3 Steps to Finding and Bringing in the Best Hourly Employees

 Managers responsible for recruiting hourly workers for the success of their businesses, typically do a good job of bringing candidates to the door and keeping them long enough to recoup their hiring costs. Unfortunately not much is gained after the initial employment honeymoon is over. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), hourly employee turnover rates historically run from 70 to 120% per year in most industries. With these kind of frequently published rates announced through media outlets, it’s obvious why some employers blindly accept that it will always be this way, so deal with it. But what if there was a better way of finding the good employees and keeping them longer than the average time period? What if we could skew the BLS statistics to our favor?

The good news is that we can make a positive change simply by getting back to the basics of looking at the job in the right way, know who we are looking for, and knowing where to look.  Here are those three steps explained that you can begin implementing today to make a positive difference in your hourly employee turnover rate.

Step One: Look at the Job in the Right Way

When we lose hourly employees, our first instinct is to place an advertisement for the position(s) and hope to get the best employee to apply. That kind of logic is akin to throwing a line with a hook on it in the water without any bait hoping that something bites it. Instead of taking the hoping and wishing route, let’s look at the vacant position in a different light.

There are several ways to look at a job, and we all should brainstorm the vacated position from various angles to come up with creative solutions. For now, here are three things to consider:

1. Change the business process. Some jobs can simply be redesigned by altering the business process. Others could be completed eliminated. For example, in some restaurants, there are self-serve beverage stands because it’s cheaper to offer free refills than to hire the extra help needed to provide the drinks. Look at the overall business process and see if the position can be changed so that an employee is not needed.
2. Consider consolidating. Perhaps there is a way to fold the vacant position into another employee’s job description without causing too much of a burden. Maybe the job can be divided among several employees who are willing to be cross-trained and take on more responsibility.
3. Look into automating the job. Just as how grocery stores have self-checkout lines and data processing companies have automated many positions, perhaps you too can find a way to fill the position with artificial intelligence (AI). Many businesses are experiencing great success using AI to perform some tasks more efficiently and effectively than humans. 

Step Two: Know Who You Are Looking For

We all get into the trap of assuming what a job entails and what a job candidate should be able to do to perform well in that position. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. This is why a good job analysis should be performed every year or so to make sure that what is printed in the job description is what is actually required.

The job analysis doesn’t take very long and is well worth the effort. The best way to perform the job analysis is to observe the employee working, get feedback from the employee, the manager or supervisor, other employees, and even customers. Don’t leave any task or skill required out of the analysis. In the process, you want to look for and document the CAPS or Capacities-the physical and mental requirements to do the job; Attitudes-customer service needs, dependability, etc.; Personality-the traits needed such as temperament and assertiveness; and finally, Skills-what is required to perform well on the job.

Next, put together a job description based on your job analysis. Make sure that you include all of the requirements needed, not just because it helps the candidate understand the position, but because it will protect you down the road in case an employee files a complaint against you and the company.

Step Three: Know Where to Look

After you’ve look for alternatives to the job itself and you laid the foundation for knowing what kind of candidate you are looking for, the final step is to know where to look for them. To effectively find the right candidates for the job, you must think like a marketing manager and proactively seek candidates as you proactively seek customers—and to find customers, you first look for where you can find potential customers. Do the same for future employees: market where they congregate like on social sites, where they play, live, eat, entertain, and work. You want look for those folks who have what you’ve established in your job description using CAPS.

If you are a company that depends on hourly employees, your efforts should be focused on a consistent and constant form of marketing for candidates. Studies show that referrals is still the best way to find a good candidate, but after that is advertising. Be very creative with your ads. If you suspect your candidates use social media, place an advertisement on Facebook and use Instagram to generate leads.

Pay to have vehicle wraps or even public buses, with your advertisement on them. Come up with something catchy that appeals to the people you are looking for. A recent Forbes article gave the example of a company that placed an ad on an RV and drove it to camping sites to attract seniors for open positions. Other methods include handing out recruiting cards to everyone you come in contact with, airing silly, short commercials on radio and television, and having an open house at the company, giving away hotdogs and other goodies.

The point is to go to where the qualified candidates are located and saturate their environments with your message of hiring while touting how good it is to work at your business. 

Begin Today

Implement this three-step process today to begin a trend to getting the right employees and keeping them longer. Many employers are already doing pieces and parts of these three steps, but that doesn’t always prove as effective. To increase your rate of return on your hourly employees and to decrease turnover, you have to take all three steps seriously and make the effort needed to see them through to the end. Like most things that require hard work, the reward of your efforts will be seen in the increase in service and production and everything else that has a positive impact on the company’s bottom line.

Biased, (and Even Illegal) Interview Questions You Are Probably Asking in Every Interview

The job interview. One of the best tools in a hiring manager’s toolbox, it’s the time that is set aside for a conversation with a job candidate. For some, it is the time to put the candidate on the hot seat to see how they answer a list of pre-structured questions—sometimes even with a group of interviewers. For others it is a time to get the candidate to relax and chat. In this setting the questions are unrehearsed with the hopes of getting the candidate to let their hair down. Though the motive in the latter scenario is good, unstructured interviews using biased and illegal questions can put the interviewers and the organization in jeopardy.

Remove Biases

But we all do it. We use an unstructured interview to explore almost everything we think we need to know about a job candidate. And usually, once the candidate answers one of our questions, we take some side roads to dive deeper into that particular topic. We go down certain paths in hopes of learning more about the character of the candidate. We ask questions like, “What are some of your hobbies?,” and “Do you enjoy living in the city?” to get to know the candidate. 

Some hiring managers believe they are capable of “reading between the lines” to determine whether someone is suitable to hire. Unfortunately not even seasoned hiring managers are that good all the time. That is why various tools like structured interview questions are helpful in not only making the right hiring decisions, but also keeping interviewers out of trouble. 

Even with the tools that are available, businesses still make wrong hiring decisions. A study conducted by Scott Highhouse of Bowling Green State University concluded that, “People are not very predictable, but selection decision aids help.” Some of these aids available today include software that provides job-specific questions that are both legal and unbiased. These include Spark Hire, Kira Talent and Breezy that can help in most interview situations including:    

• Panel interviews-This format allows different stakeholders to get to know candidates
• Case interviews-Often used to assess how a candidate would manage a particular problem or situation
• Competency-based interviews-These seek to evaluate the skills and abilities candidates have used in the past as a way to predict how they will perform in the future
• Behavioral-based interviews-This style assesses the soft skills and behaviors of a candidate
• Remote interviews-This format became more common during the Covid-19 pandemic. It uses Zoom or other sources to get to know the candidate remotely.
• Lunch interviews-Basically helps the candidate to relax and allows the interviewer to get to know the candidate when they are most likely to be themselves. 

Asking the Right Questions

Although some of the questions you ask in an interview might seem harmless on the surface, they may be setting you up for trouble down the road. To ensure you are getting the best results from your interview, (and avoid litigation), consider the following five steps to interview success:

1. Prepare for the interview-A recent Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) article provides a list of to-dos to prepare for your next interview. This includes making a list of qualifications for the job, review the job description and the candidate’s resume, and plan the interview process and the follow-up.
2. Frame the questions-Use open-ended questions for the best results. These encourage candidates to expand on their answers.
3. Avoid certain questions-Particularly questions relating either directly or indirectly to age, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, genetics or disabilities. 
4. Ask only one question at a time-Listen carefully to the answers and make sure the candidate has finished speaking before going to the next question.
5. Use follow-up questions- Questions such as, “Can you give me an example of…?” “What I hear you saying is…”

Questions to Avoid

The list of questions not to ask continually grows. The best rule of thumb is to plan your questions in advance and run them by a interview committee or group of employees to test them out. Though not an exhaustive list, here are some of the commonly used interview questions you should always avoid: 

• “Where Were You Born?”

While this question seems innocent enough on the surface, it could be used to gather information illegally about national origin. 

• “Are you a U.S. citizen?” 

Employers may ask whether you are authorized to work in the United States but not specifically about citizenship. Your I-9s or E-Verify will handle this too.

• “Are You Married?”

Employers are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of marital status, so this question is not allowed.

• “What Is Your Native Language?”

The problem is that this question could be used to determine national origin. The employer can ask whether you know a particular language only if it is required for the job.

• “Do You Observe Yom Kippur, Christmas, or Whatever?”

You can’t discriminate on the basis of religion, so this question is illegal. However, you  can ask whether the candidate can work on holidays and weekends if it’s a job requirement.

• “Do You Have Children?”

Seems like a friendly question, but it’s covered by a general prohibition about discrimination over parental status.

• “Do You Plan to Get Pregnant?”

This question is illegal because it discriminates on the basis of gender and on the basis of pregnancy.

• “Do You Smoke or Use Alcohol?”

This question opens a can of worms because you can’t discriminate on the basis of the use of a legal product when the employee is not on the premises and not on the job.

• “Are You in the National Guard?”

Since it’s illegal to discriminate against someone because they belong to the National Guard or a reserve unit don’t ask this question.

Question Your Questions

A good job interview is a chance to connect the dots and determine whether a candidate is really qualified for a job. And it’s not just the questions you ask but also how you conduct the interview that increases the odds of a successful hire. Consider your questions carefully, write them out and say them out loud to yourself and then to others prior to the interview. Examine how the questions could be received and consider using a structured interview process to help eliminate biased and illegal questions.

10 Simple Employee Experience Upgrades You Can Implement Today

 Every business wants their employees engaged, but employee engagement becomes elusive if certain barriers are not eradicated and specific practices are not implemented. Eliminating things such as walls impeding communication and removing obstacles that stifle creativity are helpful in opening paths for engagement. In addition, adding best practices such as taking specific steps to enhance the employee experience are just as, and maybe more, crucial. But what exactly is involved with creating a great employee experience and how can it be accomplished? 

Simply put, a good employee experience is basically what employees expect when they come to work: engaging, productive, fulfilling and an overall enjoyable work experience. Many business and HR leaders today are baffled by what creating a good employee experience entails. A recent Deloitte Insights report discovered that almost 80% of executives rated employee experience very important (42%) or important (38%), but only 22% reported that their companies were excellent at creating a differentiated employee experience. This is partly due to confusion about what constitutes a good employee experience.

The employee experience begins at the recruitment stage including screening, any assessments, interviews, and job offering, and continues through the entire employee life cycle. It involves making the work environment conducive to the role of the employee. But developing steps to improve the employee experience is more than upgrading the employee’s physical surroundings, though those are beneficial. It is taking measures to ensure that the employee has a good emotional experience as well.

In today’s ever evolving high-tech world, ideas for creating a good employee experience can be almost limitless. It involves having your finger on the pulse of employee’s desires and customizing the work environment to provide the most productive setting. 

As George Dickson points out in Why Employee Experience Matters to Your Customers, “Your investment in providing an amazing employee experience is a clear and visible indication that you're committed to providing the kind of environment that inspires engagement.” For help with increasing your investment, try these10 simple steps to provide a great employee experience and increase employee engagement:

All Aboard

The development of a program for a great employee experience should be considered from before the employee is hired. One of the most important phases in the lifecycle of an employee is the onboarding phase. A Society of Human Resources article found that on average, companies lose 17% of their new hires during the first three months of employment. 

This is a critical time and should be used wisely to teach the employee about the culture and values of the company. According to a Harvard Business Review piece, Google uses an electronic checklist to remind managers to discuss the roles and responsibilities with new hires. Create a similar list or assign a new hire with a peer buddy to show them the ropes and start off the journey with a good experience.

Think Like A Millennial

According to a Pew Research Center report, Millennials now surpass Generation Xers as the largest generation in the US labor force. This means that workers in the 18-34 age range, or those most digitally savvy, account for the most people working today, (about 76 million). To create a great employee experience, we have to provide the tools and resources that most appeal to this audience. 

A way to create a great employee experience is to offer opportunities to see what career possibilities exist. A Gallup Workplace Panel study found that 51% of employees were looking for a new job. The cause for this is thought to be that many Millennials are searching for ways to improve their careers. To curb the trend of job hopping, one new initiative, The Future Workplace Forecast, found that employers can improve the employee experience by allowing employees to use career mobility platforms digitally to test drive new positions and experience new roles and skills. The study discovered that 15% of those surveyed use mobile apps for delivering career mobility. 

Show A Purpose

Employees don’t want to just show and up and perform a task without knowing why they are there in the first place. They want to know how the dots connect. That is why the simple step of sharing the business purpose is so profound.

The Future Workplace Forecast also found that, “Aligning employees around a common purpose at work surpasses even workplace flexibility and mentoring and coaching as the most important attribute for creating a compelling workplace experience.”  Keep your employees informed and in tune with the direction of the organization.

Invest in Overall Employee Wellness

Many organizations are instituting wellness programs, providing Fitbits to keep track of number of steps walked and offering incentives for engagement in health initiatives. These programs help to keep employees healthy as well as lower healthcare costs for the company.

But the financial health of the employee should also be a concern. An article in Forbes magazine discusses a recent survey conducted by SunTrust Bank that found that 70% of working adults felt a moderate to high level of financial stress in their lives. To counter this trend, SunTrust started an online financial fitness program to help employees save $2,000 in an emergency fund and to also take one paid day off to set up a will, construct a family budget, or going through the online Financial Fitness program offered free to all SunTrust employees.

Solicit Employee Feedback

If we don’t know how to create a great employee experience it is likely due to the fact that we are not assessing the very people who can help us develop a useful and successful program. 

A recent Deloitte Insights study found that 22% of companies survey employees quarterly or more often, 79% survey employees annually or less, and 14% never survey employees at all. Thankfully, there are several apps in the market today that can assist with soliciting and organizing employee feedback. 

Applications such as 15five that allows employees to take 15 minutes to answer a survey from their managers, and managers only need five minutes to review, and Cultureamp that provides tools to run performance reviews and pulse and culture surveys, and managers can review data based on the lifecycle stage of their employees, are just a couple of the many apps available that wise business leaders can use today.

Listen to Employees

Although artificial intelligence, apps, and digital devices are helpful in creating a great employee experience, it is always important to actually listen to your employees and process the feedback. Not only will you receive great ideas for improving the business, but by listening, you enhance the employee experience. 

In a Society for Human Resources article titled Attention to Retention: Keeping Your Best Employees, Sarah J. Meusburger suggests, “Seek input from employees on ways to drive efficiency while maintaining or boosting the quality of the product or service that the company sells… If employees feel that they are being listened to, they are more likely to share ideas and may suggest something that improves a significant aspect of your business.”

Improving the employee experience requires that leaders not only put tools in place for acquiring feedback and ideas from employees, but also showing employees that they are heard and appreciated.

Make Collaboration Easier

Most employees are not fond of working in a silo. They want the interaction with their peers and to be a part of something larger than themselves. Taking steps to make collaboration part of the organization’s culture can improve both company loyalty and the outcome of projects.

Providing access to tools such as company social media sites and cloud-based collaboration tools makes team work easier. Face-to-face teamwork is ideal, but the use of tools such as Flowdock, a group and private chat platform and Slack, a platform offering instant messaging, file transfers and powerful message search, are just two useful collaboration tools available for use.

Provide Opportunities for Growth

Providing opportunities for growth for employees isn’t just about pointing them to the next promotion opening. It is also about providing avenues for them to stretch their mental capabilities. According to Neuroscience News, employees get excited about learning.

Give employees resources that will help them to learn and grow. Partner with a local university that offers classes, provide team training sessions, start a company library, and pay for online classes are just a few ideas you can begin implementing today to improve the employee experience.

Think Customer Experience

To be successful, businesses look at providing the best customer experience possible. Research has shown that in order to provide the best customer experience, employees need to experience what it is like to be a customer. Last year the Tempkin Group reported that companies who deliver outstanding customer experiences have one-and-a-half times more engaged employees than those ranking at the lower end of the scale.

In other words, learning who your employees are. This starts with empathizing with and understanding all employee’s needs, desires and expectations. This is possible through the use of touchpoints throughout the employee’s lifecycle using smartphones, apps, like those offered by Salesforce, and other digital devices. 

Give Specific Rewards

I was brought into a company as a consultant to get rid of what the owner described as a “union mentality.” As I interviewed various top executives I discovered that one of their main concerns was the shilly-shally way in which the owner rewarded the company’s workers. The owner believed that a yearly cruise was enough to satisfy his employees.

Unfortunately, the employees didn’t see it that way. Though they enjoyed the cruise, there was no individual recognition given to employees. There was no announcement made, no pat on the back, no high-five for the many successes each employee played a role in.  

To create a great employee experience, give due recognition and call out the person by name. Make them a star for a day or more. Show respect and appreciation for a job well done.

The Need for a Great Employee Experience 

From recruitment to termination of employment, job candidates today are assessing future employers and making quick judgments about what life will be like for them in the organization, and how employment with a specific organization will impact their daily lives financially, professionally, and emotionally. 

Creating a great employee experience isn’t just about the layout of the work environment, health care benefits, and the employer’s contribution to a 401K, though those are important. But it is more about discovering what is needed to provide the most fulfilling experience emotionally for the employee. It is caring as much about the employee as we do about the customer, even more.

In a Harvard Business Review article, Denise Lee Yohn states, “If a company attends to its employee experience with the same level of discipline and intention that it does to its customer experience, the results can be seen across the board.” In other words, the most vital contribution as a business leader is to design, build, and maintain the right employee experience so that it encourages and produces the very best in your team throughout the organization.

5 Ways Management Styles Impact Employee Engagement

 It’s been said that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. In fact, according to a Gallup study found in Gallup’s 2017 “State of the American Workplace” report, 51% of currently employed adults in the US say they are searching for new jobs or watching for new job opportunities. Some of the ship-jumping is due to a particular management style. That doesn’t mean that a particular management style will be detrimental to your workforce, but that some management styles may not be conducive to a specific workforce. The ultimate goal we should all strive for is to adopt a management style that improves and increases employee engagement. 

Another Gallop study found that 70% of employees in America are disengaged costing the US over $550 billion a year in lost productivity. To keep employees engaged requires looking at the workforce and work processes from various angles to determine what could be improved, changed, or simply eliminated to increase engagement. Many areas such as empowerment, work environment, reward processes, and others should be analyzed regularly. But one area of concern that can be dealt with immediately and that will provide instant results is that of management style.

The Styles

There is a time and place for all management styles. No style is good or bad, but it is how and when leaders use them that determines success or failure. Understanding your style of management and how it impacts employee engagement is crucial to the success of your company. What follows are five management styles typically associated with almost every type of business. Depending on where you research, most of these styles can be found to some degree in every organization—and some have different headings, but most styles fall under these categories.

1. Autocratic Management Style

The Autocratic Management style is a traditional style that has been around for a very long time. This is the style that allows the manager to have a “Because I told you so” mentality. In some situations, (think military or firefighting situations), that demand error-free outcomes, this style may be applicable, but is not the best style to be used on a full-time basis. The Autocratic manager doesn’t solicit input from others, believes rules are extremely important, and dictates all methods and processes. 

An example of an Autocratic style is Sam Walton when he was building his Walmart empire or Football legend, Vince Lombardi when he coached the Green Bay Packers. This style was needed to for streamlining processes and growing a customer base. The Autocratic style has proven useful in factory settings or jobs requiring few skills, but is being phased out as managers realize that to create future leaders within the organization, a new approach should be adopted. When the Autocratic style is used in small does as in heavy industry or emergency room situations, it is useful, but it should only be added as cumin is added to dishes when cooking—too much will ruin the outcome. A full-time Autocratic style is not conducive to increasing employee engagement. Use it only as needed.

2.) Coaching Management Style

With the Coaching Management style, the manager helps team members develop their strengths to improve performance. It is a style that motivates employees by providing tools and resources for growth. This is a favored management style for improving employee engagement. The Coaching manager says, “Let me show you how it’s done.” Examples include Tony Hsieh’s style of guiding his customer service team at Zappos or as how philanthropist Andrew Carnegie  coached Charles Schwab who would become the first president of US Steel.

To build Coaching Management style muscles, you must first build a relationship with your team members. According to a Harvard Business Review article, you must, “Understand that before you start coaching, you need to develop a culture of trust and a solid relationship with the people you will be coaching. In spite of your good intentions, all the techniques in the world will make little difference if those you are trying to coach don’t feel connected to you in some way.” 

3.) Affiliative Management Style

First coined by Daniel Goleman in 2002 as one of his six leadership styles, the Affiliative style manager strives to create harmony, not just between employees and manager, but between employees. This style of management puts people first and tasks second. It is very useful in creating a more harmonious work environment and therefore opens pathways to a more engaged workforce. 

Obviously less stressful than the Autocratic Management style, the Affiliative style has its downside when performance falters or a project deadline isn’t met. It’s hard to keep the friendly, people-first attitude without accountability when profits are down. This style is good to adopt and one way to increase it’s effectiveness is to strive to know your team members to build a relationship that caters to their needs while still getting the work done. Former manager Joe Torre of the New York Yankees displayed a Affiliative style recognizing the various contributions of individual players, and then expressing his gratitude for the talent regardless of the score in the game.

4.) Participative Management Style

The Participative Management style encourages the involvement of employees in analyzing problems and strategizing for solutions. Because it creates a sense of ownership in the company, instills a sense of pride and motivates employees to increase productivity in order to achieve their goals, employees become more engaged in their work. Employees feel like they are a part of a team with a common goal, and this builds their self-esteem and generates pride and loyalty.

If you want to create an atomic reaction in your employee engagement, embrace the Participative Management style. To do this, you must be secure in your position and be willing to relinquish some control to your employees. This is not as easy as it sounds, especially if you’ve held most responsibilities close to your chest for a long time, but with an open mind and trust in your team members, it is worth letting go.

When Steve Jobs was fired from his job as leader of Apple, he was using an Autocratic style of leadership. When Jobs was brought back in the mid-1990s, he had adopted a more Participative style, hiring experienced leaders and giving them room to shine. With this style, Apple soared to even greater heights than before as employees were empowered to make decisions. 

5.) Pacesetting Management Style

The last style, as listed in Daniel Goleman’s book, Primal Leadership, is Pacesetting Management style. This is when the manager sets the pace for others to follow. Employees get motivated to keep up with the manager increasing performance and output to please the manager. As Goleman writes, “The [pacesetting] leader holds and exemplifies the highest standard of performance. He is obsessive about doing things better and faster and asks the same of everyone. He quickly pinpoints poor performers, demands more from them, and if they don’t rise to the occasion, rescues the situation himself.”

This style serves as a great motivator, except for the ones who fall behind and is short-lived in serving as a style to increase employee engagement. The long term effect leaves employees exhausted and feeling as if they’ve been pushed too hard. It is useful in spurts and is dependent on the culture of the organization and the products or service they provide. Use cautiously and when conditions are right for an all-out sprint. 

With the Pacesetting style, Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric comes to mind. Welch vowed to lead by example and encouraged his executives to do the same. Welch, nicknamed “Neutron Jack,” managed by what he coined the four E's of leadership: energy, energize, edge, and execution. Employees followed his pace and GE excelled to greater heights under his leadership. 

Hone Your Style

Obviously, the manager relationship is highly correlated with employee engagement. A good marker for the strength of the relationship is how comfortable an employee is approaching their manager with any type of question. One example of this is the subject of goal setting. A Gallup survey uncovered that when employees were asked to rate their feelings on the statement, “My manager helps me set performance goals,” 69% of employees who replied “strongly agree” were considered engaged in their work, compared to 8% who responded “disagree” or “strongly disagree.”

The best managers seem to adopt a few attributes of almost every style listed above to use in various situations. But management styles don’t just happen. Managers are made, not born so consistent quality training is required to hone a great management style. According to a Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) article, “Developing and Sustaining Employee Engagement,” middle managers need to be trained for their roles, empowered by being given larger responsibilities, and more involved in strategic decisions. The article states that if an organization's executives and HR professionals want to hold managers accountable for the engagement levels, they should:

• Make sure that managers and employees have the tools to do their jobs correctly.
• Periodically assign managers larger, more exciting roles.
• Give managers appropriate authority.
• Accelerate leadership development efforts.
• Ask managers to convey the corporate mission and vision and to help transform the organization.

The Goal is Engagement

Learning what styles are most effective for engaging your workforce is crucial to your organization’s success. In a recent Forbes article, former Navy SEAL, Brent Gleeson writes that great managers ensure they acquire and develop great talent by getting the right people on the bus and making sure they are in the right seats. They actively prioritize engagement. Their team’s activities align perfectly behind the mission narrative of the organization.

The management style you use is dependent on the circumstances you and your team may be encountering at that precise moment. Is there a need to be more autocratic because a crisis is at hand? Is it time to set the pace or is this a situation where coaching is more appropriate? Often managers must take on the role of a chameleon and change colors as the environment changes. But the ultimate goal of any style is to aim for 100% employee engagement.

Understanding Your Team Members

Most businesses have tools, equipment, materials, and processing that serve to move the business forward toward success. A lot of these businesses also claim that their greatest resource is their employees, but that claim doesn't always show through. The people in the organization are often replaced with someone new when their performance falters. Just like a piece of equipment, business leaders simply throw out a person that isn't performing up to snuff and believe that replacing them with another, newer model, might solve the issue.

If You Don't Work, You Don't Eat
I am not trying to say that you should hold onto an employee who isn't performing after every effort has been made to train them and find out why their knowledge, skills, and talents are not serving them in their current position. By all means, send them down the road if they are not doing their job. Florida is an at-will state meaning you can fire an employee based on hair color, (please don't do that though--always document an employee's lack of performance and keep an accurate record before you terminate their employment), and stand firm in the stance that if your employees don't work, they don't eat. That means that if they don't work out, do them and yourself a favor and fire them.

But if you've conducted due diligence and vetted your employees, you should already know that you want to try to salvage them whenever possible. If an employee isn't performing up to snuff, take the time to assess why performance may be dwindling. Stay in constant communication with your team members and find out all you can about them--why they are working at your business, what their dreams are, what their family is like, what really gets their creative juices flowing at work--all important factors to understand so you can provide the kind of training and counseling they may need to improve performance.

It's Cheaper to Keep Them
Since business leaders look at the bottom line, understand the costs involved with replacing an employee. The current stats show that it will cost you on average six to nine months salary to replace an employee. So if you have an employee making $40,000 per year, it will cost you $20,000 to $30,000 in recruiting and training expenses. That's pretty expensive! If you're curious, it's not that difficult to figure it out. Based on your attracting, interviewing, screening, hiring, training, and orientation costs, you can rack up a pretty hefty sum. If you want to play with the numbers, use this calculator to determine your costs for replacing an employee.

Begin Today
Beginning this week, make an effort to spend extra time with each employee and find out what makes them tick. You can do this without violating any employment laws simply by taking them for coffee and talking with them. And by the way, this little exercise of being human and paying attention to your team members has an added benefit: the employees begin to notice you are paying closer attention to them and you will gradually notice employee engagement increase.

3 Reasons Why Employee Handbooks Suck

Employee handbooks are often seen as the be-all, do-all, save-all for small businesses. There are so many misconceptions about employee handbooks that it is no wonder more businesses and the people that run them aren't in trouble with the KGB..

I was working to revise a client's employee handbook when it dawned on me that employee handbooks should be eliminated because they become a scape goat for both employers and employees and end up being used wrongly.

That is why I believe that these handbooks suck. Here are three of those reasons:

1.) Employee handbooks suck because they require a lot of time and effort and nobody reads them. They are mainly created to appease attorneys if and when something goes to court. If a company hands out handbooks to employees, they typically end up in the trash. Oh, we have the employees sign an Acknowledgement Form, but they almost never read any of the handbook.

2.) Employee handbooks suck because employers try to cram all they can into them thinking that the handbook will save them if an employee tries to sue the employer. The handbook eventually becomes 10 inches thick, ensuring that no employee will ever read it.

3.) Employee handbooks suck because most employers write them to read as, "Thou shout do this and don't do that or get fired," instead of explaining to employees how the company got started, what the path is to success in the company, and what to watch out for in order to protect them and the business.

10 Simple Employee Experience Upgrades You Can Implement Today

Every business wants their employees engaged, but employee engagement becomes elusive if certain barriers are not eradicated and specific practices are not implemented. Eliminating things such as walls impeding communication and removing obstacles that stifle creativity are helpful in opening paths for engagement. In addition, adding best practices such as taking specific steps to enhance the employee experience are just as, and maybe more, crucial. But what exactly is involved with creating a great employee experience and how can it be accomplished? 

Simply put, a good employee experience is basically what employees expect when they come to work: engaging, productive, fulfilling and an overall enjoyable work experience. Many business and HR leaders today are baffled by what creating a good employee experience entails. A recent Deloitte Insights report discovered that almost 80% of executives rated employee experience very important (42%) or important (38%), but only 22% reported that their companies were excellent at creating a differentiated employee experience. This is partly due to confusion about what constitutes a good employee experience.

The employee experience begins at the recruitment stage including screening, any assessments, interviews, and job offering, and continues through the entire employee life cycle. It involves making the work environment conducive to the role of the employee. But developing steps to improve the employee experience is more than upgrading the employee’s physical surroundings, though those are beneficial. It is taking measures to ensure that the employee has a good emotional experience as well.

In today’s ever evolving high-tech world, ideas for creating a good employee experience can be almost limitless. It involves having your finger on the pulse of employee’s desires and customizing the work environment to provide the most productive setting. 

As George Dickson points out in Why Employee Experience Matters to Your Customers, “Your investment in providing an amazing employee experience is a clear and visible indication that you're committed to providing the kind of environment that inspires engagement.” For help with increasing your investment, try these10 simple steps to provide a great employee experience and increase employee engagement:

All Aboard

The development of a program for a great employee experience should be considered from before the employee is hired. One of the most important phases in the lifecycle of an employee is the onboarding phase. A Society of Human Resources article found that on average, companies lose 17% of their new hires during the first three months of employment. 

This is a critical time and should be used wisely to teach the employee about the culture and values of the company. According to a Harvard Business Review piece, Google uses an electronic checklist to remind managers to discuss the roles and responsibilities with new hires. Create a similar list or assign a new hire with a peer buddy to show them the ropes and start off the journey with a good experience.

Think Like A Millennial

According to a Pew Research Center report, Millennials now surpass Generation Xers as the largest generation in the US labor force. This means that workers in the 18-34 age range, or those most digitally savvy, account for the most people working today, (about 76 million). To create a great employee experience, we have to provide the tools and resources that most appeal to this audience. 

A way to create a great employee experience is to offer opportunities to see what career possibilities exist. A Gallup Workplace Panel study found that 51% of employees were looking for a new job. The cause for this is thought to be that many Millennials are searching for ways to improve their careers. To curb the trend of job hopping, one new initiative, The Future Workplace Forecast, found that employers can improve the employee experience by allowing employees to use career mobility platforms digitally to test drive new positions and experience new roles and skills. The study discovered that 15% of those surveyed use mobile apps for delivering career mobility. 

Show A Purpose

Employees don’t want to just show and up and perform a task without knowing why they are there in the first place. They want to know how the dots connect. That is why the simple step of sharing the business purpose is so profound.

The Future Workplace Forecast also found that, “Aligning employees around a common purpose at work surpasses even workplace flexibility and mentoring and coaching as the most important attribute for creating a compelling workplace experience.”  Keep your employees informed and in tune with the direction of the organization.

Invest in Overall Employee Wellness

Many organizations are instituting wellness programs, providing Fitbits to keep track of number of steps walked and offering incentives for engagement in health initiatives. These programs help to keep employees healthy as well as lower healthcare costs for the company.

But the financial health of the employee should also be a concern. An article in Forbes magazine discusses a recent survey conducted by SunTrust Bank that found that 70% of working adults felt a moderate to high level of financial stress in their lives. To counter this trend, SunTrust started an online financial fitness program to help employees save $2,000 in an emergency fund and to also take one paid day off to set up a will, construct a family budget, or going through the online Financial Fitness program offered free to all SunTrust employees.

Solicit Employee Feedback

If we don’t know how to create a great employee experience it is likely due to the fact that we are not assessing the very people who can help us develop a useful and successful program. 

A recent Deloitte Insights study found that 22% of companies survey employees quarterly or more often, 79% survey employees annually or less, and 14% never survey employees at all. Thankfully, there are several apps in the market today that can assist with soliciting and organizing employee feedback. 

Applications such as 15five that allows employees to take 15 minutes to answer a survey from their managers, and managers only need five minutes to review, and Cultureamp that provides tools to run performance reviews and pulse and culture surveys, and managers can review data based on the lifecycle stage of their employees, are just a couple of the many apps available that wise business leaders can use today.

Listen to Employees

Although artificial intelligence, apps, and digital devices are helpful in creating a great employee experience, it is always important to actually listen to your employees and process the feedback. Not only will you receive great ideas for improving the business, but by listening, you enhance the employee experience. 

In a Society for Human Resources article titled Attention to Retention: Keeping Your Best Employees, Sarah J. Meusburger suggests, “Seek input from employees on ways to drive efficiency while maintaining or boosting the quality of the product or service that the company sells… If employees feel that they are being listened to, they are more likely to share ideas and may suggest something that improves a significant aspect of your business.”

Improving the employee experience requires that leaders not only put tools in place for acquiring feedback and ideas from employees, but also showing employees that they are heard and appreciated.

Make Collaboration Easier

Most employees are not fond of working in a silo. They want the interaction with their peers and to be a part of something larger than themselves. Taking steps to make collaboration part of the organization’s culture can improve both company loyalty and the outcome of projects.

Providing access to tools such as company social media sites and cloud-based collaboration tools makes team work easier. Face-to-face teamwork is ideal, but the use of tools such as Flowdock, a group and private chat platform and Slack, a platform offering instant messaging, file transfers and powerful message search, are just two useful collaboration tools available for use.

Provide Opportunities for Growth

Providing opportunities for growth for employees isn’t just about pointing them to the next promotion opening. It is also about providing avenues for them to stretch their mental capabilities. According to Neuroscience News, employees get excited about learning.

Give employees resources that will help them to learn and grow. Partner with a local university that offers classes, provide team training sessions, start a company library, and pay for online classes are just a few ideas you can begin implementing today to improve the employee experience.

Think Customer Experience

To be successful, businesses look at providing the best customer experience possible. Research has shown that in order to provide the best customer experience, employees need to experience what it is like to be a customer. Last year the Tempkin Group reported that companies who deliver outstanding customer experiences have one-and-a-half times more engaged employees than those ranking at the lower end of the scale.

In other words, learning who your employees are. This starts with empathizing with and understanding all employee’s needs, desires and expectations. This is possible through the use of touchpoints throughout the employee’s lifecycle using smartphones, apps, like those offered by Salesforce, and other digital devices. 

Give Specific Rewards

I was brought into a company as a consultant to get rid of what the owner described as a “union mentality.” As I interviewed various top executives I discovered that one of their main concerns was the shilly-shally way in which the owner rewarded the company’s workers. The owner believed that a yearly cruise was enough to satisfy his employees.

Unfortunately, the employees didn’t see it that way. Though they enjoyed the cruise, there was no individual recognition given to employees. There was no announcement made, no pat on the back, no high-five for the many successes each employee played a role in.  

To create a great employee experience, give due recognition and call out the person by name. Make them a star for a day or more. Show respect and appreciation for a job well done.

The Need for a Great Employee Experience 

From recruitment to termination of employment, job candidates today are assessing future employers and making quick judgments about what life will be like for them in the organization, and how employment with a specific organization will impact their daily lives financially, professionally, and emotionally. 

Creating a great employee experience isn’t just about the layout of the work environment, health care benefits, and the employer’s contribution to a 401K, though those are important. But it is more about discovering what is needed to provide the most fulfilling experience emotionally for the employee. It is caring as much about the employee as we do about the customer, even more.

In a Harvard Business Review article, Denise Lee Yohn states, “If a company attends to its employee experience with the same level of discipline and intention that it does to its customer experience, the results can be seen across the board.” In other words, the most vital contribution as a business leader is to design, build, and maintain the right employee experience so that it encourages and produces the very best in your team throughout the organization.