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As an HR professional, part of your role is to help maintain healthy relationships between employees and the company and ensure a productive and positive work environment. Poor employee relations can lead to a decline in productivity, low employee morale, and ultimately impact the company’s bottom line Drawing on my 10+ years of experience, I’ll discuss various ways in which HR professionals can improve employee relations and foster a positive work environment. By implementing the strategies outlined in this article, you’ll build a strong bond between the organization and employees, leading to a more engaged and productive workforce. We’ll cover:
Let’s dive in. What is employee relations?Employee relations means balancing the wants and needs of the employer with those of the employees, both collectively as well as individually. A good human resources department will foster a positive employee experience while protecting the company by maintaining compliance. While it sounds simple, the reality is much more nuanced, even for seasoned professionals! The secret to good employee relationsThrough the years, I’ve learned that the secret to good employee relations is systems and processes. Maintaining good employee relations is much easier, and team members are generally happier, when companies have systems in place to ensure that employees and leaders are engaged in regular feedback and communication, development opportunities, recognition, and wellness. And on that note… How to improve employee relations1. Better equip managers to be the front-line employee relations contactManagers are crucial in maintaining good employee relations as they’re the immediate point of contact for most employee issues. In my experience, being the front-line employee relations contact doesn’t come naturally to most managers but, fortunately, I have found it can be quickly learned. I developed a leader toolkit that I shared as part of a larger “new leader training” in my last role, and I am working on a similar initiative currently. Here’s what’s included: Time Management and Delegation. Our managers are often pulled in many different directions so time management and delegation are key to managing their workload effectively so that they have time to manage their teams. Time management tools can help prioritize tasks, and platforms like Asana and Trello are great for project management and collaboration. Delegation is key to managing their time and is another aspect of management that often is a learned skill. I encourage managers to identify tasks that can be delegated to others on the team and to set clear expectations for their completion. Giving Feedback. Managers can encourage regular employee feedback by scheduling regular individual check-ins with their direct reports. I remind managers to make sure to provide both positive and constructive feedback to their team members. This can help to improve employee engagement and morale on the team level by giving employees the opportunity to feel heard. Conflict Resolution. I developed a clear and simple process to handle conflicts between people managers and their employees. This process is easily understood by all employees and fits the culture of our organization. The process begins with an “open-door” policy where employees are encouraged to approach management with concerns. A conversation is conducted where both sides are given their turn to speak, during which they understand they will not be interrupted by the other. Both sides agree to listen fully, and not prepare their rebuttal. After both sides have the opportunity to speak, together they decide how the path forward should look. Everyone understands that HR or a second-level leader is brought in only after this process has been completed in good faith. Legal Compliance: Finally, I offer an overview of the legal responsibilities that come with being a manager. I familiarize new managers with HR policies, labor laws, and discrimination and harassment prevention training. Most importantly, I remind managers that HR is here to support them and they do not have to navigate this alone. Ideally, every new manager should receive the exact training they need prior to being promoted to a people manager role. Unfortunately, though, that’s often not the case. As HR, we can provide coaching and training to managers at all levels to help them handle difficult situations. 2. Build rapport with employees as HR and become a trusted partnerTo be effective, HR must be a trusted business partner for employees at all levels in the organization. I did this by being clear and consistent in my guidance, always maintaining professional standards, and treating employees equitably. When I started a new role last year, I needed to earn the trust of several key leaders who were hesitant to partner with me. While it was sometimes frustrating, and I felt as though I was having to prove my value to them over and over, I eventually built rapport and earned their trust. In communicating with those key leaders, I had to take the initiative to schedule time to meet with them, instead of waiting for them to come to me. I was then able to set the agenda, and I came to those initial meetings asking about their department goals and pain points. This allowed me to demonstrate my value by helping them in specific, relevant ways. Gaining business acumen is key to being able to coach and advise managers and employees knowledgeably. You can gain industry knowledge by joining an industry professional networking group and subscribing to industry newsletters. I also recommend you familiarize yourself with your organization’s business model and review your financial statements to gain an understanding of your org’s financial position. Also, become familiar with the teams you support and learn their dynamics, this provides you with valuable perspective when issues arise. It also brings visibility of HR to employees and helps them understand the function HR plays in the organization, since HR’s function is often misunderstood by employees. You can do this by meeting with teams and employees to learn about their roles. Ask managers to include you in a team meeting so you can be introduced to the team and provide an overview of your role, and schedule “office hours” in a department, either virtually or in person, where you are available to that team exclusively. 3. Clear and continuous communicationI have found inconsistent communication to be the root of many employee relations issues. Encourage open communication between all levels of leadership and employees, not just front-line managers and their direct reports. As I mentioned above, an “open-door” policy can help facilitate this, but it is the first step in building a culture of open communication. Information should be shared on multiple channels like email, instant messaging apps like Slack, message boards, and town hall meetings, to ensure it reaches all employees. HR can provide training to managers and employees on effective communication skills to ensure that they are able to convey their message clearly and effectively. 4. Regular Performance ReviewsConducting regular employee performance reviews can help identify areas for improvement and recognize achievements. Use tools like Workday or BambooHR to formalize and streamline the process, if you don’t already have a platform as part of your HRIS suite. An effective performance review cycle is one where employees know what to expect and there are no surprises at the end of the year. Expectations, goals, and performance measures are made available to employees, and managers ensure that these are fully understood. Managers and employees should meet regularly throughout the year to review progress on key performance measures. The cadence of these meetings should be at least quarterly, and can be more frequent if needed. These recurring meetings are essential to a successful and effective performance review process. The year-end performance review should then be a summary of all previous reviews throughout the year. 5. Develop an employee recognition programEmployee recognition program facilitates acknowledgment and appreciation of the efforts of employees that contribute to the organization’s purpose, mission, and values. A form recognition program can not only help to improve employee morale and motivation, it also allows for data to review the effectiveness of the program. A good employee recognition program allows employees to be recognized in a way they appreciate, with incentives that motivate them. Your organization may have a platform for employee recognition. If it does, review usage and analyze trends to determine utilization. If utilization is lacking, promote the platform and reasons to use it. Provide examples of the behaviors that you want to see recognized, and highlight incentive options available. As always, behaviors start from the top down so senior managers must lead the way! 6. Ensure employee well-beingNo one appreciates being worked into the dust and stress and burnout are real issues in the modern workplace. A good way to promote work-life balance is by providing flexible work arrangements, such as remote work, flexible hours, or job sharing. This can help to reduce employee stress and improve people’s overall well-being. Your company likely already offers an employee assistance program (EAP) to provide support to employees who may be dealing with personal or work-related issues. If so, promote the EAP to managers and employees by highlighting some of the resources available. Employee Assistance Programs are underutilized and employees often don’t realize what is available to them through an EAP. 7. Approach difficult situations with empathyShowing empathy at work requires HR to be approachable, understanding, and willing to provide support to employees when they need it most. One of the most important ways HR can show empathy is by actively listening to employees. This means listening to them without judgement and offering support or resources to help them address their problem or concern. You can validate the person’s feelings and emotions without necessarily condoning their behavior. Building Strong Employee Relations: Key Strategies for HR ProfessionalsOverall, I have found HR plays a pivotal role in the success of any organization, and HR professionals need to make sure that they are taking appropriate measures to ensure that the relationship between employees and the company is healthy and productive. The seven strategies discussed in this article—equipping managers to be the front-line employee relations contact, building rapport with employees, clear and continuous communication, performance reviews, recognition, promoting wellness, and empathy—can go a long way in fostering a positive work environment. By implementing these strategies, HR professionals can help to build strong relationships between employees and the company, leading to a more engaged and productive workforce. With the right systems and processes in place, you can help your organization maintain healthy employee relations and create a culture that supports and empowers employees, ultimately leading to a more successful and sustainable organization. Join the conversationSubscribe to the People Managing People newsletter and receive regular content to help you progress in your career and build healthy, productive organizations. You can also join our supportive community of HR professionals and business leaders sharing knowledge and best practices to build organizations of the future. The post 7 Ways To Improve Employee Relations In Your Organization appeared first on People Managing People. via People Managing People https://ift.tt/SrRU5jH
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Creating a great candidate experience is crucial if you want to increase your chances of hiring the right people for your roles. While the hiring process is an exciting time within an organisation, it’s not without its challenges and there is a chance for poor candidate experience to creep in. Tasked with bringing in new recruits quickly, most will start talking about automation and mass-scale candidate marketing. However, you may notice your candidate feedback scores, either in your surveys or Glassdoor, dropping as a result. Why? Because there is the misconception that good candidate experience and hiring fast at scale are mutually exclusive. But that’s not true! During my time at a FAANG, I doubled the EMEA headcount whilst simultaneously doubling our candidate feedback score. This article will explain how my team and I achieved that. But, first up, a quick definition. What Is The Candidate Experience And Why Is It Important?The candidate experience is the experience that candidates have when going through your application process. It’s impacted by factors such as communication, length, difficulty, the quality of interviews, and overall efficiency of the hiring. Working to create a positive candidate experience is important because it will help you close more hires and improve your overall employer brand, and can even impact your employee engagement and retention. It makes sense that your employees will pay attention to how you are treating candidates—some of those may be their own referrals! This brings us to… How To Create A Great Candidate ExperienceHere are my strategies for balancing scaling with candidate experience so that you don’t develop the reputation that your company treats candidates like numbers in a Lotto drawing machine. When looking at the below, it’s important to think about all the touchpoints you will have and how to use those best to further your company’s candidate relationships. Talent PlanningIt seems basic and perhaps less directly related, but starting off with a good talent plan either at the start of the quarter, year, or even after a funding round is vital. Meet all your business leaders and make sure that you schedule a time to talk about the health of their team and how the business aims will impact what resources will be needed. In my meetings I always touch upon the following points:
This should mean that, when you’re ready to post a role, you will avoid wasting candidates’ time by engaging them and then freezing the role out of nowhere, or having to keep reworking what the role is throughout the process. Wasting time is one of the main causes of bad candidate experience, closely followed by frustrating interview processes. Working BackwardsIf any of you have worked for an Amazon company you might be tired of hearing this, so here is a rework: “What would it take to get us there?”. You should have a rough idea of numbers such as closing rates e.g. for your business it may be 4 acceptances for every 5 offers. If you have the exact number for your business then you start working backward—a pyramid instead of a funnel. This gives a rough idea of the scope of work. Then you can start applying it to your favourite project management tool—Kanban for overview or Gantt if you have a shorter-term hiring blitz, for example. Below is an example of Kanban board of mine with at least rough numbers to aim for. The next step is super important—share the project map with the hiring manager and the hiring team! Make this a collaborative endeavour and invite them to participate. That way you can help them have more ownership. Everyone needs to know what’s coming up in the calendar and, if scaling is what the business needs, then everyone needs to absolutely prioritise hiring and that means knowing how much time commitment they will need to give to the recruiting process. No matter how streamlined, hiring is a time-intensive process! Related read: How To Create An Efficient, Sustainable Growth Hiring Plan Efficient InterviewingWhen I say efficient, don’t think immediately that the interview process has to be rushed—not at all! But, if you’re scaling rapidly, you may have to fit in a lot of interviews so making the best out of the time you have is crucial. Here’s a simple guide on what you need to take a look at to ensure that your candidates have a positive experience. Step 1 – Standardise the interview process. This will help you to be able to quickly compare candidates with each other and minimise the appearance of some biases. Step 2 – Review the interview questions you ask and when you ask them. Start with the questions that will give you insights into the skills that you have deemed essential for this role, then work towards the more desirable skills. That way you are moving from qualified candidates to the best candidates. Make sure they are well-designed questions that aim to get to the bottom of the experience. If in doubt always ask What, How, and Why. Tell me about a time when you closed a particularly tough client? What was tough about them? How did you turn the situation around? Why did you use this particular way/information/strategy vs another? Step 3 – Review the assessment Make sure that any assessment is fit for purpose and for the role you have. It needs to strive the balance between being challenging but also not too time intensive for the candidate to complete or for you to review. Related read: The Key To Focused, Engaging Interviews (+ Template) Don’t forget the basicsWith all of this talk of efficient interviewing, don’t forget that, when it comes to candidate experience, interviewing is where it can really make it or break it. This is where candidates spend the most time with you and, even if you haven’t had the time to create a super snazzy careers page with interactivity everywhere, creating a lovely interviewing experience can make up for it. That’s not to say that the interview should be easy! A lot of candidates actually prefer interviews that challenge them and make them think on their area of expertise, so the above advice for efficient interviewing still stands. However, what I want to draw your attention to are the basics that when you get right probably won’t get rapturous praise, but, if you get it wrong, you will get the deserved criticism. Always make sure to:
Seem basic but I still see situations where people forget any number of these things and it always shows. The above cost nothing to do but can earn you lots of candidate experience points in a sea of employers who are skipping the above but trying to compensate with flashy careers sites. Set Up Some AutomationsPlease note the use of the word “some“! The usual formula is that the more time a job seeker has spent on interviewing with the recruiter, the more you need to spend on giving them feedback, guidance and attention. It’s a reciprocal relationship, providing great candidate feedback will help them and your team improve. Will there be 1-2 candidates out of the many who will take advantage? Yes, but there will be all the others to whom you made a difference by humanising what can sometimes feel like a very stressful job search. Modern applicant tracking systems (ATS) and recruiting software have all sorts of automation and here are a few to take advantage of:
For example, you can automate the common rejection reasons at CV review—perhaps they don’t meet the talent bar or live in the wrong time zone. You can create a few templates to fit those more common reasons. It takes perhaps 2 extra seconds to find the right reason and, although there is a fear that candidates may get defensive or react and rant about their supposedly negative candidate experience, most of the time rejected candidates will appreciate that you have reviewed their circumstances and reacted to it. It’s a reflection of your company culture and they will also know whether to apply for your next roles too! You can also automate some emails as you move a potential candidate between stages and follow-ups e.g. in the email to schedule the first stages, you can have a pre-recorded video/Loom (or some other video interview tool) telling them what the next step on their job application journey will encompass. I’ve found it’s useful to create a visual representation of what the process will look like for them—like a map! Knowing When Not To AutomateAs mentioned above, the more time the job applicant spends interviewing the fewer automated comms they should get. As soon as they start getting to later stages, start getting on the phone with them and interacting (this could be you or the hiring manager). You need to start gauging whether the new hire is enthusiastic about the role. Enthusiasm will not be standard across everyone, so make sure you delve deeper into their motivations! Get curious about people and candidate expectations, they may be your colleague soon! This will also help later at the offer stage. Here is an example of a process I run: Some of you may already be saying “That is a lot of work!” Yes, it is, but scaling will take a lot of work and you cannot automate everything out of human connections. People hire people, not companies, not algorithms, not Zapier. Do Not Forget About Non-Automated RejectionsYou will have some job candidates whom you have screened or have gone through X steps of the interview process and did not pass. Again, the more time they have spent with your company the more attention their rejection will need. Give Proper FeedbackFeedback is super important for 2 reasons:
In EMEA, with the rise of GDPR-driven DSARs, feedback can no longer be denied so candidates can request all their information including their forms and scorecards. Make sure the hiring teams are aware of that so that they really think about why they are progressing or rejecting someone. Make them present it as a business case. Even Amazon can no longer say that they do not give feedback—I should know, I was there processing DSARs! How Good Is The Interviewing Feedback?Regularly review scorecards from the interviewing panel to check if they are up to par! Are they providing a proper business case? Is there a clear record of the questions asked and the answers given? Are there details? Does the final conclusion match the overall feedback? All of these will give you an idea of where you might need to step in and course-correct interviewers who are not questioning candidates equally or providing a bad experience. A three-sentence scorecard from a 45 min interview makes me question whether someone paid attention in the interview! You can control a lot about the process, but the interactions with the interview will make up the bulk of the candidate experience. You need to keep tabs and call out where you see that it’s not meeting the standards. When you are speaking to the candidate after interviews, or at the last stage, ask how they found their interview experience so far. Related read: How To Give More Effective Candidate Feedback Final BitsRemember that people are more likely to leave a negative review than a positive one. Make sure you leave fewer people with a really negative experience and keep on top of feedback. Will one or two candidates be dropped through the process? Perhaps—no process is perfect—but you do not want to be known as the company that never gets back to people, only prioritises candidates who go through the process, and leaves the others ghosted. Final bits:
Remember, creating a better candidate experience, even through rapidly scaling, doesn’t mean you make rushed decisions or easy interviews. It means you have a smooth hiring process and you are interviewing with a purpose. Join The ConversationGood luck with your scaling endeavours. If you have any questions or insights to share, HMU in the comments below or join the conversation in the People Managing People forum—a supportive community of HR and business leaders sharing knowledge and ideas to build the workplaces of the future. Also Worth Checking Out:
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Some people may think that all disabilities are something that can be seen. However, the CDC reports that as many as 1 in 4 U.S. adults are impacted by disabilities, and a large portion of those are invisible disabilities. To support workers with invisible/hidden disabilities, employers can provide a more inclusive environment, as well as reasonable accommodations when requested. Unlike what some people may believe, accommodations are usually neither expensive nor difficult to implement. According to a research by the Job Accommodation Network, 56% of accommodations cost nothing, while the rest typically have a one-time cost of about $500. As the CEO and Co-founder of EasyLlama, a modern training solution focusing on creating safer and more inclusive workplaces, I’m passionate about helping companies learn how to support their teams with innovative employee education. Here I’ll share how you can support workers with both invisible and visible medical conditions in your organization. What do we mean by invisible disabilities?Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines the term disability, it does not include a list of conditions that are always considered disabilities. While some disabilities are apparent to the casual observer, such as the use of assistive devices like wheelchairs or hearing aids, other disabilities are invisible, which is why it’s important to evaluate each case individually. Invisible disabilities can be physical or mental. Some forms include:
Even though they may not be apparent to observers, invisible disabilities can have a severe impact on someone’s personal and professional life. 3 Ways To support workers with invisible disabilitiesSome employees may not wish to disclose their disability status, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still support them. Promoting an inclusive workplace culture, regular needs assessments, and education can support all employees and improve your organization overall. Creating an overall inclusive environmentCreating an inclusive work environment should be top of mind for all organizations to truly harness the skills and creativity within their employee population. This means an environment where all team members feel like they belong, are empowered to do their best work, and feel comfortable contributing ideas and making reasonable requests. When it comes to including those with invisible disabilities, supportive job benefits like flexible work hours and a generous leave policy are more than just “perks”. For those with invisible disabilities that can cause them to tire easily, require frequent doctor’s appointments, or make a traditional office setting uncomfortable, these inclusive employer choices can literally be the difference between working effectively or not working at all. Furthermore, a remote or hybrid workplace can be especially accommodating since it cuts down on commuting—a major barrier for people with chronic conditions. If in-person work is required for your company, ensure that your building, website, and internal staff documents, etc. are accessible as well. Accommodations here can include:
Another initiative used by a lot of companies is to create or promote employee resource groups (ERGs). ERGs are a forum for underrepresented groups to build community, network, and help organizations better understand their needs. By encouraging an inclusive, safe, and positive workplace, a lot more employees will be more confident in requesting accommodations that can allow them to feel more comfortable with coworkers and make their working hours more productive. Send anonymous or private surveysRegular needs assessments in the form of anonymous or private surveys are a great way to identify accommodations that can be made for individuals, teams, or the company as a whole. This data can be used to inform policies, procedures, and programs that support people with both visible and invisible disabilities. Private surveys can give individuals the chance to request reasonable accommodations in a non-intimidating format, and anonymous surveys allow people with disabilities to suggest changes that can benefit everyone in the workplace environment—without “outing” themselves as disabled. Get education about invisible disabilitiesIn order to better understand how to make accommodations for disabilities, your managers and employees alike should receive regular training, for example our EasyLlama courses on the Americans with Disabilities Act or Reasonable Accommodations. This training should cover both how to support coworkers with disabilities, as well as the rights of individuals with disabilities because some disabled persons may be unaware that their conditions are supported or they might be too nervous to ask. With appropriate workplace training, employees can stay informed and up to date about their rights and benefits, especially for invisible disabilities, which are overlooked. Where to go from hereBy supporting employees with both invisible and visible disabilities you’ll have a more productive workplace and have access to a diversity of though and creativity. Individuals with disabilities are some of the most creative people on the planet, and sharing the accommodations that you have made for those in your workplace can help inspire others to implement similar solutions of their own! Often the accommodations you have to make cost little or nothing, and your employees will appreciate your efforts and promote you as a great employer. If you’re looking to create a more inclusive workplace for your employees we offer a variety of trainings on supporting disabilities as well as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); Harassment & Discrimination Prevention; Data Privacy and Cybersecurity; Workplace Safety; and Ethical Practices. Some further resources to help:
Subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter and receive regular content to help you progress in your career and build healthy, productive workplaces. Join our supportive community of passionate HR professionals and business leaders sharing knowledge and best practices to build organizations of the future. The post 3 Ways To Support Invisible Disabilities In The Workplace appeared first on People Managing People. via People Managing People https://ift.tt/hewHSn6
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Have you heard the phrase: “You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes” ? Well, the same principle applies to any organization: you can tell a lot about a company and its leadership by what they measure. On one occasion, I remember that I inquired about the metrics of the HR function, and I was given a set of two pages that were full of turnover ratios sliced in ten different ways. As I like to put it, you can slice the apple in a variety of ways, but it is still just the same apple! In this case, those two pages were just one operational measure: turnover. Although operational and financial indicators should be monitored, a company will never be able to change direction or transform itself if these are all that is being tracked. If change and transformation is what you’re searching for, you must start by redesigning your business performance indicators so that they can effectively act as the steering wheel or GPS that they can be. In a 2020 i4cp article, it was reported that “Top companies report business-boosting returns on their well-being investments, but fewer than 40% of all companies assess well-being program effectiveness.” This poses the question, how do companies, and specifically human resources, know when to change direction? If HR groups are not measuring the right things then they are effectively operating blind and their decisions are likely based on the past versus the future. I first introduced this concept in my article How To Ensure Your Talent Management Efforts Will Generate Sustainable Change where I indicated that, by shifting attention to leading organizational indicators that are directly linked to the company’s strategy, the HR function can give its talent management system the best chance to succeed. In this article I go further and focus on the why and the how of selecting the right performance metrics worthy of a human resources function of the 21st century. From lagging to leading metricsThe set of metrics or indicators that HR and senior leadership monitors represents how they define success, and, consequently, what can be expected from the function within the business ecosystem. Therefore, if the expectation of the HR function is to be an operational unit only, then the metrics attached to their performance should be operational in nature e.g. number of open positions, number of promotions, % turnover, number of training programs completed, % of BIPOC employees, employee productivity, etc. However, that would be a significant missed opportunity because the HR function should be held to a higher standard and be elevated to drive decisions that enable the long-term objectives of an organization. Talent decisions are made to impact the future of a business, not its past. So, what should human resources be tracking? A modern HR function should have talent metrics that are primarily strategic in nature and heavily concentrated in leading versus lagging indicators. Leading indicators enable the function to course correct as needed, while lagging indicators are simply a reflection of something in the past without the opportunity to correct. For example, % turnover is a common lagging metric that is calculated once employees leave an organization. Additionally, HR should be tracking empowerment or degree of employee autonomy because it is a leading indicator of the risk an employee may leave—they will give themselves the opportunity to take necessary actions to prevent unwanted turnover. Don’t get me wrong, operational metrics are valuable because they do allow the HR function to become more efficient, but, in a world of constant and rapid change, efficiency is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage. Metrics you should be tracking (and how)Developing the right set of metrics is as much an art as it is a science. Step one is to ensure that the talent management metrics are linked to the company’s strategic outcomes. Step two is to select leading indicators that are tied to the role of the HR function in those strategic outcomes, which will then foster a more proactive versus reactive approach to change. Step three is to periodically collect, analyze, and interpret the data to course correct as needed. I’ll unpack these in a little more detail. Step 1: Ensure talent management metrics are linked to the company’s strategic business outcomesBy doing this, the HR function guarantees the development of the type of talent that the company needs. To complete this exercise, the HR function must work directly with business leaders and be super clear about the strategic direction of the company. Emphasis should be put on the enablers of the strategy as it relates to talent: people skills, leadership brand, and culture. Remember, the set of indicators you choose will also need to evolve as the company achieves its strategic business outcomes. Step 2: Select leading indicators that are tied to the role of the HR function in those strategic outcomesLean heavily on leading versus lagging indicators. As we reviewed before, such an approach will foster a more proactive talent management decision-making process. To do that, an upstream or system thinking skill set is required. This is the artistic component of this process, so being able to easily connect the dots and challenge the status quo is beneficial. Also, less is more, so select just a handful of the most impactful indicators that will provide you with the necessary information to make timely decisions. In all cases, do not go over five to seven indicators (I’ll give you some examples further down). Step 3: Periodically collect, analyze, and interpret the data.The purpose of having measures is to enable timely decision-making, hence the need to periodically collect the necessary data related to the chosen indicators. But don’t stop at just collecting the information, bring it to the next level by analyzing and interpreting what the information is telling you. With the rapid advancement in human resources technologies, the possibilities are now almost endless. If your teams are spending too much time collecting the information, it is likely that you’re collecting too many data points and need to narrow it down. Choose a frequency that makes sense for your company and your HR team, is a long enough time horizon that allows for variability, yet also is not so long that it does not allow for course correction. In general, I recommend a quarterly period. Also, ensure you’re incorporating diverse perspectives into the interpretation of the information collected. In particular, make sure you’re inviting business leaders alongside HR leaders as this helps create alignment. Below I give three illustrative examples of strategic and leading measures for a company’s talent management system. There is no one size fits all, thus each company will have its own unique sets of metrics and/or indicators. The key is to ensure that the chosen metrics follow the 1-3 steps I mentioned previously. Metric one: Learning AgilityAn organization’s capability to learn is a leading indicator of its capability to innovate. In a world where the pace of change is only increasing, learning agility becomes a much better predictor of talent potential. There are several possibilities for leading indicators, for example:
Metric two: Change ResilienceA company’s ability to adapt is foundational for its survival, thus adaptability is strategic in nature. In a business environment where change is the only constant, it demands that employees are able to build a resilience to it so change becomes part of the day to day of the organization rather than an isolated set of events. In this regard, there are several possibilities for leading indicators, for example:
Metric three: Agnostic Career PathwaysThe value of diversity goes beyond the physical appearance of teams. Diversity of thought propels rich business discussions and stronger problem solving, ultimately resulting in faster decision-making. For that reason, diversity is a must when it comes to strategic business outcomes. To develop a diverse talent pool, an HR function must provide employees with a wide set of experiences beyond the traditional vertical career pathways. This will strengthen an employee’s ability to see a problem from multiple perspectives and challenge the status quo more often. Here, there are several possibilities for leading indicators, for example:
Don’t lag behind, lead aheadWhen it comes to measuring the success of talent management strategies, companies must aim higher than they have in the past. It’s not just about filling up job positions, moving talent internally, or guaranteeing high productivity, it’s about the business outcomes those actions translate into. Talent is the most critical, and one of the most expensive, resources a company has to achieve its strategic objectives, so continuing to measure its success on the basis of solely operational indicators will ultimately ensure the company’s talent management process will miss the mark. In the 21st century we should expect more from our HR function. We should expect CHRO’s to set talent metrics that are directly linked to the company’s strategic outcomes and heavily concentrated in leading versus lagging indicators. The HR function should be held to a higher standard and be elevated to drive decisions that enable the long-term objectives of an organization. Remember, talent decisions are made to impact the future of a business and not its past. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments or connect with me via LinkedIn. Some further resources to help:
Subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter and receive regular content to help you progress in your career and build healthy, productive organizations. For further support, join our community of HR and people leaders and get access to exclusive content to help you get your HR department off the ground and create more efficient processes. The post The Metrics You Should Be Tracking To Improve Your Talent Management Strategy appeared first on People Managing People. via People Managing People https://ift.tt/MzuHiLD
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Whether you’re new to HR or looking to upskill, a learning and development certification can help set you apart and provide you the knowledge and tools to effectively navigate learning, development, and training for any team. Training and development specialists support, create, plan and run effective training programs for organizations either as a full-time HR professional, leader, or consultant. 1. Associate Professional in Talent DevelopmentEarn your Associate Professional in Talent Development (APTD) through the Association for Talent Development (ATD). This HR certification is great for those early-ish in their careers with about 3-5 years of experience. If you’re looking to focus on talent development or looking to stand out in a competitive job market, an APTD might be right for you. The APTD credential covers the foundational strategies of talent development. In this particular course, you’ll focus on the Talent Development Capability Model™, made up of organizational impact, interpersonal skill-building, and professional development. The exam price does not include preparatory courses, so this method of certification is ideal for anyone who prefers independent-study and managing their own time. Previous candidates suggested 60-80 hours or 3-6 months of preparation. ATD is the largest association for learning professionals world-wide, and online membership will open their large e-library of resources or training needs. You can also join a chapter near you to network and connect with motivated professionals.
2. Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD)ATD also offers a Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD) for HR professionals taking the next critical step in their careers. Formerly known as Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP), the CPTD certification focuses on ATD’s new Talent Development Model™ as a standard for talent development. Ideal for candidates with 5+ years of work experience, this certification measures your broad knowledge and skills application to enhance employee talent development and decision making. The ATD certification does not include a course, so this certification is perfect for independent learners who can organize their own preparation. There are no prerequisites for this exam but candidates should be able to demonstrate their abilities and knowledge from topics around data and metrics, talent strategy and management, training delivery and facilitation, and cultural awareness and inclusion.
3. Certified Professional in Training Management (CPTM)The Certified Professional in Training Management (CPTM) is perfect for those interested in a role as a training manager. As a CPTM, you’ll have the skills to lead corporate training programs, create learning experiences, and drive goals tied back to your organization’s business success. The Training Industry, a leading publication in the adult learning industry, offers a CPTM track and exam. Candidates range from those currently leading or looking to lead training departments and external consultants or coaches. Your course includes access to training modules and real-world scenario application to prepare you for the certification exam.
4. Agile Certification for HR and Learning and DevelopmentTraining Industry also offers an Agile Certification for HR professionals for leaders looking to support organizations with a more flexible, proactive system of support or those looking to deepen their strategies as an L&D professional. At the end of the course, you’ll receive a certificate and digital badge you can add to your profile or email. You’ll learn design and project management in today’s new way of working, optimizing workflows, and how to embrace a growth mindset to foster a culture of learning. This course will provide the tools to support a growth mindset and change management.
5. AIHR Learning & Development CertificationThe Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) is the world’s largest online HR course catalog, offering HR pros a swath of training programs to take their careers to the next level. Their certification program helps those responsible for human resource management build or refine learning programs for their organization. Through online courses and quizzes, you’ll cover topics from skill gap analysis, corporate training or coaching, and learning and development analytics. This comprehensive course requires a capstone project where you’ll take the skills covered in this program into real-life practice.
6. Certified Learning Specialist (CLS)The Brandon Hall Group (BHG) is the go-to for many organizations and HR professionals seeking certification or resources on learning and strategy. BHG offers a Certified Learning Specialist (CLS) program helping candidates understand basic competencies such as design thinking, mentoring, inclusivity, and and how to implement the latest technologies such as learning management systems (LMS). This self-paced course is available online in three phases with interactive components. Phase I starts with basics on coaching and mentoring, centering on interpersonal skills and strategy. Phase II exercises your competency from your previous phase with case study application to put you in real world scenarios. Phase III asks candidates to apply what they’ve learned to a case study in their organization. CLS is perfect for independent students who succeed through e-learning and are looking to further their career as a training and development professional.
7. Cornell’s Employee Training & Development CourseTake your education to the next level after you earned your Bachelor’s Degree, and dive into Employee Training & Development through Cornell University’s continuing education course. This program provides you with the tools to lead, design, and champion employee training modules for an organization. You’ll explore and evaluate existing training in organizations as well as analyzing training needs to suit the organization’s goals, facilitating the transfer of learning to secure managerial or peer support, and evaluating the success of initiatives. This course is perfect for managers, entry-level, or early-careerists with 0-5 years of experience from a broad range of organizations. If you’re someone hoping to develop talent, improve employee performance, and build a learning culture, this is the right course for you.
8. Corporate Training CertificateFuture Learn offers a Corporate Training Certificate introductory program with the aim of providing you with the skills to assess an organization’s needs and deliver a winning workplace training program. This Future Learn course was created by ATC Training and is a certified CPD course. Through this program, you’ll learn about the training cycle and how to conduct a Training Needs Analysis to create engaging lesson plans and training materials. You’ll see how to present courses most effectively online or in-person and what KPIs to monitor for success.
9. Center for Executive Coaching – Core ProgramHR professionals who are looking to take their current skills on learning and development, team facilitation, or other adult learning programs should consider a path towards executive coaching as their next career step. As an executive coach you’ll work closely with C-Suite, Board members, and senior managers to help leadership support their stakeholders and their business reach better. You’ll also give them the tools to master any issues or challenges that they encounter in their roles. The Center for Executive Coaching offers a variety of certification courses but, if you’re starting out, start with their core program. Through this course, you’ll master creating coaching programs for clients, how to help leaders starting a growing business, or leaders undergoing a career transition. You’ll also work closely with certified coaches to understand practical application.
How to Choose a Learning and Development CertificationLooking over the list of potential courses, you might be wondering how to start determining which is best for you—they all look so useful! Each course and provider brings its own approach for online or in-person learning, so be sure to put that into consideration. However, overall, learning and development can divide into a few areas of expertise:
Each learning and development certification course might also depend on your experience or years in your industry, so be sure to put that into consideration as you take your next steps. Get Ready to Jump InNo matter what course you select, a learning and development certification is a great way to deepen your understanding on current strategies and methods to support an organization. It sets you apart in the hiring pool. And it continues your own journey as a lifelong learner. Some further resources to help you expand your skills and progress in your career:
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Payroll costs are costs related to compensating the people working for your business, including full-time employees, contractors, and wage earners. Most businesses operate with a payroll-to-revenue ratio of less than 30%. Though some labor-intensive service businesses can operate profitably with payroll costs of up to 50% of revenue. The ratio varies by industry—the key is to find a ratio that works for your business. In this article, we talk about the expenses included in payroll costs and how you can manage them effectively to minimize them. What’s included in Payroll costs?Payroll costs include the base salary or wages as well as taxes and benefits. Here’s an overview of the types of expenses that add to your payroll costs: Salaries, wages, and contractor paymentsSalary, wages, and payments (to employees, wage earners, and contractors, respectively) make up the biggest chunk of your payroll cost. Here’s the difference between the three types of payments:
The costs here also include expenses related to making payments. For example, paying via paper checks or direct deposit might involve costs like delivery or transaction fees. Payroll taxesYour share of the payroll taxes is included in the payroll costs. Federal taxes include:
Employee benefitsExpenses you incur to provide employees with benefits like insurance or paid time off are added to payroll costs. The type of benefits differ from company to company, but here are some common employee benefits:
Are Tax and Benefits Withholding Added to Payroll Costs?No. Withheld funds aren’t an expense. As an employer, you must withhold the employee’s share of state and federal income tax. You might also withhold the employee’s contribution towards insurance premiums or other benefits. When you withhold these amounts, you act as an agent of the government or third party to whom the amount is to be paid. You’re not incurring that expense out of your pocket but out of the employee’s compensation, and that’s why it doesn’t add to payroll costs. How to Lower Payroll CostsYou can lower payroll costs just by managing them well, efficiency and oversight are key. Let’s talk about the best ways to lower payroll costs: Manage OvertimeOvertime can often balloon up into a high payroll cost. Employees might have to work extra for a new project or during a busy week. And that’s normal. Overtime adds up when employees stay late a few minutes every day. Before you know it, you’ll have multiple employees qualifying for an hour (maybe more) of overtime during the pay period. You can lower overtime costs by setting up alerts in your HR software or scheduling software. When you receive an alert about an employee’s normal working hours ending, try and assign any pending tasks to another staff member to avoid overtime costs. Reduce Turnover and Avoid OverstaffingUnderstaffing leads to attrition and higher turnover. High turnover can wipe out a big chunk of your profit—research suggests the cost of turnover can range from 30% to 200% of the leaving person’s salary. But don’t err on the side of hiring too many people in-house. Overstaffing is as big a problem as understaffing in terms of payroll costs. The key is finding the right balance. It’s tough to be in a perpetual equilibrium—but you can maintain balance by:
Use Payroll SoftwarePayroll software helps automate various parts of running payroll. For example, payroll solutions can automatically calculate taxes and insurance premiums. This reduces the need to dedicate human resources to payroll, which helps lower payroll costs. Software solutions can auto-generate reports that provide a summary and breakdown of payroll costs. Insights from payroll software help identify areas that could benefit from optimized use of human resources. For example, when making some cuts, you should carefully look at the amount you’re spending on benefits. If you’re in a cash crunch, consider putting the wellness program on hold for a while. Payroll tax returns involve filing various forms where accuracy is critical. Payroll systems can make tax filing a breeze by auto-generating forms like:
Outsource Payroll ProcessingThe next best option to using software is outsourcing payroll. Investing in software and dedicating a staff member to operating the software can be time-consuming and expensive if you’re a small business owner. Outsourcing payroll is a simpler alternative where you pay the service provider a per-employee fee to manage all payroll-related tasks. The monthly fee depends on various factors like the total number of employees, frequency (weekly, biweekly, or monthly), and service add-ons you select. Once you hire an offline and online payroll service, you won’t have to dedicate someone to managing payroll or training them. And you benefit from the payroll service provider’s payroll management experience. The key to ensuring outsourcing works in your favor is selecting a reliable payroll company whose pricing matches your budget. Toward Smooth, Efficient PayrollContinuous learning and improvement are critical to efficient payroll management. Payroll management comes with multiple challenges. The payroll tax structure might change, or the labor market could push your payroll costs higher. When these challenges come knocking, you need the right tools and information to mitigate their impact on your bottom line. To be well-prepared for challenges, equip yourself with a payroll software solution and subscribe to the People Managing People weekly newsletter to keep yourself updated with all things HR and leadership. The post Payroll Costs: A Comprehensive Breakdown And Tips To Reduce appeared first on People Managing People. via People Managing People https://ift.tt/5vUlb3e
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Building an HR department is an exciting and challenging undertaking that will help your company grow and perform better, but it takes a thorough approach, patience, and strategic thinking. Lay faulty foundations of your HR function and you risk witnessing your business struggle over time or failing to reach the targeted success. Even though you might start without a formal HR/People Ops team, it’s challenging to maintain that status if you plan to scale your company and grow your talent pool. Building an human resources department encompasses hiring for various key roles covering hiring, compliance, compensation management, and administration. There are certain things you need to address properly in order to build an effective team and ensure everyone does their part of the job efficiently. Here we’ll cover:Let’s dive into why human resources lies at the core of every business and why you need this department. Why is Having an HR Department Important?HR departments have five principal functions: meeting staffing needs, employee compensation, employee benefits, performance assessment and appraisal, and law compliance. Their priority is to manage the needs and struggles of a company’s employees. In that sense, the HR department handles the connection between the workers and the leadership. Moreover, the efforts, actions, and strategies of HR departments help increase efficiency and optimize performance, including in the area of legal and financial matters. They’re responsible for identifying, attracting, recruiting, onboarding and training new employees and ensuring they match the job requirements and the company’s values. Besides creating compelling job descriptions, evaluating job applications, and interviewing candidates, these teams must also keep up with the latest tech, marketing, and psychology trends and innovations. This allows them to learn to use novel technologies and techniques and also to brainstorm new recruitment and candidate assessment methods and strategies. Hence, professionals working in HR departments must keep their knowledge and skills sharp and continuously upgrade their capabilities. HR Roles and ResponsibilitiesWhat will a properly functioning HR department help you with?
Without these professionals fostering and handling employee retention, succession planning and hiring skilled talent would be challenging. As your organization develops, human resources or people operations or whatever you want to call the department will help support strategic decision-making when it comes to talent management and development. If talent is the lifeblood of your organization, then human resources is like your hematologist(s)! So, if you’re just starting out or or planning to enhance your existing HR department, here’s how you can approach it. Your Step-by-Step Guide for Building An HR Department1. Assess the Current State of HR in Your OrgIf your company already has an HR department and you want to expand it, start by gauging the policies, initiatives, procedures, and strategies your current managers and leaders have in place. Evaluate the following HR responsibilities and their performance:
Rate these functions from one to ten to understand how well your current team performs them or whether they exist in your company. I recommend first taking into consideration any legal compliance issues and then strategy. That will help you discover where you need to expand. However, you should also consider the questions below, as it’s possible that you don’t have to change everything or start from scratch:
Once you have assessed where your company lies concerning HR teams and practices, it’s time to create a well-rounded action plan. List out your business priorities and how having an HR department will help you reach them. For instance, maybe you’re scaling up, striving to increase the number of employees and reinforce your units. In that case, you’d want to consider how many recruiters you’re hiring and whether they should possess specialized skills, experience, and knowledge. For example, if you’re recruiting for engineering talent, a technical recruiter will likely add the most value for this hire. Audit your current department’s roles, positions, and skill gaps. The insights you’ll gain from this process will further help to determine how many employees your new HR department should recruit and what requirements they should meet. You should now have an idea regarding what the new department should achieve in the first months and any hires you need to make. Related read: Skills Gap Analysis: How To Identify Key Skills To Meet Your Business Goals 2. Systematize Employee Records and Develop a Record-Keeping ProcessHR has the highly responsible task of handling the employee life cycle, which typically starts with employee records. Because of that, you should know how many workers your company has and set up legally required documents to help you establish HR department development plans. Remember that every worker will need their own personnel file. In the past, that document had a paper form, but most companies have digital records today stored in an HRIS, HRMS, or similar. The examples below are some of the documents you should have, and that will make it easier for your HR department to perform its tasks:
Every HR department should keep these documents and have easy access to them. You can discuss this with team leaders and line managers and collect enough data to develop the elementary base. But working with your IT unit to develop employee records online storage is also necessary. That ensures accessibility and data privacy. 3. Formalize your Basic HR PoliciesYou may be starting with zero information or have limited data on policies your HR department should follow. The following should be the starting base, but you can add more as your company grows and recruitment needs increase.
Over time, you might realize that you can tie two or more policies into one. As a general rule, they should always be concise, easy to understand, and available to all employees. Related read: List Of Essential HR Policies & Procedures (+ 4 To Avoid) 4. Develop the Basic Recruitment Steps and hiring processBefore your HR department is ready, you should know how they’ll conduct recruitment and what they’ll need. Most selection processes have the same elementary seven steps:
You should also know who will be involved in each of these steps and what documents and tools they’ll be using. Consider the questions they should ask and the documentation they should collect in each phase. The next step is to outline the onboarding process and the stages your HR departments should cover. For instance, they should know how pre-onboarding looks in your company, what happens during orientation on the first day, and what to do during the first week. Moreover, set employee goals for the first three months and consider what they should accomplish by the end of the first year. Related read: How To Write A 30 60 90 Day Plan For Your Org’s Onboarding + Template 5. Determine and Document Employee Compensation and BenefitsConsider your employee salary and benefits structure and take the final steps toward formalization. When doing that, consider the following:
You can also take into consideration different financial incentives, such as stock options, travel reimbursement, profit-sharing, employee attire, and relocation packages. Employee rewards don’t necessarily have to be monetary; you can include more well-rounded packages that include professional development, corporate discounts, flexible schedules, employee acknowledgment, and recognition programs. With time, you can discuss with your HR department the additional employee perks and benefits as, in the beginning, it’s the most important to have the elementary offering. 6. Assess Your Tech InfrastructureAlthough you may already use tech to some extent, having an HR department will require more, as you’ll have to streamline and ease their work. Because of that, you will have to invest in more complex HR systems, such as an applicant tracking systems or people analytics software. Your HR software should enable payroll management, workforce management, data keeping, performance management, candidate screening/tracking, team communication, and employee learning and development. Keep in mind that this tech must be legally compliant and in line with your company and HR needs and pain points. 7. Evaluate Compliance ProtocolsHR departments are among the key players in aligning your company’s operations with employment laws and requirements. Make their job easier by assessing the compliance guidelines and your current practices. Compare your existing policies with the latest legal regulations and adjust or implement procedures that ensure you recruit and manage the workforce according to the law. 8. Develop an Employee HandbookCreate an employee handbook, include the elementary workforce policies, and share it with your new HR department and employees. This document should also encompass information such as your company’s culture, vision, missions, background context, employee rights, and responsibilities. Related read: Ultimate Guide To Employee Handbooks [+ Free Template] 9. Establish Your L&D PlanHR teams help support employees to obtain new skills and knowledge and progress in their careers. As a result, you should start establishing your learning and development (L&D) program while building an HR department. Consider your L&D goals, the company’s skill gaps, and what competencies are necessary to reach your strategic business objectives. Talk with your employees about their ambitions and interests, as that will help you outline their career paths. Develop a well-rounded training framework, including the L&D content and materials. Related read: How To Create A Learning And Development Strategy In 7 Steps 10. Determine the Logistics of Building an HR DepartmentWhat are the skills and experiences your HR department personnel should have? For instance, HR managers should be detail-oriented, communicative, open-minded, and skilled in finding the most compatible candidates. Senior-level HR professionals should be knowledgeable about employment laws, workforce regulations, and how to connect with stakeholders. Consider whether you’ll outsource your HR personnel or prioritize internal mobility. Employees should have the necessary equipment and technology to perform their jobs efficiently. Ensure that the company can enable smooth work for everyone in terms of logistics (e.g., office materials and laptops). Also, consider whether everyone will work in the office or remotely or you’ll leverage hybrid work. 11. Determine Priority RolesWhat roles are a priority for your HR department? For example, if you’re scaling up rapidly, you will likely need more recruiters. But if you want to tackle your strategic HR goals first, prioritize HR assistants and administrators. You may also already have employees who can transfer to HR with reskilling. To Outsource Or Not To Outsource?Some organizations opt to outsource either all or part of their human resource function. Outsourcing is often evaluated in the early stages of building out the HR team. Do we engage a professional employer organization or a contractor for certain functions e.g. payroll? The answer depends on the existing experience of your in-house HR team as well as your strategy, goals, and timeline of the business. For example, if you’re planning on expanding internationally, then an employer of record will likely be a good idea. At times, budget constraints may arise, in this case, you can engage support for various functions that are simply part of a service or product. Engaging a benefits broker that acts as an extension of your benefits function is a great example of this. Further reading: Outsourcing HR Benefits, Strategies, And Considerations Wrapping UpBuilding an HR team is an exciting and challenging undertaking that will help your company grow and perform better. Even if you’re a small business or early-stage startup, having an HR department will pay dividends by keeping you on the right side of compliance and through developing a great employee experience and enviable employer brand. Start by assessing your company’s current state of HR, matching skills required vs your business goals. A clear guide will ensure you move through each development phase progressively, not skipping any vital step and tackling your priorities first. Some further reading to help you with this process and guide your thinking regarding HR:
Subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter and receive regular content to help you progress in your career and build healthy, productive organizations. For further support, join our community of HR and people leaders and get access to exclusive content to help you get your HR department off the ground and create more efficient processes. The post Building An HR Department: A Step-By-Step Guide appeared first on People Managing People. via People Managing People https://ift.tt/T3mVqMU
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As the human resources function increasingly expands its role as a strategic pillar of the business, there becomes a correlating need for rich data to enable the strategy, drive decisions, and showcase the value you’re providing to the business. Any executive team worth their salt is going to rely on a healthy dose of data to support critical decisions, including the investments in the human resources space. After all, as engineer, statistician, and management theorist W. Edwards Deming once famously said, “In God we trust, all others bring data.” So, how do you create an analytical approach for decision making, incremental improvement and value realization? The answer is simple: HR key performance Indicators (KPIs). As an HR leader, a major part of my role includes defining the KPIs for the programs I lead and ensuring they provide my leadership team and business partners with the critical insights needed to track our progress. In this article, I’ll take you through:
Let’s dive in. What Are HR KPIs?HR key performance indicators (KPIs) are measurable metrics used to track the effectiveness of HR-lead processes and strategies against organizational goals. Your human resources strategies and initiatives should always be mapped back to your organizational strategies, and likewise your HR KPIs should be able to articulate how HR professionals are providing real value realization against those same strategies. There’s no one size fits all model for KPIs. The business goals of an organization are going to vary dramatically based upon company size, maturity, and industry. As such, your KPIs will be highly personalized to give you the right information to make key decisions, track incremental improvement over time, and prove the value you are providing to your organization. Why Set HR KPIs?KPIs are an essential tool for all walks of business life and human resources is no exception. In fact, I’d argue HR KPIs are arguably one of the most significant indicators of your organization’s success. It’s almost become cliche to hear that ‘our people are our most important asset,’ but the reality is the success of your organization hinges upon your people. HR KPIs give you the benefit of:
How To Set Meaningful KPIsDrafting effective KPIs is a bit of an art and a bit of a science. There’s a level of subjectiveness in that KPIs require you to have a deep understanding of the business and use your subject matter expertise to determine what will be most impactful for you to track. On the flip side, KPIs will only provide value if they’re specific, measurable and provide objective insights into your organization’s effectiveness. Some guiding principles to keep in mind when creating meaningful KPIs include:
Ask Yourself: Does this goal help us understand our progress against our organization’s HR strategy? If the answer is unclear, you may need to revisit if this goal is appropriate as a KPI or refine it to create cleaner alignment.
Goal setting frameworks: SMART goals and OKRsLeaning on existing frameworks is a great way to accelerate your foray into any new space. Luckily with KPIs, there are some commonly used goal setting frameworks like SMART goals and OKRs that you can easily jump into and start leveraging. SMART goalsThe SMART goal framework is one of the most universal and popular goal setting frameworks around. It’s commonly used for performance management, individual development plans, strategic planning and, yes, for KPIs. The SMART goal framework articulates 5 key components of a well written goal: If you’re looking for more information about SMART goals, check out this great People Managing People article on how to write SMART goals. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)OKRs are another commonly used goal setting framework designed to allow businesses to set goals and track their progress over time. Objectives become the overarching goal that’s aligned with your organizational strategy/mission, while the key results are measurable and action-oriented human resources metrics that enable the realization of the objectives. The benefit of OKRs is that they’re designed to align individual and team goals with the higher-level business goals of the organization or function. This enables a clear line of sight and a deeper understanding for all colleagues into how the work they do contributes to the success of the organization. Additionally, the more granular key results allow you to work in a more agile manner by flexing your approach and enable continuous incremental improvement over time. For more information on OKRs, please refer to our What Are OKRs and How Can You Use Them article. Common Human Resources KPIsAs stated before, the KPIs that you’ll leverage are going to be specific to your business and talent strategies you’re trying to achieve. But, to help get you started, I’ve listed out some important KPIs that you may consider leveraging based upon the strategies you are trying to realize at your organization. KPIs for employee satisfaction1. Net promoter score. Employee net promoter score (NPS) is a great judge of your employees loyalty and satisfaction with working at your organization. This can be assessed by asking your people to rate how likely they are to recommend working at your company to others via an employee satisfaction survey. 2. Employee Engagement. Employee engagement is another great indicator of employee satisfaction. Engagement is usually captured through an engagement survey and indicates the level of emotional satisfaction and commitment your people have with your organization. 3. Employee turnover and attrition rates. Turnover, or the rate at which your employees are exiting your company, is one of the best indicators of employee satisfaction with their work experience. Depending on your organizational needs, you may consider goals associated with employee turnover/attrition in general, regrettable turnover rate (loss of high-performing employees), and/or voluntary termination (employees leaving of their own accord). KPIs for recruitment and talent acquisition4. Average tIme to fill. If you’ve ever worked as a member of a recruitment or talent acquisition team, you’ll know that time to hire is one of the most popular and significant indicators of success within this space. Your recruiting team’s ability to find quality candidates and fill requisitions in a reasonable amount of time is one of the key indicators of the success of your hiring process. 5. Internal versus external hire ratio. Measuring your organization’s internal/external fill ratio is a significant KPI for measuring your ability to develop talent in house and facilitate internal mobility. This is essential for retaining top talent over time. 6. Diversity hiring. An extension of your diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, diversity hiring measurements give you keen insights into your ability to hire diverse talent that’s reflective of the demographics of the communities in which you work and serve. KPIs for learning, development and growth (L&D)7. Training and onboarding effectiveness. KPIs for training and onboarding effectiveness can include measuring employee satisfaction with training (CSAT), knowledge acquisition, performance improvement, and return on investment. Marry this to the training costs for your programs and this is essential in determining the value you’re providing through your learning and development strategy. 8. Internal mobility and promotion rates. One of the primary drivers of your organization’s efforts from an L&D perspective is to allow your colleagues to grow their careers within your organization. KPIs associated with internal mobility and promotion are essential for tracking your ability to build career paths internally at your organization and develop the next wave of talent to move into increasingly complex roles. 9. Employee skill development. Another key measurement of the success of your learning and development strategies is the actual development of your employees’ skill levels. This can be benchmarked via annual skills assessment exercises designed to track the growth of your employees’ skills over time. KPIs for innovation10. Employee innovation index. Employee innovation index is a mechanism through which you can measure your organization’s ability to drive innovation via your employees. This can be tracked via engagement survey results, innovation programs, number of patents filed and/or other key metrics designed to best capture the growth of innovation at your organization. 11. Employee Ideas Generated. A lighter-weight approach to measuring innovation is to simply to track and measure your organization against the number of innovative employee ideas generated. Crowdsourcing ideas from your employee population is a great way to democratize innovation and empower your people to drive innovative change. 12. Speed to market. In an increasingly agile world, speed to market is an increasingly useful metric to measure innovation. In an agile environment, whether it’s in tech teams or your HR department, your ability to introduce new products to your customers/employees in a timely fashion is one of the leading indicators of the innovative nature of your organization. KPIs for resilience13. Employee wellbeing. Resilience is an area that became increasingly important during the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued to be a focus for organizations since. Employee wellbeing is one of the key indicators of the resilience of your organization. 14. Employee trust in leaders. Your employees trust in leadership is another indicator of resilience, especially through times of turmoil as your employees deal with stress and change better if they have trust in the leadership team. Luckily this is also an easy KPI to track via your engagement survey process as common engagement survey questions include: “I trust the leadership team to make the right decisions for the company?” or “I trust the leadership team to act with integrity.” 15. Employee productivity through change. Employee productivity is a baseline KPI in many industries. However, when you add in employee productivity rate through change all of a sudden you have a great KPI for resilience. Change is the only constant in life and work and your employees’ ability to be productive through change is paramount. KPIs for diversity equity and inclusion (DEI)16. Diversity representation. Goals associated with diversity representation help you track your inclusion of employees of diverse experiences, demographics, backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations. While KPIs for diversity representation are commonly tracked at a more global level for organizations, a common approach is to also to set specific goals associated with the diversity representation organizations would like to see within their leadership/executive team members as well. 17. Promotion and talent retention rates for underrepresented groups. Setting goals associated with both promotions and employee retention of underrepresented groups is a great way to drive inclusivity at your organization. Disparate promotion and/or employee retention rates for underrated groups versus your organization overall may indicate a need to take a different approach to create a company culture in which all employees can thrive regardless of their background. 18. Employee engagement survey results. You may also consider building KPIs around engagement results for underrepresented groups in your organization. Akin to tracking promotion/employee retention rates, this is a great way to understand the commitment your diverse colleagues have to your organization and drive strategies designed to improve their experience working for your organization. 19. ERG participation rates – Employee resource groups (ERGs), are “groups of people who work in the same organization (not necessarily with each other regularly) who unify based on a common identity, lived experience, common goals, or intersectional backgrounds and aspirations.” KPIs drafted to drive participation rates can directly impact your overall DEI efforts, improving employee engagement and talent retention KPIs for employee health and wellness20. Benefits satisfaction. Investing in health and wellbeing is a critical means through which organizations take care of their employees, improve moral and productivity, and reduce absenteeism/presenteeism. KPIs for benefits satisfaction help you measure if your health and wellness efforts are having the desired impact they are intended to provide. 21. Health and wellness program participation. Participation rates are a great baseline measurement of whether your health and wellness programs are hitting the mark for your employees. This helps you understand what types of programs resonate with your employees and ensures you personalize your offerings to meet their unique needs. KPIs for Compliance22. Training completion percentages for compliance training. One of the simplest, but also one of the most important, compliance KPIs to track is simply employee completion percentages for compliance training. This is essential for risk mitigation and ensuring your employees are given the requisite knowledge needed to comply with company and industry compliance requirements. 23. Ethics Reporting. Ethics reporting is an essential measurement of your employees trust in your compliance processes and willingness to report unethical behavior. This can be measured via either the volume of ethics reports that come in or via engagement survey questions designed to tease out your employees’ level of comfort with reporting instances of unethical behavior at your organization. 24. Labor Law and Policy Compliance. KPIs associated with labor law and policy compliance help you measure and improve the level of compliance you have with both external and internal compliance needs. This can be tracked through internal audits and help ensure your organization’s operations are legally sound and designed to avoid legal liability/penalties. KPIs for Compensation25. Market Salary Competitiveness. Measuring your market salary competitiveness is a significant benchmark of if your compensation strategy is working as intended. It’s important to note that not every organization strives to pay the exact market rate for the work being done—depending on your strategy and needs you pay more or less than market rate. 26. Turnover due to compensation. Understanding how you stack up against the external market, combined with other KPIs like employee turnover due to compensation, can help you measure and adjust your compensation practice over time. This KPI would generally be tracked via exit interviews or surveys. KPIs for en-vironmental, social and justice (ESG)27. Carbon footprint. ESG is becoming increasingly important for organizations as investors, consumers, and employees demand more from the companies they support and increasingly align the investments in organizations who share their values. Setting goals around reducing carbon footprint is one of the primary ways that organizations can track and improve their sustainability and impact on the environment. In case you were wondering, HR can influence this by encouraging a sustainable approach to how your employees interact with your real estate space (i.e., limit wasted office space by enabling work from home/hybrid office policies designed to reduce energy consumption and contribute to a sustainable impact on the environment). 28. Employee Health, Safety. KPIs for employee health and safety are focused around monitoring an organization’s success in providing a safe workplace for their people. This can include goals around injury frequency, near-miss accidents, and sickness. Goals in this category will vary greatly based upon the industry and work environment (i.e., factory work versus corporate office environment). 29. Employee Community Involvement/Volunteerism. KPIs for employee community involvement are a great way to measure your organization’s success at empowering your people to get involved in the local communities in which you work and serve. Common goals can include participation rates, volunteer hours logged, number of partnerships with local communities and other measures of impact driven through the volunteer activities performed by your people. Case Study: Leadership Development KPIsLet’s take a look at a real life example of how I’m currently using KPIs to drive our technology organization’s learning, development and growth strategy. Like many organizations, investing in the growth and development of our people is a top priority to enabling continued business success. This is especially true in the technology space where critical hard skills evolve rapidly, and it’s essential that employee populations stay up to date on the latest technical skills. As a Talent Strategy leader, I partnered with our executive technology team, our learning and development leads, and HR Managers/Business Partners to come up with a talent strategy focused on enabling these critical needs. Likewise, this same group spent numerous iterations defining and refining the KPIs that we would use to measure and track our success. Some examples of what we landed on include: 1. Employee Skill Development Example: “20% percent incremental improvement in Employee Skill Development Index in 2023” This KPI seeks to track an incremental improvement in employee skill development within a calendar year. Employees are asked to complete a skills assessment to baseline their current proficiency levels against critical organizational skills. After completing numerous learning and development activities over the calendar year, employees are then asked to reassess their capabilities so we can measure incremental improvement in proficiency level based upon our learning and development efforts and rebaseline our employee skill set. 2. Training Effectiveness: 25% increase in learning and development CSAT scores in 2023” This KPI tracks improvement in Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT) for our learning and development offerings. Incremental improvement over the course of 2023 showcases our ability to learn from our evaluation strategy and provide best in class training experiences to our employees. 3. Internal Mobility Rates: 10% increase. This goal is designed to track our ability to create internal mobility opportunities for our colleagues. We choose to focus not just on promotions but on any internal movement across our career lattice. This KPI allows us to better understand how skill development equates to career growth within our technology space. 4. Mentorship Program Participation Rate: “20% mentor program participation rate by 2025” Social learning is a key part of colleague learning, growth and development and something we felt was critical to track. Unlike the other goals we set above, this KPI has a target of 2025 rather than within the 2023 calendar year. This enabled us to set realistic, measurable goals for 2023 and 2024 to help ramp up our mentor program and ensure we have sufficient high quality, trained mentors to support our mentees. Start Setting KPIs To Help You Tell A Story And Push ForwardUltimately, measuring the right human resources key performance indicators is an essential part of how your HR department can make incremental improvements and provide value over the time. This also empowers you to tell the story of the value you are providing to your organization. As Chip and Dan Heath wrote, “Data are just summaries of thousands of stories–tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.” I’d encourage you to begin to leverage the HR KPIs that help you to tell the story of your success and help you build a measurable strategy to create the best HR function possible. Some further resources to help you set and track goals:
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Companies are always on the lookout for talented people. In this interview series, we talk to seasoned HR professionals to pick their brains for ideas and insights on finding the right talent for our organizations. Amber Grewal Amber Grewal, Managing Director & Partner, Chief Recruiting/Talent Officer for Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a change agent and industry leader in Talent and Human Resources. Passionate about transforming organizations, she has helped maximize several renowned companies’ talent lifecycle, enabling them to stay competitive in their industry.
Throughout her career, Amber has championed the reinvention of talent functions, set up global recruitment functions, and infused data analytics, predictive capability, and technology such as artificial intelligence to build connected, smarter, and transformative talent acquisition teams. Hi Amber, welcome to the series! Before diving in we’d love to get to know you a little better. Can you tell us what brought you to this specific career path? I’ve been passionate and focused on people since my first internship in product marketing when the CEO of the startup requested my help with onboarding and hiring, something I had never done before. That was the turning point that helped me realize that, regardless of how good a product is, without top talent you can’t be successful. Over the 20 years of my career since then, I’ve enjoyed working with talent—teaching skills, developing new operating models, and building global hiring-related priorities. Before joining BCG, I held senior leadership positions at Intel, IBM, GE and Microsoft. I joined BCG because of the opportunity presented to transform our global recruiting organization in a unique, brand-new position. Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” and how it’s relevant to your life? My personal motto in life is “Learn, Do, Teach, and Learn Again”. For me, it is crucial to never stop learning, apply what you learn to your personal and professional lives, and teach others how they can leverage what you discovered. Something important I learned from my mother, and changed my outlook towards a lot of things, “If you work hard and always act with high integrity and good intentions, everything will fall into place.” Now I just focus on giving. Are you working on any exciting new projects at your company? How is this helping people? Today’s talent cares about purpose, meaningful work and flexibility. BCG wants to tap into the best talent to build THIS and the NEXT generation’s consulting firm. This is why we recently launched our candidate value proposition, the “Beyond is where you begin” campaign. Internally, we know that BCG continues to solve real-world challenges with world-class solutions. However, externally, data shows perceptions of who we are and what we do might be a little different. We don’t just ‘consult’ or ‘think’ or ‘plan’. We are tech-savvy, innovation-driven doers. We take on the unprecedented for clients; explore topics, industries and roles outside our comfort zone. “Beyond is where we begin” showcases how we as an organization strive to always be evolving. We also aim to empower and engage current employees by encouraging them to share their personal “Beyond” stories, attract prospective talent by showing them how they can make a difference at BCG, and reframe how people think about consulting. Hiring can be very time-consuming and challenging. Can you share with our readers a bit about your experience with identifying and hiring talent? What’s been your most successful recruitment-related initiative so far? BCG’s greatest asset is our people, so identifying and hiring the best talent is crucial to our success. We’ve transformed talent acquisition as a function over the last 2 years, evolving not just how we interview but how we hire and attract by leveraging technology. We look across industries, skill sets, and experience levels and beyond resumes to find the right combination of attitude and skills. Our team receives more than one million applications a year and we hire 1% of those applicants. As I mentioned previously, our “Beyond is where we begin” campaign has been our biggest recruiting initiative to date and one that we’re excited to continue in 2023. To make sure we’re finding and engaging with the right talent, we additionally take a high touch-high tech approach to hiring and attracting talent. That initiative has been highly successful for us and involves the right tools and resources to deliver a positive candidate experience, including our BCGYou app for candidates looking to get more information on the firm, connect with current BCGers, apply for roles, prepare for cases, and find details on the interview process. We also implemented OneDay@BCG, a virtual work experience program where candidates participate in modules on cases based on real-life simulations with topics ranging from digital transformation, strategy and experience design, data science, and climate and sustainability. And, in addition, we offer CaseCoach, an online platform with BCG-tailored courses including live case practice with other candidates. Once talent is engaged, what’s your advice for creating a great candidate experience and ensuring the right people go through the process? The talent market is growing fast, and companies will need to leverage technology in their recruiting to compete for talent in the future. Outdated recruiting technology is a turn-off for talent, in particular Gen Z. In fact, industry research shows that 54% of them won’t complete a job application if they feel that employers’ recruiting methods are outdated. I can also say that virtual recruiting is here to stay. Candidates and employees have faced unprecedented change and have new expectations about the recruiting process. Over 84% of organizations shifted their recruiting process to enable virtual recruiting. 42% invested and accelerated their digital recruiting capabilities. Other than that, recruiters need to have strong partnerships with the hiring managers to align on priorities and not only ensure gaining the attention of the right candidates but also ensure having the right representation in the interview process. Based on your experience, how can HR and culture professionals work with the broader organization to identify talent needs? It’s important that there is open communication across the organization, especially the leadership team, so that everyone is aligned on priorities and organizational needs. Having regular check-ins and cross-organizational leadership meetings ensures the HR team is aware of and can meet the talent needs of the organization. We also think it’s incredibly important that there are open lines of communication between HR leaders and employees. Leadership needs to hear directly from employees about their experiences and needs to ensure they are meeting future employees’ needs as well. Is there anything you see that recruiters, internal or otherwise, do regularly that makes you think, “No, stop doing that!”? I’d say we need to cut out manual screening and hiring processes. We are fortunate enough to live in an era where technology is developing so fast every day. There are so many innovative tools and techniques that can advance recruiters through every step of the hiring process, yet I still come across so many manual processes. Be sure to make use of all the high-tech resources that we have at hand! With so much noise and competition out there, what are your top 3 ways to attract and engage the best talent in an industry when they haven’t already reached out to you? According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce is passive talent, with the remaining 30% actively seeking jobs. Therefore, the recruitment statistics show you may be missing out on a massive talent pool if your recruitment only targets active job seekers. First, we look to build relationships with candidates by first educating them on what consulting is and how we do our jobs. This helps to build relationships with talent who are still figuring out the right career path for them. We also want to take the time to listen and motivate top talent to explore life at BCG via end-to-end segmented and personalized moments. We know that Gen Z and early career talent expect personalized experiences, and they are more likely to respond to employers with personalized outreach. How to balance 1:1 personalization is key, especially when recruiting larger volumes of candidates or for niche roles.
What are the three most effective strategies you use to retain employees? We don’t rely only on compensation as a means to entice staff to stay. It is an important component—and we ensure that we are competitive—but what creates the stickiness is the experience that they have. First, we want to maintain balance and sustainable working norms for our employees. It is all about the 5Rs – reinforcing, recognizing, reconnecting, recharging our teams, and reimagining the future. We are all trying to find the right blend between work and life for our people. Their safety, well-being, and resilience should always be a priority. For instance, at BCG, we have been investing in the future of work, including hybrid and remote teaming, offering our people flexible programs/policies in day-to-day working arrangements and leave of absence. Secondly, we continue to find ways to engage our staff and build communities that support their BCG experience. For instance, last year we launched Accessibility@BCG, a global community to support staff with physical disabilities, neurodiverse backgrounds, chronic illness, and mental health conditions, as well as staff who are caregivers to those facing such situations. This goes along with our culture of diversity and inclusion, something we are committed to with clear actions and transparency. And, lastly, we provide career growth opportunities. Employees are much more likely to stay at an organization if they can see the company’s commitment to their upskilling and reskilling. We offer our people multiple options to grow professionally, including encouraging them to join employee resources groups, making space for continuing education and volunteer time. We also support tuition reimbursement for external courses. At BCG, we live by “One BCG, Many Paths”, BCGers have the chance to work and challenge themselves across our many industries and functional practice areas, and eventually choose the one that they are truly passionate about to focus on. The possibilities are limitless! Can you share five techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill? Personally, I would always try to keep an open-minded approach when it comes to identifying talent. The requirement for each role is different and nowadays there is such a variety of skills that one can possess. Therefore, there are no “one size fits all” techniques that I use. However, at BCG, there are several aspects that we would always take into consideration when hiring. 1 . Leverage technology An area we invest heavily in technology is skills tests. While skills tests and other evaluation tools have been around for decades, we have seen advancement in this area in recent years. Skills tests allow us to screen candidates more effectively and shorten the hiring process. We look at behavioral assessments such as strong work ethic and motivation. 2 . Move Away From the Traditional Way of Hiring We want to tap into pools of new diverse candidates, BCG has invested in partnerships with organizations like Management Leadership for Tomorrow and expanded outreach to HBCUs and HSIs. We have also invested in giving diverse talent the tools to succeed and have expanded our early career programs. These programs include Growing Future Leaders, Bridge to Consulting, and Discover BCG, all of which are designed to help underrepresented students develop the tools they need to succeed in their careers. 3 . Bring The Art and Science to Your Approach We’ve built a bionic talent model that is leveraging innovation and data/analytics to drive better outcomes. Connecting all our functions (talent acquisition, learning, leadership development, workforce planning, performance management, onboarding) requires a common data thread that all systems can read, understand and translate. 4 . Understand What Talent Wants It’s incredibly important that we understand what talent wants, by connecting to the market and conducting valuable research. From there, we evaluate our EVP to make sure we address the most important elements of what talent wants. 5 . Ensure You’re Tracking and Measuring Progress How is talent recruited? Is your talent process bias free? Is your talent pool wide enough; are you recruiting in the same places? How are you interviewing? We have seen leveraging AI/technology has reduced bias by 20% and increased gender diversity to 46% of hires. We have incorporated blind resume reviews, more inclusive language, stories/impact of our diverse talent communities all as a result of evaluation. Thank you for the insights Amber! How can our readers continue to follow your work? I would be happy to be able to connect with our readers there. You can find me on LinkedIn and follow our BCG on LinkedIn. The post To Attract And Recruit The Best Talent, Upgrade Your Tech Stack appeared first on People Managing People. via People Managing People https://ift.tt/Hcwador
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Although it’s essential to consider the various factors that affect the consumer decision-making process, pricing can be a challenge for new business owners. Whether you’re running an e-commerce business or a brick-and-mortar store, it can be hard to know which prices to charge for your products. This is especially true if you’re planning on launching a new venture. The prices you set for your products and services can significantly impact your business’s profitability and growth. Besides affecting your cash flow, these prices also affect other aspects of your business: business expenses and the positions of your products in the market. Fortunately, implementing competitive pricing is a way to avoid getting stuck with high prices that are not ideal for your company. Benefits for Your Strategy A competitive pricing strategy can help your business grow. It can be seen in the results of the strategy within a short time. However, it’s important to note that the long-term implications of this strategy are still crucial to the business. Having the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively understand the industry will allow you to make informed decisions. Knowledge Being knowledgeable about your industry and competitors can help you make better decisions when it comes to your business. This can also help boost your chances of succeeding in the future. Unfortunately, many business owners fail to achieve their goals when implementing competitive pricing. This can be caused by them not knowing how to utilize their pricing strategy properly. A competitive monitoring tool can help you identify areas where you can improve your pricing. Online Shopping One of the most critical factors consumers consider when making a purchase decision is pricing. According to a study conducted by an e-commerce company, over three websites are visited before a final decision is made. This shows that pricing and comparisons are crucial for online shoppers. Having a competitive pricing analysis can help keep your customers loyal and allow you to grow. Maximizing Profits One of the most sophisticated pricing analysis techniques is dynamic pricing. This method allows you to analyze the competitive environment and obtain valuable information about your competitors. This helps you to improve your competitive advantage and maximize profits. Increased Traffic A competitive pricing strategy can help boost your brand’s visibility and attract more potential customers. It can also help increase foot traffic and improve the profitability of your business. Having a competitive pricing strategy can help keep your customers loyal and allow you to grow. It can also help you maintain or even increase your market share. You can attract more potential customers by making your prices the same as the competitors. The post Why Competitive Pricing Is Good For Business first appeared on Rob Elkington | Business & Entrepreneurship.via Rob Elkington | Business & Entrepreneurship https://ift.tt/NIj3BHv |