The Official Blog of Benifys HR Solutions

People change, fact of life. And organizations change too, much like a evolving mass of ideas in a constant state of flux. Trouble brews when the lines connecting the goals of an individual to that of an organization diverge and go out of alignment, add to that the job hopping typically associated with Gen-Y folks and an entire generation of baby boomers heading towards retirement – and you have a whole lot of leaving coming around (pun intended). But, as any seasoned HR Pro will agree, not all people have an equal capacity to maintain their maturity when it comes to letting go. Whereas the more wise will leave gracefully, an awful lot will act like a child with an ego hurt; the first question hence comes to mind – “how difficult is it going to be to ask this person to leave and see them through the exit process”. Another factor, and perhaps one that is more important to the employer is “how much will the business be affected negatively if this person leaves?” Let’s equate these factors against each other as a measure to assess an employee’s work style based on the way they behave while parting ways.

Peaceful Impacter – These individuals are usually very understated, and most likely introverts. But that does not mean their work has to be understated too; because of the highly efficient methods they deploy at work (by coming up with creative solutions) and their adaptable nature… it becomes very is hard to find faults with their work. In fact, it’s your turn to be alarmed if this person leaves or is contemplating leaving your organization, because they will do so in a very matter-of-fact manner once they make their mind up.

1. Needs their space.
2. Will work uninstructed in ideal conditions.
3. More likely to come up with breakthrough ideas.
4. Might seem arrogant and indifferent on the surface.
5. They strive to find meaning in their work.

Arrogant Influencer – It is said that in organizational life, one can either have freedom from others or influence over them. Never both things at the same time. Individuals in this quadrant choose to exert influence on others as opposed to enjoying freedom from them, they control people and get work done through them (and that’s the impact they bring). Being arrogant, like micromanagement, is often not a choice, it’s a conditioned thought pattern. Needless to say, the tolerance for such employees differs based on the organizational climate.

1. They need people to listen to them.
2. Will seem inseparable from the organization.
3. Can be, and mostly will be pushy.
4. Yields authority, of that, there is no doubt.
5. More likely to delegate, direct or supervise work.

Drama Queen – They have quaint and frail self-image, like they are living in some kind of a dreamland, of which they are the respective prince or princess. They should have probably taken dramatics as a career since they obviously have a flair for it. Anything work related is not really their forte, they are full of acts (pun intended) as long as you don’t expect them to work or ask them to quit. If and when you do either one of those things – you are in for a live workshop of high emotion drama. Don’t argue much with them – they have an undue sense of entitlement, others just have to live with it.

1. Cannot work 9 to 6 faithfully even if life depended on it.
2. Might be paranoid and have delusions that they are being discussed and scrutinized.
3. Will expect people to take care of their needs without saying them.
4. Needs a thorough reality check, either through introspection or intervention.
5. More likely to spill coffee in a conference and create a scene, or just create a scene with anything.

Useless Bystander – The ones seated bang at the middle of the conference table, and will switch to whichever side of the table as dictated by the status quo. The main motive that fuels their actions is to keep things running the way they are, for better or worse. Why they behave the way they do can have so many endless explanations that it deserves a post of it’s own. They will leave the organization as easily as they came in, the the difference to the overall scheme will not be noticeable. Why does this work? Because at least there is no unrequired theatrics and in their defense – they provide a balancing effect.

1. More likely to not do anything of great significance.
2. Might prove useful in diffusing situations where serious conflict arises.
3. Will stick to sides, whichever side seems better in a given situation.
4. Can have a really long and healthy career despite incompetence because they never fix what’s not broken.
5. Needs to be a little more opinionated – to fight like they are right and listen like they are wrong.

In the toil of everyday working and just staying abreast with the needs of a business, it is easy to lose track of the constantly evolving organism that an organization is. If you don’t stop to check what state your organization is in and where it is headed, the shape it takes on it’s own might surprise you, to say the least. Here are some thoughts for you to chew on.

First, some clear signs that your organization has lost it.

1. Lunch breaks keep getting longer, 5 minutes at a day.
2. Your company is in a race to make YouTube the most popular website with employees viewing and sharing links everywhere.
3. Your organization drifts from one idea to another instead of finding it’s small niche.
4. Team meetings are infrequent and anything but invigorating. All conversations end in a either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.
5. Keeping up with current affairs has become an activity in reading Page 3 news.
6. Performance appraisal is an almost alien term, or worse, there is no performance to appraise.

Here’s a clear test – Mission Statement – Who knows it?

Ask your team in the next meeting whether they know what the mission of the organization is, they don’t have to spell it out verbatim; look for signs where people feel it is absurd and irrelevant for you to ask such a question. If everyone answers satisfactorily – congratulations, people are in sync what the organization wishes to achieve. If not, well, it’s time you either re-think your mission (Is it too abstract? Something straight out of a book?), or get down to finding out why your people are not motivated by it. What does an organization do when it doesn’t know what it does?

OK, it’s broken! What now? Take your client’s help.

Setup an online feedback form and request your clients to fill it out for you. Bad feedback never killed anyone, but it does give you the knowledge of what you are doing wrong. Form questions that help you understand the gap in promised service to actual delivery, like:

1. Is there a gap in the service we promised to the one that is now being delivered? If yes, please elaborate.
2. If you could change three things at <name of the organization>, what would they be?
3. Is the representative appointed by our organization knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the work they do at <name of client organization>?

Avoid questions that might induce bias or negative action – for example if you know that things have not been going too well off late, it would be stupid to ask a question like “Would you recommend us?” The purpose is to get feedback that you can use to improve the level of service and find out hidden gremlins in operations, a copy-paste job will only serve to make things worse.

Lastly, and most importantly, involve the people.

A majority of organizational problems both begin and end with people. If people do not volunteer information, have a round of team building activities in order to set the tone for it. The information gathered from client feedback can be discussed as a team and further used to make an action plan with timelines.

If people seem to be losing steam and you sense a growing disinterest amongst them, conduct an engagement survey with targeted questions to find out what precisely is not working for them.

Anyone who follows Web 2.0 with any level of interest in all probability already knows what Yammer is, if you are not one of them, here is a guide to what you need to know, why you need to know it and how to implement it for your organization.

What is Yammer?

Yammer is a micro-blogging platform made specifically for organizational use, consider it a ‘version’  of twitter that is used for work (not that it is affiliated with twitter in any way). By way of posting short status updates, one can be constantly aware about what his colleagues are up to, it is also a great tool for encouraging a team support system wherein the team can not only be updated about any problem that their co-worker is facing but also discuss it in real-time and provide a solution.

Why do I need Yammer?

Did people ask why they need email, while they were using snail mail? Quite an interesting thought that! There are other tools which can and are being used to the same effect, but none that matches the popularity and features of Yammer, you need Yammer because:

• It brings a real-time element to the conversations.
• It is more collaborative than other modes of communication because of threaded commenting system.
• You can attach files just like email.
• You will gradually build a searchable database of all conversations that occur: A knowledge bank.
• Yammer provides free applications to use the platform with Blackberry, iPhone, SMS and even IMs.

While a total replacement of email might not seem like a legitimate option, Yammer does indeed have its share of benefits over it.

Implementing Yammer

Setting up Yammer is a very straightforward process, although it might take a little co-ordination to get it up and running. We will provide you with all the links that you might need in order to setup yammer for your organization at the end of this article. But before that, let us tell you how it works – once a person signs-up at Yammer with the domain name of their organization (e.g. Allen@abc.co.uk), they are sent a confirmation link to confirm the sign-up, after which they can invite other people from their organization from within Yammer.

Every employee gets a profile on Yammer where they setup a profile picture, expertise, role and background. An organization chart is built after the relationship between the employees is entered in the database.

In our team we have a blackberry that runs Yammer by the application provided by them, and the others are a combination of a very nifty Firefox plug-in and Yammer desktop client. Irrespective of where the Yam (that’s what an update is called) originated, everyone is pinged in real-time through their respective services and then they can respond to the message or just follow the flow of conversation.

Resources

Yammer Website

Firefox Plug-in for Yammer

Why do it?

It builds a psychological contract – A good internal communication policy helps to build a two way non verbal understanding between the employee and the employer – the employee feels valued by the employer and the employer is able to visibly display their commitment to the employees’ well-being by acknowledging that employee feedback/interaction matters to them. It is not just one of those ‘good to have’ things, it is in fact one of the ‘things to have’, if you wish to build a world class organization.

Improved work performance – Good communication practices result in better performance and better overall organizational climate. At the same time, they help bridge the gap between the employee’s need to have access to more and better information. Employee communication is commonly confused with an open door policy, while, in reality, these are two very different things. Employee communication pertains to the messages that the management communicates to, and receives from its employees. An open door policy, on the other hand, is a reflection of the attitude of the management towards its accessibility for employees.

Reduced staff turnover - Research has revealed that open communication at the workplace has a direct positive impact on employee satisfaction and morale levels, which in turn, reduces attrition levels. And if you thought that the time and money spent on communication is not justified or necessary – well, think again… Would you rather be paying three times to find replacements or take some preemptive action? Remember, the cost of replacement is not just the money that you pay to the recruiting agency there is loss of knowledge and adverse impact on morale of the people who stay behind that also has to be taken into account.

It’s branding at its best – Right from the time a candidate is interviewed for a position to the time when an employee leaves the organization; all forms of written or verbal communication that are exchanged are implicitly projecting the identity of the organization – your brand is at stake. It’s that little bit extra that you put into communication that separates the good from the best. A well planned employee communication process is internal branding working for you at no extra cost.

How to do it?

Make a communication strategy – Right from convincing the top management about the importance of internal communication and building internal alliances to facilitate efficiency of the communication process to reviewing communication initiatives to check what has worked, what hasn’t, and why not at the end of a communication cycle forms the communication strategy. It is advisable to have a structured approach to this as opposed to haphazardly trying to put across information.

Mind the medium – No single method of communication is most effective, each one of them have their own pros and cons and specific situation based usage. Communication can be usually divided into two major categories depending on their usage, which is, they can either be in a dialogue mode like one-to-one meetings or notification based like a letter or an intranet information board. Also, they can be either verbal or written; due consideration is to be taken of that fact the verbal communication can be misinterpreted and written communication can be missed or overlooked, therefore it is advisable to use the right combination of both.

Ensure Communication Clarity – If you are trying to set up a communication strategy or are in the process of revamping it, your motto should be ‘right information for the right person, at the right time and delivered in most impactful manner’. You have to make sure the message is consistent, over time and between audiences. Overtly complicated language is counterproductive to the entire exercise of communication. And make sure that wherever possible, a two way communicated is established which encourages dialogue and feedback.

Create the Aha! Moment – The Aha! Moment in communication is that time when the intended message hits home in the minds of the audience in a moment of clarity and realization. These are some of the common Aha! Moments:

• “Ah, now I get it!”
• “Now I can do something about it.”
• “That makes perfect sense.”

Creating and delivering an Aha! Moment is the ultimate aim of any employee communication practice, this technique is especially effective in communicating change where you don’t want to spell the information out in clear words at first but instead provide related information and data leading the people automatically to the Aha! Moment. It also helps people to form their own understanding of the situation rather than feeling that information is being forced down on them.

Recruitment is one function of HR that plays a major part in deciding the success of the organization as well as defining the organizational culture. How, then, to ensure that you, as a recruiter, recruit only the best for your company? Finding the ideal candidate for a position can be a tricky proposition as it does not require only qualification, but also behavioral skills and attitudes which make a candidate suitable for the job. Some ideas that can help recruiters find the right person for the right job:

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Craft the Job Description carefully:

A job description is the starting point of recruiting for any position. More important than the job description, is the process that is used to develop it internally. One very good way of doing this is to assemble a team of people who represent the best qualities of the people who currently hold the same or a similar position, including the hiring manager. The job description has to delineate the KRAs of the position. It should also include the major behavioral characteristics required for the position. The second step would be to cull out those parts of the job description that will be used to screen resumes and start phone screening. The phone screening gives an idea about what to expect from candidates for the position in question and thus, help in framing interview questions.

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Tapping Employee Networks:

Nominate employees to participate in various conferences, workshops, and trade shows etc. This would not just build networks, but also create visibility for the company in the industry circles thus attracting potential candidates. Develop a system for keeping in touch with the contacts thus formed either through telephone or e-mail. A company newsletter would also be a great way of staying in contact with people. These can be posted on the company website and/or sent out using mailing lists.

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Use Your Website:

Your company’s website is a potentially powerful medium of attracting employees. A well put-together website conveys the vision, mission, values and culture of the organization to the viewer in the most convincing manner. The ‘Jobs & Career’ section must sparkle with personality so that a potential candidate feels “this is the place for me”. Also essential is an easy interface for submissions of resumes and clear indications on who to contact and how to contact for any queries or questions.

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Maintain Frequent Contact:

So you have got a pool of resumes for various positions in your files. What do you do with them? Don’t just let them languish. You might not need them right now, but a requirement might arise at a later date. Keep in constant touch with them so that all your momentum is not lost. Let them subscribe to the company’s newsletter or have a mini newsletter designed especially for them. Keep them updated about the recent job openings. They can also bring in references for other positions. Nurture the association into a long term relationship.

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Use Recruiters And Headhunters:

Sometimes, it can be worth the money to use recruiters and headhunters. These professionals usually have a database that they have accumulated over a period of time and can most of the time find the right kind of candidate within a short duration. They are especially useful when hiring for senior positions or positions with specific technical expertise.

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Harness The Internet:

Use the internet for attracting a larger number of applications. Various websites provide job-listings as well as resume search services either free of cost or at a charge. These websites are also ideal for accumulating a database of resumes which are relevant to the different roles in your organization. Moreover, these make the process easier as these websites generally have an interface which makes it possible for the recruiter to key in the keywords for a position or select them from a list.

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Become An Employer Of Choice:

What opinion does a potential employee form about your company? The first thing to consider would, of course, be stability and profitability of the company. Other than that, candidates are also affected by how employee-friendly you are, how evocative your vision and mission statement is, how much sense of purpose do you convey, does your organization nurture talent and provide opportunities for growth and so on. And remember, the devil is in the details. It does matter to the candidate if you return his phone call, if the interview questions are succinct and probing, if you give him feedback even if he is not selected, if he feels appreciated and valued. All the little things do make a difference. To become an employer of choice, act like one.

Recruiting right and recruiting the best, is a skill that can be honed over time. With the assistance of the tips and tricks mentioned above, recruiters can take another positive stride in the direction of good recruiting.