Do Your New Recruits Fall Into Any of These Categories?

  

For hiring managers, interviewing candidates is an ongoing process. All through their journey, they come across a new face every day! A new individual with some unique traits and characteristics every day! It gives them a new experience daily!

Most commonly, there are a few categories in which every individual falls! However, some traits may vary, but on a broader picture, they somehow come under 4 categories.

Here are the listed categories that’ll help you make better decisions during the hiring process as well as it’ll help candidates to demonstrate their job-suitability that can help them achieve their targets and growth. 

Category #1 : 360 Degree Assessment Personalities:

Majority of your workforce belongs to this category. These individuals possess basic skills and undergo detailed assessment of their overall personality. This involves more in-depth behavioral and technical assessment rounds, and proper background checks. Such upgrade recruiting process is undertaken to ensure that no mistakes are made. The reasons why they are behind the top-performers include lack of motivation, cultural-fit issues, different working style, lack of team skills, etc. But, if they work on these aspects, they can surpass the top-performers!

Category #2: Resume-based Personalities:

These individuals are half way through just by their resumes! They possess the basic skills, qualifications, decent experience, good academic background, and a soothing personality. Hiring them is not a mistake, but a LIABILITY! You need to monitor and supervise them all the time to get that average performance out of them. Another matter of concern with this type is that they pollute the vicinity, demotivating other individuals as well. They can become the stars if treated well and given right situations and opportunities.

Category #3: Never Hire Personalities:

These are but obviously the ones that you should never hire. These are the actual under-performers and you will soon realize that you have made a fundamentally wrong decision by hiring them. It may happen because of certain reasons- they are not aware what exactly their responsibility is, recruiters didn’t paid attention to their resume or conduct a background check, or you misinterpreted the flamboyancy of the candidate.

Category #4:Star-performer Personalities:

These are the must hire ones, who regardless of any challenge or hurdle, bring out the best results. They are generally the leader types and suit well to the challenging leadership positions. This is the highly motivated and focused breed, like to jump on projects that are most difficult, gel along well with company culture and people.

These are the 4 types from which you need to fetch out the best ones! However, everyone wants the category 4 individuals to attain their business goals, it is important to have each category in your talent pool to make the best mix. You can transform category 1’s to category 4’s through your style of managing workforce and making under-performers the star-performers!

TeamWise is sophisticated Payroll & HR Management Software that performs comprehensive HR functions over the single interface. With the user-friendly GUI, you can seamlessly perform all routine tasks. The major features include Leave and Attendance Management, Payroll Management, Talent Management, Performance Management, Time Tracking, Grievance Handling, Recruitment Management, etc

How Workplace Culture Can Make or Break Your Employer Brand!

The one word that’s been trending in the corporate world and for all good reasons is “workplace culture”. Latest corporate researches uncover the fact that culture, employee retention and engagement are the top most challenges faced by business leaders.

 

But why?

 

Answer is quite simple! With global economy picking up fast, power is getting shifted from job creators to job seekers. Talented candidates get the power to select from multiple options available. So to be in the good books of these candidates, companies need to strengthen their employment brand and assure them that they are a great place to work at. Thus, now simply the job seekers are more interested in knowing what culture a company has, how happy employees and what steps they take to keep employees engaged instead of focusing on what the job description is.

 

Every company from a start-up to big conglomerate, are scratching heads to find out ways to prevent top talent from leaving. They are getting culture-driven and even realizing that focusing on this aspect gives significant payoffs!

Now the office spaces are becoming the vital part of making a great workplace culture. Mention of office space reminds me of the movie “Office Space” where the employees of an IT firm were disgruntled and repeatedly maltreated by the management. The real picture was quite true a decade back, but now businesses have started to believe that office culture and how management treats the employees, has a direct impact on overall company performance and productivity. To make a positive impact on these performance indicators, companies are increasingly taking the initiative to get more flexible, offer entertainment and lively office interiors for employees to help them release their stress and work more productively.

 

But, what culture actually means?

Is it the entire fun n frolic at the workplace?

Certainly not! It’s not always the fun activities going all around; it is also what happens at the floors when no one’s watching. It is set of behaviors, employee mind sets, values and how they feel about being a part of the company. Culture can also be demonstrated when everybody is on their desks and busy in their tasks. The very vibe of that place speaks loudly of its culture. The time at which employees get in and get out also explain the culture to a great extent.

The question is…How to achieve such culture at the workplace?

It is solely in the hands of the leaders. Their leadership demonstrates the culture. If you have a great bunch of true leaders, then it goes without saying that you have a great culture. If any discrepancy is there, work more on the leaders as leadership is the only driver of workplace culture.

With more tools available to engage employees, you can get on to the nerve of the matters that may affect the culture or put negative impact on employees. You need to understand that people are not motivated by perks or a good compensation only, it’s the passion, interest and zeal that brings them to work. So keep your employees happy and motivated!

How To Create A Lasting Onboarding Experience For Your New Hires ?

 

Traditional onboarding is often a stereotyped experience for majority of new hires because it is focused on extremely dry and monotonous processes, like filling a lot of forms, attending company induction, going through heap of new rules and regulations, etc. Almost every organization follows a similar process forcing new employees to experience ‘not so good’ first few days.

Surveys reveal that organizations who don’t concentrate or put efforts in making this process better, are more likely to face lower retention rates and significantly declined employee motivation and satisfaction.

Follow these simple yet effective measures to make the process a long-lasting memory for your new hires.

Don’t leave everything for the joining day

Make sure that all the necessary paperwork (which doesn’t include employee’s presence) is completed before the employee’s joining date. In this way, his/her first few days won’t be occupied in just filling out forms. Welcome your new employee with a welcome kit having all information regarding his/her role, company policies, common rules and regulations, etc. Also make sure that the team he/she is joining already recognizes the new hire by his/her name. This will give them a sense of friendliness and will help them in gelling with the team more easily.

Embrace technology to collect & reuse new employee information

No one likes to complete same forms again and again or provide the same information over and over again in different forms. Same goes with your employees; they too feel irritated when you give them a bunch of forms to fill and every form starts with, Name, Address, etc. Leveraging the power of technology and using online forms requiring candidates to fill information only once as well as automated workflows will help you remove the hassles and headaches caused during the on-boarding process. It will help employers / HR managers pull out some general information about the new employee and spare them the horror of filling never-ending forms right on their first day of joining.

Assign a mentor for work-related help and a colleague to guide them around

When a new employee joins an organization, he/she is not in any way different than a school child on his/her first day at a new school. Everything needs to be figured out, like where’s the classroom or the cafeteria, etc. Your new hire is also in the same confused state. Thus, assign one of his teammates to show him around and get introduced to every concerned person. Also, make sure you have a mentor assigned for him to help him get introduced to his work and how things are getting done at his new workplace.

Use gamification to make his/her first few days full of fun

Several organizations have started opting for gamification strategy to make their new hires comfortable as soon as they can. This includes several games that are played in the organization or within the team so that new employee can easily bond with the company culture and his/her colleagues. This is a far better way to have your new employees get comfortable, than providing them with monotonous presentations, lectures, reading materials, etc.

Taken as a whole, these simple tips will help your new hires connect with the organization’s culture more quickly and easily. Moreover, they will have a lasting experience with extensive satisfaction and motivation to work for the organization in a much better way.

Payroll Data Is The New Intelligent Data! Find out how!

Business decision-makers continuously strive to figure out ways to stay updated with current trends, their internal processes, expenses, etc. In that case, intelligent analytics and data can help them make well-informed decisions. Many believe employee performance and related details would be all they need to evaluate and improve business processes. But, there is a big block missing and that is the PAYROLL DATA.

Most decision makers don’t consider using payroll data as an information determiner, but that’s where they are making a big mistake. There are number of ways where this data can help you improve process and outcomes.

Time-tracking Helps Determine Workforce Adequacy

If your employees are increasingly doing overtime, then this will enable you to determine if they are over-burdened or are less productive! When regular overtime hours are shown, this means that you have a workforce shortage and that’s why the employees are over-occupied with their work. If the situation goes unnoticed, then this might result in more frustrated employees with increased attrition rate.

Moreover, reviewing past data will also help you judge the situation closely that whether the shortage is seasonal or you have an inefficient or slow hiring process. As a result, you can employ change measures for improving the situation.

Performance Data Coupled With Payroll Data

Compensation is not the only employee performance driver. But, pay and performance go hand in hand. If the employees are paid well, this will definitely get reflected in their performance. Also during the hike cycle, employee performance must be analyzed properly so that well-informed pay raise decisions are made. If you have a centralized data with all the necessary information, then you can better plan your pay raise strategies and bonuses.

In addition, you can also evaluate the impact of these appraisals and bonuses on Employee Performances.

Better Budget Planning

Usually HR budgets are decided taking into consideration the financial reports of the previous year and the results. But if you do not take into account the payroll data, especially if the appraisals occurred during that period, then you will probably end up making wrong estimations and goals. You can use the previous year’s payroll data to evaluate how much money was paid to employees as salary out of the total budget allotted for employee management. This will help you make more realistic budget plans.

Therefore, your payroll data has multi-fold benefits and it can help you take a complete overview about how your organization works. Having a well-integrated HR and Payroll Management System can make your task of using this information much easier. With all data at one place you can not only make wiser decisions but can save time commendably.

Planning Not To Invest In Employee Training? First Know The Risks Involved!!

As the global economy is going through a struggling phase, the first thing that most of the companies will put aside is their ‘Training and Development’ department (of course, if they have one). The management strategy of cut, slash and burn might look ‘OK’ in the initial stages but can have drastic effects in the coming future.

Training and a scope to grow is one of the most desired Employee Benefits by workforce of all generations; especially, Gen Y employees, who fear of failing or falling behind in this competitive world, value training and learning as the most critical aspect to advance in their career and make more money.

Moreover, after a considerable time period, employee might get bored of the monotony in work and start looking for other opportunities. If they are given proper opportunities to learn and try new things, this may motivate and engage them to give bring in more innovative ideas and better performance.

Thus, employers should not sideline training and development as it is the key factor in engaging employees. Let’s have a look at few of the positive outcomes of skill training.

Enhanced performance and efficiency – By giving your employees an opportunity to learn new skills will help them understand and fulfill their basic roles and responsibilities in a better way on daily basis. The results will be a boost in employee efficiency, much higher productivity and positive outcomes.

Better employee morale – Every employee has the zeal to advance in their career and training plays a significant role in fulfilling that goal. Neglecting employee training will leave them in a state of distress and with thinking that they don’t have any future within the organization, at least not in the near future, thereby affecting their commitment towards work, morale and performance levels.

Development of potential leaders – Every individual possess the qualities of becoming a potential leader and with proper training and skills enhancement, this quality can be refined. It is the responsibility of the employer to identify and improve their employees’ qualities through proper support and training.

Staying competitive – When you have a high quality workforce, equipped with all the latest skills and technologies, short-term and long-term organizational goals are no difficult task to achieve. This enables the organization to stay ahead of the curve in this cut-throat market competition.

Much higher return on investment – Training programs entail considerable investments initially, but if the program targets a specific business need, it is surely to provide rapid returns. Your initial investment will soon be recouped through a rapid increase in efficiency gains or a power-boost in the revenue.

In addition to better productivity and other benefits mentioned above, organizations that emphasize on their employee development tend to make a lasting impression on them and earn their lasting loyalty.

Learning and upgrading skills must start from the day employee joins a company and should become successive as he/she grows within the organization. It is obvious that the returns will not be visible from day-one but the long-term benefits are definitely going to make a difference, something that is worth investing and waiting for.

Wish To Have An Engaged Workforce? Consider These Tips!

Employee engagement—considered as one of the most serious concerns in every organization’s corporate agenda, is also considered as a deciding criterion in today’s war for acquiring talent. Then,

What is still making employees disengaged?

There could be many reasons that contribute to make a workforce disengaged. These could be low compensations, unclear growth path, no creative liberty, extensive favoritism, and the list goes on!

Employers are now struggling and find this task of engaging employees and retaining employees as a nightmare. The reason is, majorly, either they don’t possess the right HR skills to establish a happy, satisfied and engaged workforce or they find it extremely difficult to recruit those candidates whom the organization really needs!

The consequences of a disengaged workforce can be extremely costly with serious impact on your business, customers, overall productivity, company performance and also employees’ personal lives. Moreover, you may lose your potential employees to your competitors. Thus, the best way to battle this issue is to have:

Don’t let your communication become “Chinese Whispers”:

Make effective and honest communication so that every party involved – employees and employers – is always on the same page in terms of understanding organizational goals and setting priorities.

Make a “Cutting Dash” offer:

Incentivize your employees and keep them fairly paid all the time. Focus on returning equal amount of appreciation as you expect in receiving from the employees in the form of their hard work.

Make sure that you always “Cause a Stir” among the employee:

Make efforts in engaging your employees through understanding their future goals and assigning projects according to their interests. A scope or a boost in their career will definitely make them more engaged.

Work towards building “Happy Camper” employees:

Keep your employee wellbeing always on your priority list. After all, happy employees are engaged employees.

These factors, when applied successfully, will help in motivating employees to a much higher extent.

Lack of Employee Engagement in an organization can have serious detrimental effects on the employees’ productivity as well as the overall well-being of the company. Thus, by gelling brand and people, two of the most valuable assets of any organization, perfectly together will definitely deliver high quality results, as expected. With the aforementioned guidelines, you are not only sure to possess a never like before engaged workforce, you can also enhance internal communications, foster innovation, provide a better than before customer experience and uplift your overall workplace culture to a whole new level.

Bounce Back To Work After A Vacation With These Simple Tips!!

From a huge email backlog to non stop meetings to dig down deeper to recollect what you have been working on and where you left; it’s never easy to bounce back and come in shape for the regular work after a fun and frolic holiday. You might have a physical presence at the office but your mind is still enjoying the beach breeze or a delicacy that you tried.

You’re probably going to agree if you had just returned from a vacation or had been in a similar situation.

Making this tricky shift from leave to labor can be a total drag if you don’t make this transition smooth. Here’s how you can make it smoother:

Pre-plan To Make Your Return Smooth 

 Most people plan their return on a Sunday evening to maximize the vacation. This can sometimes be hazardous as you don’t get enough time even to unpack and get back on track. Thus, planning an early return, say on a Saturday or two days before the joining will help lessen the impact on the first day after your return at work.

Realize That Both Your Physical & Mental Presence Is Required

A holiday mindset can cause serious problems at work resulting in lack of concentration, forgetting the client names and missing important appointments. You might get some breathing space for some time, if your boss has been in a similar situation, but not for too long! Remember that your vacation is over; now it’s time to get back to work with full dedication.

Try To Combat The Worst Task First

Finishing a big and awful assignment nice and early might help you shed some load for the rest of the day or probably the entire week. This is another way of reducing the blues that you experience after coming back.

Don’t Just End Your Vacation! Plan For A Next One!

Knowing that you have another vacation in the pipeline is the best way to overcome post-vacation blues. Put aside some money every week and start saving for the get-away. This will help you concentrate on the work and forget the last holiday way more easily. After all, it’s the work that is going to pay for those plane tickets! Right!!

Put Your Experiences To Test At Work

Sharing experiences with colleagues can help in developing enthusiasm towards work after coming back. Along with that, those from the creative field can actually experiment with their work taking inspiration from experiences during the vacation, like meeting an interesting person or visiting a scenic place. This will motivate them and their surrounding people too, to work on something new, fresh and rejuvenating.

Holidays are refreshing and give you some peace time away from the hectic daily routine. But proper care must be taken so that it does not affect your work in any sense. The above tips will help you overcome the Vacation Blues to some extent. So, plan early and be realistic for an equally refreshing return to work.

The Role Of Technology In Making Employee Engagement Better!

 

Why did the great eagles of Gandalf the Grey in “Lord of the Rings” did not fly Frodo Baggins to the Mount Doom for destroying the ring?

This could have been very simple right! If they can fly him back then why not helped him in the first place?

I’ll tell you! Because, there are no shortcuts on the journey to success.

Likewise, keeping your employees engaged and putting efforts in making them satisfied is a continuous and definitely not an easy process which cannot be shortened in any way.

It’s All About Employee Engagement!

As a manager, you know it is extremely crucial to keep your employees engaged but how exactly does it work? Actually, engaged employees are those who make use of their discretionary efforts and have the zeal to go that extra mile, apart from their regular monotonous work. They tend to develop a sense of dedication to their organization and its goals. Therefore, a mutual understanding between an employer and the employee is must to develop which will serve as the foundation of engaging/retaining talented employees and meeting the organizational pre-set goals. It is also equally important to keep this foundation strong, and keep the momentum going.

But, how can you assure the success of such a high-level engagement or build a team with that level of commitment? The game plan is right here!
 

Bring The Power In Your People – With Technology!

The role of technology in business continue to uplift at a very fast pace, and 2015 and beyond will definitely see a plenty of new trends sidelining the old traditional methods. Optimizing the employees’ work potential is almost impossible in today’s culture without making use of various connection options and devices. This displays how technology has deeply rooted itself into our day-to-day life, and for sure, engaging your employees is not at all an exception.
With video communication to social networks to BYOD to embracing mobile technology, the use of tech-enabled engagement is the choice at present by most of the employers.

But implementing the technology blindly can make blunders when your expectation was to make things simple. Thus, before anything is set, consider the following –

Enhance technology comfort – If employees don’t feel comfortable with the newly implemented technology then instead of motivating them, you will receive a reverse affect. Thus, employee’s strengths and comfort levels must be considered before applying any changes.

Once comfortable, keep them informed – Once the employees get hold of the technology, keep them involved in any discussions regarding new enhancements. Every improvement has a purpose, make sure this purpose is clearly publicized.

Analyze whether the motives are met or not – Keep requesting for feedbacks and suggestions to analyze whether the new implementation is successful in meeting the desired targets. Re-assess the situation and the underlying cause if your work culture doesn’t welcome the new system.

The true value of any company comes from its people. If you believe in this motto then it is the right time to employ significant strategies and embed efficient HR software in the organization so that you can engage your employees in a better way.

Fostering a never like before engaged workforce will help any organization in achieving its mission, executing the pre-defined strategies and spawn positive results. However, the specific ways to define and invest in engagement can variate from organization-to-organization based on the company’s objectives, strategies and workforce. HR practices that are carefully crafted can prove to be the key drivers in increasing Employee Engagement and commitment.

Let The Superheroes In Your Talent Pool To Take Over!

After spending some time in corporate environment, everyone realizes that surviving and winning is not a child’s play. The nature of challenges and issues that crop up on daily basis, can only be dealt effectively if the organization’s talent is full of superheroes who can turn impossible into possible! The article discusses the charismatic superheroes and what lessons can be taken from them.


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Redefining The Traditional Team Model

(By : Prateek Sharma)

From our childhood days, we have been taught to adapt synergism at all stages; sometimes with mutual agreement and sometimes forced, but we all have that spirit running in our veins. 

Being a part of team boosts an individual’s potential to foster a meaningful and fulfilling way of working together. Engaged with a group of people having a common goal, on a worthwhile activity, can prove to be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of work. 

But what if the team model we knew from all these years is broken? 

By employing clever behavioral economics and considerable motivation factors, a team successfully works together and every member contributes his/her part to the fullest. But it’s not compulsory that each of the member shares great camaraderie with everyone or, say, “were friends”.

For instance, take the technology industry for consideration, where team structure has been given an entire new meaning with the introduction of agile methodology, regular scrum meetings and iterative development. This, along with social media communities, groups, lists and circles, minimized the need for fixed working routines, forced organizational charts and pre-defined seating plans, for the teams to perform better. 

As a consequence, the team rules have been rewritten and member roles are seeing major shift from a fixed to fluid deployment. 

Now is the era of teams who assemble for a fixed purpose, work according to common vision, analyze, plan, build, test, fix, release and then disassemble and perform the same cycle somewhere else and with someone else. 

Withal, being friends with team members could be difficult in this kind of working environment as people are rapidly moved to various teams as per requirements. However, it is quite possible that if any individual don’t feel comfortable in other teams then his/her performance might degrade considerably.

Thus, the need of the hour is that employees sideline their emotions at workplace to successfully adapt to the current culture. However, the sense of teamwork should definitely exist but it must not be confined to just one team. “Comradeship isn’t de rigueur in team for assured success; the team’s success depends on how its members perform together and arrive at their destined goal.”

Prateek Sharma is the Product Owner @TeamWise ( All in one HRMS Solution ), where he is responsible for technically administering and handling all products and features. With over 6 years of experience in software industry, Sharma is a master in applying product development technologies and devising innovative business strategies.