A recent Newsweek article touched on the impact “March Madness” can have on a company’s profitability.  As an ardent college basketball fan (and of course someone who takes his work seriously),  I wanted to share the finding and some ways you can make the office a little more fun around this time of year.

Imagine- you’re performing your daily ritual of watching SportsCenter in the morning; you hear the anchors discussing the March Madness Countdown…suddenly you  begin to envision an inbox full of “I’m out sick” messages.  Don’t panic!  This is normal.  During March Madness, a dramatic increase of influenza hits those most vulnerable to the illness; the gainfully employed.  Amid all the March Madness distractions, however, taking advantage of these few weeks can be a great opportunity to build morale and camaraderie within your organization, and to keep attendance close to 100%.

Turn on ESPN in the break room!

New technology has given basketball fans instant access to streaming videos of live March Madness games (which can keep them glued to their desk computers for the wrong reasons). Putting a TV in the break room gives your employees the freedom to watch the games in segments, reducing the temptation to watch the whole game on their computers.

Free company-wide office bracket-pool

March Madness brackets are a great tool to build competitive spirit within the organization. Hang a large, updated bracket on a high-traffic wall for all competitors to view. Reward the top five with free lunches or framed awards.

Favorite Team Apparel Day

Let your employees wear the apparel of their favorite colleges for a day. Just make sure they don’t have any important meetings scheduled—don’t want to see any fights erupt with potential new clients!

As a Talent Acquisition Consultant to many of New England’s fastest growing tech startup companies and a few Fortune 500 behemoths, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when employees start to head for the exit doors in search of new opportunities.  More often than not, management teams end up using the “bubble gum in the dam” approach to stop the bleeding.  This is, in large part, due to their inability to get to the root of the problem when it first emerges.  The quick-fix approach is shortsighted, and often does more harm than good.  Read on.

Makin’ it rain (may not be a good idea).
When a company faces retention problems, management’s initial reaction is often to pay people more money to get them to stick around, but this should be a last resort.  One of my clients started losing top employees to privately held start-ups who were offering higher pay and stock options.  Their solution?  Boost everyone’s pay.  Not a good idea.  Throwing money at your employees might hold them over temporarily, but if they aren’t truly happy being a part of your organization, they will be looking for other opportunities (unless they’re gold-diggers) on the side, and when they find a company they are better aligned with, they might even end up leaving for less pay.   So how do you get them to stay with your crew?

Let them stand under your (corporate) umbrella.
Strengthen the culture of your firm and your employees will begin to hold themselves and one another to your corporate values and traditions, ultimately resulting in higher retention rates and creating a solid team.  I sat down with my client’s senior management team and advised them to offer competitive salaries in line with industry standards, but more importantly to take big steps to improve the company culture.  For example, I recommended that they become more transparent with employees, focus their attention on improving morale by recognizing good work, and importantly, that they support employees when it’s most needed.

Keep it real.
The best way to avoid retention problems and to develop a strong culture is to start with the front end of the equation, which is talent acquisition.  I’ve seen countless job applicant assessment formulas, predictive analytics and competency tests, but I want to know how many of you pay close attention to cultural fit when you interview a job applicant?  This is, hands down, the most “real” way to tell if an employee will be around for the long haul.

It’s all about the Benjamins, baby…(the Ben Smiths, that is).
Example of a great cultural fit:
Ben Smith (@TheRealBenSmith) is a HubSpot employee working with customers to keep the churn down and he does a remarkable job – last I checked it was hovering around 2%.  Of equal importance are Ben’s contributions to the HubSpot culture with his honesty, integrity, openness, transparency and the positive attitude he brings every day.  These are the values we saw in him from Day 1. These values were as important, if not more important, than his experience and background in the hiring process.

You better check yourself before you wreck yourself.
When the unemployment numbers dip and the talent wars heat up, your best bet is to hire people like Ben Smith and work to strengthen the culture of your organization before it’s too late.  Money should not be a driving force behind retention of your best talent, and if it is, you might be doing something very wrong.  And on the hiring front- if your corporate culture is alluring and strong enough, it won’t be hard to get top candidates to… “holla back”.

In previous posts, we’ve discussed how companies that mistreated their employees during the recession may soon see them depart for greener pastures, and we’ve gone over the practical steps employers should take to be sure they retain their best talent during the recovery. As the job market continues to stabilize in the wake of the recession and new opportunities begin to open up elsewhere, it shouldn’t surprise hiring managers that employees may begin to explore their options with other companies. As many companies continue to feel the financial crunch and are forced to stretch every dollar to its limit, hiring managers would do well to consider that the costs of retention, when compared to those of a new hire, aren’t nearly as balanced as one might think. Filling or replacing a position may seem like a simple transaction, but there are numerous unseen costs built into the process. For instance, when an employee quits or is fired, the costs of refilling that position  with a new hire aren’t only limited to providing a base salary, but often include HR and hiring costs, time and money spent on possible outsourcing, any costs associated with training your new employee, and any lost productivity stemming from a loss of morale, or additional workloads.

Here are some things to consider before making a hiring decision:

The costs of hiring may be far greater than you thinkTo put a number in your mind, several studies indicate that the costs associated with replacing an employee are, on average, 150 percent of that position’s annual salary. If that number seems high, the most conservative findings still find those costs hovering near 50 percent. As one resource notes:

[Lose] someone making $30,000 a year because you failed to take adequate steps to keep them and replacing them will likely cost between $45,000 and $60,000. If employees earn $35,000 and you lose a dozen a year, turnover costs approach $250,000 per annum, or more.

Someone amongst your existing staff might want the job you’re hiring for.

If you take the time to speak with your employees about their career goals and their satisfaction with their workload, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that some of them are ready for their next challenge or opportunity. While it’s completely unacceptable to abuse employees and force them to work outside of their job-descriptions, some of your employees might be thrilled to add an extra bullet to their resume, and you could find yourself in a situation where you’re both maximizing their potential and saving yourself the time and expense of taking on a new hire.

Hiring managers sometimes overlook top-notch candidates by focusing only on professional accolades and top-notch degrees.  If you ever find yourself going “YES! I want THAT ONE!” because a candidate looks great on paper and passed your interview questions like Marion Jones passed her competition at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, bite your tongue! Remember that a resume is (if candidates do it right) a strategically crafted piece of paper. You can never really be sure that what you’re reading on paper is in line with the reality of the person. Furthermore, can you really know what it’s like to work with a person based on the well-rehearsed answers they gave to your well-rehearsed questions? No.

So, go back into the trashcan and dig out that stack of not-so-great resumes. They might warrant a closer look, and here’s why:An article in Restaurant Hospitality Magazine (“Weeding Out the Wackos”) rightly asserts that hiring for personality is way more important to sustained employment than skills-based hiring. “You can train the mechanics of almost any job, but you cannot teach or buy personality”, the article quotes VP of Training at Champps restaurants as saying.  During the interview process “you’re seeing the absolute best this person has to offer.”

Having Straight-A Suzie on your roster is no good if she regularly annoys cubicle-neighbors by correcting their grammar (“It’s ‘for whom’, not ‘for who’), or answers the phone like the chick in Office Space. You may soon find yourself dogged with questions from colleagues about your decision and judgment.

What should you be looking for? David Scott Peters, founder of Smile Button Enterprises, suggests going with Marion Jones-proof interview questions (“Tell me about a time when you bent the rules to get a job done”… “Are you willing to take a drug test today?”) and has broken the interview process down into four critical components to be testing for: Skills, Personality; Professional Motivation; and Cultural Fit.  I’m not suggesting you take your candidate to a bar to see what drunken confessions you’ll get out of him, but do make these other factors as important, if not more important than skills in the hiring process.

In the discussion of how companies will include social media into their business strategy, there is always the struggle of finding practical uses for the medium. Thankfully for HR professionals, one trending topic is the increasing use of social media as part of the hiring process, or recruiting 2.0.

In an age of interconnectivity, one of the most useful features of social media is that it provides a glimpse into an applicant’s professional and personal nature. Networking websites like LinkedIn and Facebook integrate an individual’s professional achievements with their relationships and interests, allowing one to not only access an applicant’s resume or work experience, but an entire community of corroborators who could attest to their value and character.

Businesses are catching on. Chris Pintilla, a writer for Entrepreneur.com’s HR blog, wrote about a recent survey of hiring managers, which found that social media is playing an increasing role in their hiring decisions. According to the results, out of 100 managers surveyed:

75 percent go to LinkedIn to research job candidates before making a job offer, while 48 percent check out Facebook and 26 percent go to Twitter. When asked where they find talent for job openings, 66 percent said LinkedIn, 23 percent said Facebook and 16 percent said Twitter.

Are you up-to-date on social media?

Here are four tips for integrating social media into your company’s recruiting strategy:

1. Create a social media presence. By creating a LinkedIn profile and a Facebook page, you are inviting outside users, community members and job applicants to learn more about your brand and culture. Attempt to build a following by posting information about the company and its mission. Take opportunities to interact with users more personally by asking questions and posting surveys. This is a great opportunity to see prospective applicants align themselves with your company’s brand before the interview.
2. Use social media as a means to broadcast new opportunities. Twitter’s usage grew by 752 percent in 2008 and 1,382 percent in 2009. In the summer of 2009, Twitter passed 50 million unique users. With growth like this, Twitter and other social media utilities are ripe with opportunities to connect your business with a vast online community. Use a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page to list open positions or future opportunities. Then, invite other users to forward the information to their own followers and friends.
3. Do your homework. Social media is a two-way street. Make sure you research your potential applicant’s online persona. Use Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles to get a sense of an applicant’s personality and interests outside of work. Check out their LinkedIn profile to view their job experience and professional connections. But remember to use fair judgment. It’s a fine line between research and Big Brother, and this isn’t 1984.
4. Measure your results. If used properly, social media can be an incredible help to HR professionals. Prepare to keep track of your social media success by asking applicants how they found out about the company or the position.

Click here for more tips on harnessing social media for your company.

Now more than ever, the attention of job-seekers is turning to companies that offer a unique culture, non-traditional management hierarchy, and flexible policies that allow employees to lead well-balanced lives.  This increasingly European approach to workplace norms may cause companies a heap of trouble in coming months as more jobs become available, and retention becomes a concern of traditional “dinosaur” CEOs.  This will be particularly true of bosses who extended hours, cut pay, nixed benefits, and laid-off workers en masse in 2009.  On top of knowing that new Gen-Y friendly companies are out there, employees who work for dinosaurs will remember if they’ve been treated poorly and abused in the name of “tough economic times”, and aren’t likely to forgive.  Staying in an office where they felt undervalued will no longer seem logical, and many will opt to leave for more charismatic and innovative employers.
 
One such innovative leader is inbound marketing and web analytics company Hubspot.  With an almost revolutionary approach to running a business, HubSpot’s leaders have basically handed employees the reins.  Bear in mind, this is no “Mom and Pop Shop” where employees wear Hawaiian shirts on Fridays.  HubSpot is a hugely successful company with well over 100 employees.  The stakes were high, but HubSpot firmly believes that their approach to conducting business is the best all-around fit for management and staff alike, and it seems to be working! 

 “A “common sense” policy really governs everything our employees do,” says Joe Sharron, Director of Talent Acquisition at HubSpot.
 
 Here’s a look at some of the more unique offerings on the corporate table at this company.  Traditional corporate types, hold onto your hats…
 
HubSpot TV on Fridays
This is a Good Morning America style podcast that HubSpot hosts weekly.  With as many as 100 local business owners, marketing professionals, and prospective hires present at the live recordings, HubSpot invites people in from the streets to showcase the latest developments in inbound marketing.  Before and after the taping, refreshments, including cold beer, are served, as employees network and socialize with guests.  The likes of MC Hammer and the Founder of Twitter have made appearances, as have various venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.  HubSpot TV is currently one of the most popular podcasts on the Web. 

HubSpot TV

Ping Pong Tournaments
They periodically hold  internal tournaments, and all employees, including executives, participate.  Needless to say, these can get very competitive!
 
No Door Policy
HubSpot has, of course, taken the “Open Door Policy” one step further and, um, removed their doors.  Actually, even the executives don’t use offices.
  
Companies seem to be realizing that open communication is essential to employee happiness.  Meeting behind closed doors screams “corporate gossip” and makes employees feel ill-at-ease regarding their job security and their performance.  At HubSpot, it’s all about transparency.  Employees know they can approach each other at any time, and never feel as though they are being discussed or talked badly about behind closed doors.
 
Dress Code
There isn’t one.  Most people opt for casual or business casual.
 
Social Media
As you may have guessed, social media is strongly encouraged here.  Employees blog, Tweet, Book Faces on FaceBook, and Link In on a regular basis, with no restrictions on content.
 
Vacation Policy
HubSpot’s new policy states that in 2010, there is no formal vacation policy.  No forms necessary, no permission needed, and  no limits on how much vacation time you can take, and no accrual or carryover issues.  Once again, common sense is the name of the game. 
 
What’s the Catch
Thanks to the office beer coolers and fully stocked refrigerators, you may fall victim to the “HubSpot 15”.
 
So What?
As you might imagine, HubSpot does not anticipate having any retention problems in 2010, partially because they hire well to begin with, and largely because of these amazing policies that have many desk-jockeys green with envy.  In 2009, the company was pleased to report a total of zero layoffs. Since the beginning of the recession, they have grown by 350%.  Get the picture?
 
“I’ve been recruiting for many years,” says Sharron.  “You can always tell when someone works for a good company because they are literally impossible to recruit.  At HubSpot, we make it our intention not just to have appealing policies in place, but to offer our employees a way of life.” 

To learn more about HubSpot visit: www.hubspot.com

By Meg Toland

As mentioned in an earlier post, the online recruiting space has rapidly evolved within the past year.  Innovative technology is enabling startup job board companies to compete with big players like Monster, Hotjobs and Career Builder.  In this Job Startup Series, we will highlight some of the noteworthy players in this startup space.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet with Jindrich Liska, CEO of Jobmagic, a startup job board company that is really making a name for itself within both corporate and agency recruiting. As suggested on the company’s website: “Jobmagic’s solution is elegant and efficient, a game-changer in the online careers space.” The technology behind the product assesses every dimension of a candidate – their unique skills, education, experiences, and preferences, and matches these elements against detailed job profiles to return only the best matches.

Jobmagic Empowers Recruiters With Social Media-Enabled Job Postings

New Jobmagic application allows recruiters to add their Facebook®, LinkedIn® and Twitter profiles to their job postings and to automatically publish them to major social media outlets.

The next-generation recruiting platform Jobmagic today announced its new social media application, which expands recruiters’ reach by leveraging the power of social media outlets such as Facebook®, LinkedIn® and Twitter.

Jobmagic’s application enables recruiters not only to efficiently attract qualified candidates through their many referral networks, but also to grow their networks. Job postings feature one-click buttons to recruiters’ Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter profiles, making it easy for candidates to immediately connect and stay in touch. Networking is a key success factor in recruiting, and the social media-enabled job postings give recruiters a strong competitive advantage above plain text job postings.

“Jobmagic puts a recruiter’s social media brand one click away from millions of job seekers 24/7,” says Jindrich Liska, founder and CEO. “It brings recruiters closer to their candidates and allows them to engage in an immediate dialogue.”

Jobmagic’s new application fully automates job publishing on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, each job is automatically published to a recruiter’s network news feed, where it can be shared and further virally distributed. In addition, a recruiter can specify a frequency at which jobs are automatically re-published or re-tweeted. The application has been successfully used by recruiters across the entire spectrum of the industry, from executive search firms to staffing agencies, from healthcare to technology.

“Many recruiters are already using social media by manually publishing jobs through their status updates, job notifications or tweets,” says Liska. “Jobmagic improves efficiency by automating those processes.”

Additional features of the application include:

LinkedIn

• Post jobs to LinkedIn Groups.
• Send jobs to LinkedIn contacts.

Facebook

• Publish jobs to friends’ news feeds.
• Add full-featured, keyword and location-searchable job boards to recruiter’s profile.
• Enable fully automated job re-publishing.
• Send jobs to Facebook friends.
• Show featured jobs directly on recruiter’s Facebook profile.
• Use Facebook Connect for one-click login from the Web.

Twitter

• Tweet jobs to the company Twitter account.
• Enable fully automated job re-tweeting.
• The Jobmagic application for recruiters is available on Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/job-magic/.

About Jobmagic

Jobmagic is a comprehensive recruiting platform for social media job publishing, referral hiring and high-accuracy profile matching. Jobs published on the Jobmagic platform are social media-enabled to allow recruiters and candidates to engage in the fastest way possible. The patent-pending, profile-based matching system generates a ranked list of the most qualified candidates for each job opportunity. Jobmagic is a service of Vitruva, Inc.

• What are the top three reasons that people work for your organization? Consider surveying your staff on this, but don’t feed them options on this question.  Let your employees fill out their own thoughts to ensure you are getting the most honest responses. 
• What reasons (other than money) are revealed for voluntary departures in employee exit interviews? Are you tracking this?
• What are the top three professional characteristics that your strongest employees/performers share?
• What percentage of A, B and C candidates are hired annually?
• Do your employees believe in your company vision, product/service value proposition and culture?
• Do management styles fluctuate across the organization?
• What percentage of your employees would feel confident recommending your organization to a friend or contact as a great place to work?

A government official is delivering a press conference on a matter of grave importance.  No one dares to make a sound.  Quietly, one man turns his head and nudges the person beside him. “Do you smell smoke?” he whispers. Three other people hear him and turn around to confirm their suspicions. A nervous ripple moves through the audience, and one bold woman musters up the courage to yell, “FIRE!!!” Chaos ensues as people dash for the exits en masse. No one wants to be left in a burning room.  Commonsense though it may seem, many CEOs abandoned this truth to the wind when the going got tough in recent years.

Word-of-mouth and hype are powerful tools. Your treatment of employees during difficult economic times could have hurt your brand more than you know. Before you know it, you may find yourself facing an exodus of talented employees, with little or no fresh talent wanting to come in the door.

Is your company a burning building, or have you been treating your employees well? Your behavior during a recession may have seemed appropriate. It’s undeniable that companies have been under severe budget cuts and you’d be hard-pressed to find a company that has survived without some degree of layoffs. However, the extent to which you flexed your corporate muscle and intimidated or even emotionally abused your employees with threats (overt or subtle) of layoffs will determine how you come out on the other end.  It will also determine to what extent fresh talent wants to work for a company that regularly laid-off hard working employees and was unwilling to sacrifice for the good of the team. 

Employers, take note! You probably think your employees are more satisfied than they really are. A 2009 Salary.com survey on the topic of retention showed that 65 percent of employees admitted to passively or actively looking for a new job, compared with employers’ estimates of 37 percent. 77% of employers believe their employees were at least somewhat satisfied in their jobs, while in reality, only 65 percent said they were satisfied.  The key takeaway from the survey is that employers have felt confident that simply giving someone a job is enough to retain them during a recession, but that has never been entirely true, and now the tides are turning!

So as 2010 progresses, and the nebulous “when the recession ends” nears, focus your efforts on retention. It’s important now, more than ever, to treat your employees well and reward them before it’s too late for the valuable contributions they’ve made to your team during hard times. Click here for some tactics on retaining your company’s most valuable asset.

2009 was quite the year for Boston businesses and their workers.  Between mass layoffs, budget cuts and hiring freezes, local businesses have been faced with challenges that have more than likely impacted their workforce. 

This morning I came across the NECN report/video below.  As the market starts to turn around for many (not all) local companies, I’m interested in hearing from Boston hiring professionals on the following:

1. Do you fear that you will lose some great talent over the next few months or in 2010?
2. Would you say that your employees are satisfied in their jobs and working for your company?
3.  What current employee retention initiatives/practices do you have in place?

 (Comments welcome below report)

NECN REPORT:

Job satisfaction down among American workers

(NECN: Greg Wayland, Boston, Mass.) – Whether you’re lifting, lugging or living high off the corporate hog, a new national survey claims odds are less than even that you’re lovin’ every minute of it.

The Conference Board Consumer Research Center surveyed 5000 U.S. households and found only 45 percent of workers were satisfied with their jobs.

That’s down 61 percent since 1987.

They also claim people’s interest in their jobs dropped nearly 19 percent during that period. A sense of job security dipped 17 and a half percent, and according to this survey, 22 percent of workers didn’t even expect to be in their current job in a year.

NECN’s Greg Wayland spoke to people today about their jobs. Link to NECN: (http://www.necn.com/Boston/Business/2010/01/05/Job-satisfaction-down-among/1262738443.html)