10 Smart Ideas to Keep Your Employees Happy

How do you sustain your efforts in making your employees happy and excited in their jobs?

It’s not easy but there are practical ways on how you can do it.  Actually, employee satisfaction is not only about pay, benefits or incentives but also how to make their jobs easier and fun.  Add to that giving them all out support and respect and you have the magic combination.

Here are 10 smart ideas that you can try to keep your employees love coming to work every day.

Give them a free hand

Empower them and let them have a say over their working areas, work flow and conditions.  One of the things that turns them off is when they feel that you breath down on their necks too much.  

Challenge them

Raise the bar of their performance by throwing challenges at them.  Make them feel that you believe in them. Give your employees challenging new assignments to motivate and push them even beyond their limits.  Nothing is more rewarding to employees than making them feel your trust.

Engage

Find time to reach out to employees by having informal chats over lunch or coffee to find out what they value and aspire for.

Be open

Employees feel more trusted and valued if they know what’s going in the company and they’ll be more happier if they know where it is headed and where do they fit in.

Listen to their ideas

Never put down an employee’s idea especially in public to promote a creative environment.  Show them that you value their ideas by listening to their suggestions and making them part of the company’s decision-making process.

Recognize employees' achievements

During meetings and assemblies, make it a point to acknowledge and mention the name of your employees and their accomplishments.  People appreciate being respected and recognized for what they do well.

Apply different strokes for different folks

People have unique needs and wants as well as expectations.  Make it a policy among your managers to deal individually with those who are under their direct supervision. Ask their subordinates what they need from their leader, peers and the organization as a whole; how they want to be recognized and rewarded and how do they want to be treated based on their answers, instead of the one-size-fits-all approach to employee motivation. 

Encourage social activities 
Have regular activities that promote socialization among employees such as retreats, nature trips, happy hours and other activities that give them a chance to bond together.

Provide the right tools
To make your employees happy and productive, remove any barrier that will keep them from performing their tasks by providing a conducive work environment and the right tools they need.

Send the right signals

In everything you do and say to your employees, you send out messages that tell whether you are concerned about them or not. The tone of your voice or your body language says a lot about your intentions.

Chances are, before you became the boss, you were an employee once.  What motivated you then? What were your expectations? How you wanted to be treated? 

Your answers to these questions should make it easier for you now to answer the question of how to make your employees happy and productive. 

 

Watch your body language

"Those in leadership and management roles should look inward at their own behavior and body language; are you sending out the right optimistic and positive message? Leaders set the tone for the culture, which will create a happy or unhappy staff." – Laurie-Ann Murabito, speaker and author, "Rethink Leadership: 4 Lessons to Make You Remarkable" (CreateSpace, May 2011)
- See more at: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8224-keep-employees-happy.html#sthash.FLWrCJqX.dpuf

What's the Future of Technology in Recruitment and Hiring

Technology moves so fast in all fronts including the field of hiring and recruitment. As it continues to evolve, it will play an important role in the way companies approach the recruiting and hiring process.
 

Photo by: recruitingblog.com

Recruitment today has evolved from the traditional job boards of not so long ago into the present outreach and applicant tracking systems. Now, the world of recruitment has gone 100% digital.

Link with LinkedIn Way to Go?
Before, LinkedIn was seen as just supplemental to the traditional paper resume and personal interview.  

Now, it is a digital “filing cabinet” of resumes where recruiters may look for potential candidates for a vacancy to be filled up.

The need to come out with ads in the papers primarily to collect resumes from active job candidates is fast becoming irrelevant as evidenced by the thinning pages of help-wanted ads in the classified section of the leading dailies. 

This is one significant development that tremendously decreased help-wanted ads in the newspapers when job announcements migrated to the web.

At LinkedIn, potential job candidates are now being reached out by companies in increasing frequency.  Many of them regularly receive emails from social networks that says “company so and so are looking for candidates like you”.

Technology to Replace Human Recruiters?
Now that recruitment and hiring has gone digital, paper resumes where recruiter used to base their insights on individual experiences, skill and aptitudes are now being replaced by social media and other technologies.  


Experts have noted that digital profiles are able to provide far more insight into a candidate, as many recruiters have realized. From it, recruiters can now assess whether a person will fit and has the right skills for a job.

“This kind of automated outreach”, reports Inc. magazine, “points to what experts expect to see soon from recruiting technology: Advanced outreach specifically tailored to specific candidates and based on more than the employment and education information they've listed on the Internet.” 

Inc. further reported,  “And we can expect to begin answering a big question: Will human managers ever be fully removed from the recruiting and hiring process?”

Not necessarily.  Technology, I believe, will not replace human judgment but merely to aid it in the selection process.  

Despite present recruiting technology today that works by collecting a batch of potential recruits and weeds out those who don’t meet certain qualifications in their resumes or cover letters, there is still a need for a recruiter’s judgment call where a balance between technology and the human touch is reached.

Digital Interviews
There is no doubt that technology will play a crucial role in the hiring process.  For instance, more and more companies will embrace Skype and other video services in interviewing whether one-on-one or panel interviews.

Photo by: cpr-pa.com

More and more employers are utilizing the webcam and video interviews in their hiring process.  One-way videos where applicants record their interviews for later on-demand viewing are also becoming standard practice.  Live, two-way webcam interviews will experience tremendous growth as well in the coming years.

For out-of-town candidates and first-round interviews, the phone call is quickly being replaced by the more-high-tech video interview too, reported Business News Daily.

The Age of the Generation Y or Millenials

Business News Daily added that “more and more of Generation Y will be entering the job market in the coming years, and will soon make up the largest percentage of the workforce. Employers are quickly learning that these workers have different expectations about the hiring process than past generations.”

Raised on technology, they no longer accept “old school” concepts of recruiting and work. Recruiters need to engage Gen Y candidates in new ways to be effective in attracting them.

This is true as well with passive candidates or those who are not looking for jobs but maybe open to new career opportunities.

As technology moves, so is the recruitment and hiring systems.  Each day, new apps and solutions are being developed and introduced to help solve each and every facet of the HR profession. 

The professional recruiter of today cannot afford not to be proactive and be abreast of technology as it affects his or her line of work. Otherwise there is no tomorrow to think of.

Agree?  Let me know what your think.

UP NEXT:  How to Keep Your Employees Happy.  Employee satisfaction is not all about salary, benefits and expensive perks — it's also about making employees' jobs easier and more meaningful, and supporting and respecting them as people both in and out of the office.

 

  

Essential Qualities to Look For in Recruitment Consultants

These past years, human resources practitioners have observed that there are recruitment firms who are undercutting each other in terms of fees they charge their clients.

Photo by Twitter

In the short term outlook, this is good for employers because they get the best possible prices to save on their recruitment costs.

 But for some of them, this practice is raising the red flag.

 Once this becomes the practice among recruitment consultants, particularly those who specialize in key management positions, employers may wonder about the quality of recruits of these consultants or which part of their service are being "diluted" to offset the smaller profit spreads.

Although the prospect of hiring a price-diving recruitment agency may seem appealing, in reality it’s a false economy. 

By the time you’ve wasted hours and days sifting through resumes, weeding out the unsuitable applications and pre-screening candidates – essentially doing the work that a consultant should be doing for you – it will soon become apparent that the money you thought you saved are just eaten by lost productive hours.

Or it could be worse. 

If a budget recruitment service results in a less than perfect hire, and the new employee leaves, then you'll be faced with a whole range of hidden costs not to mention the negative impression of upper management.

And that does not include the cost of starting the hiring process all over again from scratch.

Come to think of it.  If you factor in the losses you incur and wasted time brought about by a bad experience with a recruitment consultant, the fees are irrelevant.

Price certainly comes a distant second to the importance of finding a consultant that provides a truly valuable service.

Photo by: imagekb.com

So before you sign along the fine prints, make sure you choose a consultant that fills all of the following criteria:

Have Industry Expertise

Unless your recruitment needs are very general, as much as possible, choose a consultant that is familiar with your industry. If they don’t understand your business, then they’ll find a hard time to scout for the most suitable candidates.

Casts a Wide Net

The best candidates for any position are those who are not looking for a job and the ideal recruitment consultant dig deep for those types. They don’t limit themselves to picking up scraps from online job boards.

Have an In-depth Screening System

Once a consultant understands what type of a candidate you need, the last thing you want is to be handed 20 resumes and you are left to figure out which ones are best suited for your requirement.  A diligent recruitment agency will spend considerable time pre-screening candidates, and only introduce you a shortlist of 3 people who are most fitted for a position.

Offers a Guarantee

A good sign that you are dealing with a capable consultant is when you are offered a guarantee.  Otherwise beware.  This may mean that they’re not fully confident in their ability to find you the right candidate.

Have a High Employee Retention Rate                                                 
It’s not enough that consultants are able to meet 100% of your hiring criteria.  As much as possible, none of their candidates quit within 12 months.  Ask for track records on their retention rates.

Conduct Post-placement Follow-ups. 

Once a recruitment consultant places a candidate, they regularly check on their candidates every now and then within six months or so and help out their candidates settle down and adjust to their new work environment. 

We all know that a significant factor that spells the difference between smooth operations and chaos in any organization is middle management.  They are the sandwich layer between top management and rank and file.  They are in the unique position to command the respect and cooperation of those below the hierarchy, to effectively implement the policies and programs of those at the top. 

It is critical therefore that you are able to get the best possible candidates to fill up vacancies at this level of your organization to ensure the smooth operations of your business in the long term.    

Should you decide to make use of the services of recruitment consultants, consider first those with a wide breadth of experience, industry exposure and reach to potential talents, before looking at what they have to offer in terms of price. 

What's your experience in this area?  Why don't you share your views and comments below so that other HR practitioners in this community may also benefit from your ideas, or vice-versa. 

UP NEXT:  What's The Future of Technology in Recruitment and Hiring.  It predicts how technology will affect recruitment and hiring practices in the future and how they will impact your future hiring activities.