It’s All About the Fit!
Hiring is becoming more competitive in the local market again. Local unemployment figures for February 2011 showed a slight decrease from January 2011. According to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, the February 2011 unemployment rate for Washington, D.C. was 9.5%, while the unemployment rates for Virginia and Maryland were 6.4% and 7.1%, respectively. Job growth continues to be a leading factor in the overall decrease in unemployment. While this is great news for individuals looking for employment, companies remain charged with the critical task of finding the right talent. At the same time, employers must realize that the decrease in unemployment is causing the workforce to change.
Filling your open positions requires a great match of both skills and cultural fit. Rightly, companies want to search for that “perfect fit,” but they may have limited time to conduct a thorough search. The result: weeks and months can go by, existing staff become overextended and the company falls victim to the short-staffing phenomenon of hiring a ‘warm body’ that seems to meet the basic needs. This type of pressured hiring nearly always results in mistakes.
Unfortunately, the financial impact of a bad hire is staggering. In a study completed by CCH, one in four hiring managers reported that even one bad hire cost their businesses more than $50,000 in the last year alone.
Companies can avoid this type of costly mistake by taking a few proactive steps with respect to hiring:
- Understand your true organizational culture. Perception is often not reality, so solicit feedback from your team in order to gain a better understanding.
- When interviewing potential candidates, consider their cultural fit as much as their skill sets. It is typically much easier to train a new employee on a particular skill than it is to try and teach them how to blend in with your organization’s culture.
- Ensure that candidates understand the outcomes of the position. Clear communication of the short- and long-term goals serves both you and the candidate well.
At Helios, finding the right candidate and hiring for ‘fit’ is our priority. We can help our clients find top talent through two different recruiting models, which saves them both time and money. Please contact Bridget Pulivarti at bpulivarti@helioshr.com to learn more about how Helios can help your company find the right fit for your organization.
Top Reasons for Small and Medium Businesses to Consider HRIS
Is your business growing or expecting growth? Are more and more of your employees working remotely and across the country? How can a small or medium sized organization manage these challenges along with new compliance obligations that accompany these changes without adding HR staff? With the right technology, your remote employees can stay connected with easy access to their data, and your current HR staff can effectively manage the organization’s personnel data and maintain compliance with federal and state employement regulations. Here are some top things you should consider in leveraging a Human Resource Information System (HRIS):
1. Enhanced Efficiencies/Improved Recordkeeping: Many organizations’ Human Resource departments are overburdened with the administrative task of recordkeeping. Benefits eligibility, EEO information, I-9s and Family and Medical Leave are often tracked using a burdensome manual spreadsheet or database that is difficult and time consuming to maintain. However, an HRIS will provide a single, secure repository for confidential HR information that is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week from any location with access to the internet.
By using an HRIS an organization can reduce time spent by HR on remedial tasks while ensuring accuracy of their records. An organization required to maintain security clearances or certifications can track this data in their HRIS and ensure notification when clearances and certifications are pending expiration.
2. Improved Productivity via Employee Self Service: Employee Self Service (ESS) quickly reduces HR data entry tasks, allowing staff to focus on strategic HR initiatives. With an HRIS employees are able to log in and manage their own data, with the ultimate approval continuing to be granted by Human Resources. An employee can log in and change an address, update W-4 data, emergency contact information, dependents, beneficiaries and direct deposit information. According to the 2010-2011 CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey results, 60% of respondents reported utilizing employee self-service and manager self-service modules in their HRIS.
In that same survey 60% of organizations reported facing pressure to increase productivity, reduce labor costs, and still provide superior service levels. When employees can enter and find information online it translates into fewer calls to the HR and payroll departments. In addition to reducing or eliminating the use of paper forms, many organizations can maintain a lower HR to employee ratio.
3. Automated Benefits Management: Annual open enrollment processes can go from a time consuming task requiring HR to spend time educating and following up with employees, to completion with the click of a mouse. HR staff can click a button that initiates an automated open enrollment process.
Employees receive a notification that explains any changes and walks them through the updated plan options. After an employee makes a selection, the information is sent directly to the benefit carriers and their new elections take effect.
4. Single Point of Entry for Data: A fully integrated HRIS system eliminates theneed to enter an employee’s information in multiple systems. Once the employee’s record is created that information will immediately populate all other applications. The information will be available to Payroll, IT or Security with the click of a mouse. With this single point of entry, information is far more likely to be accurate as the likelihood of data entry errors is reduced.
This single data entry method allows maintenance of an efficient HR staff-to-employee ratio as your organization grows. According to the Institute for Corporate Productivity’s 2010 Future of HR Survey, the ratio of HR staff to employees for high performing companies with fewer than 100 employees is 1:57. For larger organizations, this ratio grows to 1:124 for high performing organizations. With the help of a fully integrated HRIS system, an organization can expect to optimize the ratio of HR staff to employees throughout a growth phase.
If your compliance is still tracked manually it’s time to consider a cost efficient technology upgrade that will ensure compliance and prepare your organization for growth. Prepare now with an HRIS system that will cost far less than you may think and will demonstrate its value in increased efficiencies and opportunity to scale.
Reintegrating Employees Returning From Active Military Duty
Almost 40% of the US military is made up of National Guardsmen and Reservists. These 850,000+ service members are also your employees. While their calls to duty are in the national interest, it can be disruptive to productivity, challenging to organizational cohesion, and stressful for everyone involved. But, we HR professionals can mitigate — even gain — from these experiences using techniques already available to us.
Following are some suggestions to consider when one of your employees will be deployed:
- Recognize that stressors appear on the individual, family, and employer almost as soon as active duty orders are received.
- Apply human resource (or workforce) planning techniques to discuss openly how the deployment will impact the employee, his/her team, and the employer.
- Take steps, such as building Job Books or cross-training, to prepare the workforce for the absence.
- Keep the employee connected to the company while away; send notes and “care packages” — and get others to participate.
Finally, keep in mind that almost every sojourner (expatriate executive, international student, or your activated employee) will have to readjust when they come back. A 2000 HR Magazine article reminds us that, “People don’t expect to have to adjust to home, but that is precisely what makes it so difficult. After being gone, the [employee] is facing a world of changes - personally, culturally, and professionally.”
For more information on reintegrating employees returning from active military duty, contact your Helios consultant at (703) 860-3882 x102. Additionally, the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) maintains field committees of volunteers in every state. Go to www.esgr.org for more information and to locate volunteers in your area.
Taking Care of Your People Takes Care of Your Business
In an economy where every dollar is cautiously and carefully spent, the most important investments become apparent. Companies admit the secret to their success is their employees. Even in a down economy, investments in employee programs are on the rise.
Organizations with strong employee development initiatives achieve a critical competitive advantage. A global workforce survey conducted by Towers Perrin found that companies with the highest levels of employee engagement achieve better financial results and are more successful in retaining their most valued employees. In fact, companies with the largest percentage of engaged employees experienced an increased operating income of 19 percent. By engaging employees with development and training programs, they believe the company values their efforts and feel a part of the organization’s overall success.
For four years, Helios HR has hosted the Apollo Awards, a program dedicated to recognize employers that invest in employee development initiatives. In parallel, leading market research firm, Market Connections, collects survey data from all nominees. This data is analyzed in a best practices program overview. Through the Apollo Awards, executives and human resource (HR) professionals can learn about the actions of enlightened and innovative organizations, which exemplify strong HR programs. Certain commonalities become evident, this year a clear trend emerged: leading companies are offering their employees customized training programs in skill development (i.e. personal, time management, technical) via a diverse array of learning channels.
Offering Multiple Channels of Learning
The finalists for our awards program take very unique approaches to employee development, but one common thread is in offering customized training through different channels. Most of these top organizations offer a variety of employee development opportunities such as peer-to-peer mentoring, attendance at events, seminars, online training and instructor-led classes so that employees can select the training that will be individually most effective.
The benefits of offering different learning approaches can include increased retention, a positive effect on company culture and productivity, improved ability to effectively recruit, enhanced quality of work, and increased organizational expertise. Reduced opportunity cost also occurs when employees are assimilated into an organization more rapidly. Two of these forward-thinking organizations, Dewberry and Métier, offer customized programs, with a variety of channels to cater to individual learning styles and preferences.
Dewberry’s Blended Learning
Dewberry, a professional services firm, recognizes that people learn different ways; therefore, they utilize a blended learning approach. This approach offers employees a variety of learning channels as part of The Dewberry Learning Center including: classroom, software, mentoring, coaching, one-on-one, seminars and brown bag lunches, among other approaches.
One key to Dewberry’s blended learning success is in involving internal resources such as corporate leadership to host or participate in the programs. The active involvement of top executives impresses upon employees the seriousness of the training and demonstrates that their efforts are valued.
Métier’s Development on Day One
Métier, a project portfolio management solutions provider, doesn’t have an assembly line. Tweaking and fine-tuning the organization is all about polishing their greatest asset – the employees. Métier considers each employee’s learning abilities and needs with customized development beginning on the employee’s first day. Every new employee attends a two-week orientation known as Boot Camp, where each individual’s strengths and weakness are assessed to provide a benchmark for their career-long professional development activities. The Boot Camp also provides instructive and interactive orientation in a variety of learning ways such as instructor-led, computer-based, seminars, webinars and on-the-job-training.
Métier’s approach paid off: the company witnessed greater employee camaraderie and improved knowledge retention. In fact, when Métier shifted Boot Camp from one week to two weeks, the percentage of employees with tenure of one year increased 25 percent and tenure of two years increased by 12 percent.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Dewberry and Métier are just two companies finding value in offering their employees multiple development opportunities. It’s no surprise that both organizations are service providers that understand their success is tied to the performance of their employees. Both provide innovative employee development initiatives. We can look to these companies as models in implementing strong programs.
Companies that don’t explore developing their greatest resources – their employees – will loose a competitive advantage that can be a costly loss. Organizations are quickly finding that there is no “one size fits all” approach to learning.
Hubert Humphrey, former Vice President of the U.S. put it very simply, “There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free.” And it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who quoted, “The mind, once stretched, never regains its original dimension.” Innovative employee development practices offered through multiple learning channels provide an organization the opportunity to stretch beyond “its original dimensions.”
~Kathy Albarado
The Helios HR 2010 Apollo Awards
Join us on June 3rd from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. to network with 400+ CEOs and HR professionals as we recognize the following finalists for their passion and commitment to employee development.
Emerging Companies Mid-Size Companies
Evans Incorporated Apple Federal Credit Union
Justin Bradley Capitol Concierge
Metier Ltd. Goodman & Company
Rose Financial Services, LLC High Performance Technologies, Inc.
SpeakerBox Communications SkillStorm
The North Highland Company
Small Companies Large Companies
BrightKey, Inc. Ascend One
Horizon Consulting Deltek
Snyder Cohn, P.C. Dewberry
The QED Group LLC Greenspring Retirement Community
VISTAtsi Ogilvy PR Washington
The Helios HR Apollo Awards™ recognize Washington area organizations that promote employee development. Come hear the latest trends that provide a competitive advantage. Register today at 2010 Apollo Awards Registration.
ABOUT HELIOS HR
Helios HR provides human resources outsourcing, consulting and recruiting services that optimize your workforce and HR operations. With Helios, you gain a strategic business partner with a keen eye on your organization’s culture, growth, business strategy and budget.