Category: Human Resources (HR) Resources

29 May 2018

Inside Knowledge about the Recruiting Process

The recruitment process comes about because of a need for employees by an organization to carry out different tasks. Once the need arises the recruitment process has been initiated. In order to understand what the recruitment process is all about, lets firstly set the foundation by having a concrete definition of what the recruitment process really is. Recruitment is a systematic process of finding and hiring suitable candidates, from within or outside an organization, for an open job post in a timely manner. The recruitment process can be a long and exhausting process, however with a strategic team, the process can be finished in the shortest possible time. This process can be summarized into five easy steps.

  1. The first step is analyzing. Within this step, the organization that needs the candidate does their research to see how many spaces they need to be filled and what positions are to be filled. This is a very important step, as this step analyses the job description for the open positions within the firm. Without a job description things are like a train at top speed that has lost all control, so it is very imperative to have the job description sorted out.

  2. The next step is the attraction. Within this step, the necessary tools are used to drive interested candidates to apply for that job. Without this step, there will be no candidates to be considered for the position.

  3. The next step involves screening the candidates. Within this step, the candidates undergo a preliminary interview, that determines who has the required set of qualifications for the specified job post. This step is also important as it reduces the number of unqualified applications sent in to the recruiter.

  4. The fourth step involves doing a more in depth interview that will really determine whether or not the applicant is able to fulfil the requirements of the job.

  5. And the final step involves assimilating the qualified candidates within the position within the organization.

As stated before, the recruitment process can be very tedious without a very strategic team as Caribbean HR Solutions. As such we are always ready to take that burden from your shoulders, and do the recruiting for you. We have filled both small and big gaps, so come in and have a conversation with us today. 

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02 May 2018

Training and Development of my Staff – Are my Programs effective?

Training and development of staff is arguably an important part of the development of your company and ensuring that your company grows. Onboarding a new employee is costly and similarly, every company wants to ensure that their employees are not only effective but also efficient. Training and development programs provide employees with that necessary skills and knowledge to grow and also implement in their current work to be more efficient and effective. As an organization, it is therefore critical to examine training and development programs and ensure that they are effective.

Here are 5 tips to ensure that you have a successful training program

  1. Identify Clear Goals and Outcomes

Any good program starts with clear and definable goals. Training merely for the purpose of having it is futile. You need concrete outcomes in order to stand any chance of deploying materials and a curriculum that add value to your firm.

  1. Develop Engaging Training Resources

In addition to having the correct goals and the best intentions, you also need materials and a curriculum that is sufficiently interesting to engage your employees and keep them focused. It comes down to three choices:

  1. Establish a Consistent Schedule

Effective training is all about consistency. Instead of trying to cram all of your company’s required training into a three-day period at the end of the calendar year, try spreading things out and commit to a couple hours of training every week or month.

This kind of consistency not only lessens the burden on your company, but it also raises the probability that your employees will become committed to ongoing learning. (They’ll also retain more information this way.)

  1. Give Employees a Say in the Curriculum

Though you’ll have the final say over which curriculum your organization uses for its training programs, don’t deny your employees the opportunity to get involved. Ask them about concepts and topics they feel would help them grow as employees, leaders, etc. There’s a lot of potential value in getting their input, and you may stumble across some ideas you hadn’t previously considered.

  1. Bridge the Gap Between Knowledge and Action

One of the biggest mistakes organizations too often make is failing to bridge the gap between knowledge and action. In other words, they expend generous amounts of time and money on training but don’t give employees a timely opportunity to transfer the knowledge they’ve acquired into action.

Employee training expert Julie Winkle Giulioni believes in developing an action plan: “Organizations, leaders, and individuals invest heavily in training and development through traditional classroom-based workshops, e-learning, webinars, apps, mentoring, experiences, and more,” Giulioni explains.

“But formal and informal learning efforts fall short of the full range of possible outcomes if we don’t metaphorically cross the finish line by bringing the learning to life. Action planning is what does this, bridging insights and intentions to results.”

You can increase the odds that your employees will convert knowledge into action by setting them up for success. Always enable employees to debrief before they leave any training session.

Ask questions like “What will you do differently now that you know X?” Host follow-up meetings with your team to see what progress they’re making. Simple things like these can have a significant impact.

 

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23 Apr 2018

Industry Talent Composition & Improvement Areas to Foster Growth

The 1st Outsource2Jamaica Symposium & Expo was held on April 11-13, 2018 at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, Montego Bay, Jamaica.

This BPO event hosted by the BPIAJ (Business Process Industry of Jamaica) is the 1st of its kind to be held in Jamaica bringing together a diverse group of global experts, technocrats, local entrepreneurs, Government officials, BPO leaders, buyers and service providers at the first ever Outsourcing Symposium and Expo in Jamaica. It was a great opportunity to network and interact with key stakeholder’s in the BPO industry and listen to presentations made by experts in the industry.

Debra Fraser, CEO for Caribbean HR Solutions, presented on “Industry Talent Composition & Improvement Areas to Foster Growth”. She examined the need for training in the BPO sector and possible improvements that could be made to the existing training avenues. She highlighted the importance of having pre-trained candidates and the need for assessments to determine the skills and talents of individuals prior to training as this will help to boost productivity and profitability.

 

Here are four steps that need to be used by the training institutions and the organizations in the BPO sector to ensure that they receive the best performance from their employees.

  1. Better Pre-Assessment of natural giftings, skills, and attitudes and desire.
  • Assess #1- What industry and job is this job-seeker best suited for? BPO, Finance, Hospitality? Entertainment? Construction? -assessed for industry ‘fit’ – not just typing and talking, but a deeper and more objective assessment of natural proclivities
  • Assess #2 – If the person is suited for the BPO industry, what type of BPO job are they best suited for: Sales? Collections?  specialized in areas like Customer Service, Sales, Collections and Technical Support, comprising while others Virtual real estate schedulers, remote data analyst, remote payroll administrators, virtual Executive assistants,
  1. Use objective assessment tools. i.e psychometric assessment, computer-based test etc
  2. Use technology to ensure the assessments can be fairly administered and administered in mass. If you have the discipline to screen persons ‘out’, then you will need a much higher number of persons to screen in order to supply providers with necessary requirements. We have developed a Prescreening Psychometric screening tool, cloud-based skills and personality assessment which our clients use to ‘weed out’ and find the best candidates.
  3. Begin to use the same objective approach in selecting and accepting students for supervisory and leadership development courses. here is a large training gap in the BPO sector particularly as it relates to the training of middle-level management. Some BPO companies, for instance, Sutherland, Teleperformance, and Startek have invested heavily in training and development internally and this has contributed significantly to their sustainable growth.

 

In Summary, finding the right fit requires employers to source true talent. Employers in the BPO industry can achieve a greater ROI when more time, effort and resources are invested in effectively assessing raw talent by leveraging the use of technology and specific assessment tools.

 

 

18 Apr 2018

Working Your Way Through Talent Management Crisis in Jamaica by Talent Management Expert Debra Fraser CEO Caribbean HR Solution

Jamaica BPO Stakeholders Communicate Honest, Actionable Awareness of Talent Crisis

Jamaica BPO has been reaping the benefits of a desirable workforce, low wages, and cultural alignment with US customers, but talent is still a challenge, and the industry is vocal about it.

Whatever caused it, BPO buyers are now paying very close attention to Jamaica, with companies such as Amazon, Lyft, Hilton, and AT&T betting big on the sector. As a result, the country is under close external scrutiny, leading local stakeholders to identify what is holding Jamaica back from the next level.

As the third largest English speaking nation in the Americas, Jamaica and its BPO sector have been capitalizing on the benefits of a desirable workforce, low wages, and cultural alignment with US customers, but greater demand for talent is where the difficulties lie. As client demands also become more technical, Jamaica’s meager IT talent pool has become another top concern.

Offering another potential solution to the training deficit, Debra Fraser, CEO of Caribbean HR Solutions presented some examples of where technology is successfully being used to create a better fit between agents, employers, and roles.

“We need leaders that will bring the entire labor force up, and there are lots of tests that can help with that by identifying the right people to invest in,” she said. “We don’t just want the masses, we want quality masses, and we can do that with technology and objective standards. Pre-screening tests can weed out non-fit and high performers, along with tools that measure personality fit, basic skills in grammar, logical reasoning, math skills, and whether a person suits sales/outbound or service/inbound. I haven’t yet seen many companies use any of these in Jamaica.”

What is clear from the O2J conference is that Jamaica has a remarkable willingness to adapt, a willingness to find business, the country is open to change, and people are empathetic to the customer. These are all traits that clients want in their providers and agents, so, if the puzzle of healthy talent development is solved, particularly on the IT side, these core values will ensure the country retains its upward trajectory.

Read full article at 

 

28 Mar 2018

Are you kicking your best talent out?

Don’t Be Surprised When Your Employees Quit

lattice-4I recently wrote a post about the financial cost companies incur from losing talented employees. My hope was to illuminate in concrete terms just how expensive it is to lose good employees. In this post, I’ll discuss how you can keep them.

Fundamentally, it starts with empathy. The employer-employee relationship is just like any other personal relationship; strengthening it requires putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.

Companies need to start by thinking; why would an employee quit? From there they can improve their organization to better retain top talent.

Reason 1: Bad managers ruin everything

“People leave managers, not companies.”

Many of us who spend time thinking about management have heard that phrase.

As it turns out, it’s true.

Of all the reasons people leave companies, having a bad manager tops the list. According to Gallup polls, a full 50% of employees who quit cite their manager as the reason.

People might join a company for the compensation, growth opportunities, or mission, but they frequently leave because they don’t have a good relationship with their manager.

Unsurprisingly, the manager relationship is highly correlated with employee engagement. A good proxy for the strength of the relationship is how comfortable an employee is approaching their manager with any type of question. The responses to this statement has a clear relationship with employee engagement:

lattice-1

Source: Gallup poll

And why shouldn’t an employee place substantial value on her relationship with her direct manager?

A good manager will give you the freedom to grow, mentor you to be better at what you do, and make your daily work enjoyable. A bad manager, by contrast, can hold you back professionally, developmentally, and make you unhappy.

Solution: As a company, be obsessed with the quality of your managers

The cost of a bad manager is too high to tolerate. Not only will people quit much more often, but they’ll be much less productive before they do.

Being a good manager isn’t rocket science, but it takes work. And unfortunately, a lot of managers don’t put the same dedication into the craft of people management as they do into the craft of what they consider their “real” work.

Good management takes effort and experience, but it’s really pretty straightforward.

versusThese differences make a huge impact. Looking at just one example of a basic management function, goal setting, shows this. When employees were asked to rate their feelings on the statement “My manager helps me set performance goals”, 69% of employees who said “strongly agree” were considered engaged in their work, compared to 8% said “disagree” or “strongly disagree”. (Source: Gallup poll)

The other basic principles of management are similarly important; these are tried and trued foundations for how people work well together.

So companies, beware: A bad manager is much more detrimental than you think and needs to be corrected as quickly as possible.

Continue reading…

15 Mar 2018

How to have a workplace like Google.

Every workplace has a culture. The workplace culture of a company is important as it can help to either boost or erode your company and its objectives. Workplace culture appeals to the human capital of your organization and it links with aspects such as employee engagement, happiness, productivity, attrition rate and positive recruitment efforts.

The workplace culture is the identity of the company from the employee’s perspective. Different aspects influence the culture of the organization such as how the company looks, dress code and employee engagement.

Culture plays into employee retention. Every company wants to be able to maintain their best employees, however studies show that employees are more likely to leave a company if the culture is toxic.

 

A strong culture fosters company loyalty and thus reduces the likelihood of turn-overs. As seen in the graph above if the work place culture is “toxic” 90% of employees are likely to leave and go elsewhere for a 20% pay raise compared to only 34% of employees if there is a very strong/positive workplace culture. Employee performance significantly improves with a positive and encouraging company culture. A high-stress environment can literally be unhealthy for employees, resulting in lower engagement and a reduction in employee loyalty in the long-term.

Creating a positive workplace culture:

Here are three steps that companies can create a positive workplace culture:

  1. Create Bonds of Trust with Employees
    People perform better and report a better work experience when they feel confident their employer supports and believes in them. It’s key to create trust that goes both ways. Employers desire employees who are working hard and producing positive results, and employees desire employers who are committed to their development and success. Employers who treat employees with respect—by listening when they bring up issues and attempting to resolve intracompany problems—create an environment of trust. A commitment by employers to create this type of bond gives employees the confidence that they matter and their opinion is welcome.
  2. Develop a Sense of Purpose with Company Goals
    Every employee wants to feel like they are a contributor to their company’s success. Employers, want to hire and retain employees who are taking an active role in the success of the organization. A Mission Statement can be created to communicate why the company exists and what demonstrates success.  This can provide a metric by which to judge performance.
  3. Self-Assessment Keeps Office Culture Running
    Once you’ve built a positive culture, you need to maintain it—just as you would maintain your office building to ensure its structural integrity. Regular meetings with employees, anonymous feedback forms, engagement surveys, and other methods of communication delivered on a systematic basis can ensure intracompany issues are resolved quickly, and that employee actions are consistent with the company’s desired goals. They can also help to identify problem areas or parts of the company culture that employees are dissatisfied with or that are causing undue stress.

 

 

Taken from
http://www.snacknation.com/blog/workplace-culture/

http://unicornhro.com/blog/top-3-things-for-cultivating-a-positive-company-culture/

 

01 Feb 2018

Why Outsource?

Why Outsource?

Many firms take advantage of the opportunity to outsource their HR services for the additional benefits that they receive.

  •         Saves money/Cuts Costs – Perhaps the biggest and most significant benefit that is received from outsourcing your HR functions is that it saves the firm money. The firm no longer has to hire a large amount of people that will deal with critical HR tasks while at the same time still maintaining that compliance with all employment laws.
  •         Reduces risk by ensuring compliance with employment laws – The main function of a HR company is to monitor employment policies and practices to ensure that the company and its employees remain compliant while attending to the best interests of the company.
  •         Gain Access to top-level recruiters and HR technology without the additional cost of having to invest in it – Recruiting the best talent for your company is critical and can be determinant in your company’s success or failure. Using HR firms can help your company to gain access to their talent/expertise; technology as well as industry contacts that they would have gained. This will position your company to utilize top HR expertise and skill without any additional overhead costs.
  •         Focus on core business module – Outsourcing your HR functions will allow your company to ensure that your company is able to focus on its core business while ensuring that current staff is taken care of. It allows your current HR personnel to spend more time focusing on implementing strategy while the HR firm will focus on administrative HR duties.

Studies conducted shows that outsourcing a portion of your HR services have proved to be beneficial to many companies in enhancing their business module and enhancing their success.

Top HR Functions to Outsource

  •         Recruiting
  •         Payroll
  •         Benefits Administration
  •         Compensation
  •         Performance Management
  •         Policy and Compliance
  •         Labour Relations
  •         Attendance Management

                                                                                                                                                              

Source: http://www.professionalemployer.net
https://www.outsourcinginsight.com/outsource-hr-functions/#tab-con-2