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!

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.

Coupling Today’s HR With New Age Corporate Strategies

Those days are long gone when HR function could be handled by a single person. The typical “HR Lady” is being replaced by a complete staff of professionals having diverse roles & responsibilities. Today’s HR is seen as the catch for handling all aspects of employee relations and organizational culture. Furthermore, their role continues to evolve on a daily basis in the current employment environment.

Every business has its own strategies and visions in place but they somehow lag behind in bringing all things together at the same place and pace. Aligning organizational goals includes connecting to all employees individually, delivering to customers, operational excellence processes, measuring outcomes and rewarding the worthy personnel. This job requires certain talent that only an HR could possess and implement in a stipulated manner. 

“HRs are the makers and keepers of an organization’s culture; and they are the one who run the show”.

Here are some excerpts from what the industry experts believe HR teams must have:

• The HR team should contain people who possess business knowledge so that they can take decisions according to the business perspective. The team will then be more comfortable in talking about strategies and will understand the business operations in a better way.
• HR pros should be analytical and technology-driven so that they can suggest new ways of handling the workforce.
• HR has the responsibility of an overall organizational development thus they should be well-versed with the organizational capabilities, its design and strategic talent. 

Challenges Faced By The HR Role In Growing Markets

Unlike in mature markets like that of US and Europe, HR role faces many sorts of challenges with respect to growing markets (as in Asian countries). Mature markets are focused more on upgrading themselves to a higher level of technology or automating new processes. Whereas in other markets, in spite of having organizations that are growing really fast; there is a lack of required infrastructure, the consistent processes and the teams. Some of the challenges encountered by growing markets are mentioned below - 

• Availability of talent in the local marketplace
• Need to pay higher salaries as the price of scarce resources is way higher
• Binding talent with the organization
• Managing and measuring in-job performance
• Complex employment law provisions
• Difficulty in justifying technological investment

Other facts like facilities and infrastructure that definitely impacts overall productivity. Using smart analytics tools can help HR pros to overcome these challenges. It can help in identifying issues according to a specific country and develop customized approaches to resolve them. With the adoption of a Workforce Management System, HR pros can create a high performing workforce; keeping in mind the intangible things that form an organization – employee engagement and workplace culture.

Dropping Employee Performance: Whose Fault Is It?

Has it ever happened that you are so contended with your great hiring and just waiting for the teams to thank you with positive feedback that you acquired a wonderful resource, but to your surprise, you get negative feedback from the team and the performance of that candidate is in negative numbers. 

Alas! Bad luck…But this might have happened to every one of you once in your career. You get to regret your decisions some time later, even being cent percent sure about the respective candidate at the time of joining. 

Though, underperformers are everywhere, but the worst case scenario is when smart candidates start to underperform. There are many reasons that contribute in deteriorated performance of these individuals.

 Some of the major contributing factors are listed here:

Unclear Goals or Deliverables: Many employees struggle so hard, but still fail to clearly understand what is expected of them. This cannot be completely their fault as their managers may give them vague or incomplete description of what exactly they want from these individuals.

Mistakenly Misjudged: Famous saying, ‘don’t judge someone through the cover’, same applies here. Sometimes, hiring managers just judge the candidate through the skills and qualifications written on the resume. They might overlook the other skills gap in front of the confidence shown by the candidate. 

Not the Right Fit: “Fit” is the keyword for today’s dynamic corporate scenario. It is probably most difficult to determine if a job candidate will be the right fit for the organization or not. Moreover, the success (or failure) of an individual very much depends on how he/she gels with company interests, goals and objectives.

Unhealthy Relations with Manager: This is the number one reason for any employee to underperform. Usually, managers fail to understand that their approach “one size fits all” does not work while managing different individuals.  Poor rapport with the supervisor or manager generally lowers down employee morale and will to perform. 

Being Underpaid: While many believe they don’t, but, compensations DO matter! Every employee wishes to be fairly and competitively paid. While an employee is in his/her learning phase, he/she may work being less paid, but a good performer cannot work in considerably less salary as per industry standards.

These are the major reasons why smart Employees underperform. To have a consistently higher performance from employees, organizations need to put some hard efforts in these areas and try to keep the zeal and enthusiasm intact within the employees. 

Are Purple Squirrels Always Recognized When Recruited or Can Be Recognized Later??

Every HR professional must be thrilled with the term “Purple Squirrel”. Quite a familiar term among HR industry, but to all those who don’t know: 

“Purple Squirrel is a candidate who has the perfect combination of qualification, work experience and skill set for any particular job position.”

 

This breed is one of the rarest one and every recruiter aspires to recruit these individuals with extreme talent and innovative capabilities. If recognized in time and given proper space, they can directly impact an organization’s growth and success instantly. 

However, they have those pioneering capabilities; they are mavericks and tough to manage and are definitely not good team players. They can only be well integrated if the team understands their intentions and is prepared to take on their unconventional ways. Despite of these facts, they are like the trophies for recruiters and can be the game changers for any business. 

 Growing recession has further increased the interest of recruiters in these candidates. It is obvious that business leaders want to put these pioneers in senior positions to get the ultimate solutions to business challenges. But, they need to understand that conventional ways of recruitment are not suited to find such talented individuals. 

Many perceive this purple squirrel concept as an unrealistic expectation and can be a reason for unfilled job positions. However, this is not completely true, but the traits can be even found through internal hiring or monitoring a candidate’s performance who has been giving outstanding results. They can be easily tracked through their high-impact work in the organization. Here only what the organizations need is an efficient Talent Management System that can monitor individual employee’s performance and bring it in notice of the management.

You may never know that you have a purple squirrel within your existing workforce, if you don’t have proper performance indicators that can detect the hitherto unrecognized talent.

TeamWise: Your Ultimate Solution for Workforce Management

TeamWise is the leading workforce management software that helps HR and Payroll professionals to perform routine employee-related tasks. The all-automated technology and user-friendly interface makes it possible to execute all tasks with complete accuracy and zero errors. It comes with an array of features including Employee Self-Service, Leave and Attendance Management, Payroll Management, Recruitment Management, Performance Management, Grievance Redressal or Complaint Center, Employee On-Boarding, Talent Management, etc.

 

Learn more @TeamWise

Don’t Take The ‘Flex-time’ Policies For Granted!!

Right from the beginning of our routine lives- we have been taught to be punctual, to arrive early, better if before time! This has made our mindsets punitive making us bring the same attitude to our offices.

But..Heyy..This is CORPORATE!! 

Companies have official “flex-time” policies allowing employees to set their own time frames as per the number of working hours. And I must say, employees just love it! 

Every organization comprises of a great blend of individuals- some are early risers, some are the stereotypes and rest are the NOCTURNALS!! Thus, maximum employees try to roll their shift timings as late as possible! 

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Although, the flex timings are given to let employees work their way, yet Harvard Business Review suggests that managers consider early coming as positive and late coming as negative. However, it is not proven scientifically, but the studies show that early comers are more conscientious than the late ones (no offences though!). 

This may come as good news for early comers and a bad one for the late comers, but this is being said because many of the employees try to take advantage of these officially approved programs. Thus, the managers are required to put in efforts to judge their people. May be efficient Time Tracking Tools can help you evaluate the in-out times, while for the performance evaluation, an effective PerformanceAppraisal System can work! Get the benefit of both in TeamWise that is an all-round HR & Payroll Solution helping you manage your workforce efficiently!  

Praising the Top Performers While Staying Diplomatic!

While all the employees keep on cursing their senior executives for not praising them on their performance, senior executives also sometimes get into dilemma about how to give feedback on their sub-ordinate’s top performances. 

Unlike what employees think, managers do want to give right feedback to their top performers and help them improve! But sometimes they don’t want them to get into developmental plans that put a negative impact. 

Firstly, never avoid let them know that they are doing well...this is IMPORTANT! Seriously, whenever you get some good work done...Praise it without giving it a second thought!

Frequently communicate it your employees that how valuable they are, what exceptional they have done, their achievements, failures, team participation, leadership, etc.   

 

At the same time, you need to be tricky so that your employees don’t get over-confident about their performance and stay focused. Moreover, praising comes with some reaction from the other side as well! Many employees go out and ask for a performance comparison with their peers or inquire about their competitor’s performance ratings. 

 

However, they also ask for improvement or skill development programs that can help them hone their skills.  

 

 

Therefore, this feedback ‘give n take’ mechanism is constant in every organization and helps you review your employee performances and give feedbacks. TeamWise PerformanceManagement System allows you to assess every individual’s performance accurately and guide them accordingly.