You might have heard it said before that HR needs to think more like marketers. Why is this? Because it is the marketing department’s job to attract new leads, close the deal, retain the customer and track their ROI. In the same way, HR needs to attract new candidates, choose the best match, retain the employee and track their effectiveness against their CPA (cost per acquisition).

Make an Offer They Can’t Refuse

HR needs to re-evaluate their benefits and packages to incentivize their candidates. In order to bring in new leads and pull the best from the competition’s clutches, you will have to be creative. Think like a marketer and take into careful consideration what your target audience wants. Make that offer they just can’t walk away from. Consider your family time, paid maternity leave, training opportunities, guarantees advances after a certain time period of training and experience.

Track Like a Marketer

Marketing professionals are all about the analytics. How many people are brought in from the campaign and, of those, who is making the purchase? They aren’t just interested in the number of new leads here, but in CPA. Understanding the amount spent for each successful customer can then be checked against how much the average customer spends to insure a positive ROI. The path with the lowest and most effective CPA can then become the primary method for bringing in new leads.

Are you tracking where new candidates come from and where the best candidates are finding you? Which job boards are sending you the most hired candidates and how long do those employees stay? Every employee that is brought in and trained in your company costs money and the expectation is that the money will be made back in productive work. However, with high turnover, you will end up spending far too much on employees that aren’t around long enough to make up for what you’ve spent on them. These are important analytics to track and improve on.

Narrow Your Focus

As you continue to see which leads pan out into valuable employees and which leads are a flash in the pan, you will start to better understand your true target audience. In order to pull in the crowd that is most likely to be a good match for your company, you will want to consider where and how you are advertising the job. Mentioning the criminal background searches and drug screenings required will reduce the number of unfit candidates that would otherwise apply. Choosing the right place to post your job ads is also important, realizing that your target audience will have tendencies for where and how they spend their time. Just like a marketing professional – you will want to have your campaign wherever your audience dwells.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

Sources: www.isquare.com/turnover.cfm

Over the last few years, the tech buzzphrase “Internet of Things” (IoT) has proliferated across the Web and other communication channels. Yet many working professionals do not grasp the basic elements of the IoT, and how it will impact their jobs. What is more, a lot of HR managers fail to recognize the effect that the IoT will have on their workplaces, colleagues and operations. Both smaller firms and large enterprises will be touched by the IoT on varying levels. It is incumbent upon HR pros to learn more about how the IoT will increasingly affect their daily work lives.

But first, it is useful for HR pros to understand what the IoT is and its potential reach. The phrase IoT is commonly credited as having been first coined by British technologist Kevin Ashton in 1999. As Ashton later explained in a contributed piece for RFID Journal, he created the phrase while working at Procter & Gamble. He used it as the title for a presentation that he gave on radio-frequency identification (RFID) sensors.

The concept got further refined in a 2013 McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report. It described that the IoT “refers to the use of sensors, actuators, and data communications technology built into physical objects —from roadways to pacemakers—that enable those objects to be tracked, coordinated, or controlled across a data network or the Internet.” The report also explained the three stages of IoT applications as “capturing data from the object (for example, simple location data or more complex information), aggregating that information across a data network, and acting on that information.”

Looking ahead, there is a very wide range of new application areas that will open up to the IoT. The rapidly growing number of smart embedded devices, which can be integrated and networked, has unlocked opportunities for use of the IoT in almost every field. For instance, it has numerous applications in agriculture, energy management, environmental monitoring, finance, healthcare, retail, transportation, telecom and IT.

What is more, the rising applications in these markets are continuing to generate a growing demand for the IoT. Granted, a myriad of middleware issues still need to be resolved in order for the IoT to reach its full potential and augment the everyday lives of people. This is especially true for consumer-based IoT. But, companies involved in IT, data analytics, telecom and mobile device manufacturing have already begun to embrace the IoT.

In 2013, the Economist magazine surveyed 779 senior business leaders from around the world about their thoughts on the IoT. 96 percent of the surveyed senior executives said that they expected “their business to be using the IoT in some respect” by 2016. And, 61 percent of the respondents felt “that companies that are slow to integrate the IoT into their business will fall behind the competition.” The survey also showed that 29 percent of senior executives’ companies had experienced over a 10 percent year-on-year increase in IoT investment.

All the while, the projected reach and scope of the IoT continues to astound business leaders and consumers alike. Recent research published by CompTIA projects that there will be “50.1 billion things connected to the Internet” by 2020. Likewise, this past August ABI Research forecasted that the number of wireless connected devices will reach 40.9 billion by 2020 due mainly to the IoT. Moreover, MGI’s aforementioned report estimated that the IoT has the broad potential to connect 1 trillion things “across industries such as manufacturing, health care, and mining.”

So as we begin to enter the age of the IoT, HR managers need to think about how this disruptive technology will modify their organizations’ operations. Indeed 29 percent of the respondents in the previously cited Economist survey said that the IoT “will inspire new working practices or businesses processes.” Given this, HR pros should start thinking about the IoT’s potential influence on the following three issues:

Demand for Technical Acumen and Operational Expertise

Traditional companies are now faced with the challenge of needing to redesign their business models within the context of the IoT ecosystem. On the other hand, smaller startups have the flexibility to begin their ventures based on an IoT business model. Nevertheless, most organizations lack the engineering talent needed to manage and synthesize the confluence of enabling technologies that facilitate a business’s IoT activities.

More and more, employers covet workers with the requisite skills and competencies needed to harness the power of the IoT. Organizations want employees who possess technological proficiency, and an ability to adapt quickly to the emerging challenges that the IoT will present.

HR managers need to recruit and develop workers who demonstrate an ingenious aptitude for maximizing the capabilities of the core technologies that make up the IoT. Indeed.com has reported on the dramatic job growth for positions that involve HTML5, iOS and Android. And, mobile app jobs have also spiked over the last several years according to Indeed.com. This is all due in large part to the fact that employers are ramping up their efforts to integrate the IoT into their organizations.

The rapid job growth in these fields requires HR executives to do their due diligence when recruiting talent for these roles. It is important to hire a tech team that not only has a vast understanding of the IoT’s core technologies, but can coordinate the deployment and ongoing management of its components. HR departments should strongly consider partnering with a background screening company that offers comprehensive verification services to ensure that they are hiring technologists with the right work experience and expertise.

Creation of New Jobs, Elimination of Obsolete Roles

Similar to other disruptive technologies of the past, the IoT promises to spawn whole new categories of jobs. It offers game-changing potential that could both enhance current jobs and create many new opportunities in various verticals.

In fact, the World Economic Forum (WEF) recently published a post that predicted “the IoT economy will lead to the emergence of new hybrid verticals.” The WEF’s Manager of IT and Telecommunications Industries Elena Kvochko co-authored this post with Accenture’s Managing Director of Global R&D Prithviraj Banerjee. They proposed that within these new hybrid verticals, “it is likely that the typical employee will see their roles augmented by new technologies, and become better skilled and better paid as a result. The blue collar worker of the past could move up to be a white collar worker.”

However, even in its infancy, the IoT is forcing many companies to choose automation technology over large segments of their workforce. In 2010, the Economist prognosticated that the IoT’s “automation of the service sector…will have a devastating impact on the employment prospects of less-educated workers.” For some companies, that prediction has proven to be valid.

As a consequence, this has fueled a sense of apprehension about the adoption and deployment of IoT projects in numerous work environments. Moving forward, HR managers will be challenged with the arduous task of keeping employees invested in their organization’s IoT initiatives, while managing their employees’ anxiety about the stability of their jobs.

Strategic Workforce Planning

In this ever-evolving global economy, employers have to constantly reassess their organizational needs, as well as consistently analyze the skills and attributes of their workforce. Accordingly, many employers now rely on using strategic workforce planning (SWP) to realign their human capital to meet the changing priorities of their organizations.

SWP helps employers continually review and manage their talent to achieve business objectives. Numerical Insights President Tracey Smith rendered an astute and palpable interpretation of SWP in her book “Strategic Workforce Planning: Guidance & Back-Up Plans.” She defined SWP as “a proactive approach which plans to provide the right number of people, with the right skill sets, in the right location, at the right time, [and] at the right cost.”

Organizations have depended on SWP strategies for decades. The Institute for Employment Studies’ (IES) Alice Sinclair reported the history of SWP and how it began in the 1960s. She also detailed how some HR departments started to turn away from using SWP in the 1980s because they struggled to prove its “economic value.” Regardless, plenty of organizations progressively shifted back to using SWP strategies throughout the late 1990s and well into the new millennium.

Now, a new disruptive technology will dramatically improve the ability of organizations to achieve their SWP goals. The advent of the IoT means a multitude of new capabilities for organizations that are executing SWP strategies. The IoT will provide fully integrated project management functionality that will allow for sharing of real-time data and help organizations realize smarter workforce planning. HR managers will be able to use this real-time data to make instant decisions on recruiting and hiring based on the predictive needs of their organization and its projects.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

Nothing shapes a workplace environment quite like employee happiness. A positive and enthusiastic staff can consistently influence the ambiance of any office. If the majority of your employees feel happy about their current jobs, it can have an exponential impact on your business.

What are the things that affect employee happiness?

This month’s issue of the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) HR Magazine addresses this question. It investigates the linkages between employee engagement, satisfaction and happiness. Interestingly enough, author Nancy Hatch Woodward writes “the results of employee engagement and satisfaction often don’t correlate.” She proposes that “engagement seems to be more closely linked to happiness than satisfaction.” Hence, employers may be better off concentrating on employee engagement activities.

You might ask yourself, what will keep my employees engaged in their work?

In her article, Woodward references research conducted last year by SHRM that helps to answer this question. The SHRM’s 2014 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Survey, which canvassed 600 employees, measured the top engagement factors for respondents based on two separate categories. The two categories were workplace conditions “(the environment and the work itself)” and “workers’ opinions and behaviors (how the employees perceive their relationship with their work, as well as how they view others around them).”

Surveyed employees selected their relationships with their co-workers as their top factor for engagement under the conditions category. There was a tie for the second most cited factor for engagement within this category. Respondents equally cited both their relationship with their immediate supervisor, and opportunities to use their skills and abilities, as factors for engagement. The top engagement factor within the opinions and behaviors category turned out to be whether employees felt both determined to accomplish their work goals, and confident that they could meet them.

So what steps should employers take to further engage their employees?

Aside from recognizing which factors will make employees feel more engaged, employers also need to identify who should be executing engagement initiatives. Bain & Company’s Jon Kaufman and Rob Markey proposed in a Human Resource Executive editorial that there needs to be a shift from “a survey-dominated, HR-led engagement approach to one that emphasizes supervisor-team dialogues.” Kaufman and Markey came to this conclusion based off of a study that Bain conducted in collaboration with Netsurvey. The global survey required participants to think about whether their supervisors took responsibility for engagement, instead of just exclusively relying on HR. It deduced that “line supervisors, not HR, should lead the charge” on engagement initiatives. It is also interesting to note how this correlated with SHRM’s aforementioned findings that showed employees place a lot of importance on their relationships with their immediate supervisors.

Furthermore, a recent Gallup Web study of more than 8,000 employees advanced this theory. The study showed that managers who created engaging working environments actually catalyzed peak performance from their employees. The study found that, “workgroups with high levels of employee engagement experience[d] … 21 percent higher productivity compared with workgroups with low levels of engagement.”

In addition to job satisfaction and engagement, are there other variables that impact employee happiness?

In her article, Woodward suggests that employers consider approaching this issue from a more comprehensive perspective. She quotes a management research consultant who emphasizes the utility of “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory is often illustrated in the form of a pyramid that portrays people’s level of needs. The highest level, or top of the pyramid, is what Maslow defined as “self-actualization.” This level represents a person’s full potential and their fulfillment of that potential. The act of “problem-solving” is listed as an important component to achieving “self-actualization.” Based on this notion, Woodward explores the idea that employees need to feel like they are applying their skills and abilities towards solving a problem that affects many people. She interviews a labor and employment lawyer who reinforces this notion by explaining he feels most happy when working on “an important and urgent matter with serious consequences.” This innate desire for “self-actualization” is what may definitively determine just how happy an employee can feel about their job.

How does employee happiness impact an organization’s bottom-line?

Employers around the world have increasingly become interested in trying to determine how employee happiness affects their organization’s productivity and earnings. Earlier this year, a team of economists from both the University of Warwick and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) published a study titled Happiness and Productivity that aimed to measure this interrelationship. Their study, which included more than 700 participants involved in four different experiments, found that workers are 12 percent more productive when they are feeling happy. It also discovered that the subjects who were noticeably less happy were also less productive.

Ultimately, decreased levels of productivity lead to significant financial losses for employers. In 2013, Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce report found that “active disengagement costs the U.S. [economy] $450 billion to $550 per year.” In some cases, employee satisfaction and happiness can even influence a company’s stock performance. In July, Alex Edmans, a finance professor at both the London School of Business and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and two other professors from the Warwick Business School, produced a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper that proved this premise. Their research showed that “employee satisfaction is associated with positive abnormal returns in countries with high labor market flexibility, such as the U.S. and U.K.”

If you take the right steps to immerse your front-line supervisors in engagement operations, your employees are more likely to feel consistently happy. In addition, it is incumbent upon employers to place employees in roles that will make them feel like they are achieving “self-actualization.” In turn, a happy workforce increases your organization’s chances of improving its workflow, production and profits.

At the end of September, Inside Higher Ed (IHE) released its 2014 Survey of College and University Human Resources Officers. Gallup conducted the research study on behalf of IHE. The study surveyed 330 chief human resources (HR) officers from various public, private nonprofit and for-profit institutions. The survey aimed to gauge the opinions of these individuals on issues related to retirement, hiring and training, and other related subjects.

The survey revealed some interesting insights into the minds of higher education HR officers. It also helped to bring a deeper understanding of how they are managing challenges like the aging of a predominantly Baby Boomer workforce. The survey produced some compelling data in the following three areas that turned out to be particularly noteworthy:

Hiring & Training Practices

Within the “Hiring & Training” section of the survey, Gallup generated some enlightening statistics on the use of onboarding and training programs by each participating institution. The survey also delved into some of the common practices being used by these institutions during their hiring initiatives. One practice that has markedly increased in recent years is the use of criminal background checks.

The survey asked each HR officer whether their institution uses criminal background checks as part of their hiring procedures. 81 percent of the respondents said their institutions conduct criminal background checks when hiring faculty. Moreover 12 percent said that they do not currently conduct background checks on faculty job candidates, but indicated that they were considering doing it in the future.

Likewise, 89 percent of the surveyed HR officers said that their schools conduct criminal background checks when hiring non-faculty staff (“staff”). And, 91 percent of the respondents who were from private institutions said that they use criminal background checks for their staff hirings.

As the survey shows, colleges and universities are increasingly using criminal background checks as part of their standard hiring practices. They understand that a job applicant’s criminal history can completely change the complexion of their candidacy.

Yet, conducting a criminal background check can be a laborious exercise. In most cases, it serves in a school’s own best interest to partner with an employment screening company that specializes in conducting criminal background checks.

But prior to pursuing such a partnership, higher education HR executives should learn about the top things to look for when selecting an employment screening company.

Adjunct Faculty Members

Over the last few years, numerous media outlets have written about the poor treatment of adjunct faculty working at colleges and universities across the country. Salon’s Matt Saccaro recently wrote a great investigative piece on this problem. He discovered that some adjunct professors are making a yearly wage that is comparable to the annual earnings of an “average full-time barista.”

In response to this growing problem, campaigns have arisen to try and unionize adjunct faculty members on campuses around the U.S.

The survey uncovered higher education HR officers’ levels of awareness about this issue. Each of the surveyed HR officers shared their opinions about compensation levels for adjunct faculty at their respective institutions. Only 20 percent of the respondents strongly agreed with the suggestion that their institution fairly compensates its adjunct faculty members.

Even more notable, a mere 15 percent of those surveyed strongly agreed that that their institution “has appropriate job security and due process protections for adjunct faculty.”

In addition, most of these HR officers did not have a high level of faith in the potential benefits of unionization. A startling 55 percent strongly disagreed with the notion that “unions help adjunct faculty win better wages, benefits and working conditions that they would receive otherwise.”

Retirement

Employers in every industry have begun to feel the impact of an aging labor pool. Many companies and organizations are top-heavy with Baby Boomers. During the last decade, astute employers prepared accordingly for the anticipated fallout triggered from the retiring Baby Boom generation. The survey reveals how well higher education institutions planned for this oncoming dilemma.

Only 11 percent of the surveyed HR officers strongly agreed that their institutions offered “sufficient phased retirement options” for staff. Also, 18 percent of the respondents said the same about such options being afforded to faculty.

What is more, 32 percent of HR officers further stressed that they were very concerned about faculty “working past traditional retirement age.”

Above all, the growing costs of healthcare for retirees stood out as the main issue at the forefront of most HR officers’ minds. 35 percent of the respondents expressed that they were very concerned about this issue, while 32 percent said they felt moderately concerned.

If you would like to learn more about the findings of the survey, IHE will be hosting a webinar on Tuesday, October 14 at 2:00 pm (EDT). IHE’s editors Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman will review the highlights of the research, and are welcoming HR pros to join the conversation.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

For more than 20 years, organizations have relied on employment screenings as of part their standard hiring procedures. Over the last decade, this practice has only continued to grow in the private, public and nonprofit sectors.

There are several components of the employment screening process that organizations are increasingly looking to utilize. Criminal background checks, social security traces and verifications are just some of those components that equip employers with essential information about their job candidates.

Given that so many employers now regularly count on employment screenings, it is critical for organizations to consider creating a formal employment screening program. But in order to ensure that they are practicing prudent hiring protocol, every employer needs to be aware of the laws that govern employee screening procedures. And as an employer, you also need to understand the limited scope of capabilities that you may have to conduct high-quality employment screenings.

Here are three things to consider about establishing and operating employment screening programs

1. Why Implement an Employment Screening Program?

An employment screening program furnishes your human resources (HR) team with the operational framework it needs to effectively recruit and hire employees.

It can also serve as an incubator for establishing internal policies and procedures for conducting employment screenings. These policies should address such matters as when an employee can initiate certain phases of the screening process, and how the information retrieved from each of these components may impact hiring decisions.

In addition, the structure afforded by a program helps your HR team integrate and organize each of the various components they leverage during recruiting and hiring campaigns.

Formal screening programs also provide peace of mind to business owners who are concerned about the quality of their job candidates and employees.

By having an employment screening program in place, an employer increases their chances of hiring a job candidate who possesses the ideal skill set for the open position. As a consequence, they also retain an employee that is successful in that role. This ultimately leads to fostering a more productive workforce, and maintaining a better overall working environment.

What is more, implementing an employment screening program can reduce an employer’s risk of liability and committing an act of hiring negligence.

2. Consider Using a Background Screening Company

All too often, employers think that they will reduce implementation and operational costs, by executing their applicant screenings through their own in-house resources. However, many of these organizations fail to recognize the expertise, established relationships and costly digital tools that are required to conduct a comprehensive background screening.

Specifically, both criminal background checks and verifications are two components of the employment screening process that can be incredibly time consuming, and almost impossible to navigate, without the benefit of industry expertise. On most occasions, it serves in your organization’s best interest to work with a background screening company that has the brain trust and know-how to acquire accurate information on candidates in these two areas. Here is why:

Criminal Background Checks

Criminal background checks have steadily become a key part of the employment screening process. In 2012, the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) “Background Checking­ – The Use of Criminal Background Checks in Hiring Decisions” survey reported that 69 percent of organizations “conduct criminal background checks on all of their job candidates.”

Yet, most employers who begin to conduct a criminal background check quickly start to realize that it can be a convoluted and protracted process. Trying to track down a criminal history on a job applicant can often turn into a bureaucratic nightmare.

For efficiency’s sake, criminal background checks should generally be outsourced. In order to conduct an efficient criminal background check, one needs the ability and experience required to expertly navigate the court system. You do not want to be calling courthouses all day. Most employers do not have the resources to do the type of thorough background check that an outsourced background screening provider can conduct.

Verifications

Similar to conducting a criminal background check, the verification process is typically a lengthy and involved undertaking. Whether you are looking to verify a job applicant’s educational background, employment history, professional references and/or professional licensure, you need to know what is required from you as an employer. This is true for either an organization that attempts to conduct verifications on their own, or for one that chooses to outsource the verification process to a background screening company.

In 2008, the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) published its Verification: Best Practices brochure which serves as a helpful roadmap to employers looking to engage in the verification process. In particular, it outlines why in many cases it makes more sense to outsource this routinely labor-intensive process. And, it also highlights the issues around outsourcing that employers need to comprehend.

The verification process often involves investigating some very sensitive areas of information. By working with a background screening company, employers can attain the added benefit of legal protection. The background screener serves as a protective firewall between the employer and the entity (applicant’s former employer or educational institution) that is being contacted for verification purposes.

By outsourcing, you protect your organization from being potentially liable for asking questions that could be misconstrued by your job applicant’s former employer or educational institution. Background screening companies bring their expertise in knowing how to ask the right set of defined questions when conducting verifications.

But employers need to always remain conscious about the level of participation, and additional expenditures, required of them during the verification process.

On certain occasions, requests for more customized levels of verification can result in increased costs and slow lag times. It is important for employers to be aware of this when working with a background screening company. They should be cognizant of any third-party source charges that will get passed onto them during the verification process.

3. Understand Federal, State and Local Laws

Prior to implementing an employment screening program, you want to have a good grasp of the laws that regulate how you, and/or your provider, can conduct employment screenings.

There are different federal, state and local laws that mandate how, and what, information can be acquired during the verification process. At the federal level, chief among these laws is the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Make sure you are knowledgeable about the FCRA’s requirements for both employers and background screening companies. It is incumbent upon you to know how to remain compliant with the FCRA for all of your employment screening initiatives.

Furthermore, several states have adopted an analog FCRA statute over the last few years. Each of these states decreed their own restrictions on the reporting and use of applicant information. Familiarize yourself with your state’s analog FCRA statute.

Lastly, even local communities have taken action to limit the use of specific components of the employment screening process. Some cities have passed ordinances that regulate things like the use of criminal records and drug testing for employment screening purposes. Become informed about any of your community’s relevant ordinances before you set up an employment screening program.