How to Build and Maintain Workforce Resilience, According to Experts To understand the importance of resilience in the workplace, let's start with an example. Let's say your company has just been acquired by a major corporation. This means your organization is about to undergo some major changes — including your workplace culture, leadership structure, and even your team's goals and objectives. When it comes time to deliver the message to your marketing team, however, you're surprised by their reactions. While there is some trepidation, most of your employees are upbeat, positive, and excited about the new opportunities and challenges ahead of them. Their reaction doesn't mean they aren't also hesitant, nervous, or unsure of the future. It simply means that your team feels secure, confident, and capable of taking on those new challenges, whatever they may be. This is the power of workforce resiliency. Here, we'll dive into why workforce resiliency is one of the strongest predictors of long-term employee satisfaction and retention. Plus, how to build a more resilient workforce, according to leaders who've done it. What is workforce resilience? To understand workforce resiliency, we first need to define what resiliency is. As Merriam-Webster defines it, resiliency is "an ability to recover from or adjust easily to adversity or change". Essentially, a resilient person is someone who can adapt well to life's unexpected challenges, stresses, and uncertainties. Birdeye's Head of People & Culture Camille Boothe told me, "When I think about resilience, certain thoughts come to mind...

5 Human Resource Management Functions Every HR Manager Needs to Know There’s something every single company needs to operate, regardless of the industry or product, and that’s people. Just as there are professionals who specialize in managing products and services, there’s also a need for human resource management. Learn what it is and the key functions every HRM needs to operate. What is human resource management? 5 Main Functions of Human Resource Management Recruitment and Staffing Employee Relations Learning and Development Performance Management Company Culture Recently, we’ve heard the term “People Operations” used much more frequently than human resources. Are they the same? Not exactly. People ops is technically considered a subset under HR. However, in many companies, they are used interchangeably. While human resources focus on the structural and legal pillars such as hiring, compliance, compensation, and benefits, people ops look at the cultural implications and focus on things like employee satisfaction, productivity, and diversity and inclusion. 5 Main Functions of Human Resource Management 1. Recruitment and Staffing When you think of HR, recruitment and staffing is probably the first thing you think about. HRM requires working hand-in-hand with recruiters to identify top talent, set budgets, conduct background checks, and negotiate compensation and benefits. In addition, they must be well versed in employment law to know how...

How to Write Professional Yet Kind Rejection Letters It's never easy notifying someone that they didn’t get the job. This often leads to generic emails, or worse, complete silence – that’s where a rejection letter template can come in handy. While it’s never fun to do it, there are kind yet professional ways to reject an applicant that preserve your employer brand. How to Write a Rejection Letter You might not think twice about a rejection letter once you send it. But the truth is, your rejection letter is a reflection of your company. If it’s poorly written, that leaves a negative impression of your company that could easily spread to other candidates. This is why writing a thoughtful rejection letter is key. It allows you to maintain a good relationship with the applicant, even if they were not a good fit for a particular role. Who knows, you may want to circle back to them if another position opens up. When that comes up, you want a candidate to be excited about the prospect of working with you – and how you communicate plays a pivotal role in this. It's critical you remain positive with your language and focus on language from the job description itself. In addition, keep in mind that a rejection letter is a fantastic opportunity for the candidate to receive positive feedback and learn how to do better in the future. Consider how you can include specific and valuable feedback. A rejection letter...

11 Talent Acquisition Strategies to Find the Best Employees It can be difficult to find the ideal candidate for a specific position — in fact, in 2021, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring – a 15-year high. Regardless of the state of the economy and your talent pool, to succeed long-term, your business should be able to hire and retain the best, most talented employees. But hiring can be a daunting task, which is why you need a talent acquisition strategy. To succeed long-term, it's critical you attract and retain talented employees regardless of vacant roles. Talent acquisition can help you do this, while solving for long-term organizational needs. Now that you understand what talent acquisition is and how it differs from recruitment, let's dive into the most effective talent acquisition strategies. Here are eleven critical talent acquisition strategies to ensure you're finding the best people. 1. Align with your business goals. Consider your business goals for the next one to five years, and use those objectives to tailor your acquisition strategy to meet those needs. While recruitment tends to focus on filling vacancies within departments, talent acquisition is more about considering how your company is going to expand long term and then finding employees who can help take you there. For instance, are you planning on expanding into Latin America? If so, perhaps your HR department should focus on attracting candidates with international or regional experience. Or, maybe you're planning...

Does Your Company Need An Employee Referral Program? Finding qualified candidates to fill your open positions can be challenging. Job posting sites claim to make the process easy by connecting you with hundreds if not thousands of potential employees. But having such a large pool of candidates can be overwhelming. Just thinking about the sheer volume of work involved in reviewing applications, narrowing them down to good fits, and then vetting those potential candidates is enough to make anyone’s head explode. You work with or run a solid organization with wonderful employees. How do you make sure that you don’t get a bevy of potential candidates, but rather the right candidate? Look at this like finding the perfect place to take your significant other on a special occasion. Sure, you could do a Google search for random restaurants in your neighborhood. You could even check a review site for recommendations. However, you don’t know any of those people, so how much weight does their opinion really carry? Instead of taking a risk on a very special evening, why not reach out to the people you trust? Asking friends and family for a recommendation is a much safer avenue to finding the perfect date night experience. What if we applied this type of thinking to your search for the perfect employee? Rather than leave it up to a random internet search, ask the people you already know, like, and trust… your employees. What is an employee referral program?...

A Comprehensive Guide to Organizational Development Imagine it’s 2005, and a small drinkware business opens up in the center of town. Although they have a simple website to provide store information and field online inquiries, their collection of customized mugs, shot glasses, and more continuously grow in popularity due to loyal customers and word of mouth. Now imagine it is 2015. The small team has done well for itself; however, its online presence is suffering. Underestimating the shift to online shopping, the company cannot handle the influx of questions, feedback, and requests to create an eCommerce platform. Once they’ve identified this problem, how do they implement changes to field this issue and stop it from happening again? Successful businesses require systems and processes. If situation A happens, what are the steps in response? Organizational development (OD) enables companies with a systematic approach to identifying issues, implementing changes, and evaluating the success of the process. What is organizational development? Organizational development is a systematic process aimed at initiating and implementing changes in the values or operations of an organization to promote long-term growth and efficiency. It equips organizations with the tools to assess themselves and advance their core strategies, processes, and structures in response to internal and external changes. OD serves to increase communication and productivity, improve products and services, create a workplace culture that embraces advancement and increase profit margins. Organizational Development and Human Resources Organizational development and human resource management are both processes centered on people. The two...

5 Open Door Policy Examples Whether they have an issue they want to be resolved or ideas they think would improve the company or better serve clients, employees just want to be heard. When you don’t create an open line of communication with your team, they may feel discouraged, leading to poor morale and ultimately lower production. Not to mention that employees who feel undervalued are likely to take their time and talents elsewhere. But an open-door policy can help employees bring fresh ideas to the table and make you aware of small issues before they become major problems that affect everyone. Here’s what an open-door policy entails, how you can create one yourself, and some examples of open-door policies in action. This workplace standard should foster communication and trust throughout the company, and employees should not have to fear retaliation should they raise issues with the company or their work with any managers. Instead, they should feel heard and supported through an open door policy. Benefits of an Open Door Policy There are several benefits to maintaining an open-door policy in the workplace. First, it fosters better communication across the company. It also helps employees speak their minds about workplace issues as soon as possible, which minimizes conflicts. An open-door policy can help employees feel more supported and valued by management, which boosts morale and ultimately productivity. It may even lower turnover rates. In one study on employee voice, researchers found that at a national restaurant chain with...

How Your Company's Attrition Rate Could Be Impacting Your Business Happy employees are the key to a successful business. According to the University of Oxford, happy employees are 13% more productive. High employee satisfaction can go a long way towards your bottom line. Of course, when your employees are not happy, that shows too. You’ll likely see a slowdown in productivity, a change in the work environment, and you may start seeing an increase in employee turnover. What have you noticed in your own organization? Are employees loyal and in it for the long haul, or are they leaving in droves? If you’ve been seeing more and more employees leaving the company in a short amount of time, it might be time to calculate your attrition rate and examine what’s really going on in your organization. There are a variety of metrics that you can use to determine how your employees are doing. Many of them focus on productivity metrics such as progress to goals. However, these productivity metrics don’t tell the whole story. That’s why it’s important to understand your attrition rate to help determine the health of your organization. Let’s discuss what an attrition rate is and how to lower it. Understanding your team’s attrition rate is important for the health of your organization because having a high attrition rate can have devastating impacts on your team’s success. With too many experienced team members leaving at once, you run the risk of losing valuable organizational knowledge...

The Ultimate Guide to Performance Management: 5-Step Process and Best Practices Peter Drucker once described customers as the "most important stakeholders." While this may be true, your customers are dependent on one thing. No, it’s not your product (though that’s definitely important). It’s actually your employees. Without your employees, products won’t get made, customers won’t learn about those products, and there will be no one there to sell or deliver those products, or provide customer service to them after they’ve purchased. While your customers may be your most important stakeholders, in a business or organization, your employees are your biggest asset. Their performance, mindset, attitude, and loyalty can make or break your company's performance and determine whether or not you will have any customers to sell to. Because of this, you will want to ensure that your employees are meeting expectations, and improving in necessary areas. Performance management aims to foster the best possible employees so your organization can thrive well into the future. What is performance management? Performance management is a process that allows managers to assess their employees’ work and support of business objectives. The goal of performance management is to track and improve the skills employees need to perform their necessary job duties. Elements of performance management include giving performance appraisals, utilizing key performance indicators (KPIs) and management dashboards, peer review, 360-degree feedback (multiple individuals from managers to subordinates assist), and the use of employee management software. A similar term, performance appraisal, also focuses on goals...

Employee Experience: What It Is and How to Improve It From the moment someone applies for a job, to the moment they send their resignation letter to leave the company, they’ll experience plenty of connections and moments that determine their employee experience. Employee experience (EX) is not far from customer experience (CX). Just as a stellar CX drives loyalty and revenue, an excellent EX attracts top employees and increases employee engagement, commitment, and productivity. Many employers know how important it is to improve the EX to adapt to a post-covid reality and to reduce employee turnover and address employee engagement challenges. But there’s still work to do in employee experience to ensure it becomes a critical part of every business’ strategy. What is employee experience? In short, employee experience includes all of the touchpoints people come across when they work for an organization. This includes hiring, onboarding, performance management, and day-to-day interactions. Improving the EX is a top priority for employers. However, few have developed an EX strategy that tackles all of the challenges of working in a post-pandemic world. An article by the Harvard Business Review points out that 4 million Americans quit their jobs in July 2021 alone, and resignations have been abnormally high for the last several months. As a result, 92% of companies say they will prioritize EX enhancements over the next three years in an effort to prevent further resignations. This figure is up from 52% before the pandemic. Why Employee Experience Matters The...