RFL: Guest Author Margaret Hansen - Reducing Anxiety!

Another great read from guest poster, and RecruitingReview author for JobsInTheUS, Margaret Hansen! This is a reprint from the January 29 RecruitingReview:

How To Reduce Employee Anxiety In A Downward Economy

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By Margaret Hansen, JobsInME.com

Calming The Storm

With nearly 3 million jobs lost in 2008 and more to come, a new bag of management tricks is needed in today's workplace to calm the storm.

According to the American Psychological Association, today's employees face obstacles that increase stress and bog down productivity, including:

• Shifting to unfamiliar tasks within their companies
• The uncertainty of how much longer they will be employed
• New bosses
• Computer surveillance of production
• Fewer health and retirement benefits
• The feeling they have to work longer and harder just to maintain their current economic status

Tension and uncertainty are affecting workers at all levels, and most are updating their resumes.

Whether these conditions are real or perceived in your workplace, there are some ways you can change your work environment to keep stress at bay and improve productivity in a recession.

Keep lines of communication open with your staff

Know what's bugging them on the job and take steps to remove those roadblocks and other stressors.

Create written job descriptions for every employee

A specific, written job description creates clear, agreed-upon expectations and provides a sense of pride and respect in one's work. Reviews and raises should be tied to this.

Provide self-help opportunities

According to Forbes magazine, forecasts predict that the self-help industry will experience a 6.2% annual growth rate through 2012. Why? They offer hope. Securing a few dollars to provide financial counseling, career counseling, ways to budget, or weight loss strategies can offer solutions that reduce stress. If your budget is dry, try seeking out volunteers within the company who'll offer helpful sessions to your team.

Use empathetic responses when talking about problems

Just a few words of empathy can take the pressure off of someone whose spouse has been laid off, or who is going through a financial crisis.

Encourage staff to use their vacation time

According to Mel Borins, M.D. and author of Go Away Just for the Health of It, taking a vacation can improve physical ailments and, in turn, improve self-motivation, job interest and job efficiency while lowering absenteeism.

Recruit for keeps

Effective recruiting and retention means ensuring employees are the right "fit" for the job and the work environment. Job hunting can be stressful, particularly in times of high unemployment, but being ground down day after day by work is far worse, says Lyle H. Miller, Ph.D. and Alma Dell Smith, Ph.D., authors of The Stress Solution.

Make sure you don't have any square pegs in round holes on staff. Hiring superstars may seem like a good idea in a downward economy, but retaining them on the way up may prove to be more difficult than originally thought.

Deal with Trauma

Post-layoff workplaces are vulnerable to more stress. Be sure to give those remaining time to grieve and digest the news, perhaps in an off-site meeting/luncheon to come together for support and some time off.

Remember, everyone in your organization will go through the same stages of loss, but since management will undoubtedly know about disruptive events in advance, they may be beyond denial, and anger before the news hits the floor.

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Recruiting Review Newsletter

RFL: Staffing Strategies for a Recession

Another reprint from the RecruitingReview and from an earlier RFL post...

Employer Bright Spots

Staffing Strategies for a Recession

By Jason Blais, JobsInMA.com

Battling The Storm

Recruiting may seem like a low priority for businesses today facing hiring freezes, or worse. But a recession requires a different way of thinking. Employers who take advantage of this market will come out stronger and more diverse when the economy finally turns around. In an environment where companies are forced to do more with less, it is critical that employers leverage the skills and talents of their existing workforce, and make sound hiring decisions based on this new climate.

Provide Key Strategic Input

April 2008 saw total employment reach its highest level ever in many areas. In the second half of 2008, everything changed. It's no surprise that the instability of the economy will continue to have dramatic affects on the labor market for the next several months as businesses tighten their belts.

Take a slow, deep breath in, and let out a long, collective sigh of relief. That's right, relief. We can stop hiding from the issue and begin to tackle it head on, together. After all, it's not just your business experiencing hard times.

As an HR professional, you're truly on the front lines of this battle, balancing productivity, quality control and consumer confidence with slashed overheads, reduced staff and increasing costs of employee benefits.

Don't be discouraged. You can unveil the true power and business acumen hidden within Human Resource Management. Use your knowledge and experience to provide key strategic input to the rest of the management team and you'll navigate your business successfully through these dangerous waters.

Adaptive Staffing

In the months to come, employee productivity and personnel decisions will weigh heavily on bottom lines. Through better recruiting and staffing techniques, businesses can significantly reduce turnover costs, resulting in increased quality of work, productivity, and, ultimately, profitability.

Get Creative

You can survive the recession while positioning your company for tremendous success when the economy rebounds. Analyze and organize your labor force to increase quality, productivity, and flexibility. Install processes to increase your employee retention, engagement, and job satisfaction through new and innovative methods.

Do More with Less

With a potentially shrinking workforce and tightening budget, it's more important than ever to make sure you have the right people to keep your company thriving. In most cases, that will mean expanding job descriptions, increasing responsibilities, and cashing in on a greater variety of skill sets required to fulfill those needs.

It's easy to see the negative ramifications of the situation: over-burdened staff with no potential increase in compensation, resulting in a lack of employee engagement. But there is another perspective.

Give Employees What They Want

• As the many colors of a kaleidoscope mix to create beautiful combinations of light, a variety of job functions can create a fulfilling and rewarding combination of experiences to keep your employees engaged and growing.
• Don't just heap the workload left behind by reduced staff onto department survivors. Consider exploring opportunities for cross-departmental and cross-functional solutions and roles.
• Take a skills inventory of your entire labor force and uncover latent talents. Identify occasions to distribute job functions across the company, beyond the traditional departmental structure.
• There are countless reports and studies that indicate job satisfaction and employee engagement are directly affected by boredom, variety of job function, and interdepartmental involvement.
• By applying your own knowledge, talent, and experience in an innovative way, you'll develop organizational excellence despite the economy.
• Talk with peers at local HR Association chapter meetings, find social networking sites for like-minded professionals, and use the research and case studies provided by The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) to increase your knowledge base.
• Now is not the time to give up - now is the time to step up.

Staffing Expertise

JobsInMA.com assists local businesses in leveraging their workforce and identifying internal solutions to seize these opportunities, by offering educational webinars and seminars through JobsInMA.com University.

For several years, JobsInMA.com has presented internet recruiting and employment advertising workshops across the state. Accredited by the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI), these programs help businesses to better understand the recruiting market, providing timely content and pragmatic approaches to identify, attract, and retain the best employees.

In 2009, employers will have access to several new accredited programs developed and presented exclusively by JobsInMA.com University. From understanding social media's impact on the workforce, to developing strategies to optimize staffing during a recession, employers can choose from an array of educational content.

One session, Employment Branding 20/20, was recently presented. It provided HR professionals with techniques to decrease recruiting costs while increasing employee retention by creating best in class employment branding. All of the programs presented by JobsInMA.com University will give employers the specific tools and guidance they need to achieve results using their own in-house resources.

Employers can find more detailed information about these programs, and register for upcoming sessions at JobsInMA.com.

Recruitment Review Newsletter

RFL: Recruiting Metrics- Beyond Cost Per Hire

Reprinted from an article in the RecruitingReview and an earlier post in RFL... (but it's much prettier now!)

Recruiting Metrics:
Beyond Cost Per Hire

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By Jason Blais, JobsInNH.com

Cost Per Hire

It's no surprise that a recent JobsInNH.com poll showed Cost Per Hire as the most commonly analyzed recruiting metric. It's easy to count the number of applicants and hires per advertising source. It's also a relatively easy process to calculate how many advertising dollars were spent to fill a position.

But these are second-level metrics, focused on the actual process itself. And they can often be short-sighted.

Measuring Value

A better recruiting analysis question is: how valuable are the hires to the business? To answer this, you have to look at how long it takes for each hire to become productive and how long they stay with your company. Employee retention affects quality of the work being done by your company and your turnover costs.

Example

Let's assume that an entry level position at your company earns $25,000 in wages, and has an average annual turnover of 30%. While the costs related to turnover vary greatly, a conservative estimate is approximately 1.5 times the employee’s salary. Therefore, each time you have to fill that entry level job, it costs the company $37,500.

If you can reduce your turnover to 15% annually by attracting better candidates, then the potential value of your recruitment advertising is significant. In a department of 10 (of these entry level positions), you're reducing your average annual turnover costs from $112,500 to $56,250.

Improving Your Bottom Line

Defining the success of recruitment advertising is an important first step to developing more effective strategies for talent acquisition. Ensuring that you're attracting the best person for your company for all of your job openings is absolutely critical to your long term success, particularly when employers are forced to do more with less.

In 2009, I fear that more employers will be too focused on bottom line or second level metrics, such as Cost Per Hire. Through this strategy, businesses will end up sacrificing future growth opportunities as they focus on costs only. The most successful companies, however, will refuse to compromise their long term goals for short term gains, and will continue to analyze and invest in their recruitment advertising, adhering to the principles that great businesses are built by great people.

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Recruiting Review Newsletter

JobAngels on Twitter

Thanks to Mark Stelzner for passing this on and for everyone else with the RT's for this noble effort. For those who haven't joined the initiative yet, there's a new profile on Twitter, called JobAngels. By joining them, you're joining a "movement where we ask you to simply help one person find a job."

I'm all in, and started today to make a difference. Here's my story of how I'm trying to be a JobAngel:

After seeing the tweet from Mark this morning, and the following retweets, I really began to feel the value and power of this type of initiative. I decided to throw my cards on the table and see if I could help one person find a job. This may sound like a strange goal for someone who works for the largest job boards in Northern New England. Indeed, we attract hundreds of thousands of job seekers to our sites, and help thousands of people find work every month. But this movement is different. It's about people. It's about connecting with one person at a time to build a better community.

I had recently joined a few new LinkedIn Groups, and throught that, the opportunity to do something actually found me. Just after reading the twitter message, I saw an email update of discussions for the STC-NNE group. Coincidentally enough, there was a new discussion to post job openings to help group members find work. I immediately went to the job boards I work for and searched for matching posts. I identified and posted 4 links to jobs that would be relevant to members of this group. A few minutes later, I recieved an emial with a resume specific to one of the jobs.

I'd actually done business with that employer before, so was pretty familiar with them. I decided to go ahead and call the HR director. I told her about the initiative, and what I was doing, and asked how I could send along this resume to ensure someone would take a good look at it. She agreed to take a look, and gave me her direct email. I forwarded on the email to her, and replied to the contact in LinkedIn.

The total amount of time that this took me was less than 15 minutes. I have asked my contact at LI to let me know what happens next. Best case scenario: I helped one person find a job today. Worst case scenario: I let someone out there know I was trying to help.

Thanks to JobAngels for the push.

RFL: The Recruiter / HR Relationship

Let's go everyone. The current is against us, and it's time to make sure we're all paddling in the same direction. No more name calling. No more insidious comments behind each others' backs. No more jokes at the other's expense. Now more than ever, HR Professionals and Recruiters must get along for the betterment of our businesses and our economy. If, as a whole, business in the United States cannot become proficient at doing more with less, we are all in grave danger. This starts with our people.

Attracting the right people. Hiring the right people. Managing the right people the right way. This is how we become adaptive, flexible, and powerful. This is how we build sustainable businesses. Your sheet-fed, 2 color printing press is not going to adapt and become a digital laser printer. Your gravel sorter is not going to adapt and become a concrete mixer. Your blood pressure monitors aren't going to adapt and become CT scanners. However, your press operator can become a graphic designer; your gravel sorter mechanic can become a concrete mixer tech; your CNA can become a Radiology Technician. The ability for businesses to grow and survive is dependent upon their ability to evolve and adapt to the changing environment. Change is a human aptitude.

As we embark in the most difficult labor environment of this generation, we must have cohesion between Recruiters and HR Professionals. While both sides must work a little harder to come together, I believe the first big step must be taken by the Human Resources side. While I work in recruitment advertising, I somehow feel more closely aligned with HR Pro's than Recruiters, so I hope this doesn't come across as HR-bashing. HR must take responsibility for educating recruiters on our businesses and our needs. It's important to understand and remember that recruiters inherently want to deliver the best candidates to us. Often, failure on their end to do so can be traced back to vague, porous, or simply false information provided by HR. This can sometimes be attributed to our view of what we want our business to be, instead of what it truly is. We must take a hard look at the ugly truth of our business, with all our foibles and all our hidden treasures. Only when we face the hard reality of who we are, can we hope to identify and attract the best long-term candidates for our business.

Now, HR friends, please don't vilify me yet. Recruiters also have a very big part to play in this paradigm. Recruiters must be willing to put themselves in the seat of the student, asking questions, and constantly increasing their knowledge. This can be done by pushing further with your clients, and working a little harder to uncover the essence of their business and culture. Meanwhile it's also important to delve further into the core of your candidates- what makes them tick, which environment are they better suited to work in, where do they derive pleasure and satisfaction from? Delivering the right candidates for a company, as I know you all know, requires more than simply matching sets of required skills. When you dig further into an employee's long term value, you invariably run into employee retention and engagement. Two immensely important factors that are connected to SOFT skills. For those who are Dale Carnegie Training graduates, you may be familiar with the concept of the Innerview, in place of the Interview. While I don't exactly drink the Carnegie Coolaid, my experience has shown me that this practice reaps substantial rewards.

Together, HR Professionals and Recruiters can and must take steps to build stronger relationships for the betterment of our employers, our workforce, and our economy.

HR Professionals, are you willing to make a promise to yourself to engage more deeply with recruiters? If so, read this out loud:

I, (state your name here), will make a good faith effort to educate both internal corporate recruiters and third party recruiters about the reality of our business and our needs. I acknowledge and will remember that these recruiters have my best interests in mind, and that their goals are aligned with my goals. Starting today, I will see them as partners and as peers, working toward connecting the right people with the right career opportunities.

(now doesn't that feel better?)

Recruiters, that's right. It's your turn. Are you willing to make a promise to yourself to engage more deeply with the HR Professionals you work with? If so, read this out loud:

I, (state your name here), will make a good faith effort to learn more about the businesses and candidates that I work for. I acknowledge that the businesses that I work with are looking for the best people for their company and that their hiring decisions are made with great care. Starting today, I will see them as partners and as peers, working toward connecting the right people with the right career opportunities.

Now, let's do our part to get America working.

RFL: Which Recruiting Metrics Matter?

With employers across the United States tightening their belts, more and more HR and Recruiting professionals are focused on the value of their talent acquisition practices. Recently, the largest job boards in New England posted a micropoll for employers, asking them which recruiting metrics they were analyzing...

The following poll results were aggregated from JobsInMA, JobsInME, JobsInNH, JobsInRI, and JobsInVT. This poll and other information can be found in their monthly newsletters, which you can view by clicking the following links:
MA Recruiting Review | ME Recruiting Review | NH Recruiting Review | RI Recruiting Review | VT Recruiting Review

I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that Cost Per Hire is the most commonly analyzed recruiting metric. What we see from this graph, in my opinion, is that most people are looking at the metrics which are most easily measured. It's very easy to count the number of applicants and hires you get per advertising source. It's also a relatively easy process to calculate how many advertising dollars were spent to fill a position.

Unfortunately, those are second level metrics, focused on the actual process itself, which don't actually reflect the value of your recruitment advertising. First level metrics, which measure the results of the processes, provide a much more accurate analysis. As is the case in many situations, the more valuable information is generally the harder to capture. When the success or failure of recruitment advertising is boiled down to a dollar amount or a number of hires, you are left with a very short-sighted analysis.

A truer indicator of the value of recruitment advertising is how valuable the hires are to the business, given their prospective roles. To understand this value, you have to look at how long it takes for this person to become productive, and how long they stay with your company. Employee retention affects quality of the work being done by your company and your turnover costs.

For example, let's assume that an entry level position at your company earns $25,000 in wages, and has an average annual turnover of 30%. While the costs related to turnover vary greatly, a conservative estimate is approximately 1.5 times the employees salary. Therefore, each time you have to fill that entry level job, it costs the company $37,500, when all is said and done. If you can reduce your turnover to 15% annually by attracting better candidates, then the potential value of your recruitment advertising is significant. In a department of ten of these entry level positions, you're reducing your average annual turnover costs from $112,500 to $56,250.

I include this example as an illustration of the importance of recruitment advertising to your bottom line. Defining the success of recruitment advertising is an important first step to developing more effective strategies for talent acquisition. Ensuring that you're attracting the best person for your company for all your job openings is absolutely critical to your long term success, particularly when employers are forced to do more with less.

In 2009, I fear that more employers will be too focused on bottom line or second level metrics. Through this strategy, businesses will end up sacrificing future growth opportunities as they focus on costs only. The most successful companies, however, will refuse to compromise their long term goals for short term gains, and will continue to analyze and invest in their recruitment advertising, adhering to the principles that great businesses are built by great people.