Workplace – Qualstaff Resources Blog

What Recruiters are Doing on Twitter

admin — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 06:29:22 +0000

Want to get better at using Twitter for your job search? It is good to understand how recruiters are using the platform. Check out this great slideshare presentation from your friends at Jobcritters.com.

10 Commandments of Twitter Recruiting from Chris Russell

2015 Workplace Trends

admin — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 05:49:44 +0000

Dan Schawbel is the the founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen-Y research and management consulting firm. He also wrote the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, now in 13 languages.

He has some interesting predictions for workplace trends in 2015 in Forbes.com:

Every year I give my top ten workplace trend predictions for the upcoming year. You can read my predictions from 2013 and 2014 if you missed them. My objective is to capture all the research and insights that I have tracked through hundreds of studies released by my company and third parties each year, pulling the most significant trends from everything. The highest level trends are the skills gap, workers dropping out of the corporate system, the use of automation and outsourcing and the pressure for companies to get more lean. All of these factors have created a system where everyone is always under pressure to stay relevant, choose degrees that turn into jobs and constantly reinvent themselves. While there are a lot of obstacles to the 2015 workplace, there are also a lot of major opportunities with millions of boomers retiring and more remote working. Below are my top ten predictions for the workplace for 2015.

2015-workplace-trends

1. Companies hiring Generation Z for internships.

While many companies are still trying to understand and connect with Gen Y (or millennials), some companies are going to be heavily invested in the upcoming generation, Gen Z. Gen Z’s, born between 1994 and 2010, will become a major target for companies looking to recruit interns next year. The oldest Gen Z will be a senior in college in 2015. In addition, more companies are going to be recruiting high school students for their internship programs, including Deloitte, Microsoft, Rackspace and Lockheed Martin. In a study earlier this year, we found that half of employers are either currently accepting applications from high school students for internships or plan to this year. Companies like Facebook, LinkedIn and VMware are already paying high school students thousands of dollars to be interns and next year more companies will jump on board. This is happening for two major reasons: 1) companies are trying to close the skills gap (STEM) 2) companies are desperately trying to compete for the very best talent so they have to build brand awareness early and that means high school.

2. More millennials are taking leadership roles.

A few years ago, PayScale.com and my company found that nearly 13% of all millennials in America were managers already. That number is expected to grow in 2015 as millennials become the largest percentage of the workforce for the very first time. In a new study between my company and Elance oDesk, we found that 27% of millennials are already managers, 5% are senior management and 2% are executives. In 10 years, 47% want to be managers or senior managers, 7% want to be executives and 15% want to be business owners. Ernst & Young has also helped identify this trend by reviewing their own workforce composition and finding that 59% of their managers are already millennials and 18% are senior managers. 90% of all millennials who are managers took their role in the past five years. In another study by CareerBuilder, they found that 38% of the workforce is already managed by millennials and that’s already caused a few problems including favoritism towards other millennials and them thinking they know more than older workers. The problem these new managers are having is that they are unprepared for the positions. They were never trained on how to be good managers and are being pushed into these roles out of necessity – companies are losing older workers and positions are opening up fast.

3. Honesty becomes a revered leadership trait.

Companies are going to start embracing transparency more next year as younger generations are demanding it. Leaders won’t just have to be good at inspiring and educating, they will have to be able to instill trust through honesty. In a recent study, we found that 52% of Gen Z’s and Gen Y’s state that honesty is the most important quality for being a good leader. One companies that has exhibited the art of transparency is Whole Foods. Their company policy is that all employees can easily look up salary or bonus data from the previous year. It’s only natural that people would want to work under leaders who are open about what the company is doing, where it’s heading in the future and give honest feedback regularly. Social media is continuing to push companies to be more open and for leaders to share more of their activities on a daily basis.

4. The skills gap continues to widen.
If you ask any HR executive what their biggest challenges are, the skills gap is typically unanimously noted. I’ve been paying close attention to this trend over the past few years and the gap is actually widening instead of closing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that there were 4.7 million job openings in June and more than half of employers say that they can’t find qualified candidates. This issue will progress until the college curriculum aligns with the current job marketplace. This year, we found that only 2% of companies are recruiting liberal arts majors but schools still offer those degrees. Companies need to start working with colleges so that students get the necessary skills to fill the gap. Read More

Why Hiring Good Managers is So Essential

admin — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 06:23:42 +0000

By Randall Beck and James Harter via Harvard Business Review

An employee’s view of his or her company is directly dependent upon their direct supervisor. In fact, a company’s entire culture and employee experience is not shaped by it’s CEO, but rather by the managers in between the top and the workforce. A great study in the Harvard Business Review delves into why good managers are so rare.

Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. Yet our analysis suggests that they usually get it wrong. In fact, Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time.

Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year, and having too many of them can bring down a company. The only defense against this massive problem is a good offense, because when companies get these decisions wrong, nothing fixes it. Businesses that get it right, however, and hire managers based on talent will thrive and gain a significant competitive advantage.

Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, Gallup estimates. This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement. Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide are engaged. Worse, over the past 12 years these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work.

Gallup has studied performance at hundreds of organizations and measured the engagement of 27 million employees and more than 2.5 million work units over the past two decades. No matter the industry, size, or location, we find executives struggling to unlock the mystery of why performance varies so immensely from one workgroup to the next. Performance metrics fluctuate widely and unnecessarily within most companies, in no small part from the lack of consistency in how people are managed. This “noise” frustrates leaders because unpredictability causes great inefficiencies in execution.

Executives can cut through this noise by measuring what matters most. Gallup has discovered links between employee engagement at the business-unit level and vital performance indicators, including customer metrics; higher profitability, productivity, and quality (fewer defects); lower turnover; less absenteeism and shrinkage (i.e., theft); and fewer safety incidents. When a company raises employee engagement levels consistently across every business unit, everything gets better.

To make this happen, companies should systematically demand that every team within their workforce have a great manager. After all, the root of performance variability lies within human nature itself. Teams are composed of individuals with diverging needs related to morale, motivation, and clarity — all of which lead to varying degrees of performance. Nothing less than great managers can maximize them.

But first, companies have to find those great managers.

If great managers seem scarce, it’s because the talent required to be one is rare. Gallup finds that great managers have the following talents:

They motivate every single employee to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.

They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.

They create a culture of clear accountability.

They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.

They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.

Gallup’s research reveals that about one in ten people possess all these necessary traits. While many people are endowed with some of them, few have the unique combination of talent needed to help a team achieve excellence in a way that significantly improves a company’s performance. These 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity. Combined, they contribute about 48% higher profit to their companies than average managers.

It’s important to note that another two in 10 exhibit some characteristics of basic managerial talent and can function at a high level if their company invests in coaching and developmental plans for them.

In studying managerial talent in supervisory roles compared with the general population, we find that organizations have learned ways to slightly improve the odds of finding talented managers. Nearly one in five (18%) of those currently in management roles demonstrate a high level of talent for managing others, while another two in 10 show a basic talent for it. Still, this means that companies miss the mark on high managerial talent in 82% of their hiring decisions, which is an alarming problem for employee engagement and the development of high-performing cultures in the U.S. and worldwide.

Sure, every manager can learn to engage a team somewhat. But without the raw, natural talent to individualize; focus on each person’s needs and strengths; boldly review their team members; rally people around a cause; and execute efficient processes, the day-to-day experience will burn out both the manager and his or her team. As noted earlier, this basic inefficiency in identifying talent costs companies hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Conventional selection processes are a big contributor to inefficiency in management practices; little science or research is applied to find the right person for the managerial role. When Gallup asked U.S. managers why they believed they were hired for their current role, they commonly cited their success in a previous non-managerial role or their tenure in their company or field.

These reasons don’t take into account whether the candidate has the right talent to thrive in the role. Being a very successful programmer, salesperson, or engineer, for example, is no guarantee that someone will be even remotely adept at managing others.

Most companies promote workers into managerial positions because they seemingly deserve it, rather than because they have the talent for it. This practice doesn’t work. Experience and skills are important, but people’s talents — the naturally recurring patterns in the ways they think, feel, and behave — predict where they’ll perform at their best. Talents are innate and are the building blocks of great performance. Knowledge, experience, and skills develop our talents, but unless we possess the right innate talents for our job, no amount of training or experience will matter.

Very few people are able to pull off all five of the requirements of good management. Most managers end up with team members who are at best indifferent toward their work — or are at worst hell-bent on spreading their negativity to colleagues and customers. However, when companies can increase their number of talented managers and double the rate of engaged employees, they achieve, on average, 147% higher earnings per share than their competition.

It’s important to note — especially in the current economic climate — that finding great managers doesn’t depend on market conditions or the current labor force. Large companies have approximately one manager for every 10 employees, and Gallup finds that one in 10 people possess the inherent talent to manage. When you do the math, it’s likely that someone on each team has the talent to lead. But given our findings, chances are that it’s not the manager. More likely, it’s an employee with high managerial potential waiting to be discovered.

The good news is that sufficient management talent exists in every company – it’s often hiding in plain sight. Leaders should maximize this potential by choosing the right person for the next management role using predictive analytics to guide their identification of talent.

For too long, companies have wasted time, energy, and resources hiring the wrong managers and then attempting to train them to be who they’re not. Nothing fixes the wrong pick.