Category: Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

  • Why Small Businesses Need HR

    Why Small Businesses Need HR

    TriNet, a California based HR Services provider, conducted a survey of small businesses in 2014. They found that:

    • 81% of small business owners manage the HR function themselves
    • 30% admitted that they were nervous about managing HR for their organization
    • 30% reported that they improperly paid employees
    • 23% acknowledged that they lost employees to their competitors due to benefits

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are over 137,000 new employer companies starting up each month. As those companies grow, their burdens as an employer increase. Many of the managers who responded to the TriNet survey stated that they spent approximately three to ten hours per month on processing payroll taxes. That doesn’t even account for all of the other HR responsibilities they manage. The more time they spend managing HR, the less time they have available to focus on growing their organization.

    What can small businesses gain by turning their HR functions over to a trained HR professional?

    1. Compliance. An HR professional will evaluate the organization’s HR policies and procedures to ensure that they are compliant, meet best practice standards, and truly work in the best interest of the organization and the employees. By ensuring that the organization is compliant, a small business can help to minimize employment liabilities.
    2. Recruitment. HR can assist the organization with recruitment efforts, streamlining procedures to be more efficient, cost-effective, and to help ensure that the organization is hiring the best candidates for the position and the company culture. They can also assist with how those candidates are integrated into the organization, from onboarding to training, to performance management.
    3. Training. While orienting employees to the organization is one aspect of training that HR often has a huge hand in, training goes well beyond that initial introductory period. HR is often an integral part of designing training programs within an organization. They not only help design training but work to evaluate the effectiveness of the training, as well as determine additional areas of need. They also work closely with management teams to provide invaluable leadership training.
    4. Strategic Planning. The role of HR has evolved immensely over the past few decades. It has moved from an administrative role to a strategic role. In most organizations, both small and large, HR now has a seat at the table. Many organizations look to their HR departments to help strategize and plan for the organization’s future. HR plays an important role in the stability and growth of the organization. Organizations look to HR to fill four vital roles: the administrative expert, the employee champion, the strategic partner, and the change manager.

    How can a small business justify the cost and what will be their return on that investment?

    By building a strategic partnership with HR, organizations can help to determine how to most effectively use the financial resources allotted towards HR functions including:

    • Wage structure and benefits offered
    • Utilizing cost-effective HR systems
    • Increasing employee morale and retention
    • Safety/Risk Management mitigation

    While adding HR to your small business will mean finding the financial resources to do so, the cost of not adding HR to your organization could be much more substantial.

    Do the benefits of adding HR to your small business outweigh the risks?

  • Targeting Passive Candidates

    Targeting Passive Candidates

    Recruiters everywhere are struggling to fill open positions these days. According to an August 2018 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of job openings is 4.6%, while the rate of unemployment is 3.6%. Basically, there are more open jobs right now than there are people to fill them.

    Organizations are having to rethink their recruiting strategies in order to attract qualified candidates. Part of this revised strategy includes targeting passive candidates, or people who aren’t actively looking for a new job. So how do you attract candidates when they aren’t even job hunting?

    • Offer employee referral bonuses. Current employees are often your best resource for great talent. They’re going to refer people that they feel are qualified, team players, and hard workers. Afterall, they may have to work with them. If your organization already has an employee referral program, make sure you advertise it to your employees. Send out a reminder to all staff that the program is in place, send out regular updates on what positions are open, and recognize the employee when you make a hire as a result of their referral.
    • Use Linkedin to promote your company and to connect with potential candidates. Make sure your company page on Linkedin is up-to-date and speaks to your company culture. Then start looking for people to connect with that you feel could be an asset to your organization. Reach out to them and let them know that you were impressed with their profile and have some potential openings that you think they may be a good fit for. You may not get a response, but then again you might. And even if they aren’t interested, they may know someone who would be.
    • Attend networking events. Networking is a great way to both get your organization’s name out there as well as to connect with people who may be in the same industry and looking for a new opportunity. Events may include tradeshows, conferences, and local meetups. A few great resources to find events in your area include Eventbrite and com.
    • Sponsor local events. In addition to attending networking events, a great way to get your name out there and garner interest from potential candidates is to sponsor local events. This gives passive candidates an opportunity to see who your organization is and what you do. And it may just peak their interest in your organization. Bring recruiting materials with you that you can hand out and take the opportunity to strike up a conversation with attendees who stop by your sponsor table.

    According to Linkedin.com, 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive talent. What is your organization doing to get their attention?

  • The Power of Pause

    The Power of Pause

    “Patience is the primary virtue needed in order to reach your destiny.” Tony Evans, Detours

    We use the DiSC model in leadership training.  As you can see below, the first question asked of people when they are trying to determine their DiSC style or the style of another without the assessment is, “Are you cautious and reflective or are you fast-paced and outspoken?”  I’m so fast-paced and outspoken, you don’t even need to ask the next question (questioning and skeptical or accepting and warm?). I am a Di or an iD all day long.

    So, it’s obvious that patience is not one of my virtues.   In fact, it is quite contrary to the way I am wired.

    I’m used to driving forward to meet goals without ever pausing to think about is this goal really what I want or need anymore.  This has led to some positive results, but also an increasing inability to enjoy the process of getting there, not to mention stopping to examine if there are better goals to be pursuing.

    This year, I’ve been learning the power of the pause. Through trying to force some things to happen in order to launch a new business we had set out to do this year, I have learned that oftentimes pausing to re-valuate the timing of and need for things is critical.

    If you, like me, have trouble with pausing and patience, here are some things that have helped me self-reflect on whether or not a pause is needed:

    1. Are the right people, circumstances and resources available to drive forward? In my experience trying to launch this business, one of these things fell off, then another, then another. Yet, I was still trying to push forward because I had the goal written down on paper.  When I realized that everything I thought I had at my disposal when I set that goal was no longer there, it was time to pause.
    2. Are you enjoying the pursuit? And enjoying it enough to push through resistance? If you don’t know whether you are coming or going and/or can’t stop and reflect on a few things each day you enjoyed doing as a part of the pursuit, it is probably not right.  Also, if the first “no” and/or questions and skepticism come your way and you cave, it is probably time to pause and question is it worth it?
    3. Are other things put in front of you that need your attention more? A large volume of current client work, a son who needs a lot support and time from my husband and I right now, and my husband being promoted into a role he loves but that is more demanding of his time, I have realized are all more important priorities (sometimes not as fun, but always more important) and have led to the need for pause in this area of pursuit that I thought would be a large part of my focus for the year.

     

    I love this thought by Tony Evans from Detours:

    “Training for greater things always takes place in lesser things.  … always-always-always be faithful where you are..,Far too often, we are chasing our destiny so much that we forget to maximize the location where we are right now.”

    My pause has been such a blessing.  And the pause, I believe, is now making way for this pursuit to, at the right time, become a more fruitful reality.

    How are you pausing to maximize where you are right now?

  • Proactively Impacting Retention Through Stay Interviews

    Proactively Impacting Retention Through Stay Interviews

    How often as leaders do you wish you could convince an employee to stay after they’ve turned in their resignation? What if you could change their mind before they reached the point of no return?

    Organizations often sit down with employees after they’ve tendered their resignation to find out why they decided to leave. But how often do leaders sit down with employees to find out what can be done to ensure that they stay with the organization?

    Exit interviews usually consist of questions surrounding the reason for leaving including dissatisfaction with leadership, the organization, and benefits offered. But by the time leadership sits down with an employee to conduct an exit interview, the employee has already checked out. While in many cases the employee will be forthcoming with information on why they’ve chosen to leave, often times the employee no longer cares about providing their honest feedback. The damage has already been done and they’re ready to move on. While information gathered in the exit interview can be helpful in making necessary changes in the organization for current and future employees, it won’t help with the loss of the employee being interviewed.

    In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Richard Finnegan, author of The Stay Interview, said “Hard data proves the top reason employees quit is they don’t trust their managers. Stay Interviews are the absolute best trust-building activity…and therefore the best retention tool.”

    So how do stay interviews differ from exit interviews, other than the obvious fact of when they are conducted?

    • Stay interviews focus on the positive. What do employees like about their job? What makes them want to come to work each day? What do they like about their leadership? Where do they see themselves going within the organization? What areas of the organization do they feel they can make a bigger impact in?
    • They allow leadership to focus on the individual. Exit interviews focus on the company overall, from the leadership team, to benefits offered, to company culture. Stay interviews allow managers to focus on the individual employee. What drives them to be successful in their role? What are their career aspirations within the organization? How can leadership help them to reach (or exceed) their goals by helping them continue to grow their knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs)? What KSAs do they have that are not being fully utilized by the organization?
    • It helps to build trust with leadership. As Richard Finnegan said, most employees choose to leave because of a lack of trust with their leadership. Often this lack of trust stems from a lack of communication between employees and their managers. While many managers have conversations with their employees, those conversations are often limited to passing in the hall, quick catch ups on tasks assigned, and performance counseling. Performance reviews are usually conducted annually and too often focus on past shortfalls in performance and what the manager wants to see in future performance. Many performance review structures don’t allow for employee input in goal setting, which greatly affects employee buy in. By conducting stay interviews, the employee is given the opportunity to discuss what drives them, what their career goals are, what they feel their strengths and weaknesses are, and what areas they’d like to improve on.
    • They can help predict future turnover. Stay interviews can help leadership pinpoint those employees who are happy in the organization and those who are not. By determining which employees are at a higher risk for leaving the organization, leadership creates an opportunity to improve the individual morale of those employees. It may also help leadership to determine if it’s too late to make an impact on an employee’s view of the organization. At which point, leadership may begin to look at succession planning for that position in preparation of a potential resignation.

    What impact would stay interviews have for your organization?

  • 4 Keys to Communication to Create Optimal Candidate Experiences

    4 Keys to Communication to Create Optimal Candidate Experiences

    Candidate experience isn’t just about getting people to apply for your opening positions.  It is also about getting them to continue to or start buying your products and services.  In a recent candidate experience study by IBM,  “candidates who are satisfied with their experience are twice as likely to become a customer of the hiring organization compared to unsatisfied candidates (53 percent vs. 25 percent).”

    So you may not care if an unqualified applicant applies for your openings, but you definitely want everyone to continue or start buying from you.

    With this in mind, communication is the most critical piece of positive candidate experience.  In order to create a positive experience these things need to be present:

    1. Informative Communication. Many applicants find that their application goes into a “black hole” and they never hear anything.  Candidates should be informed if they have been screened out for a job and why.  A rejection may seem like bad communication, but in reality, no communication is much worse.  Make sure you follow-up and inform candidates after every step of the process (application, phone screen, assessment, interviews, etc.) as to whether or not they are still in the applicant pool and why or why not.

    If candidates are screened out, inform them of other openings with your organization that may be a good fit for them, if this is in fact the case.  Definitely don’t do this if you do not have openings that are a fit for them because this is misleading and unauthentic (see #4).

    2. Differentiated Communication. If you’ve done a good job of informing candidates, the next step is to go beyond using the boiler plate emails that your ATS provides. Customize the communication to reflect your culture and brand.

    3. Diverse Communication. One way to differentiate your communication with candidates is to diversify it. Let candidates hear from someone other than the recruiter or hiring manager.  This could come from someone in the job they are applying for, someone who is at the same stage in their career, and/or someone who fits their demographic profile.

    Video is a great way to differentiate and diversify your communication.  Take short clips of people throughout the organization talking about what they do and what they like about their jobs and the organization.  Use these on your careers site but also make use of it in customized emails/newsletters to candidates you are trying to target as well as those who are already in your pipeline.

    4. Authentic Communication.  If you’ve differentiated and diversified your communication, you’re stepping in the right direction of displaying authentic communication.

    Make sure your communication materials do not convey something your organization is not.  No organization is all sunshine and rainbows, so make sure your candidate communication is realistic, honest and authentic.  If you don’t have pool tables in the breakroom along with endless snacks, don’t act like you do because you’ve heard that is the way to attract millennials to a workplace.  If you’re organization’s demographic isn’t diverse as you’d like, don’t hire actors or use stock graphics to populate your careers page.  Actually use people who work in your organization.

    Make sure you know who and what you are as an organization and what you are striving to become.  Tell candidates about this throughout the process.

     

    What do you do to communicate effectively with candidates to build a positive experience for them?