HR NEWS Archives - Page 9 of 9

Is your corporate vision just a fairy-tale or can your business live happily ever after?

July 19, 2023/in HR NEWS/by jga2023

We finally launch our business idea but then what happens? Often, the fairy-tale vision we set out to achieve has remained exactly that, a fairy-tale. We sit with our heads in our hands, demoralised and wonder what we could have or should have done differently. You may have a profitable enterprise, but it just isn’t the business you dreamed off. Instead, your dream remains a one-man-band operation. Perhaps you haven’t taken risks or invested in people. Maybe you were afraid others wouldn’t share your vision or maybe you struggled to delegate because, frankly, you believed others wouldn’t work as hard or as competently as you do. Sound familiar?

Never let a door close in your mind if there is no need to close it. Instead, open doors by inspiring others to get behind your vision with a great story. This is what maverick leaders do, and it is never too late to start developing yours. Storytelling is a passion close to my heart. I studied political theatre as an MA and during this time, I immersed myself for years in political stories of hardship, anguish, diversity, enlightenment, community and philosophy. The retelling of these stories through books, plays and performances has profoundly impacted those that have experienced them. However, stories should not be confined to books or the theatre. They can be a powerful tool for achieving business success too.

Are you unique? Yes. Does this mean others cannot share your vision or outperform your own standards? No. It is through community, collaboration and the evolution of diverse ideas, practices and processes that we can continually be surprised and inspired by others. However, to empower others to action, often you need a great story. For thousands of years, people have been inspired by fantastic tales of risk-taking, struggle, love and community, which is why entrepreneurs and maverick leaders know they need to utilise this powerful tool if they wish to achieve the fairy tale ending.

Historically, storytelling had the purpose of creating communities. The first examples date back to the Chauvet cave in France, where representations of storytelling date back over 36,000 years. For our ancestors, storytelling was a practice used to help create communities, share ideas and create unity. Stories also help provide a sense of culture, history, and identity.

Subsequently, the importance of storytelling in business should never be underestimated. When implemented effectively, stories can help transform your business identity, boost profits, inspire teams and help reach new customers.

Stories provide customers with context to understand why your business is worth investing in. Real-life stories help consumers to connect with you and your brand. If your story is relatable, then customers and employees may even see themselves as a character within it. Storytelling is an emotional pastime that can help you to significantly distinguish your business from your competitors. At the very least, your story should be an essential part of your internal and external marketing strategy, and it should relate to the values and behaviours that form your culture and vision.

The power of storytelling was highlighted by significantobjects.com, a literary and anthropological experiment devised by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, which auctioned off insignificant objects on eBay alongside heartfelt short stories. The objects, purchased for $1.25 each on average, sold for nearly $8,000.00 in total. This shows how a smart storytelling approach can increase the perceived value of something and generate significant ROI.

Storytelling has also proven to increase employee engagement. We know that at the heart of all the best businesses are its employees, and therefore, a company only succeeds when its employees do. So why not start cultivating the right attitudes within your business with a compelling story?

When it comes to understanding your story, don’t just share a vision. Instead, share your struggles, values, motivations, aspirations and everything else that contributes to providing your employees and customers with a greater sense of purpose by being part of it. If you want to revolutionise the world, share the “what, how and why” of your story. It is already what the fastest growing businesses in the world are doing, and that is because people like to connect with stories and place themselves within them. People also want to remember stories and then share them, which drives action and results. Stories provide meaning, create context and they evoke a sense of purpose.

So, if you are a leader or business owner who is closing more doors than they are opening, I recommend you take some time to analyse what your story is. If you don’t, you may find your business dreams and aspirations remain a far-off fairy tale. However, if you adopt a storytelling mentality and take the time to understand and develop your own profound story, then you never know what your business might achieve.

As a risk-taking maverick entrepreneur, you can have your “happily ever after”, but first, sit down and answer this question: What is your story?

Written by Nick Day, Managing Director at JGA Recruitment Group – the UK’s leading Payroll & HR Recruitment Consultancy and Executive Search Firm.

JGA Recruitment Group| Payroll & HR Recruitment

E-Mail: [email protected] | Tel: 01727 800 377

“Outdream Yourself” – Womenomics, Role Models and Boardroom Politics

July 18, 2023/in HR NEWS/by jga2023

Glass Ceilings

Women in business have traditionally experienced considerable challenges progressing beyond a certain level. The glass ceiling is a well-known and discussed phenomenon where women are understood to face invisible barriers that make it difficult for them to advance beyond a certain point in their careers. While women represent 50% of the workforce at lower levels, at boardroom level, it is unusual to find many women in the top seats at the table (in fact, at the time of writing this, there are just six female Chief Executives in the FTSE 100).

The Gender Pay Gap

The recent gender pay gap legislation has brought issues related to pay to the forefront of business, and rightly so, as the median aggregate gap for full-time workers is still 13.7%. There are many reasons for this, namely unequal caring responsibilities, a divided labour market, men taking up most senior roles and of course, we still have outright discrimination in the workplace.

Womenomics Defined

Now, I appreciate, as a man, I cannot ever fully comprehend or comment on how it feels to be a woman in the workplace. Neither, do I pretend to. However, I am married to an inspirational female entrepreneur and, together, we both want to live in a world where opportunities for our children (we have a daughter and a son) are never limited by gender. Subsequently, when my wife and I came across the concept of ‘Womenomics in business’, I wanted to investigate it a little further, particularly as three female role models I discuss in this article, have all had a profound impact on my life. Womenomics It is a concept that Claire Shipman and Katty Kay termed for what they see as an upcoming paradigm shift in the way individuals and companies approach work, due to an increase in the value of women in the workforce. Primarily, their research highlights the rise in value that female management brings to companies.

Is the value of women in boardrooms improving?

So, the question is, are things changing or improving? I believe they are *but slowly). Companies are finally realising the significant value women offer at boardroom level. The 2017 appointment of Emma Walmsley as CEO at GSK, the world’s seventh-largest pharmaceutical company is an excellent example of how the tables are beginning to turn at the highest echelons of business. This traction coincides with increased levels of female participation within firms across the spectrum. In some countries, such as Norway, legal quotas for the numbers of women required in the boardroom have been set, and companies are obliged to find ways to achieve these. The law states that public companies must have a minimum of 40% female non-executive directors. However, while some successes have been made, there is still a lack of female role models, which is believed to be discouraging to women. Businesses are subsequently affected because insufficient female numbers in the boardroom have proven to significantly reduce new female applications, which drastically reduces the talent pool for that company.

MBA Challenges

One of the challenges has been getting women into business schools to take MBAs or executive MBA programmes. A study by the Financial Times on Executive MBA rankings discovered that in the top EMBA courses, women only accounted for 28% of participants. This is a problem not just for women, but also for MBA programmes, which need diversity in classrooms to inspire critical thought. Business schools believe that one barrier is a lack of female role models at senior levels, and to overcome this, they feature women heavily in their marketing.

Lack of Women studying Stem subjects

To attract the growing female market, schools are also starting to design programmes that fit better around the needs of women. However, I think these changes need to happen right at the grassroots level. For example, there are significantly fewer women studying Stem subjects compared to men, which has resulted in women accounting for only 14.4% of all people working in Stem in the UK (well short of the country’s goal of 30%).

Appropriate Role Models

Again, one way to encourage a higher uptake is to use more appropriate role models that tackle Stem male stereotypes. As much as I love Brian Cox (and I really do love his work), we need to expose our children to female pioneers that inspire our children to dream bigger, at an earlier age, so uptake in stem related subjects can improve. For example, how many young girls are taught about women such as Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, Barbara McClintock, Geneticist or Roberta Bondar, Astronaut Neurologist? Ginni joined IBM as a system engineer and progressed to CEO, leading IBM into cloud computing, analytics, and the commercialisation of IBM Watson along the way. Barbara is the only woman to have received, by herself, a Nobel Prize for Medicine and Roberta was Canada’s first female astronaut and the world’s first astronaut-neurologist.

Fewer Women studying Economics or Politics

The problems are not just confounded to stem related subjects either. One of the first autobiographies I ever read was “Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia (2002).” by Ingrid Betancourt, a female Colombian politician who wrote about her experiences in the impeachment process against Colombian President E. Samper. Her book, coupled with the performance work and writings of female Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist, Coco Fusco, inspired me to study an MA in South American Politics and Performance Art. Both these women are role models who inspired me to study politics, so I have no doubt they could also be role models for others too. I highlight these examples because when it comes to economics and politics, again, there are fewer women than men enrolling on these courses. The FT cited in an article in April 2018 titled “Where are all the female economists?” that only a third of undergraduate economics students in the UK are women, despite 57 per cent of total undergraduates being female. The article suggests this is likely due to an image problem. For example, Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012) remains the only woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, but how many of our children at school know about her work?

University Political Pay Gaps

Meanwhile, the Economist recently featured a poll that found the gender pay gap among British adults with a university degree, and an interest in politics, to be a whopping 37 per cent. (The Economist, July 2019). The interest gap in politics and economics seems to start in childhood, and then widen with age and education. Subsequently, we need more female role models to be highlighted and studied at an earlier stage, to inspire and encourage women to follow a path into economics or political studies.

The Good News

The good news is that many organisations are springing up to help women advance in business. For example, ‘Women in Marketing’ aims to empower women in this field. Other similar organisations focused on developing the next generation of female talent and advancing the role of women in leadership include ‘ShesBack’ which helps organisations access the potential of women returning to work after a career break, ‘PowerWomen’ and the ‘Women in Business Network’ (among many others). These organisations seek to help women gain new business opportunities by helping them to build stronger networks. This also helps increase the exposure of younger generations of women to suitable role models that will inspire them on their journey.

Brands Promoting Women in Leadership

The North Face is one International retailer who is taking significant strides forward in terms of inspiring generations of young women. One of its recent campaigns specifically focused on encouraging more women to get into outdoor adventuring. The campaign, titled “She Moves Mountains”, was explicitly aimed to inspire young female explorers. This was achieved by focusing on female role models that have reached the pinnacle in the adventure industry – such as rock climbers and ultra-marathon runners. One of the aims has been to ensure that the brand includes women more effectively than in the past.

Moreover, The North Face brand understands that women are consumers who want to spend money on outdoor kit too, and are subsequently focusing more on design for women than they ever have in the past. Also, the campaign supported women directors with $25,000 grants to help elevate more women into the film directing profession. As such, the whole focus of the brand is morphing to become more inclusive, while simultaneously recognising that females are also significant consumers. By inspiring more women with female role models, the North Face brand knows they will secure increased female consumer spending on its products.

A Strategic Business Imperative
The North Face is committed to promoting women in leadership as being a strategic and visible business imperative, and these are just some examples of how “Womenomics” is affecting the way firms are starting to change their approach to business. However, companies still need to push further for real transformation.

The Female CEO

Currently, we have just six female CEOs in the FTSE 100, and those six earn only 4.2% of the total pay awarded to FTSE 100 CEOs – highlighting that there is still a gender pay gap, even at the top levels of business. When we compare this to the Fortune 500, only 6.4% of Fortune 500 corporations have female CEOs. The good news is that we are starting to see a steady increase in these percentages. In the past eight years, 32 women have been named CEO of a Fortune 500 company, that’s over 50% of the total number since 1972 when Katherine Graham was the first female to be named CEO for a Fortune 500 company at the Washington Post. This positive movement shows that the theory of Womenomics in business is, at least, improving, but still far too slowly in my opinion.

My Womenomics Conclusion

There is no doubt that there is a long way to go until we achieve real equality in the workplace, but all the signs that genuine transformation is starting to take place are there (albeit slowly). In education, in boardrooms, and as consumers, we need to see the value women bring to the workplace highlighted more frequently. Female role models need to be more visible too. After all, these role models are not just empowering to women, but also men! One of my inspirations is Chrissy Wellington, a four-time Ironman World Champion and yet when I mention her, very few people know who she is. And yet, if I say the name, Alistair Brownlee, well, you get my point. The fact is, businesses who embrace Womenomics will benefit from extraordinary changes that can have a significant impact on overall performance. A report in the Journal of Corporate Finance supports this by highlighting that companies with women in their boardrooms performed better than those without.

Outdream Yourself

There are likely many elements to a discussion such as this that I have missed in this post. However, for those unfamiliar with the term ‘Womenomics’, I hope it is now a term that will become more prominent. Businesses need to appreciate the benefits associated with diversifying its boardrooms, but also understand that the word “talent” is genderless. I want my children to be uninhibited in life by the goals they set themselves – whatever they may be. I hope that when my daughter is old enough to take her first steps into the unknown world of business, that she feels she can achieve whatever she wants to achieve, without limits.

As my wife regularly says to my daughter “Outdream yourself”.

What do you think? What women have had a profound impact on your life? I would love to know.

Written by Nick Day, Managing Director at JGA Recruitment Group – the UK’s leading Payroll & HR Recruitment Consultancy and Executive Search Firm.

JGA Recruitment Group| Payroll & HR Recruitment

E-Mail: [email protected] | Tel: 01727 800 377

Guest Article Understanding Generation Z – Alex Atherton

May 19, 2023/in HR NEWS, Payroll News/by jga2023

Gen Z is the most important generational shift so far, but their experiences and outlook are not understood well enough by those who have come before them. Gen Z has huge, yet mostly untapped, potential to meet the challenges of today.

It is a significant topic for me. Gen Z is the generation which attended the secondary schools I led from 2006 to 2018. Their years of birth are from 1995 to 2009.

By 2025 Gen Z will form over a quarter of the UK workforce. The older ones are already in management positions in large companies or ripping up the rulebook on their own. Their importance in the workplace will grow with every passing year.

Key characteristics of Gen Z include:

Diligent – their academic outcomes are significantly higher than any which have come before. No generation has worked harder at school or university.
Prudent – they have inherited poor economic circumstances. Their education was affected by austerity and as soon as they got to the workplace there was a pandemic.
Patient – key life milestones such as buying property and retiring will either happen much later on average should they happen at all. This has an impact on their attitudes towards working life.

Too often the literature, and media reporting, around Generation Z is glass half-empty material or outright negative. References to ‘snowflakes’ have become a trope.

There can also be a real reluctance amongst the older generations to see the world through Gen Z’s eyes. Attempts to make them ‘more like us’ and help them to get their ‘heads around the real world’ are not helpful and will only backfire.

There is a need to take some time to understand.

Researching the key characteristics of Generation Z reveals a whole host of challenges for leaders and their organisations. The key ones will come as no surprise. They are recruitment, retention, motivation, engagement and training.

So how to overcome these challenges? A number of solutions are recommended below.

Be clear, be thorough

There are significant challenges in attracting Gen Z candidates for any organisation. It is easier than it has ever been to set up your own, or several times if you so choose.

Trust in traditional organisations is not what it used to be. This includes employers, many of whom had a ‘last in, first out’ approach when cuts were made around the pandemic.

I advise organisations to spell out the specifics of the role they wish to recruit for in more detail than they might ever consider reasonable. Your documentation needs to be crystal clear and therefore go for maximum transparency.

Not only does this avoid surprises down the line, but it also inspires confidence that you have thought it all through. This gives the impression you are more likely to survive when the next economic crisis or pandemic hits.

Be who you say you are

Authenticity is everything to a generation who have lived with clickbait throughout their formative years. Gen Z has highly developed filtering skills. The fact that something is said in black and white neither means it is true, nor that it was even put together by a human in the first place.

Text is not enough in this day and age. Video has become the expectation. There are good reasons why TikTok has become the search engine of choice amongst Gen Z, rather than Google. Videos are harder to fake and allows your potential applicants to make an informed choice.

It is also not enough to state your key values and principles on your website, and once at the start of employment or a recruitment process. Gen Z is very used to the repetition of messages, and if they stop hearing something it may make them wonder why.

Regular feedback on performance

Part of the reason for the stellar academic outcomes of Gen Z is that they are used to having granular feedback on their performance.

I am often told by employers that their younger staff do not want to hear ‘bad news’ about their work. My experience is very different. Gen Z absolutely does want to know how well they are doing, but platitudes do not help them.

They have come to expect not only a breakdown of how they are doing aspect by aspect, but also to be directed to resources which can help them with each of them. If they are shown how to improve their A level and degree results they will make the most of it more than any previous generation.

Make Professional Development Personal

This aspect has two meanings. The first is personal in the sense of ‘bespoke’. For example, induction to your organisation may have some core features but also some optional elements according to specialism and interest.

The second aspect refers to Gen Z’s development as young adults. As schools have become increasingly focused on examination outcomes over time, there has not been a commensurate increase in the focus on personal development. Work experience has not been a common feature of their education.

Consequently, there is gap between the quality of their qualifications and the wider skills needed for success in the workplace. Savvy employers ensure their new employees have to the opportunity to fill the gaps.

Finally, the fact that it has become harder to recruit and retain has led some employers to adopt a ‘we need to take what we can get’ approach. Gen Z did not work as hard as they did to work for an employer with that level of ambition. It is absolutely possible to recruit and retain the best of this generation with a shift in mindset and a new approach.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex Atherton is a leadership coach and team coach. He is also a former secondary school headteacher who worked with Gen Z in their formative years. He blogs, vlogs, talks and consults on how organisations can recruit, retain, engage and motivate them.

Guest Article How To Beat Imposter Syndrome When Applying For Jobs

April 18, 2023/in HR NEWS/by jga2023

If you suffer from Imposter Syndrome, you are dealing with a persistent inability to realistically assess your suitability for a role. You’re not alone – it takes up head space in a large number of people (estimated at around 70% of the population – with Albert Einstein, Serena Williams, Tom Hanks, and Lady Gaga among celebrity sufferers), but that doesn’t help when applying for jobs, and especially during job interviews, when it is important to be (and to be seen to be) confident in your competence and skills.

You may think you’re unaffected, but we can suffer from Imposter Syndrome when operating outside our comfort zone or in a competitive arena. And that’s a frequent scenario for job applicants when it’s easy to only see the success and confidence of others.

Symptoms of Imposter Syndrome include:

Thinking that your peers are more capable than you are
Fear of being seen as a failure
Feeling unworthy of attention
Downplaying your accomplishments
Crediting luck for any success you may have
Holding back from reaching goals you should be able to reach

But Imposter Syndrome exists only in the mind, and we often fail to acknowledge that other people feel exactly the same as we do. Social Media doesn’t help. Very few of us present an honest warts-and-all picture of ourselves. Our accounts are carefully polished; our recycling bins are rammed with images we will never show friends and family, never mind post online. But it rarely clicks that everyone else is doing the same thing. And feeling the same way. You are far from being the only one suffering from Imposter Syndrome. And it is something you can mitigate with a few Imposter Syndrome coping strategies:

Don’t be fooled by comparing yourself to others

It is easy to overestimate how skilful or successful other people are. The reality is that everyone else probably feels just as insecure as you do. They are likely looking at you and wishing they were as calm, confident and successful as you. Don’t compare yourself to others – they could be faking it much more than you are.

Note your accomplishments

Create a list that reminds you of how great you are, and that other people think you’re great too, and refer to this list when you have moments of doubt. This helps reframe your mind and evaporate less helpful thoughts.

Celebrate successes

Celebrating success helps dispel thoughts that we’re undeserving and gives us confidence in our abilities. Be sure to celebrate small wins as well as large ones. Imposter Syndrome sufferers tend to move on too quickly and treat wins with relief rather than taking pride in an achievement and properly marking it.

Share failures

We see other people’s successes, but we don’t always notice their flops, whereas we always see our own failures. This gives us a poor perspective and makes us think of ourselves as being less capable in comparison. Opening up with others can help demonstrate that you’re no different and that everyone has the same issues as you do. It can often be easier to speak to strangers than those who know you well.

Samuel Beckett once said, ‘Ever tried, ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better’. Failure is not a sign of being awful. Failure is a sign that you’re trying to achieve something. You should give yourself credit for this. One thing is certain, if you never try, you’ll never fail, but you’ll also never become successful.

Talk about it

Don’t be afraid to share your feelings about Imposter Syndrome with others – you may find they’re experiencing the same issues as you. This can give you more confidence and help you see that your thoughts are irrational – particularly when you talk to someone you believe has a good opinion of you.

Reframe your position

Fear can often be the prevailing emotion when it comes to Imposter Syndrome, but you need to look at situations through a different lens. Instead of thinking that any moment everyone will discover that you don’t know what you’re doing, shift things in your head. You may not know all the answers, for now, but you’re smart enough to figure them out – this is a far more empowering way of looking at your situation.

Stop chasing perfection

Being 99% good at something is not a failure. Appreciate that other people may only be capable of doing the same job to 70%. 80% will be good enough, and 90% will be better than most. Don’t think of this as lowering the bar – it’s simply reframing how well you’ve done and what you’ve achieved. Also, many jobs don’t need to be done to 100%. Perfectionists will spend time getting a job from 80% to 100%, but a smarter strategy may be to use that time to do a second task to 80% and get much more done.

Grasp life

Success in anything only exists outside your comfort zone, so you need to take action – feel the fear and do it anyway, even if your head is awash with self-doubt. As your comfort zone expands, have confidence in the fact that your levels of anxiety will reduce automatically.

There’s a great quote by the ladies’ fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, who said: You always look at the woman across the room. And you think, ‘The woman across the room is so confident, so poised and so put together, and so on.’ But that woman is looking at YOU. And for her, YOU are the woman across the room. Everybody’s the same. It’s just a big waste of time to be insecure.

Hopefully, there are a few tips in that lot that will help if you’re suffering from Imposter Syndrome (and let’s face it, there’s a fair chance that you are, statistically speaking). Too often, Imposter Syndrome holds people back from achieving their full potential, but recognising it for what it is, is a huge step towards fixing it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ian Child is a former corporate leader, co-founder of the training company propertyCEO (propertyceo.co.uk) and the author of ‘Your Own Personal Time Machine’, a guide to getting your life back, available exclusively from amazon.co.uk. in paperback and e-book.

JGA Recruitment Group is officially one of UK’s Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing!

February 23, 2023/in HR NEWS, Payroll News/by jga2023

We are incredibly proud to announce that JGA Recruitment Group has been recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing by Great Place to Work®! 🎉

Great Place to Work’s culture experts analysed thousands of employee surveys, assessing people’s holistic experiences of wellbeing at work to determine the UK’s Best Workplaces™ for its Best Workplace Wellbeing list. The surveys asked employees to comment on how their company supports their work-life balance, sense of fulfilment, job satisfaction, psychological safety, and financial security. Evaluations also included assessing how well the organisation could consistently deliver employee experience across all departments and seniority levels.

To be recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing is a considerable achievement and a testament to JGA Recruitment Group’s commitment to create an environment where its employees can thrive. The company continues to prioritise employee wellbeing by offering equitable activities, support, and training to ensure everyone feels valued at work.

Employee engagement events ranging from charity days to trips abroad have further contributed towards fostering positive internal relationships which have helped develop a positive, supportive, and inclusive workplace culture within the firm.

When the founder of JGA Recruitment Group, Nick Day, was informed about the company’s inclusion on the list as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing, he commented:

“At JGA Recruitment Group, we’re honoured to be recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces for Wellbeing by Great Place to Work. A positive workplace culture fostering inclusion, wellbeing, and growth is critical to creating a sustainable and successful business. That’s why we’re deeply committed to investing in our employees’ mental and physical health and providing a nurturing and supportive environment for everyone in our business.

We are thrilled to see our initiatives’ impact on our workplace culture and are dedicated to continuing to improve and evolve. This recognition is a testament to our team’s hard work and dedication, and we’re proud to be included on this prestigious list. We’ll continue to prioritise the wellbeing of our employees because we know that when our team members thrive, our business thrives.”

About Great Place to Work®

Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, they have surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. In 2022, they launched the first-ever annual UK’s Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing list of organisations that delivered exceptional wellbeing support for employees across all levels and departments. For more information, visit www.greatplacetowork.co.uk

Contact JGA Recruitment Group

Contact JGA Recruitment to find out more and discover how in partnership, we can locate the top talent for your business and take positive steps to create a sustainable, brighter future for all: [email protected].

Visit our website here

JGA Recruitment also publishes two leading business podcasts: The Payroll Podcast and The HR L&D Podcast.

7 Innovative Approaches to Improve Your HR and Talent Management in the Digital Era

March 2, 2020/in HR NEWS/by jga2023

Digital transformation is a priority in recent times. Today, talent is making a rapid shift towards becoming digital natives. Employees expect to be a part of a flexible, collaborative, energetic and inclusive workplace. In fact, companies that have succeeded in getting digital leadership right, have displayed better performance with higher engagement levels for employees.

However, the introduction of a brand-new management standpoint at par with the paradigm shift of digitization is not enough to improve talent management. The lack of dedication can be a severe hindrance to this transformation. Thus, an overall change in the approach to HR recruitment is essential to ensure that all stakeholders place their trust in this new program.

Human Resources (HR) has a crucial role to play in digital transformation, with employee onboarding and engagement being vital aspects of the process. The company culture of a digital organization must center around a customer-centric mindset that leads to a transparent and agile process.

HR professionals hired through an HR recruitment agency must ensure that the change occurs throughout the company, while confirming that employees are onboard with the current values and purpose of the organization.

Approaches to Improve HR and Talent Management

The constant fight to retain an empowered worker in this digital age is no secret. High performers today have a clear understanding of their value and it is easy for recruiters and competitors to screen and discover them.

Digital labor platforms have paved the way for competitors to pick the best people from their companies and help employees declare their presence to the world in unimagined ways. Here is a list of approaches that can be taken to enhance your HR and talent management in the digital era:

1. Onboarding and Training

Labour platforms today help you develop a personalized, comprehensive and quick onboarding experience to make sure that new HRs rapidly generate greater value. In fact, creating an onboarding agenda enabled Google to improve the productivity of its new employees to over 15%.

In a business arena with swiftly evolving technology, providing one-time training might not suffice. Enterprises in knowledge-oriented industries require virtual learning, self-directed and ongoing support mechanisms. In this context, efficient online learning programs and in-house training sessions can be of great help.

2. Measure Your Success Rates

Apart from areas of competence and innovative skills, HR must deal with the challenge of proposing relevant metrics. These metrics related to optimum performance in combination with other digital objectives put in place by the company.

Achievable goals need to be broken into proper KPIs and linked ROI, which define success at various levels of the transformation. Talent management data need to be incorporated with business intelligent data and vice versa for effective planning and monitoring.

3. Transform the Management

Though opposition to change begins from the lower tiers, the prime aim of any digital HR strategy is to support the Management and drive leadership during this shift towards a customer-oriented approach. Thus, both the training and acquisition processes of a human resources recruitment agency must revolve around creation of the means for a workable approach.

A change in Management is mainly a change in mentality. However, HR agencies must educate and create digital leaders who believe in deriving results from true innovation. An HR must back an infrastructure that lets the Management define steps to real outcomes with clarity. Companies that succeed in creating an environment for development, knowledge transfer and performance management reach the heights of digital competence.

4. Clear Communication

For efficient talent management, a balance must exist between the means and frequency of communication among the HR and individual teams. It is important to establish transparency regarding time-sensitive topics as well as long-term goals during team meetings. Try sharing the podium so that the discussion does not appear to be a one-way street.

Getting your team to put away their cell phones during the meeting can greatly help you improve employee engagement. The use of mobile technology can be extremely distracting in meetings. You can also appoint a different individual to carry out the meetings each week. This will give them the accountability to capture crucial points, thereby ensuring a productive meeting. Lastly, HR management must include the creation of a robust sense of connect and collaboration within the team by establishing social media communities.

5. Use Multi-Channel Activities

Digital HR processes capture mobile, social and cloud technologies to collect and study data while overseeing the employee experience. HR managers need to build a concrete plan inclusive of platforms and multi-channel activities to handle the complete integrated programs at various levels of the digital transformation procedure.

Thus, the HR needs to work towards a seamless integration of various processes and systems across multiple applications, from performance management, collaboration, staff training to communication tools. Systematic integrations pave the way for more informed decision-making practices and improved productivity.

6. Cross-Functional Collaboration

Human resource in an era of digital interference are intertwined with the company’s infrastructure. An HR needs to have a strong collaboration with IT to recruit talent and create a platform for the easy flow of information and centralized intelligence. However, in case of a customer-centric approach, customer journey mirrors the employee experience.

A huge challenge faced by an HR recruitment agency in the recent digital encouraging HRs to establish strong co-dependencies with other units in the organization. If done successfully, this helps a company take the needs and requirements of a workforce into account and move towards long-term goals.

7. Collaborate for Success

An HR is backed by endless options accessible to assist a team. Thus, it is essential that every human resource recruitment agency looks for individuals motivated in building an association aimed at success and effective talent management. You can make use of social media platforms to improve your network connections and strengthen your community at work. Apps can also be used as great on-the-job resources to enhance employee engagement.

Try promoting innovation through organized brainstorming sessions, design thinking, as well as advocating diversity of backgrounds and perspectives within the groups. Employees consider their leader to be the main guide who makes the best decisions for their personal and professional development. Therefore, as an HR, it is imperative that you try and partner with employees for success by mentoring them to exploit their strengths to the fullest.

Nevertheless, executive alignment and technology are not enough to propel an organization’s digital transformation. At the end of it all, a company’s most asset is its employees. Working towards their engagement and motivation gives rise to a culture of innovation that is essential for a company’s success in this digital age.

HR experiences that are strictly derived from client-grade digital practices and focus greatly on an employee’s professional and personal well-being help bring out the best. At the end of the day, it is a purpose which drives people, and people who drive a company’s growth.

Article originally published in ‘My Story’ here: https://yourstory.com/mystory/innovative-approaches-improve-hr-talent-digital

Written by Nick Day, Founder of the award-winning recruitment agency, JGA Recruitment Group.

If you need help with a Payroll, HR or Marketing Recruitment problem, please get in touch.

[email protected]

01727800377

7 Tech Trends in HR and Payroll that are set to continue…

June 29, 2017/in HR NEWS, Payroll News/by jga2023

New technologies continue to enrich the ease of providing HR and Payroll services to employees, and we predict the following trends will carry on in the months and years ahead.

1. Cloud-Based Payroll & Payroll Services
The Cloud is becoming increasingly integral to almost everyone in everyday life, and this is the same within the workplace. Businesses have become increasingly dependent on big data storage that remains accessible on the move. We have witnessed the cloud revolutionise the way information is stored and accessed within the workplace. Cloud-based apps are providing cost-efficient, real-time flexibility and convenience and with data analytics becoming an ever more important aspect of the modern payroll and HR professional, we can only see Cloud usage increasing. Data tracking analytics from tracking employee hours, managing payroll, monitoring absence, benchmarking data or even making amendments – whatever the requirement, cloud data can be accessed in real time anywhere and at any time. Cloud services provide ultimate convenience and efficiency savings for payroll and HR departments alike, and as such we anticipate this trend will continue as upgrades continue to make it even more efficient.

2. A Growing Focus on Data Security
As businesses usage of cloud-based payroll & HR services increases, one primary concern that often accompanies its usage is security. Confidential employee data information must be protected, and this has led the way for third-party service providers to offer new security systems which are being taken up by HR and payroll departments to ensure they are adequately protected. Fraud, identity theft and corporate hacking is on the increase so protecting employee HR and payroll data has never been more important. Added security provides more assurance that personal employee information stays protected. This investment in HR & Payroll data security is a trend that will continue as hackers become more sophisticated with the way they access and utilise stolen data.

3. Customisation of Payroll & HR Software and Partnering with Multiple Vendors.
Most companies employ a wide-range of employees, from part-time hourly, salaried, and freelance to expats, inpats and globally based staff. More and more businesses are now recruiting an increasingly global workforce. These differences all require a custom approach to ensure that systems can output accurate employee data and payment calculations. The payroll & HR legislation is often complex across different global locations, and no solution can cover all parameters and possibilities across all countries. Subsequently, we are seeing more and more Payroll & HR Systems being customised to cope with unique company employee requirements. More and more businesses are now partnering with multiple vendors in order to ensure that they can accurately deliver sophisticated services to these diverse workforces. The one-system-fits-all approach is outdated. Suppliers are responding by specialising in niches where they can guarantee excellent levels of service and businesses are responding by being more demanding of current providers. Partnering with multiple service providers and customising internal systems is a trend we believe will continue. Employee retention metrics have been linked heavily with a business’s ability to offer accurate, accessible and efficient HR and Payroll services to its employees. Unique, bespoke and customised systems and engaging with multiple partners makes this possible.

4. Focusing on the Team, Not the Individual.
HR departments are focusing more on collaboration and integration now than ever before. Employees are assessed, and recruitment decisions are made based on cultural and behavioural profiling as opposed to just skills based assessments. This is a trend we have seen increase because employers are competing to be the brand of choice in their specialist markets to attract and retain staff. Businesses are subsequently recruiting talent based on team fit and by assessing how an individual may impact on overall team performance rather than just on individual performance alone. Skills based assessments are on the decline, but behavioural assessments are on the rise. With company growth and profits intrinsically linked to team performance, we see this trend continuing.

5. Embracing Data-driven Decisions
Data-driven decision making is a strategic practice within organisations reaching new levels of analysis and deployment. By utilising data, employers can make employment decisions regarding where and how existing employees should be managed and assigned. Based on the interests, personalities and skills of the employee, data-driven decisions can be made on a massive scale that has been proven to improve employee productivity and retention levels. By assigning roles to employees based on interests and personality profiling allows businesses to utilise its workforce more efficiently.

6. Employees Evaluations to Optimise Productivity
Employee evaluations are moving away from score-based systems towards various feedback routes from multiple sources. These are designed to focus more on continual performance, providing employees with specific feedback to help facilitate improvement. Offering frequent feedback fosters an environment which has been proven to increase employee productivity. Higher productivity results in increased profits for businesses so this is one optimisation process we see continuing as competing companies strive to be the brand of choice in their chosen markets.

7. Payroll & HR Robotic Process Automation and Predictive Analytics
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is being utilised by businesses in increasingly smarter ways thanks to the cost savings automating processes can deliver. Many payroll processes can now be automated and virtual assistants and artificial intelligence is being applied to numerous payroll processes. Software is also being developed in a constant stream by developers to help HR & Payroll professionals analyse data in cleverer ways. Businesses are still discovering how best to use these RPA and analytics tools now at their disposal, and this has resulted in a new breed of payroll and HR professional emerging whose sole purpose is to effectively extrapolate, analyse and recommend (based on results) changes that can impact the bottom line.

Predictive analytics, in particular, are being incorporated to examine new and creative trends to help maximise profits. Information gained during payroll analysis can spot things such a fraud, overtime, sick days, and trends in the hours worked. When utilised effectively, the results can allow for HR and Payroll managers to implement significant cost-saving initiatives or spot costly fraudulent activities. The possibilities for how predictive analytics can benefit companies are endless so we see this trending for some time as HR and Payroll departments become smarter with how they can be incorporated and developed to improve efficiency. An increase in the need to hire skilled HR or Payroll Analytic Specialists is likely to follow.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. The HR & Payroll tech landscape changes extremely quickly and it is clear that if these trends are set to stay then payroll & HR professionals need to prepare for a more accessible, cloud-based, robotic and data driven future

I would welcome your views on how you see the market, what you see changing and which trends you think are here to stay (for now)…

Thanks for reading.

Please share and comment – I will try to interact with as many as possible!
This article was written by Nick Day, Managing Director at JGA Recruitment – the leading Global Payroll and HR Recruitment Specialist Employment Agency.

If you are looking for expert talent in the fields of Payroll, HR or Reward, then please reach out for a 15 minute ignition call and I would be delighted to discuss how we can help.
Nick Day
Managing Director
JGA Payroll & HR Recruitment
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 01727 800 377

JGA Recruitment Group Ltd