Simple ways to welcome your new employees

I am sure that all of us have full of anticipation and nervous energy one night before the new job commerce. Companies have invested heavily on onboarding programs, but might have missed out on simple aspects that could make a new hire feel welcome

SHARE THEIR PRESENCE

This can be done even before their first day. You could send a company wide email to share about this new person and encourage replies and acknowledge of their presence. You could also bring them around the office to introduce new hires to their new team and colleagues.

COMPANY GIFTS

Your company is your own brand. Little bit of things like a note book, office stationery with your Company logo imprinted on it can make a new hire have a sense of belonging. Your trivial things could also provide more common chattering between the new hire in the current team.

KNOW YOUR VALUES

There’s no better day to share about your company values during their first day. This will help them understand the culture of your company and would also ensure that they are aware of your value, so your incumbent actions would align with the values of the Company.

You could also share your company’s process during this period, and this will allow them to see the big picture and understand how the different departments work.

Resume Red Flags that are of lesser importance

It is always good to bring in good candidates, but as hiring managers, we should also be able to set realistic expectations. There will never be the most ideal candidate to hire, and even if they are – they will most likely be the most expensive to hire.

There are many reasons why we did not shortlist candidates, but the labor market is getting tighter and there are some reasons why we should be more receptive to them

RETRENCHMENT

Retrenchment happens because there is redundancy of headcount, but it need not be linked to ability or work ethics. During recession, it is common that there are over supply of labour and companies must drastically cut cost by reducing their manpower. It does not mean that only the non-performing is let go. To have greater assurance, you could conduct a reference check with the previous employer.

EMPLOYMENT GAPS

It is common to ask questions when one takes on a long break before commencing the next employment. Just because a person took a long time to find a job, does not represent that the interviewee is not qualified. This is especially so when people are redefining priorities in life and are considering travelling plans with them as well.

EDUCATION QUALIFICATIONS

The move is now towards a knowledge-based economy and hiring is less emphasis on educational certificates. Skills can be taught, but what is more important is the person’s attitude and willingness to learn. You can still see people in management positions doing well despite not having a graduate from one of the prestigious university.

SHORT EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

It is still good to check with someone who have short employment history and to understand the validity of the reasons of leaving. Some people find it difficult to get a full-time role, so undertake different contracts in different companies. It is always good to ask before you conclude.

How do you appreciate your employees?

We have heard it so many times – that people are the core of the business, and human capital is important but how often do the middle management and top management really show their appreciation to employees?

If you are reading this, and you are one of the management or in the Human Resource team, then maybe it is time for you to initiate! Employee Appreciation Day falls on the 3rd March annually but it is still not too late!

Here are some ways you can show your extra appreciation to your employees!

Provide Welfare

You can do this by providing massage services to employees who badly need to relax – whether is it for your blue collars who are doing your manual work or your white collars who are constantly hunched trying to coordinate your work for you.

Provide Food

You can’t really go wrong with food, as food commonly bonds colleagues and friends! Good food is awesome, but it will be even better when it is fully sponsored by the Company!

During this period, there should also not be any restrictions on lunch break! Lunch break should be if your employees wishes. It is ultimately a form of reward for all the hard work done.

You can also provide new coffee machines in the pantry, as an extra surprise to your employees! This give them the extra perk to perform better in their work anyway!

Hand written notes

This do not have to be presentable, and expensive cards to show your appreciation. Simple one or two sentences to show your appreciation will do. You can be surprised of what a few words can do!

Reorganize your office

If you have the luxury of time, you can request for your employees to give the walls a different shade of colour, and understand the request of a reorganization of office furniture.

You can even provide them a small budget to redecorate their office spaces, to feel energized!

Purchase a new computer!

This applies if you have huge budget or when your computer is old. Imagine your employee’s delight if you’re able to give them something new to allow them to be more productive at work!

You can also introduce systems to help encourage productivity and efficiency as well – to make work more meaningful and less administrative.

Be Interested

Employees would really feel appreciated if you are interested in their personal lives, apart from how they are like in the company. If bosses show interest in their families, instead of how much work have they performed – this would also reflect as an appreciation of employees.

This would be even better if you allow your employees a more flexible schedule if they are able to perform in their work. It would be one thing to share that you want them to have a work-life balance, and another if you really make it one of the priorities that has been stressed by the management.

How to Identify Resume Fraud

Looking for employment opportunities could be a very lengthy and frustrating process. You were so close to being offered the role, but someone with more experience comes along the takes the job. You are always the second in line to the person companies would like to offer.

This increases resume fraud – and it is best to identify doing a reference check and a verification with selected education institutions to ensure that the education they have provided are true and accurate.

In addition, you could look out for the following pointers:

VAGUE DESCRIPTION FOR SKILLS

It will be advised to have a quick phone chat or conduct a face to face interviews, probing into skills that they have mentioned to be of very vague in nature. If someone has shared that they are familiar with a skill, they should be able to answer you reasonably well when asked in detail.

Alternatively, you could also require candidates to come in for a one-day trial to understand if they really have the skill that is required, or you could offer them on a temporary basis, convertible to a permanent if they have shown to be a good fit with the Company.

QUESTIONABLE EMPLOYMENT DATES

Resumes who only have indicated the years are usually a big red flag to try to prolong their period of employment or, they could have hope that it could hide periods of unemployment. It will be good if you check with Candidates the months of the employment and to be truthful when sharing their period. Alternatively, there is always the presence of reference checks

OBSERVE BODY LANGUAGE

Imagine conducting an interview where the candidate is avoiding eye contact or appear to have memorized scripts prior to the interview. This are all signs of dishonestly, but it is also important to distinguish on whether this nervousness or dishonesty is.

Overworked?

The truth is, we all are. The never-ending emails which require some form of actions on our end, and the amount of time each effort requires makes us constantly drained at work. Sometimes, the stress could be reduced by asking colleagues for assistance, but you feel it will be a move that is constantly frowned upon by others.

The fact is people are willing to help – but this comes as a disclaimer that only if you show you have put in adequate effort into your work. You must think about these few pointers before proceeding with simple delegation.

WHICH TASK TO ASSIGN

You might want to assign tasks that are very simple but administrative. This times up a lot of your personal time at work. These tasks are best as they do not require complicated instructions or constant supervision. You would not want to assign tasks that your other colleagues constantly ask you questions because they are unsure of the instructions.

COMMUNCIATE WHAT YOU NEED

If you have already decided to ask a colleague, you must communicate what you need very clearly. If you have not communicated clearly enough, it might result in duplicate work. If someone has decided to help you, you can do away with less formalities by “Would you be able to help me”. These choices of words might seem like an option to the one receiving the instructions.

BE RECEPTIVE

You might only want a colleague to help you, but if they have shared that they too lack the time to assist you or they shared they might not be the best person to help you but recommend someone else – you might want to give it a go with that someone as well.

How to handle termination at workplace?

It could be the company’s decision to terminate a person, but everyone would shun when they are aware that they might have to communicate this termination to the affected employee. There will be fears of how the affected employee would take it once they are confronted with the decision, and it might seem as a very distasteful way to execute this decision. 

THE THOUGHT PROCESS

It is important to ensure the company have sufficiently thought through this process before handling the termination letter. A good company policy would be sufficient to handle any reasons why a supervisor might be reluctant to hand the termination letter. These reasons can then be used to justify to the affected employee on their reasons for termination.

Before termination is decided, employees should have been aware of the reasons of their performance issues and have given opportunities to improve. It is only justifiable if they have been aware of their issues and proper remediation steps have been advised and executed.

Fundamentally, the affected employee is affecting the team synergy and his outcome of his work is dis-satisfactory to the team’s work performance. This is the exact case of “It’s better to have no one at all, than to have the affected employee on board”. If the affected employee performance is not up to par, it is also to justify to his co-workers and then the entire misconception of the person executing the termination is cruel and inconsiderate would also be misplaced. People prefer to work for managers who enforce exacting standards and who give continuous feedback on their work.

It is also important to understand to consider this affected employee a re-designation before termination. The affected employee could be kept due to good attitude and willing to learn but a non-performance in the role that was assigned

HANDLE THE PERSON EXECUTING IT

The person handling the termination should be trained and be advised prior to executing the termination to the affected employee. The person executing the termination should never retaliate to anger or violence during the termination process as both parties could have been displeased with each other for a period.

It is important also to let managers listen to their perspective of the affected employee before finalizing the discussion by saying the discussion is over, but the decision still stands. It would not be very professional for an employee to have been kept interrupted with “Our decision still stands”.

During the execution of termination, it would be a fatal mistake to go through the empathetic stand and shower compliments to a candidate when the decision has been made for him to be terminated. You might also confuse your employee on the decision and might result in the employee challenging the manager on why the decision was made.

Effective Employee Communications

I always believe that keeping employee communications a priority helps keep organisation improve in its performances – an engaged workforce would mean more success.

Proper communications do help in eliminating misunderstanding and assumptions, and also help to encourage a healthy and peaceful work environment. An age-old aphorism goes - “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.” It’s a profound learning process that we must pick up along the way. Efficient communication with the team and all will make work done effective and professional.

Here you go:

Setting the right tone

We tend to encounter employees who try to test boundaries, and see where is good for them to test your limits. However, be sure to display confidence and keep the tone right. Seriousness is key and important for employees especially when you meet the uninterested ones. They must understand and keep in mind the message sends across. If information sent across are seemed to be unimportant, employees will reciprocate the same.

Use simple terms and words & articulate well

We want everyone to be on the same page and yet not everyone is able to understand the same if you use bombastic words to communicate. Keep messages simple for everyone to understand. You do want to keep explaining yourself on any pointers and everyone forgets what was communicated before that.

Listen to your employees

Communications are never meant to be one-way. Always encourage your employees to speak or open during group discussions so that they can be guided properly. You never know, we may have other employees who are also having the same questions in their head, and assume their ways of answers.

Use multiple forms of communication channels

Everyone gets message across in different means. You’ve employees who are good listeners, others who are needs assistance in visual communications while more who digested messages slightly slowly as they need to go through your messages repeatedly. Whenever possible, distribute your messages in all different channels such as e-emails, posters, face-to-face, presentation slides etc.

Plan the communications – Feedback & Q&A

I’m sure no one stands in front of their employees stuttering, and cannot explain any pointers during the session. Plan it out and ensure that the messages are brought across coherently. You might want to have a check-box to ensure that you do not miss out any information. It is also good to have some answers prepared for Q&A session.

Encourage feedback during communications. It gives you the chance to know that your message has been brought across and also to measure the effectiveness of communication.

How to fix your workplace culture

We all understand that work culture is important as it enhances productivity, increases retention and make your company more attractive to new hires. Culture is based on the set of beliefs and values, and it fundamentally affect your actions your employees do at work as well.

IDENTIFY WEAK CULTURES

You must first identify what is your current culture you have. Are your employees constantly engaged, or are they very confused about what is expected of them? Do you constantly see signs of verbal gossips, or verbal and physical abuse? Are you also hearing whether feedback is useless since Management do not consider that as well and that they are underpaid for all the roles and duties they are assigned within the Company?

You will then want to understand what is it that cause your employees this mindset? What exactly is the actions that have resulted in this behavior traits. Through understanding what are the infrastructure that have resulted in this culture, you might want to act on it.

LISTEN TO YOUR EMPLOYEES

The best person to explain to you why the culture is being set today, is to have a quick chat with your employees – whether is it a focus group session, one to one communication or data in the form of quantitative or qualitative. You will want to make them feel validated and that they matter.

START FROM MANAGEMENT

Fundamentally, for the culture to be set right – your management must set the good examples as well. You will want to understand what has caused or resulted in this culture. Do management take feedback seriously and do they recognize excellent work? 

FIXING THE INFRASTRUCTURE

You must understand that people are resistant to change – generally be it management or employees. You should set priorities on what are the things to change. Evaluate how big your actions can cause based on just one change. You could also identify the influencers in the team and start the change from them. Generally, once accepted by them – acceptance rates from the others would be higher as well.

If your common feedback that everyone is overworked, then it is time to propose realistic deadlines and workloads. If you need to hire more to distribute the workload more evenly, you might want to consider that as well. It could be good to set in accountability to ensure that your employees are aware of what they are responsible for. It is especially important for management to show recognition of excellent work done to constantly motivate employees.

If communication is a problem, you might want to ensure feedback sessions are conducted regularly and for management to have more transparent communication with their employees to reduce confusion and hence, frustration.

REVIEW THE PLANS

Constantly seek feedback and ensure you are going on the right track. There will never be any harm on hearing more perspectives.  Give your changes some time to be implemented, and do not rush the process. Gradually, you should assess if there is any change in the work place culture and constantly tweak to finally have the culture you require in your team.