HRM: Recruitment Costs, Employee Training & Performance Review

How to Reduce Recruitment Costs

Every new employee who joins the company will modify the talent pool.  But while hiring new people you also have to keep your budget in check.

There are two types of hiring costs- direct hiring costs which include calculating specific spending made on services or goods used to recruit employees and there is an indirect hiring cost which includes costs for activities that will affect more than one position in an organization.

Here we are going to showcase some useful tips to reduce your hiring budget.

Internal referral resources

Instead of paying to recruiting agency, ask your current employees for personal referrals.  You can also ask their friends or relatives for the position.

Plan and Unplanned Vacancies 

HR partners and managers should sit down together and decide what their planned vacancies are and how much budget should be allocated.  While for unplanned vacancies, it should be budgeted based on a running rate through the current year.

Use social sites like Linked, Facebook, Watsapp

Social network sites are the best place to reach mass employees with the very limited resource.  You can even search for a specific community like LinkedIn recruiter page, career page, etc. on social sites and post the vacancy details.

Track the indirect expense made for recruitment

Track the amount spent after job advertisements, promotion needs, and expenditure on logistical supports during the interview, etc. This whole amount will be considered while calculating recruitment cost per person.

Online Recruitment

Recruitment online is much cheaper and effective than traditional print.  Certain websites have the capability to email directly to targeted individuals who have registered to their websites.

Managed online recruitment

This approach is a combination of email marketing, web advertising, CV searching and candidate screening to deliver to their clients a pool or relevant and targeted resumes from which to interview and hire from

Retain current staff

It is the ideal way to reduce the expenses over recruitment that comes at the regular time period.  Reduce the attrition rate and encourage the staff to hangon with you.  Before considering fresh recruit for new position in company, consider the previous employee for position who have left company with good experience or with formal training

Consider part-time recruitment

Consider hiring independent contractors to work for your businesses on a temporary basis rather than hiring a long term employee to handle various tasks. You can hire part-time employees for slow work, this will save the cost made on permanent employee

Use ATS (Applicant Tracking Software) system

ATS system or Applicant Tracking Software helps to eliminate the number of unqualified candidate’s reaching your HR or recruiter by setting up criteria that filter the applicants.

Hire Consultancy

Hiring consultancy can come handy, when hiring process is frequent in an organization. It saves a lot of time and cost spent after hiring process. The rich experience of hiring consultant always guarantees a good potential candidate.

How to find n number of candidates for your job opening?

The primary challenge for any job consultancy is to attract the number of applicants for the positions.  It is the first step towards the process of successful recruiting.   Here, we will see some of the strategies that can attract more candidates for the job position.

Use social sites for head hunt

Searching people with high profile and experience candidate in bulk takes a lot of research. The best way to do this is post job on social sites or through references through the network.

Build up your own database 

Another way to find more candidates is by building your own high profile candidate database including a list of companies and new joiners.  Have a consistent contact with these employees and get a reference from them. Share your email and contact details if it is necessary

Activate your network

Job market is still tight, so by spreading word about the position to fellow employees or colleagues is the best way to target maximum candidates

Write a job description that sells

More the job views, more the applicants. To mark your presence and getting your job description noticed online is very important to attract maximum employees. For that go online and look for the job that catches your attention in a pool of job posted, analyze what is unique in it and try implementing it in your next job post.

Track your job posting

It’s important to know whether your job posting is ideal for attracting maximum candidates. By using tool like “Job Posting Performance Report”, it will give the report of whether your job post method is appropriate or not and also give you the recommendation to improve job post

Rank high on search result pages

Usually candidate will click on top two or three websites listed on search engine webpage.  For better page ranking, it is crucial that you include the position keyword in your job posting. Keep your job title as clear as possible.

Optimise site for tablet and mobile

Most candidates nowadays carry a smartphone, so if your job site does not support these mobile devices, it will reduce the number of applicants.  For example, how long your website took to open on these devices

Make profile upload easier/flexible

Allow candidates to upload their profile with just a few clicks, instead of asking pages after pages to fill their past experience or history.  Give them option to pull their resume or profile from any other resources (social sites, email accounts, etc.)

Beside all these tips, continuous recruiting is the key for attracting more and more candidates.

Importance of Employment Background Check

Importance of Employment Background Check

Starting a business is a process that takes a lot of time and planning. Employment background check may be thought of as intrusive, but to keep the company protected in future, it is best to adapt this check. This helps the employer to find out if the details given in the resume of the applicant are true or not. It will help to protect the company from employing any person with an anti social act or practice in record. As crime is at its peak and the economy is battling, at all time, low, it is essential to do this check for the sake of the company’s safety and progress.

Checked

How can these checks be performed?

These details about the applicants are designed by getting paperwork from the police stations, law-courts and other government offices. It is enough to put in the name of the applicant and in a few seconds, all of the details come on screen in front of the operator. If you need more detailed information, you may employ a provider who will search old papers, hire detectives or phone a relative. This will be for a security job or the like that needs confidential information. Employment background check is something that has become highly common nowadays.

Can the company perform in-house checks on applicants?

These employment background checks can also be taken over by the in-house in the companies. Though the outsourcing of employment background check does have its own advantages; hiring a third party to conduct the check needs the consent of the applicant and according to the FCRA rules. You need to provide  the applicant  details of the investigations conducted on him. However, this is not necessary in case this check is taken up in-house. The employer does not need to disclose the details of the investigation, and there is no need for the applicant’s consent.

Can employees check the background of companies?

Not only the organizations but also the employees can perform the employment background check to make sure that their future is in good hands. The employee can find out if the employer has given correct details about the profits his company is making, or has given wrong data in the records. The future of the employee can be at stake with a company that has given wrong data and allured the applicants.

How to Keep Employees Motivated?

Employees that are highly motivated are more productive in their work and delivered better quality work. The most challenging task to keep your employees motivated throughout days, weeks, months and years. Individuals not only vary in their skills but also in their willingness to do a particular job.

Employees have five level of needs – Safety, Physiological, Ego, Self-Actualizing and Social Recognition. Based on these fives aspect employee can be kept motivated.

Here, we are going to analyze few general techniques that are adopted by a bigger as well as smaller organization to keep their employee engaged or motivated day-in and day-out.

  • Compensate employees: Support employee’s motivation by establishing reasonable compensation systems or perks at regular interval. You can also offer stock options it can act as a deferred compensation.
  • Assign special tasks: By assigning special tasks to employees you make them feel more important.
  • Acknowledge professional achievement: The acknowledgment of a task done well by upper management or the owner of the company will mean more to an employee
  • Help employee fulfill career goals: Listen to your employees and figure out what employees needs are and the company in general.
  • Understand the gap between employees ability and willingness to work: Allocate work to employees that not only fits his ability to do that job but also his willingness to do

  • Holding an after work happy hour: Include a happy hour session twice a week, where all team members involve to complete some activity
  • Work on the four objectives: Identify employees four objective – personal objective, organizational objective, societal objective and functional objective
  • Listen to your employees: Sometimes employees want that you are having listening ears to solve their problem other time they just want a sympathetic ear
  • Respect your employees: Believe it or not you are in the business of growing people. You’re all attempt to keep your employees motivated will go in vain if you don’t respect them. Be considerate to accept their opinions and views
  • Ensure job security: Ensure the security of their job and let them feel that it is their organization
  • Keep your doors open: Make your employees feel that your door are always open for them to share idea and opinion
  • Employees lack interest in the subject matter: An interested employee is likely to take actions and would work harder to perform it. Allocate the work that is of interest to particular employee
  • Effective Mentoring: Employees are more susceptible to get demotivated in the absence of proper mentors, so a right mention is essential to keep team motivated
  • Remote work place: If possible provide remote work place to your employee. In addition you can also give them flexible work hour once or twice a week.

Conclusion:

As an employer, motivating employees is a continuous process of rewarding, recognizing, encouraging and engaging the workforce.  All the strategies and tips mentioned here are designed keeping this aspect in mind.

Get Maximum ROI on Employee Training

An untrained employee can take up to six times longer to perform a task in comparison to trained employees.

So organization should focus on following aspect of training and investment made behind it.

Technical training through e-learning

Offering training in a new technology will help your business competitive, current and on top of other business competitors. With all learning resource available online, training staff for new technology should not be a huge cost to a company when compared to hiring professional.

Creating standard SOP (Standard Operating Procedures)

Using standard SOP will be helpful in a condition where spending big amount for the training session is not advisable, especially for Startup Company.  You can use the SOP document for your regular training needs.

Find trainers within your organization

For internal training instead of hiring skilled professional, use your experienced employee who can train new staff and also train those in groups which help to minimize the training cost.

Hire trained employees

When it comes to hiring freshers, atleast try to look for those employees that have received at least a portion of their training previously through their staffing agency or some other sources.

Instead of making their mind stone make it sponge

Learning style of each individual is different. It’s important to figure out how your employee learns best, and only then design the training activities that caters their preferred learning style.  The common learning style is divided into four segments visual, auditory, kinesthetic (learn by doing) and reading/writing preferences.

Ask- employee, Ask- experts

Ask your employee about the training they required and how it will help them to improve their performance capabilities. You can also ask your in-house training experts to see what new programs they will be offering.

Prepare an Audio script

Incase where training program is broad and in detail, record that conversation to audio script, it helps the learner to understand the concept thoroughly at their comfort. The biggest advantage of  Audio script is that it allows to replay the script as many times as you want.

Set up forums and join community groups

With forum discussion online as well as offline with the experts during free hours will help new bee to get their hands on the areas they need to excel.  They will have some useful tips that they won’t be able to get from any other training programs.

Train the top-notch

When training for all is not feasible, picking up one particular employee who’s a good presenter can be a good deal.  Send that person to attend the training program, when he comes back can train the others in what he learned.

Administer small doses and regular feedback

Sometimes all the training effort you invested will go in vain if your employee is not able to catch the training outcome.  Too much detailed and the long session may end up with nothing, it’s better to administer training program in a small portion and at regular intervals.  Time to time feedback is also important to check your investment for training program was worth.

Tips to Reduce Employee Turnover

Employee’s attrition is a common problem that is faced by any organization, and it is inevitable for any organization.  The only solution an organization can have to deal with this problem is to reduce the attrition rate.  Here we have listed some possible solution that can help to reduce the attrition rate.

Offering fair remuneration

The biggest reason for employee’s attrition is the financial growth. By offering legitimate remuneration to the employee, the attrition ratio can be reduced. To hold on to regular employees, regular reviews of the salaries must be conducted.  Also, performance based bonuses can also work sometimes to retain employee in an organization

Train your frontiers

If the managers and supervisors are not properly trained with their subordinates, then a healthy working atmosphere is not possible.  Leaders must be trained to build a proper relationship between employees and them, it is extremely important

Comprehensive Analysis

Analyze previous exit interviews data and look out for the common reason that all x-employees have listed out in their exit interviews.  Work on that factor and figure out how to eliminate it

Incorporate continuous development plans

Enhance the development plan for every employee and provide opportunities for growth in their personal career goal.  Encourage each employee to learn one new thing every one or two week and it will create a work force that will be committed, excited and motivated. Include program for skill up-gradation through training intervention

Perform exit Interviews

To get a realistic check and unbiased feedback, conduct an exit interviews. Include team leaders and managers in the interviewing processes.

Communicate with employees

Communicate with employees at regular time period, and ensure that their insecurities and vulnerabilities are addressed appropriately

Work/Life Balance

Employees seek job that allows them to have a personal life, ensure that you allow time off for personal business, family emergencies and other vital situation.

Effective Recruitment Process

Employee retention invariably depends upon the recruitment process.  When a candidate with a right set of skill and personality is hired, he is much likely to stick to his job.

ESOP (Employee Stock Option Plan)

ESOP or employee stock option plan can encourage employees to stick with the organization.  The main objective of enrolling the ESOP plan is to attract, retain and award the best of the talents and create a strong sense of ownership in the company.

Clear employees roles and responsibilities

Make sure your employees know what is expected of him and what types of the decision he or she will be allowed to take independently.

Consider alternate roles for unhappy employees

Certain employees work hard, but their skill set or personality keep them away from reaching the full potential. For such employee look for an alternate role that is more suitable or to its liking.

What is Performance Review & How it helps the Company

Shaun was working for a private company, but his manager identified that Shaun was not able to give satisfactory output.  Shaun was confronted many times by his manager related to his performance issue but was unable to identify the exact area for improvement. It was during his performance review, manager figured out that he might need training for his improvement. He put Shaun for a training program, and he noticed that Shaun was able to perform better than before.  Performance review can be a great strain at times, but the benefits are huge at longer periods. There are various stages of performance review.

Performance

What is performance review?

Performance review is an important aspect between manager and their employees.  It is a process of analysing the work output of an employee.  The objective behind the performance review is to make sure that the employee has a clear understanding of their job and to meet the expectation for the position they are hired. The first thing in performance review is to identify the cause of a performance problem and how to solve that problem.

Identifying the cause of performance problem

a)      Lack of knowledge and skill

b)      Lack of motivation

c)       Personal difficulties

d)      Inability to perform

e)      Performance obstacle

Why to do performance review?

a)      Employee’s development and improvement

b)      Identification of training required

c)       Employee’s motivation

d)      Identify the issues within the organization

e)      To meet customers or client’s satisfaction

f)       To identify the areas for improvements

Performance

Tips for successful performance reviews:

1) Conversation between manager and employees for the Annual Review

To assess progress towards a decided goal, midyear assessment is very crucial. It gives time not only to see the progress of the project, but also to analyze the area for correction. The main activities that are focused in such assessment are progress of the project before and after the conversation between employees and manager, review of the documents from last performance, documents or notes accumulated during the year eg: a feedback from the client.

2) Document the conversation

A written performance document or form is important, because it keeps a record of past performance and what are the expectations for future projects.

3) Self Appraisal form

Managers can ensure that every employee receives an annual review form and on the basis of that annual review form, the review process is done.

4) Reciprocal Process

A frequent conversation about the performance between the managers and employees will create an atmosphere of shared responsibility of work and how to execute it.

Reciprocal process is very important for those employees whose interaction with their managers is very less.

5) Keep employee’s job description upto date

A review of employee’s job description is very important, as to keep a watch on their job responsibility.  It helps to analyze the skills and training required for the job, as with the time the responsibility of the job changes.

6) Multi-Rater Feedback

This is also helpful to account the performance of an employee. A multi-rater feedback form is a feedback form that is filled by employee’s colleagues or customers, to map the employee’s performance.

7) Review each aspect of employee

Do not review any one aspect of employee, employee often do better in some area than others.  So it becomes necessary to review each aspect of employee independently while doing performance review.

8) Judge performance not potential

Focus on actual performance and the contribution of an employee to complete the task.

9) Judge achievement, not progress

Judge the achievement of the employee and the positive results obtained during a fixed period of time rather than activity or progress.

10) Self-evaluation

Self-evaluation of an employee can be crucial, as it opens the door for discussion with employee and areas of improvement can be identified.

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