Firms in good position to attract new talent
The amount of Canadian workers actively looking for a new job has increased over the last quarter, according to Randstad's latest labour mobility index.
Overall, compared to third quarter results, the mobility index has risen from 103 to 105 points (levels last seen in the first and second quarters of 2011). This increase indicates more employees worldwide expect to be employed elsewhere over the next six months, said Randstad.
In a global context, no other country has experienced greater movement in the labour market in the fourth quarter as Canada has, with an increase of 12 points over the last quarter. Belgium (up eight points) Switzerland (up five points) and Argentina (up five points) have also seen an increase while Singapore (down seven points) has experienced a decline in the fourth quarter, found the index.
Full story on Canadian HR Reporter
Showing posts with label employee satisfaction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employee satisfaction. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, December 21, 2009
What Drives Employee Engagement?
December 3, 2009: Mumblr
by Abishek
by Abishek
I came across a blog post titled “Employee Engagement: What Exactly is it?” The post points to a study by The Conference Board which studied different research reports published by various consulting firms. Interesting thing is that they look at the top drivers of engagement and I have always maintained that there is a lot of value in attempting to identify the key drivers of engagement. The post concludes that these research studies generally agreed on the following drivers:
Trust and integrity – how well managers communicate and ‘walk the talk’.
Nature of the job –Is it mentally stimulating day-to-day?
Line of sight between employee performance and company performance – Does the employee understand how their work contributes to the company’s performance?
Career Growth opportunities –Are there future opportunities for growth?
Pride about the company – How much self-esteem does the employee feel by being associated with their company?
Coworkers/team members – significantly influence one’s level of engagement
Employee development – Is the company making an effort to develop the employee’s skills?
Relationship with one’s manager – Does the employee value his or her relationship with his or her manager?
The post acknowledges that there are lots of variances in the data, but concludes that across all variables “the relationship with one’s manager” is the strongest driver. I completely agree with the fact that the quality of direct supervisors plays a crucial role in shaping engagement. However, there are times when organizations need to focus differently. What happens when broad workplace systems / processes / policies are not in place? A manager can still soothe his people, but not for long. Discontent will brew fast with the organizational functioning. And, managers may be helpless.
Whether organizational functioning or workgroup experiences shape engagement really depends on the unique situation of the organization in question. I would rather not be so quick in putting all the onus on managers.
On another note, the Towers Perrin’s Global Workforce Study of over 90000 employees identified the following key drivers of talent attraction, retention and engagement. Interestingly, the drivers are different, indicating different solutions for different issues.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Employee Engagement and Recognition: The Recipe for Retention
December 11, 2009
It was a most unusual reception area. It was painted in bold primary colors, and had the most fascinating reading material – every inch of the walls was covered with handwritten messages from their clients – personal greetings and testimonials about their great experiences with the company.
A sign on the reception desk directed me down the hallway of this up-and-coming firm to the conference room, where I met the Director of Community Relations, who took me on a tour.
Everyone I passed said a cheery “hello!” and gave me a huge smile. In the open cubicle areas, everyone greeted me, and those who were further away jumped up and waved. In the break room, the soda machine advertised something really refreshing — the values of the organization, painted in very large letters across the front of the machine!
Everywhere I looked, I saw satisfied, motivated, happy people doing the jobs they do well. They know what is expected of them; they work in an environment that prioritizes values and productivity at the same time. And the results are evident. Jobing.com has become a well-known provider of internet-based recruitment strategies and resources for employees and employers.
In “First, Break All The Rules”, Gallup Poll researchers Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman write that peak performers want to know what is expected of them at work and that their work has meaning to the organization. Buckingham and Coffman found a positive correlation between employee satisfaction and business success indicators, including profits, market share, customer loyalty and even return to shareholders.
Jobing.com expanded its product line and regional operations and continues to grow its market share year after year. There is no doubt that this is due, in part, to its teamwork and employees’ drive. Satisfied employees are driven to produce.
Employee satisfaction is a main ingredient of employee engagement. Satisfaction catapults when employees are recognized for their contributions. Organizations need to ensure the right recognition for the right people. In short, recognition has to be personally meaningful to the employee.
A colleague of mine received a gift basket from her boss as a thank-you. It was full of chocolate items — if it could be made with chocolate or covered in chocolate, it was in there. There’s just one problem – she’s highly allergic to chocolate, and it’s well-known in the office! Now, that working relationship – productive for five years – is a significantly less sweet experience. She believes her manager really doesn’t know her. If he can overlook a serious allergy, is he also overlooking her work achievements?
An online survey of 1,002 randomly selected, full-time employed adults throughout the United States, showed that recognition programs specifically targeted to employees’ preferences play a huge role in employee satisfaction. The October 2005 survey by Maritz Research showed survey respondents who were recognized with employee-specific recognition programs were:
• Eleven times more likely to be completely satisfied with their jobs than those who are not completely satisfied with their employee recognition programs (76 percent versus 7 percent)
• Seven times more likely to spend the rest of their careers with their present company than those who are not completely satisfied with their employee recognition programs (63 percent vs. 9 percent)
• Five times more likely to feel highly valued at their job than those who are not completely satisfied with their employee recognition programs. (73 percent vs. 16 percent)
What can you do to foster a recipe for recognition to increase employee engagement and retention? Start with the main ingredients:
• Establish budget to provide realistic recognition program foundation
• Know your employees’ preferences
• Provide the appropriate forum of recognition, either public or private
• Set up measurable criteria to assess the effectiveness of the recognition program
The U.S. Department of Labor reports that 46 percent of those who quit their jobs last year did so because they felt unappreciated. That’s staggering – employees would rather endure the rigors of a job search than stay in a place where recognition is given little attention. By putting some of the ingredients in place for personalized and well-thought-out recognition programs, you create a recipe for employee engagement and, consequently, increased retention. Your organization will become one those 46 percent will look to join.
Debbie Benami-Rahm, M.S., President of DBR Career Services, is a Human Resources strategist who works with businesses to provide employee selection and engagement solutions, resulting in maximized retention and decreased turnover costs. She also works with individuals in career transition. She is the author of “Uncover the Hidden Applicant,” an interviewing resource guide, and creator of the HR² Method for Engaging and Retaining Employees. Debbie can be reached at: Debbie@DBRcareerservices.com For more information, please visit http://www.DBRcareerservices.com
http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/12/11/employee-engagement-and-recognition-the-recipe-for-retention/
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Employee engagement. Not child’s play, but we can learn from our kids
December 14, 2009
by Greg Savage: The Savage Truth
In the world of managing staffing companies, I imagine the last 12 months are up there amongst the hardest ever. For us at Aquent, despite our market leading position, we have had to respond to declining demand with staff reductions, reduced hours and a range of spending cuts. Good commercial sense of course, and our business is in prime shape because of it, but it pays not to underestimate the human toll.
I have been travelling a lot around the business lately and it’s obvious our people are bruised by a very challenging year. Faith in the company remains rock solid I am pleased to say, but no employer should take staff engagement for granted, and this will never be so true as the market recovers and people consider their options.
Of course I was well aware of the challenge of morale, engagement and staff retention right through the downturn, but a little scenario has been playing out even closer to home than Aquent, that has driven this lesson home to me recently.
I have a 19-year-old daughter, just completing second year of a Bachelor of Business in Marketing at University in Sydney. (I will call her ‘M‘ here because mentioning her name on my blog will provoke World War 3 at home). Being a true child of her generation, ‘M’ can’t envisage life without a car, massive mobile phone bills, and a not inconsiderable social life. Equally, I can’t imagine a world where I pay for these trappings of her good life.
So ‘M’ has a job. And it’s a good job too – on the surface. For reasons soon to become clear, I won’t mention her employers’ name, but she has a retail role in one of the flagship outlets. It’s well paid too, and with Sunday overtime, it keeps her in the style she feels she deserves, while enabling her to complete university as well.
Having a father in the recruitment industry is a double edged sword for ‘M’ however, because I encouraged her (vigorously) to also look for experience in a field closer to her career goal. And to her credit she secured “work experience” with Pulse Communications, a successful PR company, which is part of the STW Communications Group in Sydney. This arrangement is like an internship and she has worked every Friday at Pulse for the last three months. Great experience, but unpaid.
Now this is where it gets interesting. ‘M’ detests her well paid ‘real’ job. People are cold and disinterested. They operate in cliques that exclude newcomers. Her boss doesn’t work the days she does, so she has never met her! On one occasion the supervisor left at 4 pm and all five of the other employees working on the same shift as ‘M’, moved out back into the staff room and stayed there until closing time. The fact they had left a trainee to handle a long line of irate customers, while they smoked and joked, apparently caused them no concern at all. The culture is such that when she arrives for work a cheerful “good morning” is met with stony silence more often than not. When she leaves maybe one person out of five will say goodbye. The tiniest error is met with derision and scolding. I was saddened to have her tell me she goes to work with “a heavy feeling of dread in her stomach”.
But Pulse is so different. As I warned her she would, she stacks boxes and stuffs envelopes, but they have also give her interesting research and include her in client meetings as an observer. On her second day she was invited to lunch with the team celebrating a big win. People know her name, include her in all goings on, and the CEO asks her how things are going. She loves going there, and has learned so much she has been totally re-enthused about a career in communications.
I was stunned and delighted be told by ‘M’ that during her (obscenely long) Uni vacation, she has volunteered to work at Pulse three days a week. And she is not paid one cent.
So what do we learn from this? ‘M’ hates her paid job and only turns up for the money. She does her best, but no doubt her unhappiness must show in her customer service – or at least it will eventually. She is looking for a new job and will leave as soon as she can. But Pulse, where she is not even paid, brings a sparkle to her eye. She looks forward to going there. She speaks in awe of the people who work there, and has taken a renewed interest in her university studies as a result.
And so I reflected on this lesson. I am not expecting anyone at Aquent to volunteer for three days unpaid work a week any time soon (!) But the importance of creating a culture and an environment where people want to be is clearer than ever. Commercial success is important, but so is belief in the business and a return on our efforts that are to measured in fun and self-respect as well as dollars
I will be working with the senior Aquent management team to create just such a work place at Aquent.
by Greg Savage: The Savage Truth
In the world of managing staffing companies, I imagine the last 12 months are up there amongst the hardest ever. For us at Aquent, despite our market leading position, we have had to respond to declining demand with staff reductions, reduced hours and a range of spending cuts. Good commercial sense of course, and our business is in prime shape because of it, but it pays not to underestimate the human toll.
I have been travelling a lot around the business lately and it’s obvious our people are bruised by a very challenging year. Faith in the company remains rock solid I am pleased to say, but no employer should take staff engagement for granted, and this will never be so true as the market recovers and people consider their options.
Of course I was well aware of the challenge of morale, engagement and staff retention right through the downturn, but a little scenario has been playing out even closer to home than Aquent, that has driven this lesson home to me recently.
I have a 19-year-old daughter, just completing second year of a Bachelor of Business in Marketing at University in Sydney. (I will call her ‘M‘ here because mentioning her name on my blog will provoke World War 3 at home). Being a true child of her generation, ‘M’ can’t envisage life without a car, massive mobile phone bills, and a not inconsiderable social life. Equally, I can’t imagine a world where I pay for these trappings of her good life.
So ‘M’ has a job. And it’s a good job too – on the surface. For reasons soon to become clear, I won’t mention her employers’ name, but she has a retail role in one of the flagship outlets. It’s well paid too, and with Sunday overtime, it keeps her in the style she feels she deserves, while enabling her to complete university as well.
Having a father in the recruitment industry is a double edged sword for ‘M’ however, because I encouraged her (vigorously) to also look for experience in a field closer to her career goal. And to her credit she secured “work experience” with Pulse Communications, a successful PR company, which is part of the STW Communications Group in Sydney. This arrangement is like an internship and she has worked every Friday at Pulse for the last three months. Great experience, but unpaid.
Now this is where it gets interesting. ‘M’ detests her well paid ‘real’ job. People are cold and disinterested. They operate in cliques that exclude newcomers. Her boss doesn’t work the days she does, so she has never met her! On one occasion the supervisor left at 4 pm and all five of the other employees working on the same shift as ‘M’, moved out back into the staff room and stayed there until closing time. The fact they had left a trainee to handle a long line of irate customers, while they smoked and joked, apparently caused them no concern at all. The culture is such that when she arrives for work a cheerful “good morning” is met with stony silence more often than not. When she leaves maybe one person out of five will say goodbye. The tiniest error is met with derision and scolding. I was saddened to have her tell me she goes to work with “a heavy feeling of dread in her stomach”.
But Pulse is so different. As I warned her she would, she stacks boxes and stuffs envelopes, but they have also give her interesting research and include her in client meetings as an observer. On her second day she was invited to lunch with the team celebrating a big win. People know her name, include her in all goings on, and the CEO asks her how things are going. She loves going there, and has learned so much she has been totally re-enthused about a career in communications.
I was stunned and delighted be told by ‘M’ that during her (obscenely long) Uni vacation, she has volunteered to work at Pulse three days a week. And she is not paid one cent.
So what do we learn from this? ‘M’ hates her paid job and only turns up for the money. She does her best, but no doubt her unhappiness must show in her customer service – or at least it will eventually. She is looking for a new job and will leave as soon as she can. But Pulse, where she is not even paid, brings a sparkle to her eye. She looks forward to going there. She speaks in awe of the people who work there, and has taken a renewed interest in her university studies as a result.
And so I reflected on this lesson. I am not expecting anyone at Aquent to volunteer for three days unpaid work a week any time soon (!) But the importance of creating a culture and an environment where people want to be is clearer than ever. Commercial success is important, but so is belief in the business and a return on our efforts that are to measured in fun and self-respect as well as dollars
I will be working with the senior Aquent management team to create just such a work place at Aquent.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Employee satisfaction vs. employee engagement -- and how to measure them
Once you've differentiated between employee satisfaction and employee engagement, another challenge remains: assessing them
Dear Bob ...
While I was reading your "Legless Dog Syndrome" article, it got me thinking about a friend's situation -- specifically, the managers' lack of leadership traits where she works.
[ Also on InfoWorld, Bob dismisses other bad methods of measurement in "A case for the separation of management and software" | Get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld's Advice Line newsletter. ]
The team she works on is scheduled for their periodic Employee Engagement Survey soon. From what she tells me, the engagement survey is not supposed to be an employee satisfaction survey, but the questions sure seem to be for an employee satisfaction survey.
An example question is, "How would you rate your manager's involvement in your day to day duties?" or one of my favorites, "How would you rate (on a scale of 1 to 10) your daily work mood?"
The management team puts on a PowerPoint presentation that specifically states "Engagement is not satisfaction." I kind of agree, but the questions are more related to satisfaction, in my opinion. The goal is to raise the scores every time. Thus far, the scores have been consistently low with no movement.
Anyway, is there a difference between an Employee Engagement Survey versus an Employee Satisfaction Survey, or is this some clever management speak? I know my opinion is the latter.
- Unengaged
Dear Unengaged ...
My opinion? The two surveys should be different, because engagement and satisfaction are different concepts.
Or maybe the two surveys should be the same, but different from what either looks like in typical companies. Here's how I think it works:
Fully engaged employees -- those who are emotionally invested in the success of the organization they work in -- should find their work environment satisfying, and satisfied employees are likely to be satisfied because they're in an environment that's thoroughly engaging.
Poor leaders who fail to understand what employee engagement entails are also unlikely to understand what makes for a satisfying work environment. So they'll ask the wrong, but very similar, questions about one, the other, or both -- such as whether employees like the furnishings, the parking arrangements, or what have you. As a consequence, they'll get very similar, bad surveys that fail to ask whether employees are fully engaged in the business, or why.
- Bob
Monday, October 12, 2009
Are You Measuring Engagement vs. Only Employee Satisfaction
Most "employers of choice" do some form of employee "satisfaction" survey. The question is: Is it worthwhile, and if so, why?
In the current economic climate, one might be tempted to ask: "Why bother?" With unemployment at record high numbers, one might assume that employers have employees "over a barrel," that they (the employees) don’t have many other options, so it's not necessary to go out of our way to give them what they want.
This argument fails on (at least) two levels. Even overlooking the crass opportunism of such an argument, theatre operators need to recognize that while overall national unemployment rates climb to record levels, the current jobless rate for working-age teenagers (our key employment demographic) remains little changed over the last several years, at 21.6 percent.
The other way in which the "over a barrel" thesis might fail would be if we were only measuring satisfaction. But most companies that do this "right" aren't measuring mere satisfaction; they're measuring engagement.
What's the difference? In a nutshell, satisfaction is simply how happy or content your employees are. Engagement is a measure of their level of motivation and their potential for discretionary effort.
Big difference.
While satisfaction is certainly a component—or driver—of engagement, so are many other things, like trust, company pride, feeling valued, commitment, and feeling your work is significant or relevant. Given that definition, it's easy to see how someone could be satisfied, but not engaged. Having a bunch of happy employees might make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside; but it’s not going to necessarily have any impact on the business.
In the current economic climate, one might be tempted to ask: "Why bother?" With unemployment at record high numbers, one might assume that employers have employees "over a barrel," that they (the employees) don’t have many other options, so it's not necessary to go out of our way to give them what they want.
This argument fails on (at least) two levels. Even overlooking the crass opportunism of such an argument, theatre operators need to recognize that while overall national unemployment rates climb to record levels, the current jobless rate for working-age teenagers (our key employment demographic) remains little changed over the last several years, at 21.6 percent.
The other way in which the "over a barrel" thesis might fail would be if we were only measuring satisfaction. But most companies that do this "right" aren't measuring mere satisfaction; they're measuring engagement.
What's the difference? In a nutshell, satisfaction is simply how happy or content your employees are. Engagement is a measure of their level of motivation and their potential for discretionary effort.
Big difference.
While satisfaction is certainly a component—or driver—of engagement, so are many other things, like trust, company pride, feeling valued, commitment, and feeling your work is significant or relevant. Given that definition, it's easy to see how someone could be satisfied, but not engaged. Having a bunch of happy employees might make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside; but it’s not going to necessarily have any impact on the business.
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