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How will blockchain affect HR Recruitment Processes? Article 3 of 10

August 15, 2018/in Uncategorized/by jga2023

This is article 3 of 10 forming the third part of a series of articles dedicated to my attempt at helping Payroll & HR professionals understand the potential impact that Blockchain and Cryptocurrency could have on the future of Payroll & HR.

To view the earlier article in the series – click here:

Article 1: How will Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and DLT technologies affect the future of Payroll & HR
Article 2: Will companies start to payroll its employees in cryptocurrency?

Also, check out the latest episode of The Payroll Podcast with Anita Lettink, SVP of Global Alliances at NGA HR which discusses ‘Blockchain and the Future of Payroll & HR‘

Today, I would like to discuss how I think Blockchain may affect Human Resources in relation to recruitment-related administration and storing personal data…

How will blockchain affect HR Recruitment Processes?

A large proportion of time in the life of an HR professional is spent repeating the same actions over and over again. This is especially true with recruitment, vetting and onboarding.

Now, if I was to say that we could automate some of these repeated actions: chasing down references, checking work histories, verifying credentials etc., etc., I am sure you would be very interested in understanding how. Not only would this save time, but it would also save money, and it would allow HR professionals to spend more time on strategy and less time on repetitive HR administrative tasks!

You will soon begin to hear many firms peddling their technological wares claiming

“Blockchain is the answer”.

You will discover how blockchain technology could speed up the hiring and recruitment process, by removing the need to contact third parties to confirm information.

Right now, there are even pilot programs automating such repetitive tasks already. For example, in this group of Greek universities [link], they are experimenting with ways to add student diplomas to a blockchain database.

However, the truth is that despite these pilot projects existing, industry-wide adoption remains a problem for blockchain-based technologies.

There are various reasons for this.

Let’s explore…

Using Blockchain in Recruitment

There are two major strands of how blockchain systems could affect recruitment. Each relates to a different kind of blockchain: the first is private and permissioned, and the second is public and permissionless. We go into more detail about this in the latest episode of The Payroll Podcast.

However, for now, let’s consider the analogy IBM use of the internet (public) vs intranet (private) to help describe the differences between these two types of blockchains.

Public blockchains: publicly available, decentralised blockchains – where anyone can view the information on a blockchain without first having to ask for permission, login credentials or a password – also known as permissionless blockchains
Private Blockchain: private, in-house, centralised blockchain-based databases where only a select few people can gain access – also known as permissioned blockchains

So how does this affect recruitment for Employers?

Firstly, companies who want to be seen as being ‘ahead of the curve’ and ‘technologically advanced’ they may consider employing some form of blockchain solution to help with their recruitment and HR systems.

Why? Because right now it is likely that those who do decide to implement these new types of systems will use it in their marketing in an attempt to attract forward-thinking, technologically-curious applicants to the business. It could also appeal to companies desperate to attract ‘millennials’ to their brands.

However, one of the main issues with recruiting great employees is the fact that we know the references, job successes and credentials can easily be faked or exaggerated. CV ‘padding’ is a significant issue and candidates will often overstate levels of responsibility, inflate or even invent credentials, or use fake or inflated job titles to fill gaps on a CV.

This is a genuine problem for HR departments and recruiters alike, and it takes a lot of time (and sometimes poor hiring decisions) to establish the wheat from the chaff. Sadly, at present blockchain doesn’t really offer a solution to this problem either.

Blockchain would only really work as a solution if candidate information was all available in one place. It would be a dream if there were one place that all credentials, qualifications and career histories were stored that HR professionals could access. If this did exist then this would be the hook for blockchain-based databases. However, this reality rarely matches the dream.

One possibility for blockchain, however, can be found within educational establishments (if indeed they all decide to adopt the technology). If they started to store results on a blockchain database then these would be great, uneditable databases HR professionals could access to easily look-up a candidate’s educational qualifications to see if the results listed on a CV matched those on the block-chain database. As blockchains are uneditable, they would even exist even if the educational institution dissolved.

Interestingly, some educational institutions are already beginning to record qualifications on the blockchain. However, at present, this is far from being universally adopted. Subsequently, until this becomes the process for all educational institutions, it is hard to see how blockchain, at least in the immediate future, will improve recruitment from an HR process perspective

The reality is that vetting candidates correctly remains an extremely time-consuming task for HR professionals and recruiters and there is no “quick-fix” solution. Until an all-in-one place solution exists which keeps accurate records of all aspects of an applicant’s profile, this is unlikely to change either.

While blockchain could, in theory, allow us to check qualifications quickly and reliably, it only really works as a process if all businesses and educational establishments adopt the technology. Even if this part of the vetting process becomes a universal norm, it still won’t change the fact that HR departments and recruiters still would not have one central place to check for CV inaccuracies.

Okay, but what about blockchain databases for storing personal data on employees?

Personal Data and Blockchain

Personal data and blockchains is a tricky subject. While blockchain evangelists may see it as a natural fit, in reality, there is a rather devastating argument against their use.

Personal data on a blockchain cannot be removed. This is in the permanent nature of a blockchain and exactly how it is designed. Blockchains are uneditable.

As a result, blockchain databases containing personal data cannot comply with the UK’s Data Protection Act, nor with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (better known as GDPR). This is because the legislation explicitly states the individual’s right to require organisations – including universities and private companies – to delete the data about herself or himself unless it must be kept on record for legal reasons. This is also known as ‘Right to Erasure’ (Art. 17 of the GDPR)

Securing Personal Data

The above applies to public blockchains. Private, permissioned blockchains, however, could be used in their place.

In private blockchains, you need to depend on an individual person to manage access to the blockchain, and this person needs to be a trusted third-party who has the confidence of everyone concerned. Here, inherently lies the problem because this one person also becomes the potential point of failure.

Why would anyone want to use a blockchain-based database instead of a traditional database which already works perfectly well? It is a bit like paying your employees in bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency – why bother when we already have a perfectly useful currency (the British Pound) we can pay people with, that is both more financially stable and more universally accepted.

I love Einstein quotes (for those of you who have previously visited our website you will know this already), and here a good one comes to mind…

“We can’t solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” – Einstein.

Also, when we talk about viewing personal data on a blockchain, we are really talking about hashes (the shortened, cryptography-secured representation of that data). To access the personal data in full – in this case, presumably, degree or course certificates, a person’s full name and attendance record, or list of publications – another application outside the blockchain are needed to decode the hashes and provide this information.

I appreciate that following this can be difficult so perhaps Bart Jacobs, Professor of Software Security at Radboud University in The Netherlands who has researched this issue can put it more directly. He writes [Dutch translation: https://ibestuur.nl/weblog/reason-yourself-out-of-blockchains]

“The blockchain only plays a very limited, subordinate role in [decoding personal data]. Besides, the energy consumption of blockchains borders on madness.”

Because a blockchain is an ever-growing list of all the data entered into the database – and the cryptographic proof-of-work required to verify the information on it – the energy and electricity consumption required to maintain them become impractical for most businesses.

Jacobs adds:

“The next time a blockchain guru approaches you with promises, ask ‘Where is the really sensitive data, and how is it protected? How do you regulate how parties are authenticated? And therefore, why is the blockchain really needed?’”

However secure a blockchain-based database – and there is no question that the cryptographic standards used are pretty secure – where that technology is forced to touch down and interact with the rest of the world, there are significant security compromises to be made.

Conclusion

Organisations looking to cut back-office costs may see blockchain-based databases as a cure-all panacea for slow and costly recruitment processes and HR verifications.

In reality, I don’t believe public blockchains are really suitable for hosting personal data. Besides, while using private blockchains may address some legislative concerns, they are redundant because of the need for a trusted third party to maintain them and regulate access.

In this way, they overlap with existing, non-experimental database technologies.

Subsequently, while it is inevitable that we will see blockchain technology begin to infiltrate many business processes, I personally think that when it comes to HR and Payroll, companies should take time to understand if and how products that promise blockchain as a solution really work before jumping in to implement it.

What do you think? Please share and comment – I will try to interact with as many as possible!

Future articles in the series will include:

What is a smart contracts and how will they affect payroll and HR?
What benefits could blockchain bring to the payroll industry?
Blockchain payroll companies
How to build a blockchain-based payroll system
When should businesses start planning for blockchain?
Risks and costs
Conclusion – is blockchain and crypto the future?

Look out for article 4 in the series: What is a smart contracts and how will they affect payroll and HR?

As always, whether you love payroll or love HR, love what you do, work smart and work hard – just be careful not to overdo it.

This article was written by Nick Day, CEO of JGA Recruitment – the leading Payroll, HR & Reward Recruitment Specialists.

Nick Day | CEO
JGA Recruitment Group
Payroll, HR & Reward Specialist Recruiters
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 01727 800 377

Sources:

8 Risks you take if you fail to track employee engagement and retention

November 8, 2017/in Uncategorized/by jga2023

Employee engagement is not a management “fad.” It is not going to go away anytime soon. One factor that helps the recruitment industry to remain as fluid is the fact that many businesses just underestimate the importance of employee engagement.

They focus too much on attracting talent and not enough time retaining it. However, the fact of the matter is, engaged employees who want to stay at the organisation are critical to its success. This makes tracking employee engagement and retention a must for a business of any size. Companies that fail to monitor employee engagement run a lot of risks that impact on their ability to succeed and build competitive advantage.

Here are eight risks you take if you fail to track employee engagement and underestimate your investment in employee retention:

1. You will have higher costs — it costs a lot to hire and train an employee. Failing to hire the right people and then to retain them leads to both the direct costs of paying agencies, advertising and management time spent recruiting. It also leads to the indirect costs of a less productive team while a replacement is found. In Gallup’s study of organisations with engaged and disengaged employees, those in the top quarter percentile in terms of engagement had 25% lower turnover when they operated in high turnover industries, and small turnover firms had 65% lower turnover.

2. You won’t know how many people are leaving or why — failing to track employee turnover issues means that you won’t be aware of core problems that are driving people to exit your business. This means you also won’t be taking corrective action and the problem will persist. An exit interview at a minimum can help better track specific issues.

3. You will develop a reputation as a poor employer brand — companies that have a higher level of employee turnover are likely to have a harder time finding employees. When word gets out that a firm is not a great place to be, and this is evidenced by high employee attrition, the employer brand is affected. The reputation of the company as an employer will drop, and this makes it even harder to attract and retain talent. Since people are increasingly seen as key to competitive advantage, this is highly problematic. These problems have been exacerbated by the fact that there are online review sites where employees can rank and rate employers, meaning that stories of low employee engagement can spread faster than wildfire.

4. You will have higher levels of absenteeism — people that are not engaged take more sick leave. Gallup found that the organisations that were in the top quarter percentile for engagement had lower levels of absenteeism. However, a study by the CIPD also showed that those that are less engaged have lower levels of wellbeing as a result, and this may be a cause of this absenteeism — as well as the fact the employees are less involved in the first place.

5. You will have higher levels of health and safety incidents — organisations that have a lower level of engagement have much higher levels of health and safety issues. The Gallup survey found that businesses with the highest levels of engagement (in the top quartile) had 48% fewer safety issues compared to bottom quartile companies.

6. You will have lower customer satisfaction and loyalty — a lot of studies have shown that customer satisfaction is higher when employees are engaged and retained. It makes sense that employees that are happier are better able to sell to customers, and dealing with a new employee each time due to a lack of employee retention is a frustrating experience for a client.

7. You could develop a ‘toxic workforce’ — actively disengaged employees can be poisonous. They become miserable, and as a consequence, they then try to make everyone around them miserable too. They are not just watching the clock, but actively causing damage to the company. If you do not know you have an employee engagement problem, actively disengaged employees will be spreading negativity throughout the business. This means any employees that were engaged could be dragged down by them, making any issues much worse.

8. You will experience lower productivity and profitability — ultimately for all the reasons already mentioned, such as a higher level of accidents, higher absenteeism, and increased employee turnover, companies with lower levels of engagement, are naturally going to have lower productivity and ultimately profitability. Other factors also feed into this, such as the fact that companies with lower levels of participation have higher levels of quality issues and mistakes, wasting time and lowering productivity. In the end all the costs add up and profitability is impacted. This has been demonstrated over and over again in countless employee engagement and retention studies.

The bottom line is that your bottom line will suffer if you underestimate the importance of engaging your employees and retaining top talent. It can detrimentally impact your company if you fail to track employee engagement and retention and as a result, it will become harder and harder to understand if you have a problem, what the issues are or the extent of them. The question is, can you afford to not track employee engagement and retention?

At JGA Recruitment, we base our success on our placement retention statistics (currently 95.7%), that is, how many candidates we place that are still employed 12 months later. We believe this is the true measurable metric for tracking recruitment success.

Thanks for reading.

This article was submitted by Nick Day, CEO of JGA Recruitment – the leading Payroll, HR & Reward Recruitment Specialists.

Nick Day
CEO
JGA Recruitment Group
Payroll, HR & Reward Specialist Recruiters
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 01727 800 377

Generation Z in The Workplace

May 31, 2017/in Uncategorized/by jga2023

The term Generation Z, or Gen-Z, is one of many that is used to refer to people born from about 1995 onwards. The children of both Baby Boomers and Millennials; they are beginning to make their workforce presence felt in the workplace.

Like all generational cohorts, there are characteristics that distinguish Gen-Z’s from other generations. Incidents like the London bombing attacks and the global recession have served to shape their characters in many ways. Having seen the economic turmoil through which their parents or older siblings lived, many Generation Z’s aspire to be independent with many Generation Z’s expecting to be self-employed at some stage. Already we are seeing this impacting the UK workforce considerably. Since the economic crash in 2008, according to the National Office for Statistics, self-employment has grown from 12% in 2008 to over 16% in 2016.

This entrepreneurial spirit is embedded in Gen-Z’s. They are familiar with utilising online tutorials and lessons to develop skills and are using auction sites and online markets to sell goods, products and services directly.

Employers and HR recruiters need to learn about the goals and aspirations of Gen-Z’s, as well as what makes them tick. For example, they rate financial rewards as more important than their counterpart Millennials do. They are also the first generation to have lived exclusively in a globalised world. Most them have never known the world without the Internet.

Subsequently, the majority spend at least one hour per day online, while more than half spending at least ten hours online each day. The Internet and technological advancements in the way we gather and digest information has clearly influenced the way Gen-Z employees collect data. Social media is of vital importance to them, both as research tools and ways to express or market themselves.

Their ability to attract followers on social media networks should be of interest to employers, as this can give business a huge marketing advantage. However, companies also need to shift their thinking about what makes an ideal candidate. The Gen-Z workforce is a powerful, media social-savvy generation who will impact and shape the political and economic future of the UK. Employers need to embrace this and offer a workplace that challenges, inspires and motivates a Gen-Z workforce if they want to get the best out of them.

With instant information at their fingertips, Gen-Z employees are less likely to store facts and figures in their memory. To the more experienced recruiter or hiring manager, this can come across as disinterest or laziness. Thinking this way is a mistake. As technology continues to develop it plays important roles in all aspects of modern living and the way employers run their businesses. Gen-Z employees disseminate information differently to their Millennial counterparts. Employers and HR recruiters need to be willing to embrace this change in ways of thinking so they can both attract and then get the best from tech-savvy Gen Z’s.

1. What changes have you seen in the workplace since 2008?
2. Has your business reacted to the Gen-Z generation?

This article was written by Steve Yardley, Associate Director at JGA Recruitment – the leading Payroll, HR & Reward Recruitment Specialists.

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.
Steve Yardley
Associate Director
JGA Recruitment Group Ltd
Payroll, HR & Reward Specialist Recruiters
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 01727 800 377

Credits & Sources:
1. Office for National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/trendsinselfemploymentintheuk/2001to2015

The Four Listening Rules That We Don’t Heed Enough

May 31, 2017/in Uncategorized/by jga2023

Everyone assumes that listening is a passive process. Information enters in the form of words through our ears, gets processed by our brains and comes out the other end as actions.

However, we all know people where this information seems to go “in one ear and out of the other” – the input doesn’t correspond to the desired output. They “hear” the messages going in, but unless that produces a suitable reaction, you can hardly call it listening.
True listening is anything but passive.

Listening is not only about processing the words. The way they are told, the tone, the facial expressions and body language of the speaker weave a far richer picture. This imparts far more meaning to the message than the words themselves, but it is up to the listener to interpret the messages in the way that the speaker intended.

This is extremely hard work. Mind reading is impossible, but if you listen actively enough, you can get close. If you are seeking to influence others, they firstly need to understand that they are being understood.

There are few professions that require superb listening skills more than recruitment. Having a nervous candidate sitting in front of you, not quite sure how to tell their career story, you have to be able to read between the lines. Teasing the details of a job brief from a client that doesn’t quite know the scope themselves is something that we undertake on a regular basis. As the owner of a recruitment firm, there are four distinct rules that I encourage my people (and myself) to remember:

Analyse the non-verbals (independent of the words). For whatever reason, what people say does not always reflect the whole truth of their message. They may be nervous, they may not know how to say something or they may not be able to say it, so if you take the words on face value, you will often miss the tell-tale signs of non-verbal communication. The moment that there is a disconnect between the non-verbals and the verbals, it is important to analyse why. This will add an entirely different level of meaning to the message.
Empathising means forgetting about yourself. For truly effective listening, you need to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and consequently forget about your own perspective for a while. If you are continually approaching conversations with your own personal end-game in mind, the other person will feel that you are uninterested in what they have to say. People give more if they feel that their opinions are valued.
Focus on the ideas behind the words. Step past what a person is saying and think about what they are trying to say. When you know someone well, you have more information to come to these conclusions, but even for a stranger, after a few short sentences, you have enough material to be able to infer a wider meaning. Use the next part of the conversation to check your understanding
Don’t allow for any distractions. In our busy lives, this is the hardest part of any conversation. A little patience lets people feel that they have the chance to explore their feelings in full, and you will come away with a much richer picture. If you are always acting as if you have “somewhere to go”, your conversation partners will always try to keep it brief, and you will miss out on the crucial details in any message.

The “two ears and one mouth, use them in that proportion” idea doesn’t quite compute when there are two people in a conversation as a third of the time would be silence, but actually, a little bit of silence is no bad thing.

It gives you both time to think about what exactly you are trying to say.

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This article was submitted by Nick Day, Managing Director of JGA Recruitment – the leading Payroll, HR & Reward Recruitment Specialists.

Nick Day
Managing Director
JGA Recruitment Group Ltd
Payroll, HR & Reward Specialist Recruiters
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 01727 800 377

9 Key Characteristics Of Good Leadership

May 31, 2017/in Uncategorized/by jga2023

Good teamwork can make anything possible.

Being able to motivate, and bring a team of employees with you; to act as one behind a particular cause and support your vision is one of the most valuable skills any manager can possess. In short, it is probably the most important quality which any company looks for in a potential leader.

If you are in a leadership position, getting others behind a particular cause is not always an easy task because your team members will not always see things the same way as you do. In fact, some of them may even oppose your ideas and decisions.

In all walks of life, a harmonious existence relies on us being tolerant of others; being able to accept the fact that we are all unique, and that we may often have different opinions. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done, and under stress, emotions can run high, and so to be able to lead effectively, you need to be able to intervene, and you need to take on the role of peacekeeper.

In poorly managed teams where people are constantly in disagreement with each other, achieving goals can be virtually impossible. In well-managed teams, however, conflicts are kept at bay, because team members learn how to respect each other’s differences.

When an entire team all disagree with their leader, then we have a very different situation. A leader might have an idea which they believe is crucial for the job at hand, but his or her team may disagree. Of course, as a leader you are in a position where you can dictate to your team, but is it the best way forward? Is it not better to get your team behind you? Remember, every challenge can quickly be knocked off-course if your workforce is always chipping away at your plan of action. In short, as a leader, it is imperative that you get all your team members on-board if you wish to achieve a goal.

You Need Genuine Support and Backing

If you ask me, I would say that this is one of the biggest challenges one can face if you are in a leadership position. As a team leader, you have the authority to insist that thing must “be done your way”. It can be tempting to manage in a dictatorial fashion by asking that your team members do what you tell them to do, and do it the way you want them to do it.

Unfortunately, this sort of attitude rarely leads to success. It doesn’t matter if you are the president, prime minister, or a small business owner. If you are trying to implement a strategy to survive a particularly sticky patch or achieve a challenging goal, you need to get your entire team behind you; need them on your side of the playing field, with all of them pulling the rope in the same direction as you are.

9 Key Characteristics Of Good Leadership:

1. Demonstrate good leadership by leading from the front
2. Be the sort of person others would be happy to follow
3. Offer a realistic and positive vision of the future
4. Inspire your team members with passion, commitment and vigour
5. Make sure others in your team feel they are needed and appreciated
6. Demonstrate good values
7. Strive to create a work environment where improvement is continuous
8. Provide opportunities that allow your team to grow, professionally and personally
9. Show genuine concern for those in your team, and demonstrate compassion

Here at JGA recruitment, we take part in an annual charity cycle that will typically involve cycling from one European country to another. This challenge is one that many of us take part in annually even though many of the team do not cycle at any other time of the year. When we first suggested this challenge, it is fair to say that not many of the team were interested! However, when discussed further, a charitable cause agreed upon, and the details ironed out, the team took some time out to mull the challenge over. The response was incredible as the team came back and all agreed to “go for it”. An initially negative response has since transformed into a very positive experience and an annual event for our company. Eight years on and we have since covered thousands of kilometres and over 18 European countries raising funds for some very worthy causes while doing so. These events have not only raised money, but they have also become fantastic team building experiences that have had positive knock-on effects in our workplace.

For me, this confirms the way I feel about the importance of getting your team behind you. Let your team know why and what the end goal is, and suggest a possible direction for reaching it, but allow your team to reach their conclusions as well. They may suggest a somewhat different direction, and you should be open to that. After all, the most important thing of all is achieving the end goal.

Good teamwork can make anything possible – UNITY IS STRENGTH!

• What great things have your team achieved?

• What are your team targets for 2017?

• What characteristic do you think is most valuable in a team leader?

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Please like, share and comment and i will do my best to respond!
This article was written by Nick Day, Managing Director of JGA Recruitment – the leading Payroll, HR & Reward Recruitment Specialists.

If you are looking for expert talent in the fields of Payroll, HR or Reward, then please reach out for a 15 minute client engagement call and I would be delighted to discuss how we can help.

Nick Day

Managing Director | JGA Recruitment | Payroll & HR Specialist Recruiters

Email: [email protected] | Tel: 01727 800 377