visualize his future success. Simple examples include his music playlist, the fact that he gets on and off the swim podium a certain number of times and his race week diet.

What small wins can you introduce at your company to build momentum for your organizational habit reformation?

  • Distribute afternoon snacks on Mondays.
  • Endeavor shorter, more digestible goals that are achieved over a couple of weeks rather than an entire quarter.
  • Take requests to play songs over the intercom on Fridays.
  • Hit a bong every time a new sale is made.
  • Offer a means for employees to publicly appreciate co-workers who go above and beyond during a specific week.

4 – Strong values support habit reformation

Consider how your core values support your existing company habits. Or, if you don’t have established core values that are officially recognized, you have an opportunity to create them and give employees expectations–essentially a plan–for understanding the right behaviors to fall back on when stress and time constraints take over.

In The Power of Habit, the story of how tension between surgeons and nurses at Rhode Island Hospital led to grave surgical mistakes was a powerful reminder that values and an organizational culture are significant drivers of habit. So contentious was the way in which many surgeons minimized the suggestions of assisting nurses, that on more than one occasion doctors operated on the wrong part of patients’ bodies despite urges from nurses to double check details–sometimes with fatal results.

Fortunately, however, the hospital amidst much public criticism and many malpractice lawsuits was able to engineer a turnaround. It instilled the importance of collaboration as a value and offered examples of how nurses and surgeons could implement protocols for working effectively together as a team before and during surgery.

5 – Focus on keystone habits first

Much like a keystone locks all the other stones in an arch into place, forming positive keystone habits can influence and change other habits for the better, as well. In his book, Duhigg tells the story of how mega coffee retailer Starbucks identified a keystone habit capable of influencing customer service in an optimal direction.

The challenge for Starbucks baristas was to deliver outstanding customer service despite the occurrence of cranky customers on a daily basis. I suppose in the coffee industry the instance of perturbed customers in search of their caffeine fix isn’t all that uncommon! Starbucks executives realized that “willpower” was their critical keystone habit at an organizational level, and they needed to turn it into a habit so that their employees could have the fortitude to be pleasant and helpful despite the occasional negative customer.

To do so, they built training curriculum around empowering employees to choose what their reaction would be to a negative customer well in advance of ever experiencing various situations. They essentially taught willpower and trained it as a muscle. That way, once the cue of a certain customer complaint arrived, baristas would already know the appropriate behavior to implement.

The book cited examples of how the identification of keystone habits can lead to widespread habit improvement. For example, people who start exercising (a keystone habit for many) often start budgeting expenses more regularly and getting more sleep. Families who eat together (another cited keystone habit) tend to raise more responsible, confident children.

Our ExactHire team recently rolled out the “Monthly Nom Nom,” which is a meal shared together the first week of every month. We did it as one of many ways to foster better connectivity in our office which is sometimes challenged by a very flexible work from home policy. Six months out of the year we plan a themed potluck, and the other six months the company springs for a catered, in-office meal. The result has been a better understanding of each other’s daily obstacles simply because better communication has been fostered by breaking bread together. Would the same keystone habit make an impact at your organization, or within your department? Or, perhaps one of these other habits could serve as your organizational keystone:

  • Wellness – Offering opportunities to feel better physically can have mental benefits, too.
  • Safety – Provide more confidence at work and in others’ effort to take precautions.
  • Customer service – Award incentives (aka “pieces of flair”) to employees who set the best example.
  • Continuous learning – Create opportunities and rewards for additional learning/training milestones (e.g. book clubs, certifications).

6 – In with the old…AND the new

Given my personal affinity for marketing strategy, I was especially intrigued by the real-life examples of how various organizations have induced consumers–through marketing tactics–into adopting new purchase behavior. Given especially large organizations’ access to highly-sophisticated predictive analytics tools, it is fairly straightforward for a company like Target to predict which women are pregnant before they have even shared the news with the public.

However, Target learned that access to this coveted knowledge can certainly “creep out” consumers if handled too directly. Essentially, they found that the difference between a direct mail piece that says “congratulations on your forthcoming bundle of joy” and a normal coupon mailer that subtly inserts baby product coupons amidst other innocuous household product coupons is billions of dollars in revenue.

Duhigg remarked that to sell something new, you must first wrap it in something familiar. Let that sink in, and then think about its application to your workforce. How many times has management forced a widespread change without buy-in and success amongst employees? The key is to introduce change alongside something that is comfortable and palatable for the audience.

Consider the example of moving from printed new hire paperwork to a paperless employee onboarding software application. With any new software roll-out, user adoption can be a struggle if not prepared for carefully. One way in which you might wrap a new onboarding software platform into something familiar is by emphasizing the fact that new hire paperwork forms will still look the same as in the past (just visible from a screen rather than printed out), but now that forms will be completed electronically it will improve legibility and cycle time.

7 – Don’t underestimate the value of social relationships

Just when you think it can’t get more varied than kebabs to toothpaste to Febreze to gambling addiction, Duhigg shares a compelling history of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycotts and Rosa Parks’ impact on the civil rights movement in America. He used these stories as a backdrop for understanding the dynamics that must be present for a widespread habit change to take root.

Not surprisingly, core relationships (such as with close friends and family members) are essential to igniting support for one’s objective. However, these relationships only reach so far into the potential network of supporters that are necessary to enact change at a critical mass. In the case of Rosa Parks, her refusal to move to the back of the bus sparked a revolution whereas African Americans who had done the same in previous years in Montgomery had not made their mark in history. So what was the difference?

According to Duhigg, it was the “power of weak ties.” Unlike her bus-riding predecessors, Rosa Parks was a member of a vast number of different social networks (through work, community organizations, ladies groups, church, etc.). She had a large number of loose acquaintances–aka weak ties. While these individuals weren’t her close confidants, they were likely to help her movement as a result of

  • peer pressure,
  • the wish to avoid ridicule or letting others down, and
  • as a simple form of self-preservation through reputation management.

Her large, loosely woven network was the fabric of change in the early civil rights movement. However, the final ingredient to changing the perceptions and habits of many Americans at that time was the emergence of strong leaders (e.g. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and their ability to give new habits to people who would champion them on their own. For example, African Americans arranged carpools or walked to work instead of riding the buses.

So, from an employer standpoint, what can your organization do to leverage the social ties of your employees? After all, getting buy-in for change from your workforce will be much easier if employees perceive that their peers are on board. Consider the following:

  • Appoint well-liked, high-performing employees as employer brand ambassadors to help carry out and support new changes.
  • Make it easy for employees to share good news about your organization by providing suggested content for social media posts and emails to outside community influencers.
  • Encourage employees to talk about changes within their own corporate peer networks and brainstorm ideas for transitioning smoothly.
  • Make sure senior management offers employees a specific plan for which new behaviors to implement in the face of old cues and triggers.
  • Enlist the help of vendors, clients, partners and employee family members to help support employees’ efforts to implement change and form new habits.

The Power of Habit emphasized that half the battle of remaking a habit is becoming aware of it and then recognizing the habit loop with its cue, behavior and reward. Now that you are better equipped to do so, you have a responsibility to make a plan for positive change in your own life and organization. I hope your first step in that direction is grabbing this book and reading it for yourself!

cultivating-company-culture-exacthire

Employee Onboarding…or Onboring?

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No one likes to be bored. But what makes people bored in the first place? If you ask my 5-year old son, he’d probably tell you “doing something I don’t want to do”. And that’s a pretty good start. To that, I would add the feeling of “my time is valuable, and this (whatever it is) is less valuable than my time.”

Providing Value

With the above definition of boring, we could say that boring onboarding is a low-value experience–that is, low-value from the employee’s perspective. This should not be mixed up with questions of compensation. Truly great employees are not motivated by salary alone; there needs to be value beyond dollars. So how can you determine if your organization provides a high-value experience though the employee onboarding process?

To help answer this question, it may be helpful to consider what a new employee may likely need or value. This will undoubtedly vary from employee to employee, but an onboarding process that is marked by the following qualities will provide value to almost everyone.

Clarity

No one likes to be confused. Confusion leads to doubt, and doubt can decrease confidence and increase anxiety for a new employee. Employers who provide clarity around initial duties and company policies will empower new employees to become productive more quickly.

The most obvious place to start is with policies. While not all employers have–or need–elaborate policy manuals or employee handbooks, it’s important that new employees can easily access documentation on items such as payroll, PTO requests, appropriate workplace conduct, and available benefits. Ideally, an employer will initially present and discuss these items face-to-face.

Clarity is also important when assigning initial duties to a new employee. Often, a manager may assume that new employees know more than they really do. When a manager unintentionally omits important details related to an assignment, the new employee may feel as if they are in a “sink or swim” environment–which, when unintended, can easily torpedo the employee onboarding experience.

Timeliness

Waiting on something is one the most boring things to do. But timeliness is not just the elimination of waiting, it’s providing the right resources and services at the right time.

For example, on the first day of employment, an employer could provide a new employee with a stack of new hire forms and a schedule of work assignments for the first three week, and this would eliminate a lot of waiting, but it could also overwhelm the employee. A more effective approach would be to provide these items as employees need them so that they have time to absorb and understand the information at a comfortable pace.

Yes, an employer should have resources prepared ahead of time so that new employees are not waiting. But employers shouldn’t dump a truckload of information and assignments on a new employee all at once.

Challenging

A high-value employee onboarding process should deliver an enjoyable experience, but this should not be mistaken for an easy experience. Great employees are constantly looking for ways to improve. They are motivated to achieve and add value to your organization. Giving new employees easy work doesn’t put their talents to use and can be just as demoralizing as giving them too much work.

By developing a plan for a new employee’s first few weeks, an employer has the opportunity to provide a good mix of fun, easy, and challenging assignments. This mix will ensure that the employee gains experience and confidence as they assimilate to a new job and organization.

Fun

Most of the time when we think of a fun onboarding process, we think about an employee’s first day and some type of “meet and greet” event. Maybe this also includes company swag. That’s all worthwhile and exciting, but if the fun screeches to a halt after the first few days, then the glow can quickly wear off for a new employee.

Fun doesn’t have to be special. It doesn’t have to cost money. And it doesn’t have to waste time. But a fun onboarding process does require a fun company culture; without it, an employer is simply creating unrealistic expectations that lead to poor employee retention. Which leads me to our final quality…

Delivering (on) Expectations

Although important, first impressions are easier to make than they are to maintain. And the quickest way for an employer to ruin a good first impression…is to follow it up with a boring onboarding experience.

After the initial recruiting and hiring efforts, employee onboarding seeks to meet an employee’s initial expectations. Everything from an employer’s job description, career site, hiring process, and interview will have made an impression and created expectations. Employee onboarding is where this is all put to the test.

However, it shouldn’t be a surprise that some employees will perceive a discrepancy between what they expected and what they experience. This is natural, and it is why onboarding must also continue the work of creating expectations. This dual objective–of both meeting and creating expectations–is one of the reasons why the employee onboarding process is so crucial to the larger idea of company culture.

Onboring

Despite the excitement surrounding a new employee’s first day on the job, boredom can quickly set in during the first weeks of employment. It is during this time that your new employees will determine what working at your company is “really like.” When employers develop an employee onboarding process that delivers high-value to new employees, those employees are more likely to stay longterm and quickly impact the organization.

 

ExactHire develops employee onboarding software that provides employers with a paperless employee onboarding process, while also ensuring that new employees and existing staff can efficiently collaborate on onboarding activities.

15 Tips for Improving Emotional Intelligence in the Recruiting Process

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I love learning more about human behavior’s impact on employee engagement and corporate culture. I guess that’s par for the course in the human resources field. But specifically, the idea that emotional intelligence is an adaptable skill that can improve—or regress—based on an awareness of one’s emotions is fascinating to me.

I recently listened to Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry during a few of my lengthy morning commutes. I say “morning” because I generally only have the focus to pay attention to a book narrator in the early morning hours…by the end of the day I just need to decompress with music. Alas, one of my “a-ha” moments during the book was learning to truly be self-aware of my own prime times and circumstances for optimal listening. In fact, “self-awareness” is one of the four primary parts of emotional intelligence (EQ):

  • Personal competence
    • Self-awareness
    • Self-management
  • Social competence
    • Social awareness
    • Relationship management

In this blog, I’ll share fifteen golden nuggets I collected from Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and briefly relate how each of them are especially applicable for recruiters to bear in mind during the recruiting process.

SELF-AWARENESS

 

1 – Think about what you are feeling when you are in the moment

As a recruiter, there may be times when you lose your composure or are, at the very least, mildly annoyed:

  • When a candidate blurts out an unexpected answer that you don’t appreciate.
  • When a hiring manager doesn’t get back to you with feedback in a timely manner.
  • When an interviewee shows up late to an interview.

By being aware of how you feel about a situation, you’re better equipped to recognize your feelings before they have an undesired impact on others. Then, you may instead take positive action to improve a situation–even if you didn’t cause it to go poorly. According to Bradberry’s book, the more you think about your feelings and how you wish to act, the more you strengthen the pathway between your brain’s limbic system (where emotions originate) and the part of your brain that helps you think rationally.

2 – Pay attention to the ripple effect your emotions have on others

Even the subtlest emotions–contentment, moodiness, irritation, nervousness and bashfulness–can have an impact on those around you. And as we already know, the more extreme examples of happiness, sadness, anger, fear and shame can significantly affect social situations and outcomes. Check yourself during your next candidate interactions to see how your most basic emotions may be influencing the recruiting process–for better or worse.

  • How has your personal demeanor impacted an interviewee’s answer?
  • Does your attitude perturb (or elevate) other stakeholders during the hiring process?

3 – Be aware of your physical reactions to situations

Whether you’ll admit it or not, the range of physical responses you experience during certain emotions varies from barely perceptible (though still detectable) to obnoxiously obvious. If you’re like many of us, you may do the following:

  • Tap your fingers when you’re getting impatient with an interviewee’s lengthy question response…or bounce your leg up and down under the table (I’m guilty of the latter).
  • Redden in the face or neck when someone says something that upsets or embarrasses you.

And while you can’t necessarily prevent these responses from happening, you can use them as the first clue that you’re heading down the path of experiencing a certain emotion so that you can take positive action to keep your composure and minimize the impact.

4 – Determine why you do what you do

Instead of simply reacting, consider why you behave in a certain way when experiencing various emotions. This may be just the ticket for better controlling the strength of your response–you don’t have to revert to your signature behavior just because it’s the way you’ve always done it.

  • Is your response rooted in a need to control a situation…or perhaps a desire to not have to be in control?
  • Are you worried about being ashamed if you mess up in front of your peers at your employer?

Once you’ve identified your motivations for behavior, then you may consider whether you may make any adjustments to eliminate your need to act that way in the future. Or conversely, what can you do to encourage more of the same behavior in the future when you are experiencing positive emotions?

SELF-MANAGEMENT

 

5 – Just smile

This is old news, yet so easily forgotten. Smile when you are on the phone with a prospective employee or during a face-to-face interview. Bradberry’s book shares that, in this scenario, your face actually sends signals to your brain that make you happier.

6 – Schedule time to ponder

When you have ten different requisitions for which you are sourcing and you feel like you must schedule back-to-back phone interviews all day long, you’re not at your best. You can’t sustain that level of activity while having the best outcomes for all involved in the recruiting process for long.

Schedule blocks of time to decompress and think about candidate responses and make notes before making any decisions. That way, any emotions you were already feeling about certain candidates will be somewhat dissipated and you’ll be in a better position to process rational thoughts about each individual’s qualifications for a position.

7 – See your own success in advance

When I played basketball as a kid, my coach taught me to see the ball going into the hoop as you are shooting it. Visualization is an important tool to being successful in your endeavors…and it helps improve your free throw percentage, too. Once you’ve identified a situation that may cause you to lose your cool–even mildly–imagine yourself coming out of the scenario with a positive outcome.

The next time a hiring manager brushes you off and doesn’t respect your desire to get back to candidates promptly, visualize your conversation and actions with the HM instead of reverting to your normal response of annoyance, anger and/or helplessness.

8 – Keep your circadian rhythms in rhythm

If you’re anything like me, you sometimes struggle to put your laptop away once the kids are in bed. In order for you to be the most alert during the day, you need to give yourself the best chance for good sleep at night. Turn the computer off at least two hours before bedtime…stop screening applicants while watching DVR!

SOCIAL AWARENESS

 

9 – Greet people using their name frequently

Everyone loves hearing his own name. Be sure and use prospective employees’ first names at an appropriate frequency during the interview process. If you’re the type of person that forgets a person’s name as soon as he tells you, then think of a mental image that will help you remember new acquaintances’ names. For example, if you meet a “Sandy,” picture her standing on a sandy beach.

10 – Be prepared for awkward silences

As a business professional, there will be times when you hit an uncomfortable lull in conversation in the workplace. While it likely won’t be on a phone interview, maybe it’s while giving an office tour to a final stage candidate. Have a “go-to” question in mind to circumvent those awkward silences. After all, part of your job as a recruiter is to make interviewees feel at ease at your organization. Here are some casual conversation question ideas:

  • Have you read any good books lately?
  • Is there anything about our organization that you’ve learned, but weren’t expecting?

11 – Don’t think ahead, just listen

Personally, this is an area in which I know I have room to improve…slowly but surely! Whether you’re interviewing individuals or working with your peers at your employer, don’t try to plan your next comment while “listening” to someone else speak. That’s not really listening and you’re bound to miss details…or at least the context of some of one’s comments. Whether or not the other person acknowledges your failure to focus, his behavior and respect for you will reflect his attitude about your inattention. Listen and learn from others’ talking points first and foremost.

12 – Be punctual

How many blogs have you read about job seekers complaining about never hearing back from companies…or hearing one promise, and receiving another outcome? Too many to count from my end. Respect the time of others and give yourself a competitive advantage–because enough recruiters and hiring managers out there don’t bother.

  • Be prompt with phone interviews.
  • Mind the clock so that interviews don’t exceed the allotted time expectation.
  • When scheduling interviews, be as flexible as possible with candidates to accommodate their own schedule limitations.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

 

13 – Accept feedback famously

Some people are better at receiving constructive criticism than others…and what an opportunity to strengthen your EQ and your relationships if you can do it well! Solicit suggestions from job candidates and hiring managers about how the hiring process may be improved. Then, smile (remember #5!), be gracious about feedback and communicate plans for any action steps as a result of the feedback.

14 – Acknowledge the feelings of others

Let’s face it…you’re never going to agree with everyone about everything. However, the way you work through differences of opinions will certainly influence how smooth your interactions (and future disagreements) are with the same stakeholders in the future. It’s okay to disagree, but don’t minimize or ignore the feelings of others.

If you’re disputing which candidates should be hired with hiring managers, respect their opinion as valid before trying to come to a consensus, compromise or action step for further candidate vetting.

15 – Don’t be shy about having hard conversations

If you can have tough conversations in a clear, professional manner, then people will respect you more and know that you’re being upfront with them. The alternative approaches of avoidance and/or insincere sugar-coating only delay the inevitable and cause turmoil for yourself and others involved. Especially when delivering bad news to the final candidates who don’t get an employment offer, be courteous and give them a call to break the news and thank them for their time. Be direct but kind.

If you have not read any EQ-focused books yet, consider picking one up soon to continue exploring techniques for how you may improve your personal and social competence. Any improvements you can make will not only serve you well professionally, but also your employer as you represent the organization in the recruiting process.

 

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When you can save time and stay organized, you’re able to focus on your emotions and relationships. HireCentric is applicant tracking software that manages your entire recruitment process so you can focus on the more strategic aspects of recruiting.

Learn More

 

10 Steps to Rolling Out Core Values at a Small Business

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There are many reasons that organizations choose not to craft a core set of values. Sometimes, senior management doesn’t think core values are a big deal because they think every employee already knows how they are supposed to act to succeed. Or, key employees may have had a bad experience with values at a previous organization that were essentially meaningless. Moreover, not having any recognized values relieves any obligation for an employer to deal with employees who would not live up to a set of corporate values.

If it’s too easy for your organization to find an excuse not to commit to forming a relevant, celebrated value statement, then your business will never reach its full potential. It’s just not possible when conditions aren’t in place to align a workforce with the principles that an employer holds sacred.

At ExactHire, we only very recently rolled out our core values. While the company has been in business since 2007, our management team had some of the same objections that I initially mentioned. However, when we first decided that it was time to make a change and embrace the value process, we made the classic rookie mistake of involving everyone. As you can imagine, it resulted in a hot mess of groupthink…complete with vanilla platitudes that can only result from trying to be everything to everyone. And not surprisingly, the trite single-word adjectives we selected were quickly forgotten.

The Better Way to Craft Core Values

However, after some frank internal banter and a commitment to make our values amount to more than just a framed wall poster, we embarked on a mission that led us to G.E.C.U.S.P.

ExactHire Core Values
While we’re extremely happy with these new core values, we fell a little short on a catchy acronym. But hey, there’s only so many ways to rearrange letters. In this blog, I’ll share our process for creating, unveiling and embracing the ExactHire core values that truly represent our small business.

1 – Owner ownership

We were fortunate to learn, with only a minor hiccup, that you can’t involve everyone if you’re going to capture the true values of your organization. Keep your values “discovery team” small, and ideally comprised of only your founder(s) and perhaps certain long-tenured senior managers. The values of the organization should reflect the values of the founders, and so owner ownership of the process is essential. They are the ones that will model the behavior to the rest of the organization.

2 – Give context and get buy-in

Especially when members of your values discovery group are skeptical about the potential impact of spending time on core value development, you must set clear expectations. Talk about what will be different this time compared to their past experiences and get their feedback. Discuss ways in which the values will be woven into daily work life beyond the initial announcement. Assign stakeholders to own various values initiatives.

Then, consider announcing to the rest of the company that you are creating values and that it is a process that is taken very seriously. Then, when the eventual values are announced later, employees will know that they were formed with careful intention and not just copied from some business book.

3 – Brainstorm independently, but with parameters

Each member of the small discovery team should come up with a list of values on his/her own. If you’ve selected the right core group of people (e.g. founders, key long-time employees), and they are being honest about how work is really done at the organization, then their separate lists should have many similarities.

However, to start them down a productive path, clarify the following:

  • They are to list actual core values, not aspirational values. As Patrick Lencioni details in this Harvard Business Review article, aspirational values may be necessary for the company’s eventual success, but are not representative of the traits that the company can honestly claim today.
  • They should avoid one-word overused “no duh” adjectives like “innovation” or “integrity.” At ExactHire, our team focused on short phrases.
  • They are welcome to look at values from other organizations that they believe have a similar culture to get the creative juices flowing.

4 – Collaborate to edit and refine

In our experience, we knew we were on the right track–as when we gathered to compare notes–our lists were about an 85% match. That reassured us that we were on the right path, and then the process of rephrasing statements and combining categories to come up with a succinct list was relatively painless.

During this process, we honed our list by asking questions like these:

  • Are these actual or aspirational values?
  • Are there any obvious outliers that won’t seem authentic to employees?
  • Is the language gritty enough to represent how we do business? Does it make our priorities clear?
  • Are these values complementary to our employment brand? Strategic planning process? Performance management process?

5 – Simmer

Once we were content with our final values list, we knew that we had to give it some time to make sure it really fit the organization. We tabled the process for a couple of months in order to let them sink in to ensure their credibility before announcing them to the rest of the organization.

6 – Plan a big reveal

The definition of “big” will depend on your organization’s size. However, no matter the size, don’t just send out an email or make a quick announcement that your new values are posted. Plan a reveal that will be memorable and engage employees to quickly learn the values.

At ExactHire, we planned the announcement during our monthly company meeting, and took time to explain how we approached the process and why we involved a very small group of employees. Prior to the unveiling, we designed a logo that incorporates color and different fonts to make it easy to remember our G.E.C.U.S.P. However, we knew that employees wouldn’t necessarily take it upon themselves to periodically glance at the logo. So, we ordered die-cut laptop stickers (from my new obsession Sticker Mule) and presented them to employees during the meeting.

ExactHire Employees Core Values Stickers

Tom, Jess and Darythe showing off ExactHire core values!

Now, many of the laptops you see around our office proudly sport our values and make it easy for them to be top-of-mind. While stickers may be the norm for a software company, if mugs, water bottles or magnets are more your speed–go for it! The point is to select an item that is frequently close to your employees and reinforces the values visually on a daily basis.

In our meeting, we also handed out the unabridged internal document that defines our values…complete with bullet points that clarify what each short phrase means.

ExactHire Core Values Bullet Detail

7 – Cultivate employee values engagement

To add to the excitement of our initial roll-out, we wanted to keep the momentum going in the early adoption phase by giving employees the optional opportunity to participate in a t-shirt design contest. We had been meaning to get company t-shirts for some time anyway (what cool tech company doesn’t have an employee picture in matching shirts after all?), and this seemed like the perfect chance to meet that need while getting teammates excited about incorporating values into an aspect of our culture.

We passed out this contest rules flyer during the company meeting, and employees were invited to select the winning t-shirt design via anonymous survey a week later.

ExactHire Core Values Tshirt Contest

And the winner is…

ExactHire Core Values T-shirt Winner

NOTE: We haven’t produced them yet at the time of this writing…hence no cool team picture in matching outfits yet–stay tuned!

While our contest rules didn’t stipulate that the new values had to be explicitly represented on the t-shirt, I was pleased that the majority of the submitted designs did actually incorporate the values anyway…a sign that we were on the right track. If employees don’t believe you’ve selected the right values, they won’t want to wear them!

Here are some other values engagement ideas:

  • Plan book club discussions about books that are based on some of your selected values.
  • Challenge employees to self-identify how they can better align their own work and behavior to core values.
  • Invite employees to blog about how they see values represented at the organization from their own perspective. This is a great way to promote your values to the external world in a very authentic way, as well.

8 – Share your values externally

Don’t stop at blogging when it comes to sharing your values outside of your organization. Organizations that walk the talk will be more attractive to job seekers, potential customers and business partners. Consider the following ideas:

  • Include your values graphic on your company’s “about” page.
  • Weave values into your jobs portal or applicant tracking system. Include a link to information about your values in job descriptions. This is a great tool to get some less desirable applicants to self-select out of your hiring process.
  • Create a slide deck about your core values that can be embedded in social media posts and web pages.
  • Invite employees to do testimonials that talk about how each of your values impacts their work life. These can be in written and/or video format.
  • Use your values as a basis for selecting organizations with which to partner for charitable donations and volunteer hours. When contributing silent auction items to noteworthy causes, choose items that can be easily tied to your values.
  • Creatively display your values in your working space, especially in places where customers, partners and job candidates will visit.

9 – Live your values everyday

Don’t fall into the dreaded cliche of rolling out values and then forgetting about them the next day. Build in triggers to live them. For example, if you are in Human Resources, a department that helps champion work culture and supports senior management initiatives, set periodic reminders to intentionally think about values and how recent events can be correlated to them. For example, if a customer sends in a “happy note” about the service he received, then have a founder forward the note to the entire company with a comment that ties it back to a specific core value being positively represented.

Other ideas for reinforcing core values:

  • Make them the deciding factor on company decisions.
  • Use them to inspire internal traditions like Monday Funday.
  • Evaluate whether your performance management process appropriately accounts for employees’ embodiment of core values.
  • Revisit your interview process and incorporate questions that give you an opportunity to discuss core values with job candidates.
  • If your organization is large enough, consider a quarterly prize that recognizes individuals who have done something that specifically reinforces a certain value. Document these employee stories and share them with incoming employees to build a tradition of celebrating value alignment.

10 – Re-evaluate your values periodically

It’s important to be vigilant about engaging employees to your core values, as well as ensuring that senior management models them appropriately. Additionally, while core values would rarely (if ever) change for an organization (assuming founders remain involved), there may be times when an additional value is warranted.

Conduct employee pulse surveys from time to time to ask questions that will help you take the temperature on whether the organization needs to be doing more to promote value alignment.

I hope that the lessons we learned during the value formation process for ExactHire can help inspire action for other small- and medium-sized employers. We’re still in the learning process, too, as we look for more ways to reinforce them everyday…but we’re heading in the right direction.

For more information on building work culture, and how it starts with eliminating bad hires, consult out Free ATS Guide.

cultivating-company-culture-exacthire

How to Motivate Management to Support Company Culture Improvement

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Hopefully you’ve had the pleasure of working for an employer with a deeply rewarding work culture. One of the reasons you enjoyed the experience probably had something to do with the actual work you accomplished there, but that likely wasn’t the only factor. Or, maybe you long for culture improvements at your existing employer, but struggle to make a business case to senior management to win their support and resources for what can sometimes be deemed as a “fluffy” back-burner endeavor.

However, the impact of corporate culture is anything but fluff. In fact, Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi, the authors of Primed to Perform, have repeatedly done work with organizations to quantify the marked impact that company culture has on employee motivation. They’ve based their work on research initially presented by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan a few decades ago, that suggested that there are six primary reasons why people work–three of which are direct motives being related to the work itself, and three of which are indirect since they are not connected to the actual work.

Direct Motives

  • Play – the extent to which you love the work itself
  • Purpose – the extent to which you identify with the impact of your work
  • Potential – the extent to which you stand to gain from the impact of your work

These direct motives tend to increase performance, with those motives being closest to the work itself having the most significant impact (i.e. play is more powerful than purpose, and purpose more powerful than potential).

Indirect Motives

  • Emotional pressure – the extent to which you work to avoid your identity being marred by some external force
  • Economic pressure – the extent to which you work to be rewarded or avoid penalties
  • Inertia – the extent to which you work simply because it’s what you’ve always done and not because you have any other sound reason

Unlike direct motives, indirect ones generally weaken performance. Emotional pressure doesn’t weaken it as much as the subsequent indirect motives because it is still connected to your identity even if it’s not connected to the work itself.

So Why Does This Matter?

Simple. Engaging senior leaders to your company culture improvement cause must start with applying the very same motives that will eventually drive your actual culture improvement efforts–once they’re approved, that is.

Let’s break down six common objections human resource professionals may hear when trying to make a business case for work culture change. Each of these objections will touch on one of the six aforementioned motives. By reframing each objection into an opportunity to maximize a direct motive or minimize an indirect motive, HR professionals stand a much better chance at creating total motivation (ToMo) to convince senior leaders to invest the time and resources necessary to engage employees via culture revolution.

6 Senior Leader Culture Development Excuses

Culture is warm and fuzzy. We have bigger fish to fry.

 

PLAY

Do you sometimes think your company’s owners are singing “Shiny Happy People” by REM when your HR team brings up anything culture-related in conversation? Or, maybe their version is “Shiny Happy HR People.” They’d rather relegate warm and fuzzy culture development to the people who are more likely to enjoy that kind of work. It’s not their idea of play.

Maybe some senior leaders don’t love the work of cultural activity planning themselves, but maybe they do love enabling their department heads to do the work that invigorates them so that they find their own sense of play. Perhaps the owners’ idea of the play motive is entrepreneurial at heart…getting the right people on the team and then giving them the reins to do great things, to experiment and fail, but most importantly to learn what works and what doesn’t.

If this describes your relationship with management, then brainstorm ways in which you can appeal to your company owners’ work passions. That might include an experiment with trying a new, entrepreneurial approach to teaching the workforce how to play the game of business, or using business analytics to find patterns in what has engaged employees in the past.

I don’t understand what good will come from making changes.

 

PURPOSE


The purpose motive highlights whether you personally identify with and are motivated by the outcomes of your own work. If your senior management team is skeptical that anything will materially change as a result of getting new swag for employees and holding a foosball tournament, then I wouldn’t fault them. They may not have experience with knowing what specific impact a focus on culture may have on the organization (and therefore on their identity as the leader of that organization).

Of course the previously mentioned cliche culture activities are not a sound solution to your employee engagement problems. Many other moves may fall short, as well, if you fail to set expectations with ownership about the desired positive outcomes that you hope to realize as a result of any changes. Help them identify with the potential impact of the organization’s focus on culture improvement on others and themselves.

Here are positive outcomes to which businesses often aspire when endeavoring culture evolution:

  • Greater sense of shared purpose (does your work save lives, help people in need, make life more efficient, etc.)
  • Intrinsic motivation (employees are self-directed)
  • Knowledge sharing (no department silos and selfish data hoarding)
  • Momentum for change; enhanced learning leads to richer workforce skills inventory
  • Expanded opportunity for “play” which leads to innovation
  • Better adaptive performance; or, the ability to be flexible with unanticipated demands and not just tied into rigid tactical performance
  • More productivity; higher revenue
  • Healthier workforce; fewer costs related to health insurance and absenteeism
  • Less turnover; faster time to productivity (this outcome alone is very easily quantifiable to the CFO)
  • Wide span of idea sourcing; really good suggestions come from all areas of the organization
  • Increased access to A-player talent when sourcing new hires

Frame your conversation in a way that makes it clear that these positive outcomes will result, in large part, from the owner’s own work to publicly support culture development initiatives.

I fail to see a link between the investment required and a future financial gain.

 

POTENTIAL


To be successful, you must quantify how culture change will move the organization from point A to point B in a financially lucrative way. But how do you quantitatively benchmark culture…that warm and fuzzy, you-have-it-or-you-don’t organizational je ne sais quoi?

The good news is that you can assign a ToMo score to organizations using an analysis of employee responses related to the six work motives. In their consulting work, the authors of Primed to Perform have done this over and over again at many different organizations. And, they found that “in many industries, the most-admired cultures tend to have 15 points higher ToMo than their peers” (e.g. Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Apple Retail Stores).

The research suggests that a focus on having a positive work culture can materially move the needle and deliver a positive ROI. By sharing examples of these kinds of organizations and painting the picture of the impact your organization might have not just on employees, but also on your industry, potential will become clear to your leadership team.

I don’t think we have a culture problem. / I’m worried we’ll try and fail.

 

EMOTIONAL PRESSURE


It’s not really my thing. I don’t want us (or me) to look dumb. I don’t want to acknowledge the cultural elephant in the room. Reframing excuses that relate to one of the indirect motives can be a bit trickier, but never fear. Any of the aforementioned comments reek of emotional pressure and are understandable, as we’re all human.

To overcome the insecurity that they seem to suggest, don’t just explain the “why” of culture improvement to your senior leaders, but supplement your plan with the “how.” You’ve heard it before: come with a solution, not just a problem. Letting your senior management team know that you’re in it to win it when it comes to improving your work environment alleviates some of the emotional pressure (or burden) they may have been feeling about it themselves all along. Double down by enabling senior leaders (and others) the opportunity to “play” to brainstorm ideas on how the culture change might go down. Acknowledging to others in advance that a change is desired, and that it might not be perfect the first time round, is okay. It’s a step in the right direction.

Additionally, during the brainstorm process make sure that managers’, employees’ and customers’ motivations are aligned to succeed. For example, if customer and management expectations for service involve a customized, hold-my-hand relationship, but customer service representatives are paid based on the number of cases handled, then emotional pressure is sure to weaken organizational performance.

It will cost too much.

 

ECONOMIC PRESSURE


Not every company is going to even come close to Google’s budget for culture. However, every company needs to set aside either some funding and/or employee time to intentionally focus on culture development. Focusing on ToMo score in this scenario is helpful in making an argument in favor of culture change, as well. When you think about companies that are admired for their culture like Southwest and Whole Foods–companies with leading ToMo scores in their industries–you’re also reminded that they’re highly successful.

So then the compelling argument to senior leadership becomes, what’s the opportunity cost of doing nothing? Surely, that type of economic pressure warrants consideration relative to the cost of endeavoring change (given that you’re reading this article). In fact, budgeting for culture and engagement may end up eliminating costs in other areas…areas that may include incentives that are eventually found to create the wrong behaviors that weaken total motivation.

It’s how we’ve always done it.

 

INERTIA


The dreaded inertia might as well be called “insanity” in the context of this conversation. After all, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. But inertia is comfortable, familiar, it doesn’t make waves. It’s insidious.

While on its face, this motive seems like the mildest of the three indirect motives, it is the most harmful to total motivation and performance. In fact, it may even be the culture itself…“the way” things get done around your organization.

Tackle this senior leader objection head on with proof that what has always been done no longer (or has never) produced the desired results when it comes to engagement and performance. This may involve an honest look at how your organization stacks up against his competitors in terms of market share, ability to source top talent and length of customer relationships (among other indicators). You may lessen the likelihood of continued inertia by disrupting the status quo with clear suggestions on how opportunities to incorporate play, purpose and potential can be baked into the change process.

 

Convincing senior management to support your company culture improvement endeavors doesn’t have to be a cringe-worthy event. By bearing in mind that the six main reasons people work are the same six reasons your owner works, you can isolate objections and counter with objectives that will both maximize direct motives to support your plan, and minimize indirect motives.

Company Culture Ebook Download | ExactHire

Ready to Improve Your Onboarding Process – Where Do You Start?

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Congratulations! You’ve successfully made a business case to get the resources to improve your onboarding process. And, as a result of demonstrating its compelling potential ROI, you even received upper management’s blessing to implement onboarding software to infuse technology into your new hire experience. So, you’re ready to get started…but where should you start?

In this blog, I’ll outline four key strategies for ensuring that your onboarding process change effort will result in marked improvement for your organization’s business outcomes.

1 – Get stakeholder buy-in

If it has been some time since you’ve examined your onboarding process and enacted changes, then now is the time to invite others to participate…those who haven’t previously been involved in the design of this critical new hire process. Modern onboarding calls for the inclusion and engagement of a wide variety of stakeholders, and by involving them from the early stages of process re-engineering, the probability of them carrying out onboarding tasks willingly and successfully later greatly increases.

Demonstrate how an improved framework for welcoming and acclimating new employees will benefit stakeholders. While you’ve already shown senior management how your planned key performance indicators will be positively influenced by the change, and therefore have a positive impact on business outcomes, your peers (other hiring managers and administrative employees) may not have heard your case yet. Show them the numbers…especially how they impact their respective department areas, if possible.

Department heads, in particular, should appreciate the new plan’s aim to reduce turnover and shorten time to productivity, as it should prevent them from spending as much time interviewing replacements in the future. Additionally, the use of employee onboarding software will automate reminder notifications so important process milestones aren’t forgotten (i.e. periodic progress meeting reminders, benefit enrollment meetings, alerts to request future training sessions). Take it a step further and build in opportunities to have conversations with new employees that further set expectations with them about job responsibilities and performance expectations.

Having a system in place that alleviates any concern about forgetting tasks removes the urgency for managers to tell a new employee every little thing in the first week. Avoid forcing new hires to “drink from the water hose” the first few days. As a result, realize the benefit of improved knowledge retention due to more digestible information sessions being spread out over a longer period of time. Allocate the time saved by automatic software notifications toward strategic elements of the onboarding process that make a new hire comfortable and more likely to stay with your business for years to come.

2 – Make it easy for upper management to support the effort

The hard part (that is, getting the blessing of senior directors) is behind you. However, to maximize the potential success of your new plan you still need their ongoing support. Make it easy for them to give that support by telling them how they can be helpful, and giving them the information they need to convey success. In doing so, make sure their public involvement in supporting your objectives is done in such a way that aligns your improved onboarding process with the company’s image and culture. For example, if your organization is somewhat transparent and regularly shares certain aspects of financial information and goal progress with employees, then share a dashboard of your onboarding process metrics with staff members, as well. Or, if your smaller business prides itself on personalized service (including thank you notes to new customers), then ask your CEO to send hand-written notes to new employees before their first day on the job.

Other ideas for visible senior management support include:

  • public recognition of new employees via social media
  • an email to the entire company from the president welcoming a new hire
  • a 1-on-1 lunch with a new teammate during the first week on the job
  • public acknowledgment of newly-hired employees during the next company meeting

3 – Note the importance of sound documentation

The greatest plans will fail to deliver if they aren’t recorded properly…particularly employee onboarding process checklists which have multiple moving parts. Start by researching and confirming the required paperwork that should be presented to a new employee. This will most certainly vary by country, state and even municipality if you operate in a number of different geographic locations. If you’re unsure of requirements, it’s always a good idea to involve a trusted employment law attorney.

Along with the required tax and employment eligibility paperwork based on your location and industry, document which other forms and policy acknowledgments should be included in your new hire packet(s), and how it will vary based by role, division and/or location of employee. Effective onboarding software should allow you to create many different new hire packets, and then automatically present the appropriate packet to a new employee within the onboarding dashboard based on his/her employment characteristics (again…role, division and location).

Next, assign stakeholders to responsibilities for each step of the onboarding process. Have conversations with these individuals so they have an opportunity to volunteer, consent, ask questions and/or decline based on their understanding of the assignment. During this exercise, map out how stakeholders’ assignment to different tasks within the onboarding process could affect a new employee’s onboarding experience. For example, don’t accidentally assign an individual in your corporate office to be the Form I-9 approver for new hires in your production plant two states away. If possible, have more than one individual available to handle certain types of onboarding roles so that each geographic area has an appointed person in all of the critical roles. However, if for example, new employee equipment orders are centralized in your corporate office, it’s okay to have a single person in that equipment provisioning role regardless of new employee location.

Brainstorm other onboarding tasks that could add value with your stakeholders. If they’ve not previously been involved in this group effort, you may be surprised about the innovative ideas they bring to the table. As you vet other tasks for potential inclusion, determine where they should fall in the process, and whether any other tasks should happen as prerequisites beforehand. Assign owners to each of these tasks, as well.

4 – Create an onboarding roadmap to communicate expectations

Take your documentation efforts a step further by creating a visual resource for both your process stakeholders, as well as your other teammates. Share this roadmap with your new hires before their first day on the job, as well. It is okay to have a pared down version of your regular roadmap for your newest employees.

Make a detailed version of this resource available as a handout for stakeholders, and if possible, have an attractive summary version posted as a banner on a wall inside your offices and/or on your intranet, as well. Its prominent appearance will be a constant reminder for all employees to support the onboarding process in order to make it successful.

Your roadmap might be as simple as a flowchart showing the order of tasks and time during which they are executed; or, it may be a chance to get more creative and literally illustrate the “road” to new hire success…complete with pit stops and task milestone markers along the way. What works for you will depend on the culture and resources available within your organization.

This visual representation sets expectations for all stakeholders and clearly depicts assigned responsibilities by person. It is a mechanism to document minimum accepted timeframes for task completion and therefore helps to bring context to the dashboard on which you track onboarding-related KPIs. In fact, consider including a roadmap milestone that documents how frequently you conduct lessons learned sessions with stakeholders, and check on KPIs.

The roadmap helps to make clear which employee onboarding tasks need to be addressed at what time, and this frequent familiarity with the onboarding process and KPI dashboard is key in demonstrating how process improvement does in fact drive business outcomes.

If you’re ready to include employee onboarding software as a critical driver in your organization’s process change efforts, please contact ExactHire to schedule a live demo today.

 
Image credit: Harvard University by Tim Green aka atoach (contact)

How to Make a Business Case for Onboarding Process Improvement

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You know it’s time to do something better with your employee onboarding process. Your HR-intuition is on full alert after spotting the tell tale signs: high employee turnover; low workforce morale; lagging time to productivity statistics; and perhaps even lengthening time to fill trends for open positions.

But is your boss convinced that the new hire onboarding pain is palpable enough yet? As a person charged with human resources activities within your organization, it is your job to convince upper management that they need to care about this process and take action. To do so, you must make a business case for onboarding process improvement…and it starts with a discussion on how change can make the company more profitable.

Focus on KPIs that impact business outcomes

Key performance indicators for any organization are always tied to people. So, to help connect the dots between profitability and your plans for employee onboarding nirvana, you’ll need to identify and track the onboarding-related metrics that will most impact business outcomes. This means moving from a conversation that was once focused only on efficiencies gained or staff time saved…to one that illuminates the direct impact those efficiencies can have on your organization’s revenue growth and profitability.

In addition to your trusty turnover and time to productivity metrics, introduce ratios such as revenue per employee and profit per employee to the discussion with senior management. The latter metrics are more easily tracked and benchmarked, and more clearly affect the bottom line…a factor that will cause ownership to take notice when a process improvement effort can move that needle.

Next, paint the picture on how those business outcomes can be positively changed as the result of onboarding process re-engineering:

  • Automating the management of onboarding process tasks using employee onboarding software makes it easier for new employees and onboarding process stakeholders to address administrative items quickly and correctly
  • Allowing employees and managers to electronically sign and approve completed forms (vs. paper statutory forms and organizational documents) from any web-based device requires fewer HR business partners to be involved in document review in the instance of an organization with multiple branches/offices.
  • Leveraging automatic email notifications for onboarding process task reminders allows the human resources team to focus on the more strategic process elements such as culture assimilation, training excellence, fostering a sound mentoring program, and continuous analysis of new hire feedback…even with a potentially greater number of new employees and/or stakeholders involved in the process
  • Focusing more effort and enabling all stakeholders to spend more time with new employees leads to retaining teammates…teammates who are excited to be a part of the organization as a result of the attention, assistance and expectations offered in a revamped onboarding process
  • Engaged employees are likely to become productive more quickly, stay with your company longer and be better performers
  • This domino effect improves your customer satisfaction statistics, reduces operating costs, improves business output, and drives more revenue per employee in part due to the use of technology to automate the more tactical aspects of the process

Record benchmarks for current levels

During the process of identifying which quantitative KPIs are critical to your company’s success, be sure and note their current levels so that benchmarks may be established and compared against future metrics. Only by doing this will you be able to realize the extent to which your ongoing onboarding process improvements have an impact on business outcomes.

Meet with other process stakeholders to determine, in advance, where KPIs will be collected and reported; as well as, who is responsible for monitoring them, and how often.

To increase awareness of your re-engineering efforts, and to illustrate the importance of this endeavor with the rest of your organization, consider making highly visible dashboards available…either via a web-based portal/Intranet and/or in frequently-trafficked areas of your office(s). The added benefit of this approach is that it further commits all stakeholders to staying accountable to the goal for onboarding improvement. There’s no hiding from the onboarding scoreboard!

Organize your findings

Set yourself up for success when making your request for support and resources to senior management. By now you will have identified which KPIs will resonate with ownership, but also remember that your best approach is to come to management with a solution…not just a problem that needs fixing because a bunch of numbers are looking scary.

Think about the types of activities that will result in positive outcome change for your business. A helpful exercise is to organize potential items in a SWOT (Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats) four-square grid. This format helps to flesh out which items are the most critical objectives…as upon completing the grid, items that are truly top priorities are often redundantly referenced across more than one of the four squares. Additionally, a SWOT can help demonstrate that you are thinking outside the change’s impact on your department, and more broadly at an organizational level.

Grab your bullhorn and spread the word

In addition to presenting the raw numbers and proposed action steps to company ownership, it’s important to garner support from peers within the organization, as well. While you will need the head honchos to wave the green flag, it’s vitally important to make your peers aware of the forthcoming change effort, as well. The more you can engage them to offer feedback on how the process might work more effectively, the better your chances of future business outcomes being positively impacted. After all, you will continue to rely on these stakeholders to buy-in to the change so they are willing to help you execute the plan moving forward.

Do focus groups and/or surveys with existing employees for insight on what works or doesn’t work with your current employee onboarding process. Solicit feedback (and also communicate future progress) via many different avenues:

  • internal company newsletter
  • email
  • social media (particularly if you wish to also include feedback from your vendors and/or customers)
  • word of mouth
  • periodic company and/or department meetings
  • company dashboards/intranet

Stay the course

Approval for significant onboarding process improvement may not happen overnight in your organization, but continuing to speak the language of senior management will at least keep the lines of communication open (while you continue to amass data that supports your cause) and improve your perceived value to the organization (icing on the cake).

ExactHire’s employee onboarding software makes the otherwise tedious administrative activities involved with hiring new employees paperless and painless. For more information about our software application, please visit our resources section, try our pricing estimator tool and/or contact us today.

Image credit: Photographers expand horizons in 2010 Army Digital Photography Contest 110311 by familymwr (contact)

Checklist to Improve the Small Business Employee Onboarding Process

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Your business is agile, nimble…you’re capable of taking swift, decisive action in a short period of time. For example, it’s Thursday afternoon and your team has just finished interviewing the last of the final candidates for a newly-created job in your firm. You needed to fill the position yesterday. But, if all goes as planned, the offer will be extended yet today, the candidate (who seemed really excited) will accept on Friday, and…in the spirit of chaotic, yet productive startups, he will start work on Monday! He can just grab a notepad and some pens out of the supply closet, and do without a laptop for a few days (argh…we need to order that today) because he’ll just be shadowing other people during that time.

Sound familiar? Hopefully not, but don’t be ashamed if it is a sometimes accurate description of the employee onboarding process at your small business. It can be easy to ignore the importance of employee onboarding in the SMB space, especially if you happen to be growing like gangbusters, have a pretty good culture and perhaps many opportunities for upward movement across the organization. The thing is…those positive attributes are likely in play despite your lackluster onboarding process. Since your onboarding process is akin to your new hires’ first impression of your company, the business needs to put some effort and time into this new employee experience. The results of your efforts will exponentially improve your business.

Download ExactHire's Employee Onboarding Checklist

Here’s a checklist a small organization may use to start talking about employee onboarding process change.

1 – Envision future success

There’s no point in initiating a change effort if you won’t recognize success when it finally happens. If you’re not sure where to start, consider your organization’s current definition of employee onboarding, and then think outside the box to include other items that are now commonly attributed to this effort by the modern HR practitioner.

Think about broad stroke adjectives that could be used to describe your future successful onboarding process. Do you want to make it more: special; professional; efficient; niche-focused; standardized; personalized; etc.? Pulling out some key themes will then allow you to brainstorm more detailed ideas.

It’s key to visualize success simply so that you actually know when you accomplish it someday. And certainly the journey is never over. Upon reaching your first milestone accomplishment you’ll want to create new success goals; however, you must know where you’ve been and where you are going first. That’s why it’s important to identify potential performance indicators, establish starting benchmarks, and then evaluate movement and impact over time to determine which metrics are the most influential to positive change. Stay tuned for more details on this in a future blog.

2 – Discuss planning considerations

Before embarking on the change effort, along with brainstorming ideas, it’s important to note constraints that may impact your re-engineering endeavors, as well. For example, identify potential obstacles such as:

  • Availability of certain employees to participate in various steps of the onboarding process
  • Any existing policies prohibiting certain activities within the organization (i.e. new hires can’t watch videos about company culture and training on YouTube if your company blocks that site from employee computers)
  • Fulfillment time for provisioning employee equipment is set at a minimum number of days (no matter what)
  • Lack of the availability of hiring software to facilitate electronic signatures and approvals and task notifications

Additionally, bear in mind that your approach will vary depending on whether your human resources function is centralized or decentralized. For example, in a centralized system, an organization with different locations will likely rely even more heavily on supervisors to carry out the majority of the tasks associated with pre-boarding and onboarding since HR staff won’t always be directly available.

The complexity of your business will of course drive the development of your new onboarding plan, too. If you have multiple divisions and/or departments, then it would be to your advantage to take time to customize different versions of your plan so they each include items specific to their respective department to better engage employees. These customizations will range from different statutory forms being required depending on employee location to different long-term training curriculum options being offered depending on employee role level.

As you plan the many elements of your revised employee onboarding process, continuously evaluate how the number of stages you choose to include impacts the overall length of your process. And remember, it’s not a bad thing to have a comprehensive onboarding process that lasts for a year or more; however, it is underwhelming to cram a bunch of information into a new employee’s first couple of days — particularly, if that’s all she wrote for the onboarding experience.

3 – Identify potential onboarding process players

Planning a stage in which you get buy-in from the stakeholders involved in your employee onboarding process is a critical port-of-call on your voyage to improvement. People will more likely be active (rather than adverse) participants in change that they help shape. So, at the onset of your project, think about people who have relationships with new hires, and then also consider how the scope of their relationships will impact the extent to which they should be involved in the project. Some will be champions for your cause; while others are sufficient as supporting cast members…but you do want to engage all at the appropriate level. Potential onboarding process players may include:

  • newly hired employees
  • human resources department members
  • hiring managers / supervisors
  • people that provision equipment / resources
  • people that approve forms
  • existing department members
  • members of senior management
  • mentors and buddies assigned to new employees
  • external vendors who interface with a new hire’s role
  • customers of your organization

Depending on both the individual as well as his/her role in the onboarding effort, different communication styles may be appropriate. Take time to mutually create expectations with others about communication preferences that will efficiently support the execution of the process.

4 – Build a framework for accountability

Where many small organizations fall down is in their tendency to repeatedly bandage their process gaps instead of making time for re-engineering efforts and strategy sessions. Their immediate pain is often getting product out the door in time, delivering service that is personalized, and other issues that arise from narrow staff bandwidth. Or, if they do have a periodic project retreat to discuss action steps, they may later fail to execute those items and stay on track to realize change.

The same macro-level tendencies of the organization are often recreated at the employee onboarding micro-level, as well. To overcome this pattern, it’s important for companies to specifically document their plan for change, assign tasks to specific individuals and set milestone deadlines for project completion so that the revamped onboarding process can be put into action for future new hires. Your initial approach may involve the eventual creation of a Gantt chart; however, if you’re a small business ready to foster team collaboration, using colored sticky notes at a team meeting can go a long way, too. Brainstorm all facets and tasks involved in the process, narrow down a sequential order and then assign stakeholders action items and responsibilities by adding initials to the sticky notes. The note color coding strategy can be applied in whichever way is most appropriate for your organization. Here are some ideas:

  • task category (tactical vs. strategic vs. cultural?)
  • task location within onboarding process timeframe (first week vs. six month anniversary)
  • person responsible
  • new onboarding process items vs. old process steps
  • priority for completion (if process is being rolled out in multiple phases)

As you and your team hammer out the details, be sure and think about how employees’ task assignments and roles can affect their onboarding experience and adjust accordingly. For example, some tasks may be completed independently from one another; whereas, others require certain prerequisite items to be completed beforehand.

5 – Incorporate external feedback, tools and resources

It’s easy for small businesses to only consider how their existing resources might be altered to impact employee onboarding process change. However, SMBs do themselves a disservice if they assume that external resources may cost too much, take too much time to research/implement, or have too many bells and whistles for their needs. Here are a list of ideas that could further raise your employee onboarding process game:

  • Survey stakeholders – While the HR team is accustomed to looking out for employees and striving to make improvements, they have only one perspective of what needs to change–their own perspective. By taking time to survey other players in the process who are external to HR, valuable ideas can be gained.
  • Research other employers – If you admire any other organizations for their low turnover and ability to assimilate happy new employees, then make time to take some notes on how your organization can incorporate some of their best practices…or at least take their ideas and tweak them to fit your culture.
  • Don’t forget the legalese – The more tactical side of employee onboarding includes the requisite paperwork and documents…some of which are required in order for the individual to be in your employ legally. The employment law landscape changes over time, and especially if you hire in different states and certain industries, being aware of the latest updates is essential to avoid big costs later. A trusted employment law attorney is someone you should have on speed dial.
  • Make the most of employee assessments – A validated, job-relevant assessment tool, when embraced and used by the entire team, can dramatically improve a new hire’s productivity earlier in the employment relationship. Especially those assessments that have cognitive and behavioral elements…as they allow both new hire and manager to peer into one another’s hard-wiring right off the bat so that they can begin to work together effectively that much sooner. Scheduling onboarding sessions to discuss assessment tools and how they tell a story about one’s skills, motivations and/or preferences is time well spent.
  • Reserve a spot for technology in your onboarding process – Especially because some software companies now focus on working with small- and medium-sized companies, many web-based tools now exist that are budget-friendly. Whether it be using social media to publicly welcome new employees to the firm, building in gamification activities to improve training activity retention rates, and/or implementing employee onboarding software to make your process paperless and improve accountability further into your onboarding process with the use of task assignments and notifications…the cost of tech resources is often insignificant when compared to the savings realized by the resulting improved productivity, lower turnover and quick access to web-based information.

If you’re committed to avoiding future next day new hire scenarios, then follow this small business employee onboarding checklist to be on your way to planning innovative change that will positively impact your organization.

ExactHire’s hiring software solutions are specifically designed for small- and medium-sized organizations. For more information on our employee onboarding software, please visit our resources section, try our pricing estimator tool and/or contact us today.