Category: human resources

test again

When somebody cuts you off in traffic after having woken up from noticeably insufficient sleep, you feel different, right? Worse than you usually would.

New candidates get sent through entire batteries of tests. Personality, aptitude, reasoning… You name it. There is probably a test for that.
When a candidate gets hired, that’s where the tests stop. Why? People change, along with their interests. From one day to the next, you might feel completely different, increasing the need for testing recurrently.

Employees should have the ability to formally restate their professional interests, once in a while.

madness

Insanity is misattributing the same Einstein quote repeatedly. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.” It turns out Einstein never said that.

The definition for crazy madness still holds ground, in any case.

People are hired every day, only to see them leave a couple of months later. If the goal is to grow as a company, that translates to pushing water uphill with a rake.

Hiring new people without knowing why the current people are leaving is kind of a crazy thing to pursue.

retention levels

There are levels to employee retention. Ordered from disastrous to excellent.

People are leaving faster than you can properly onboard them. They run away from your company as if they’ve seen a ghost. That’s bad.

People aren’t considering leaving your company at all. At the same time, they stopped being engaged years ago. They stay with your company due to the benefits your company provides. Their productivity is still stuck in the previous century.

People are considering leaving but really take their time. They’re concerned with how job-hopping might look on their resume, so they stay on for about a year, albeit unengaged.

Your employees are somewhat engaged and aren’t actively looking for a new job. If a better offer comes along, though, they might leave.

Your employees are super engaged. Beginning to think of leaving your company isn’t even an option.

Question: what’s worse than the first couple of levels of retention? Answer: not knowing where your employees are.

job content

Only one in four Belgians consider their paycheck to be the most crucial source of motivation for work. 48% consider the actual contents of their job the most important motivator, according to a recent study conducted by Partena Professional.

Salary, among other “advantages,” is easy to express, and the number speaks for itself. How it actually feels like to perform the job, on a daily basis, is much harder to define and subsequently communicate.

Close to one in two is on the lookout for a different job throughout the first year of employment. Reason why? Mismatch in job expectations. In other words, this is not what I’ve been sold. You told me, dear recruiter, that I could work in a particular way. A couple of weeks later, it turns out that it couldn’t be farther from the truth. You told me I would get a lot of autonomy and feedback. In reality, I’m being micro-managed without any feedback. The way I perform tasks daily is not at all as described—quite the contrary.

Imagine for a second that marketeers advertised products and services as poorly as some recruiters do. Actually, they can’t because there are regulations to prevent false advertising.

Focus on communicating job content correctly to your candidates.

Bonus: if you don’t know how, ask me. I’d love to help out.

old habits die hard

Mom, why do we cut off the sides of the meatloaf when we put it in the oven? She thinks for a second before she responds, that’s a good question. I actually don’t know. Your grandmother used to prepare it like that. I’ll call her and ask.

So she rings her mother asking, mom, why do we cut off the sides of the meatloaf when we bake it in the oven? After a short moment of silence, her mother replies, I actually don’t know. Your grandmother used to prepare it like that. I’ll call her and ask.

When she asks her mom, she starts laughing immediately. She says, child, when your father and I were young, the oven was too small, so we had to cut the ends to make it fit.

Old habits die hard.

Many companies today still don’t treat their employees the way they should, simply because that’s what they used to do back in the day. The times have changed. Apply a talent-centric approach, or your employee will find the next employer who will.

in reverse

There isn’t one particular place in human resources processes where companies should focus on employee engagement. That’s a long way of saying, focus on employee engagement in every single step of the way.

There is, however, a natural order. Reverse that is.

Suppose people are leaving faster than you can hire them. In that case, there really is no point in focusing heavily on employee engagement at the start of the funnel, is there? Only to see them pack up and go a couple of months later?

Start mapping employee engagement with the people who are already there. Map employee engagement efforts in a retention process, and work your way back to recruitment.

what’s in a name

How can we improve professional human behavior and interaction when we can’t decide on a term and clear definition of those skills?

Maybe we should forget about semantics and do it anyway? Improve on the above-mentioned skills and make the best of them. What’s in a name, after all… Then again, which other domains have made significant progress without an unambiguous definition? Without the ability to measure, there is no before and after.

We live in an interesting time where professional human behavior and interaction are still a bit of a black box.

Please join me on my journey this year, demystifying these principles.

scientific people

There is something HR can learn from science. Even if you aren’t a scientist at all, there is a large chance you understand what science entails. In short, the ability to recreate an experiment and get the same outcome.

Rather than a massive rollout of a new approach or solution, start small. Very small. One individual, a couple, a group, a team, a department.

People are incredibly diverse. Without knowing precisely what you’re measuring, why bother? Luck isn’t a good strategy, is it?

Launch new HR initiatives on a small scale. Evaluate and then increase the size of the rollout.

don’t change your essence

Do you have what it takes for the job? Maybe you do. If you don’t? What can, and would you be willing to change, to legitimately be able to claim that you do have what it takes?

We can take small steps to improve on certain hard-skills and soft-skills. Doing so can be incredibly valuable. Changing who you are, in essence, on the other hand, isn’t something you can do, nor should you be asked to do.

The greater distance between who you are in essence and whom you are required to be (on the job), the more well-being problems will arise.

relevant retention

Do you have a problem with employee retention? Yes or no?
When talent is quitting faster than you can hire them, it’s pretty apparent you have a problem with retention. A major one at that.

When talent isn’t quitting, ever, you also have a problem with retention. While the talent may be very loyal, they might not be productive at all. That’s the downside to loyalty.

Retention, the principle, in itself doesn’t entirely cover the load. You want to aim for relevant retention.

Relevant retention means keeping talent engaged simply because engaged talent is more productive.

Talent engagement efforts should precede retention efforts.