The Future of Human Resources Business Development

v  The Society of Human Resource Management's Future Insights report predicted that increased competition for skilled talent, the influence of social media on recruitment, the need for a flexible work schedules, new foreign markets and more government legislation are the driving force behind significant changes to business development in HR.

v  Let's start with the competition for talent – something every HR Manager knows all too well. Online resume banks and recruitment agencies may have proven useful to us in the past, but they leave us with no exclusivity to the talent pool. LinkedIn has enabled the rise of the online freelancer, and erased the need for talent to send out multiple applications to different companies. The biggest impact comes when one considers that your competitors are using the same sites and research tools that you are.

v  Another problem for recruitment is the influence of social media most of hiring managers were found to have looked a candidate up on social media.  With new media technologies comes the ability to work remotely from home. We can keep in touch with work whilst we are out-and-about. This may now be seen as an exponential concern to the future of HR business development and while executives may love their staff's new flexible work process, in time certain risks can begin to play out as remote and virtual working is not for everyone.

v  This ability to connect to anyone anywhere has indeed brought with it a new world of emerging markets, with many outsourced workers connecting with in-office workers through the digital world on the other side of the world. If used smartly, this can work to the advantage of all people teams, as two distant sides can now work together and remain in contact, solidifying the team and company culture.

v  Finally, increasing legislation in developed countries to protect profits while sustaining workers is going to be a significant development in HR, as old policies will need to be adjusted and old processes amended! As the world of business continues to develop, as must the HR function in order to remain effective. Whatever the future may bring, will your team and department be ready?

3 Cost Effective Talent Management Strategies

Most organizations have a set of brilliant employees who perform far beyond standard expectations. We call these individuals "start performers." On the surface there are no underlying problems with these people, after all, they are super productive. However, handling these individuals effectively in a team can become difficult over time. They might become isolated as a result of preferring to work alone or being favored by their boss. HR experts suggest the following ways to bridge the gap between the star performers and your team:

Get the right mix

      For a star performer to thrive within a team, it is important that the entire team is competent as well. Every team has a different mix of employees with both strengths and weaknesses. As a manager, you have to ensure that your team has the right balance of talent. Some members are introverted, but have an extensive eye for detail. Others are excellent at coordinating. Drawing out the strengths of each team member will take the spotlight away from star performers. As a result, everyone will get to shine. Also note that all star performers may not be natural leaders. When choosing team leaders, you must recognize individuals who have the ability to bring out the best in others.

Everyone should be accountable

     In a team, everyone is responsible, and favouring star performers is not advisable. When performance is not up-to-the-mark, everyone should be evaluated equally. Star performers should not feel like they can get away with mistakes just because they have been producing exceptional results so far. An organization is only as good as its weakest link. Ensure that you spend the time and resources to develop all employees in your team. Doing this should nip any future problems in the bud. Be sure to recognize every person's accomplishments no matter how little. Develop common awards for every employee. These practices will go a long way in nurturing the perfect team.

Have a 360 degrees feedback system

    During appraisals, it is always advisable to keep a 360 degrees feedback system. This would include feedback from top management as well as colleagues. Doing this would ensure that every employee gets an honest picture of their performance from their entire team. Star performers would know where they are contributing, but also where they're lagging behind in the eyes of their co-workers.

In order to become a great place to work, you must develop honest communication and interpersonal skills among your team members to make them more productive. Keep a compassionate ear for any discrepancies faced by them. Help your team solve any issues by honestly sharing their problems with each other. This way, if anyone is feeling left out at least the team will know. Star performers might even help train their colleagues by sharing their knowledge, skills and expertise.

10 Things That Make Good Employees Quit

Employees quit their job for many reasons.  The majority of reasons why employees quit their job are under the control of the employer. In fact, any element of your current workplace, your culture and environment, the employee's perception of his job and opportunities are all factors that the employer affects. The best way to retain employees is to stay in touch with what they're thinking.

Are they happy with their work? Are their needs for challenge, belonging, development, and meaningful work met? Do they have the communication, problem solving, feedback, and recognition that they need from their boss? If you stay in touch with your employees, you can head off potential retention issues. Are the systems, processes, and requirements in your company supportive of employees? You must think about employee retention every day.

Here are ten critical reasons why employees quit their job. You can manage them.

Relationship with boss

      Employees don't need to be friends with their boss but they need to have a relationship. The boss is too much of an integral part of their daily lives at work for an uncomfortable relationship. The boss provides direction and feedback, spends time in one-to-one meetings, and connects the employee to the larger organization.

Bored and unchallenged by the work itself

      No one wants to be bored and unchallenged by their work. Employees want to enjoy their job. They spend more than a third of their days working, getting ready for work, and transporting themselves to work. Work closely with employees who report to you to ensure that each employee is engaged, excited, and challenged to contribute, create, and perform. Otherwise, you will lose them to an employer who will.

Relationship with co-workers

      When an employee leaves any company, every email that is sent to the whole company, to say good-bye, includes a comment about passionate co-workers who the employee cares about and will miss. Second only to an employee's manager, the co-workers with whom he sits, interacts, and serves with on teams, are a critical components of an employee's work environment.

Opportunities to use skills and abilities

      When employees use their significant skills and abilities on the job, they feel a sense pride, accomplishment, and self-confidence. Employees want to develop and grow their skills. If an employee can't see a path to continued growth in their current organization, they are likely to look elsewhere for a career development or promotion opportunity. Make sure that you're talking with them and that you know their hopes and dreams.

Contribution of work to the organization's business goals

      Managers need to sit with each reporting employee and discuss the relevance of the employee's job and key contributions and deliverables to the overall strategy and business plan of the organization. Employees need to feel connected and that they are part of an effort that is larger than just their job. They need your help to understand and connect their job to the bigger picture. If they're not part of it, you'll lose them.

Autonomy and independence

      Organizations talk about empowerment, autonomy, and independence, but they are not something that you can do to people or give them. They are traits and characteristics that an employee needs to pursue and embrace. You are responsible for the work environment that enables them to do this. By creating a culture of accountability, you create empowerment as employees own and execute their responsibilities. Without this, your best employees will leave.

Meaningfulness of job

      We all want to do something that makes a difference. Managers must help employees see where their work contributes to the execution of deliverables that make a difference in the world. With some products and services - cancer research, feeding the hungry, animal rescue, diagnosing and curing illnesses, producing milk or crops - meaningful is obvious, but everyone's work needs the same meaningfulness. Help employees connect to why their work has meaning or they will find an employer who will.

Organization's financial stability

      Financial instability leads to an employee's feeling of instability and a lack of trust. Make every change and potential change transparent. Let them know how the business is doing at all times and what the organization's plans are for staying on track or recovering in the future. But, the most important issue here is the employees' trust in and respect for the management team. If they respect your judgment, direction, and decision making, they will stay. If not, they will leave.

Overall corporate culture

      Does your organization appreciate employees, treat them with respect, and provide compensation, benefits, and perks that demonstrate respect and caring? Is your work environment for people conducive to employee satisfaction and engagement? Do you provide events; employee activities, celebrations, and team building efforts that make employees feel that your organization is a great place to work? Employees appreciate a workplace in which communication is transparent, management is accessible, executives are approachable and respected, and direction is clear and understood. Your overall culture keeps employees – or turns them away.

Management's recognition of employee job performance

      Many place employee recognition further up the list, but this is where recognition scored in a recent Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) survey of employees. While recognition is important, it is not among employees' chief concerns. A lack of recognition can affect many of the above factors, especially culture, but it's probably not the deciding factor in an employee's decision to leave your organization. Provide a lot of genuine appreciation and recognition as icing on the cake for employee retention. Pay attention to the more significant factors if you wish to retain your best employees. Make recognition the way you live in your organization to keep your best talent.

If you pay attention to these ten factors, you will reduce turnover and retain your most wanted employees. If not, you'll be holding regular exit interviews and good-bye lunches. It's expensive to recruit a new employee. Why not expend the effort necessary to retain the employees that you have already painfully recruited and hired?

Emotional Intelligence: Attrition and Attainment

We are a generation of job hoppers. We don't think of "stability" as a cool word. We believe in "moving on" to greener pastures.  As seen in most movies, each of us reach decisions, on one hand, derived after putting our brains into it; while on the other side, by being led by our hearts. Research in "Employee Hiring and Attrition" suggests that whilst most employees take up a job role based on logical reasons, employees who leave an organization often cite emotional reasons such as dissatisfaction, disagreement, conflict, burnout etc.

Let us better understand "Emotional Intelligence".

The pioneer researcher in this field, Daniel Goleman, defines it as "the ability to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and in others."

Broadly categorized, Emotional Intelligence comprises of:

·         Self Awareness

·         Self Management

·         Social Awareness

·         Relationship Management

Most hiring procedures often take the assistance of Intelligence Tests; in other words, give more importance to the Intelligence Quotient or the cognitive abilities of the person to judge his fitment for the job. Whilst many imminent psychologists have included Intelligence within the paradigm of an individual's personality, the latter is still often not touched upon due to the general dissent formal settings seem to have for the "F" word, means "Feelings".

Elucidating the aforementioned reasons of attrition, most organizations seem to be under the idea that stress tolerance and resilience are the major determiners of an employee's reaction to any situation which is an outcome of the function of the "F" word. Hiring procedures are often known to scrupulously follow a protocol of putting up situation induced pressure tests and simulation questions which are answered equally diligently by the contenders. The fact here being, when asked to imagine situations and their outcomes, the brain is at work, but when such situations play out in real life, well, the heart wants what it wants.

What's the best way to deal with this?

Unlike I.Q. which is defined from birth, E.Q. is a constantly evolving entity. The good news being, even if you initially picked your star employee on the basis of his cognitive ability, you can still develop his emotional quotient. Consistent assistance in the form of mentoring sessions, where an independent authority (preferably a psychologist) talks to the employees individually about their emotional fitment in the organization will help in this case. The best Emotional Intelligence exercise, to deal with this, would be to enable an intermittent shuffling procedure within teams that ensures more variety and less monotony in the team structure and thereby in the source of authority or leadership style.

Effective Strategies for Managing Volunteering in the Workplace

Our local schools and non-profit organizations have always been able to count on financial support from the business community. Their ever increasing need, however, has stretched companies that can only donate so much of their hard-earned profits.

There is another way for your company, large or small, to support our community without putting an extra dent in your donations budget: augment your giving by creating an employee volunteer program to donate free labour to your local organizations. Many non-profit organizations continually face the challenge of finding more volunteers, especially those with skills that your employees might already have. These include administration, accounting, legal or writing.

Rather than simply writing another check, your company can fill that need much better by donating employee volunteers. By harnessing the power of employee volunteering, small to medium size businesses can affect a sea change in the way private enterprise contributes to public good. The potential benefits from encouraging your employees to volunteer are numerous. They include increasing employee morale, loyalty and retention by backing causes they support, creating networking opportunities among your own employees, building ties between your employees and our community, providing your employees new avenues to practice their professional skills and enhancing your company's local reputation. And, by the way, all of the above results could also possibly lead to an increase in your customer loyalty, retention and sales. Here are nine ways to encourage your employees to volunteer:

1) Offer your employees paid time off for their volunteerism. If this is not practical to do on a frequent basis, limit the offer to one day a month or a few days a year.

2) See if one or more of your employees can create and run a volunteer program. Their role would be to identify local groups that need volunteers and then communicate that information to your other employees.

3) Seek out organizations such as Habitat for Humanity that need multiple volunteers so your employees can interact outside of the workplace.

4) Make it fun. Encourage your employees to bring their friends and family members. Provide snacks and refreshments at the volunteer site.

5) Encourage your top managers to lead by example and volunteer themselves.

6) Provide your volunteers with company-logo shirts and/or hats. This makes your employees feel special and lets others know your company supports those hard-working, community-minded volunteers.

7) Create a tracking system so your employees can easily log the hours they volunteer each month. Celebrate their efforts by recognizing your top volunteers annually with an award or special luncheon, a story in the company newsletter, a note from you and/or a grant to their favorite non-profit.

8) Consider implementing a volunteer-leave program that enables one or more employees to apply to volunteer full time at a non-profit organization for an extended period while retaining their pay and benefits.

9) Think about starting a volunteer grant program that provides cash awards and/or in-kind contributions (such as used office equipment) to the non-profit groups where your employees donate most of their time.

There's no doubt that our local business community has the talent and expertise to fill most – if not all – the essential volunteer roles at our local non-profit organizations.  And when a school or non-profit organization teams with local companies to recruit and support volunteers, our community wins.

3 Sarcastic Ways to Overcome Organizational Crisis

The old adage, "the only thing constant in the world is change," has never been more prevalent than in today's industry. Key internal and external factors like economic recession, downsizing, restructuring are driving radical changes in the way organisations work and shape the strategic context for managing people at present and in future. The main reason of an organisation going through a paradigm shift is to achieve transition from current to a desired state. Despite individual successes, change is difficult to pull off and a lot of change initiatives fail.

To counter such a predicament, the HR personnel of any organisation ought to act upon the following areas:

1. Try to Retain Culture: Change brings in uncertainty and anxiety that results in a lot of negative energy. To sustain a great culture, organisations must know how employees feel about their jobs, management structure and the internal communication process. During the period of change, online and offline AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions can be a fantastic platform to engage with employees about this.

For example, Google's Thank God its Friday (TGIF) is one of their many initiatives to bridge the gap between employee and management. The TGIF exercise helps the management to directly get in touch with the employees through a Q&A session. While TGIF wasn't designed from an organisational change perspective, it is a fantastic engagement activity that can easily be adapted to be used as an AMA during organisational change.

2. Have Clear Communication: Poor communication is one of the most common pitfalls during an organisational change. Ensuring proper communication during organisational change isn't just the responsibility of the corporate communication department of an organisation, but also that of the HR department. This needs to be realised not only by the HR themselves, but also by the senior management that must get the senior HR team involved before the change is announced. The (internal) communication agenda and discourse during organisational change should fall under two broad areas –

Ø  Communicating the reason and vision of the change - Till the organisational change process gets completed; HR must get the top management to regularly address questions and concerns of employees to reinforce the vision and benefits of change. Many senior management and HR people wrongly presume that addressing questions and concerns a couple of times during the change process are good enough. In reality, that is rarely the case. 

Ø  Clearly defining roles of employees - One of the biggest casualties of an organisational change process is the lack of role clarity for employees that arise during the change process. This eventually becomes a significant hindrance to the success of the change as good people either start departing due to ambiguity in their roles and expectations, or they stop being invested in the mission of the organisation.

Proper communication is the key to avoid insecurity among employees.

3. Retain Quality Employees: During an organisational change, the company's ability to retain the best employees is of tremendous importance. The change brings in more behavioural issues over technical ones. From the perspective of say, downsizing, it is of paramount importance that HR pay attention to the psychological needs of employees and create an environment of fairness.

Most people feel bogged down by the constant stress of being laid off as organisational change normally involves some threat – real or perceived – of personal loss for those involved. This threat may vary from job security to simply the disruption of an established routine. Therefore, during the change period, HR must go out of its way to retain good talent by being perceived as fair and communicative.

Most organisations significantly underestimate the skill and experience required to handle organisational change. By planning well in advance organisations can add the right skill set in the HR function. While that still may not guarantee success in the transformation process, however, it can significantly improve the odds of success.

5 Best tips that will rock your next interview

Most people feel pressured when they're interviewing for a job; you know, sweaty palms, increased heart rate, fidgeting. It happens to all of us at one point or another.  However there are tips that will help you get through an interview at least appearing to be calm and collected. 

Check Out the Company

Don't get caught unprepared.  Learn as much as you can about the company before the job interview. Take the time, in advance, to search the Internet to discover as much information as you can about the company, its products, management and culture. This means going to their corporate websites, Linked In, Facebook and Wikipedia. General searches will also uncover interesting links that can reveal what the corporate culture is. Many companies will have (multiple) blogs and some will have Twitter and Facebook pages. Because you need to be efficient in your research, you want to make sure you cover a general overview for the first interview and then go deeper if you are called back for subsequent interviews. Being well prepared means you will be able to answer interview questions as well as ask the interviewer questions to find out if you and the company and its culture are a good fit.

Practice Interviewing

Taking the time to review typical interview questions you will probably be asked during a job interview will help give you a framework for your responses and will help calm your frazzled nerves. With practice, you won't be scrambling for an answer while you're in the interview hot seat. Ask a friend or family member to help you. When you're practicing, it's not about memorizing answers, but having the main points at the top of your mind so that under stress, you can (1) remember the point and (2) present it logically and articulately. The interviewer knows you're nervous, but he or she wants to hire someone who's confident – the best person for the job.

Dress for Interview Success

The first impression you make on a potential employer can make a big difference. The first judgment an interviewer makes is going to be based on how you look and what you are wearing. That's why it's always important to dress professionally for a job interview. Regardless of the job you're applying for, it's important to dress for success. Conversely, it's also important not to overdress. At a job interview, proper etiquette dictates that your manner of dress should fit in with the scene around you, but to show your respect for the occasion you need to dress just a step above the norm of that environment.  The reason is because inappropriate business attire creates an unacceptable distraction.  The focus should be on you and your skills, your clothes shouldn't be stealing the show.

Be on Time

There is no excuse for being late, none!  You don't want a your interviewer to be annoyed before the interview even starts; so do whatever it takes to be on time. A job interview isn't a party, so arriving casually late won't score you any points.  Like anyone at work, your interviewer is most likely in the midst of a busy workday, so show them their time is valuable to you.  Being late tells others that you're self-centred, disorganized, rude or all three. Make sure you show up at least 10-15 minutes in advance and notify reception upon your arrival.

Don't Discuss Money

Until you've been offered the job, it's often best to defer all discussions relating to money.  Ideally, a job interview will focus on whether you're right for the position.  It's not uncommon though for interviewers to bring up money so be ready to handle the question. When you're asked for salary history, tell the interviewer you'd rather not discuss it at this time.  If asked what salary you expect you can explain that you are looking for a good fit with opportunities for advancement. If you name a figure at this point, you might either price yourself out of the job if your figure is too high or unnecessary limit your negotiating position if you name a lower figure.

There you have it.  The top 5 best job interview tips you'll ever get.  Stick to them and you'll be on your way to getting hired!