Just like cultures and attitudes, broad approaches to staffing and retention tend to evolve over time. Regardless of the industry, employees’ personal values tend to shift in accordance with the shifting values of a larger culture. And the classic characteristics of an effective manager twenty years ago are unlikely to lead to success in today’s workplace.

So if you’re an HR pro or a department manager, what does this mean for your staffing and retention methods? Are you holding on to outdated management approaches and missing opportunities to make the most of your talented team? Consider the following differences between modern and outdated management styles.

Effective Management Styles: The End of No and the Beginning of Yes

In today’s fast-paced, global, relationship-and-technology-driven world, companies are more likely to find success if their employees are innovators, risk takers, and collaborators. In the old model, bosses did well when their employees were obedient and followed orders quietly, and rigid hierarchies kept things moving while maintaining the status quo. But companies who still cling to those ideals and those fearful workplace cultures are stalling out and falling behind. They’re being surpassed by teams of engaged workers who aren’t afraid to speak up. When employees contribute and invest in the big picture, everybody wins. But they only tend to do this when they feel comfortable taking risks. Think about this the next time you close your office door, say no, or find yourself freezing out an employee to keep him or her in line.

Effective Management Styles: From Bossing To Teaching

Retention and talent management are no longer about giving and receiving orders. They’re about giving and receiving information and sharing the wisdom of experience. Employees thrive when they learn from the things you know. They don’t thrive as much when they’re simply executing your instructions.

Effective Management Styles: From Know-It-All to Fellow Learner

Instead of answering the next question from one of your talented employees, trying offering another question. Encourage the employee to work her way toward a solution on her own. For example, if an employee asks you if she should choose this course of action or another one, help her account for the pros and cons of both, but allow her to arrive at a decision—and accept responsibility for the decision—by herself.

If you encourage employees to take risks and propose solutions on their own, you’ll have to be prepared to back them up when they make mistakes. This may come at a small cost, but the benefits will far outweigh these costs as your employees learn to understand and contribute to the business as a whole. As a general trend, agency, ownership and engagement are replacing obedience and risk-aversion. Make the most of this trend and you’ll get more out of your most valuable form of capital.

Do you need help moving your talent strategy into the modern world? Find the answers you’re looking for by r

eaching out to the experts at The Palmer Group.

The competition for top talent doesn’t let up, even during a weak economy. The best and most highly skilled employees can easily find work anywhere, during any job market, and most of these job seekers are savvy enough to look before they leap into a commitment with a new employer.

Before talented candidates apply for a position with your firm, they’ll conduct a quick Google search at the very least. And before they accept or even consider a formal offer, they’ll probably conduct in- depth searches of your organization, including the names of company managers and executives. Sites like JobVent, Job Bite and Glass Door are easy places to search for testimonials from current and former employees, and if you think potential candidates won’t read these reviews, think again.

So what can you do to make sure your workplace comes off well? And if the news isn’t great and your reputation is already in trouble, what can you do to turn the tide?
 
Online Workplace Brand Management: Focus on the Positive

The first step to online workplace brand management is finding out what’s out there. Put yourself in the position of a talented candidate. What kinds of things would you want to know about a potential employer? Visit Google and run a search on your company’s name. Then head to some of the testimonial sites listed above.

If the news is positive, or if you find nothing of any special relevance, great. You’re online brand is still under your control. Just make sure you conduct these checks on a fairly regular basis. And in the meantime, find ways build your brand from the inside out. The best way to gain a reputation as a fair, respectful, or fun place to work is to actively encourage a culture of fairness, respect and fun. Decide how you’d like to target your workplace brand and focus on retaining the kinds of employees who best support your brand and your overall business. Flood the web with good news. Encourage content employees to post positive testimonials. Don’t offer to pay them, since this can interfere with the integrity of both the website and your business. But do let them know that if they’re happy, sharing their feelings online will give your company a boost.

Online Workplace Brand Management: Damage Control

If you conduct a search on your company and the results aren’t good, take action. First, recognize that negative testimonials may or may not have substance. They may not even be written by actual employees. But if they do, and they are, investigate possible reasons for this discontent. Meanwhile, see if you can have any abusive or inappropriate reviews taken down by the site administrator.

No matter what you find, you should always be working to expand your company’s online footprint. If you don’t have a Facebook, Twitter, or blog presence, now is the time to establish them. Encourage your contented employees to bury the bad press under an avalanche of good news. This is an honest, effective, and easy way to tip the balance of public opinion back in your favor. 

For more help with online workplace brand management, recruiting, or retention, contact The Palmer Group and put our experience to work for you.

As web development resources expand, it’s becoming easier and more affordable for even the smallest companies to maintain functional and beautiful sites. But an effective website still requires some decision-making ability, marketing savvy, and willingness to reach out for professional help. As you put your website together, remember that you can’t please everyone, but you can (and you should) build a website that’s carefully targeted to your two primary audiences: customers and job seekers. 
 
Website Visitor Response: “This website is a real problem.”

Nothing wears away at customer patience like a broken, confusing online labyrinth. If you don’t know what most of your customers are looking for when they log on, then you need to find out. Chances are, they want these three things above all else: Contact information, a clear and accurate introductory page, and an easy, functional and fast way to search through available products and services.

If your links are broken, your search function doesn’t work, your introductory page can’t be found, or your contact information is incomplete (a fax but no phone number? A missing email address? A “send a message” feature that freezes constantly?) then you have a problem. Get it resolved before you lose money.

Job seekers who encounter a dysfunctional or incomplete website are unlikely to look much further. Even in a weak economy, they can do better.

Website Visitor Response: “I’m not thinking much about this website, since I’m easily finding what I need.”
 
Sure, your website is a little outdated, but customers haven’t actively complained. They can find what they need, so you aren’t hearing much backlash.

At the same time, customers and job seekers rely on subtle cues to draw conclusions about your level of establishment in the business and your trustworthiness. If you’re willing to shell out for creative help, the resulting boost to your website can mean the difference between one-time buyers and repeat business. Simple details can also mean the difference between a wide pool of excited, savvy, talented candidates and a thin trickle of applicants who shrugged, clicked “attach”, and tossed a resume in your direction.
 
Website Visitor Response: “This company is amazing!”

This is a total win. Customers and job seekers are finding what they need, but as they navigate around the site, they’re also also compelled to pause and appreciate the cleverness, visual beauty and attention to detail that surrounds them. 

Unfortunately, style, humor, smooth writing, and a confident sense of design can’t be pulled out of a magic hat or summoned by an act of will. To build these qualities into your website, you’ll need to pay for them. Just make sure you carefully investigate the writers and web designers you employ before you make a commitment. Do they really understand what you’re looking for? Do they have a portfolio of previous work they can show you?   

The key to getting your money’s worth and making sure the impact isn’t lost on your audience? Research and more research. Before you spend, know exactly who your customers are and what they like to see. And as far as job seekers are concerned, before you make a single change, determine what kind of employees you’d like to attract. Get these specific employees excited about your company and they’ll rush to apply.

For more information on targeting a specific audience of customers and job seekers, contact The Palmer Group and talk to our talented staffing team.

As managers approach the hiring process, they usually strive to be fair, open minded, and goal oriented. This means they view an open position as a problem that needs to be solved, and as they staff the position, they strive to stay as impersonal and task-oriented as possible. Can the candidate do the job or not? Does she have the skills required to move the company forward? Does she have the experience necessary to handle the challenges of this position? If she’s hired and trained, will she stay? Sometimes as a kind of afterthought, managers ask: Will she be easy and pleasant to work with?

But this approach to the hiring process is beginning to change. As recent studies have shown, and many managers can confirm, technical skills are no longer the defining predictor of job success. Just because a candidate knows how to use a certain software program, handle a budget, or execute a task does not mean she’ll be content in her new position, and it doesn’t mean she’ll bring high returns to the company.

Attitude seems to play the strongest role in employee success, not aptitude. And “attitude” isn’t just a stand-in term for cheerful obedience. It refers to the specific values and personality traits the employee shares with her coworkers, superiors, clients, and subordinates. After the first round of candidate selection, employers are no longer asking if an applicant can do the job. They’re now asking: How well will she fit in here? Does she share our work ethic? Is she competitive/collaborative like we are? Is she relaxed/driven like us? Is she serious/fun? Is she open to new ideas, or does she work by-the-book?

Once the pool has been narrowed to include only those who possess the necessary skill sets, attitude-oriented questions can help bring better results during screening and selection. As you review each candidate, remove some of the skill-focused questions from the process, and replace them with questions like these:

1. This job may involve (insert the most challenging or unpleasant aspect of the position) on a regular basis. How do you feel about that?
2. Describe the worst interpersonal conflict you’ve ever experienced in the workplace. How did you respond?
3. What is your favorite aspect of this line of work? How about your least favorite?
4. Have you ever worked with a team that failed to meet its goals or deadlines? What did you learn from this experience and how have you applied those lessons?
5. When you have the option, which do you typically enjoy more: Working with a team in a cooperative manner or engaging in personal competition?
6. Are you sometimes frustrated by questions with no single correct answer and problems with no single resolution? Or do you find these situations enjoyable?

For more examples of behavioral interview questions that can help you select candidates based on attitude, contact the experts at The Palmer Group. We’ll give you the tools you need to match the right candidate with the right job.

Managers measure the success of a new hire using industry and company-specific metrics, like long term assessments of the new employee’s productivity and adaptability to the culture. Candidates, of course, measure the success of the hiring process as a kind of pass-fail: they were either offered the job or they weren’t. But what about recruiters? If it’s your job to match candidates and employers profitably, then what metrics should you use to measure success?

New Versus Outdated Hiring Metrics 

In the not-so-distant past, recruiters often used short term analytics to measure success, like the days it took to fill a position and the cost of the hiring process per candidate. But for a variety of reasons, this is beginning to change.

First, managers are shifting their hiring strategies away from just-in-time staffing, in which candidates are sought, evaluated, and hired as positions become available. Many industries are now moving toward an approach that favors pipeline building, or cultivating existing employees and hiring from within. That means that external candidates (and the recruiters who promote them) are often at a competitive disadvantage, even when they possess excellent qualifications.

Recruiter success metrics are also shifting. Instead of short term measurements, like days-to-fill and cost per hire, recruiters are being held accountable for long term metrics, like overall quality-of-hire as determined after 3 to 6 months on the job.

Do your candidates measure up when put to the test? Do they prove themselves reliable and adapt quickly to the workplace cultures in which they’re placed? Because these subjective qualifications are steadily falling into the milieu of the recruiter, not the hiring manager. And if your career depends on your recruiting skills, then it depends on your ability to match the company with the candidate and predict the quality of long term relationships between employee and boss.

The Hiring Process: Matching Candidates and Employers

To flex your matchmaking skills, use every tool at your disposal, including social media and video technology. Here are a few tips:

1. 
Create an individual blog for each open position. Free blog platforms are available through Blogger and WordPress, and setting up a blog takes only a few minutes. Keep blog content fresh and make use of keywords and links to your website, the company site, and the posting on Monster/ Careerbuilder. This will keep the blog’s search engine rankings high and will draw maximum attention to the position. But more important, this step will provide potential applicants with a wealth of detail about culture and expectations.

2. 
Use social media to present the candidate to the hiring manger. Ask the candidate for links to any profiles that seem relevant, including those on LinkedIn, Facebook, and any industry-specific sites he or she may use. This often enriches the resume process and provides hiring managers with a clearer, more in-depth picture of a candidate’s personality and qualifications.

3. 
Film the hiring manager. With permission, use a hand held camera to record the hiring manger as she answers questions about the job, the company, and the culture. As she sits in her office or a conference room, ask her questions like the following: What does it take to be successful in this role? What does she look for in a candidate? How would she describe her management philosophy? Etc.

These are just a few strategies that can help recruiters improve their long term odds of success. For more hiring tips and matchmaking tools, contact The Palmer Group and discuss your needs with our team of staffing experts.

How do you plan to shape your marketing strategy during the year ahead? What new campaigns will you be putting into place? What moves will you adopt and what risks will you take to stay a step ahead of your competition during this challenging business cycle?

In a digital era driven by fast growth and increasingly complex consumer decisions, marketing success depends on constant motion. What worked yesterday can’t be relied on tomorrow. And new opportunities are constantly arising that marketers ignore at their peril. If you handle marketing needs for a growing company, no matter which direction you choose, you’ll need to keep moving. In this new landscape, successful businesses are driven by those who stay awake, tuned in, and always open to change. Here are a few key trends to keep an eye on during 2012: 

Focused Messages

Consumer attention is a precious commodity, and to make the most of a second or two in the spotlight, marketers are tightening their messages like never before. Taglines and promotions should be stunning, complete, and short. Find a way to tap into the emotional core of your brand in five words or fewer. Regardless of the business or industry, less is always more.

Integration and Strategic Partnerships

Find partners who stand to benefit from shared promotional efforts and join forces. If you sell socks, partner with a shoe store. In the popcorn business? Find your butter. Link your social media feeds, share campaign strategies and build your brands on mutually beneficial messages.

Advanced Web Management

Your web platform may once have been a side arm of your overall enterprise, but not anymore. Ecommerce is the new commerce, and web marketing has become an industry unto itself. In most cases, managing your web marketing efforts on your own has become too complex to be cost effective. It’s better to focus your own attention on your product and customers, and outsource your online marketing to professionals. Somebody needs to maintain your web presence, keep your site content fresh, manage your SEO strategy, and monitor your analytics. But it shouldn’t be you. 

Humor

Humor has always been a powerful marketing tool, but these days it seems to deliver a greater per dollar impact than ever before. Why? Who knows. As a culture, we may have more sensitive funny bones than we used to, or maybe we’re relying on humor to carry us through challenging times. But regardless of how it works, people like to laugh. And when they laugh, they buy. Bring the funny.

Keeping Up With Shifting Lifestyles

Finally, recognize that the way we live now is a long way from where we were twenty years ago, and this shift isn’t slowing any time soon. Before you settle on any new campaign or marketing approach, stop and think about your target audience. These people may want the same things they wanted a year ago. But chances are, they don’t. Don’t pitch lifestyles that people stopped aspiring to in 1993. And don’t be tone deaf. In general, a broad cultural shift is taking place toward simplicity and away from chaos, toward free time instead of extra money, and toward quality of life instead of quantity of possessions. Be awake to this shift and use it to stay connected to your customers.

For more information on small business growth, arrange a consultation with the experts at The Palmer Group.

A pleasant surprise: Sometimes that’s all it takes to gain the attention and interest of talented candidates. And the simplest way to pleasantly surprise a candidate is by doing something your competitors should be doing and aren’t. Let’s look at a few examples.

The Application Process

Your competitors are getting the application process all wrong. There may be plenty of practical reasons why their applications are long and confusing, their online submission forms are unreliable, and their contact information is outdated or impossible to find. But let them go ahead and bungle this. It’s one of the easiest possible ways to give talented candidates a pleasant surprise when they read and respond to your posting. Just make sure your own application process is trouble-free and appealing and you’ll step into the lead right out of the gate.

The Greeting

We live in an increasingly tuned-out and asocial society, and candidates are getting used to the way this affects the job hunt. They’ve come to tolerate, even expect, a rude and inattentive welcome when they show up for an interview. They’re accustomed to an indifferent glance from reception, a long spell in the waiting area, and finally a greeting from a hiring manager with a weak handshake and an apparent obsession with his phone.

Why do hiring managers do this? The answer: It doesn’t matter. Let them do it. Because you can easily do so much better. It costs almost nothing to welcome candidates with warmth, interest and a touch of the VIP treatment. The talented ones will remember and appreciate it.

The Offer

The best way to work the “pleasant surprise” theme into your offer is by making one, and by doing it quickly, warmly and enthusiastically. Don’t just tell the candidate you’re interested and then let weeks go by without following through. Talented candidates respect a company that seems functional and under control, and they like employers who show excitement about their candidacy. A company that seems lukewarm and unprofessional is unappealing, but it’s what candidates have come to expect. Show them something new.

The Entire Journey

Promptly returned phone calls? Friendly voices on the other line? An offer of coffee or bottled water at the reception desk? Clear directions to and away from the interview venue? With a recruitment process like this in place, candidates may wonder what kind of strange new world they’ve stumbled upon. And that’s exactly how you want them to feel. In the race for top talent, you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to outshine your competitors.

For more guidance and help with your recruitment strategy, contact the Palmer Group and arrange a meeting with our staffing experts.

Your company culture is part of your workplace brand, and your culture is built on countless intangible details that resonate throughout the halls of your labs, offices, field sites and lunchrooms. These are the details that represent your company’s public and internal personality. 

What is it like to work here? Potential employees, if they’re wise, will want to know the answer to this question before they sign on. The kinds of candidates who respect your business model and share your values are the kind of candidates you want, and vice versa. Countless surveys have shown that workplace culture and relationships often mean more to employees than the size of their paychecks, and anecdotal evidence everywhere suggests that employees will often pass on better paying offers in order to stay with a company that feels like a family. So is your culture attracting and retaining well-matched candidates? And if not, what can you do to change things up?

Do Talented Employees Thrive in Your Workplace? How Can You Tell?

Do your employees recognize the big picture and understand how their jobs are connected to overall company success? And do they care? All employees should understand exactly what your company does and how their day-to-day tasks contribute to that effort. Not only does this understanding support teamwork, it also motivates employees by showing how a functional system sustains everyone. Employees should know everything they can about the engine that provides their bread and butter. And ideally, they should be excited about it, and should encourage the same enthusiasm in others.

Making Cultural Changes to Attract Top Candidates

If you look around the office and in every direction you see enthusiastic team players who care about their jobs and the fate of the company, then well done. Now you just need to express that energy in your postings and recruiting efforts. You want to attract candidates who will be honored and excited to receive an offer, so you’ll need to demonstrate that honor and excitement are part of the prevailing attitude on board the ship.

But if you look around and don’t see this at all, but instead see frustrated teams, individuals pulling in different directions, or a sense of confusion, cynicism, and defeat, something needs to change. Arrange a meeting with your HR staff and department managers and try to identify the heart of the problem. Then tailor the treatment to the disease. This may mean an increase in teamwork training, or a better motivational strategy. It may even mean a few management changes.

Once you’ve formed a plan and taken action, measure the results. If your plan doesn’t effectively shift the culture within a set period of time, try something else. Don’t be satisfied until you’re attracting and holding onto the kinds of employees you want. For additional guidance on shaping your company culture, contact the experts at The Palmer Group.

Are enthusiasm and productivity noticeably lacking in your workplace? Do employees seem defeated, angry, bored, or usually quiet? How are your turnover rates?

If the vibe is getting grim, relationships between managers and workers are becoming strained, or your office is starting to look like a revolving door, you may have a serious morale problem. Here are few steps HR managers can take to tackle the issue at the source and get energy and commitment levels back where they belong.
 

Don’t wait for change.

Every once in a while, low morale problems mysteriously solve themselves. Like cloudy weather or a cold virus, low moral drifts in, spreads around, runs its course and then fades away. But effective HR management isn’t based on luck. Once you’ve identified the problem, don’t try to wait it out, and don’t risk the chance that it might get worse. Take action now.

Find the source.

A lost account, a departing popular coworker, chronic layoff rumors, or an uncomfortable leadership change can all send good spirits into a tailspin. But the solution to each of these morale busters lies in an entirely different direction. Before you develop a strategy, see if you can isolate the problem at the source. Chat with employees personally and listen for clues and insights. Maintain an open door policy so employees can voice their concerns. Ask the right questions.

Tailor the solution to the problem.

If employees are burdened with confusing expectations, schedule meetings with appropriate managers to mitigate the situation. If employees are mourning a loss, fearing a change, or dealing with a business-related disappointment, some old fashioned cheerleading may be in order. If working conditions are uncomfortable, see what you can do to change the environment. Don’t underestimate the morale-boosting power of cleanliness, order, polite language, and natural light. But don’t offer mismatched solutions. If employees are overworked and underpaid, making them come in early to clean the office won’t solve the problem.   

Reward morale boosting efforts.

Both good and bad morale are contagious. So encourage the efforts of those who contribute to team spirit. Consider monetary rewards, bonuses, prizes, or even just a little verbal praise. Exceptional team players should know that their efforts are noted and appreciated.

Address bad apples.

By the same token, bad apples are toxic to morale. If you identify an especially unhappy employee, talk to her privately about her concerns. Alleviate them if possible, and if not, help her understand how her words and actions affect productivity. Of course, clearly inappropriate behavior should be addressed with disciplinary action or termination.

For more help with morale issues, staffing concerns, and workplace management, contact the Palmer Group and arrange a consultation.

Can a candidate’s body language help you read between the lines and gather unspoken information about her potential as an employee? Can you rely on non-verbal communication to determine if a candidate is exaggerating his credentials? Can a handshake or body posture reveal the candidate most likely to go the extra mile and help drive your company forward?

For the most part, no. Non-verbal gestures are not magic windows into an applicant’s soul, and it’s an unwise hiring manager who ignores strong credentials and rejects a candidate because of a few nervous gestures. By the same token, only the most inexperienced interviewer would dismiss multiple red flags and accept a poor candidate on the basis of confidence-inducing body language.

So don’t be taken in by appearances. And don’t let talented applicants slip away just because they show signs of nervous energy during an interview. At the same time, it can help to know how body posture affects our unconscious feelings about a candidate. Here are a few common gestures interviewers often notice during the selection process. Observe these gestures with rational distance as you make your hiring decisions.

Body mirroring

During a conversation, we tend to feel an affinity for a companion if her general body posture reflects our own. People who feel an empathetic connection tend to move more or less in sync as they lean back or forward, cross or uncross their legs, and shift vocal tone. Applicants who mirror our gestures, unconsciously or deliberately, tend to put us at ease and make us feel connected to them on a personal level. 

Handshakes, posture, and eye contact

Candidates are constantly coached to straighten their backs, tighten their handshakes and make direct eye contact with interviewers. An interviewer, in turn, can glean information about a candidate by observing how she interprets this advice. If she clutches your hand and stares into your eyes like a hungry lioness, it may mean she has limited self-awareness. But it may also mean she really, really wants the job and is willing to make the most of every piece of advice she’s been given. 

On the other hand, if a candidate’s handshake is limp and his eye contact wanders, it means he’s chosen not to take this common advice, he isn’t able to for some reason, or doesn’t have much invested in this position.

Silences

The way candidates handle nervous moments and awkward silences can speak volumes about their confidence, grace, and experience. Don’t reject a candidate simply because he stammers or fiddles with a paper clip during a conversational pause. But recognize and appreciate the candidates who don’t do this. Show some respect for an applicant who can navigate silence or sit calmly in a waiting room without tapping, fidgeting or pretending to use her phone.

For additional guidance on non-verbal gestures and candidate selection, contact the experts at The Palmer Group.