Author: Jim Hunter

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PeopleBest Offers Team Comparison Report

PeopleBest Offers Team Comparison Report

Today’s teams are more diverse, dispersed, digital and dynamic. This creates a growing imperative to move information and energy through the organization and reduce friction that slows progress. How do leaders build trust and attentiveness in their teams on what matters? How can the team stay ‘on point’ during strategic shifts?

These questions and more are on the minds of organization leaders. We take the challenge of equipping leaders seriously. In times of rapid change and dispersed work, real-time insights are imperative. The PeopleBest Team Comparison report addresses these questions and more by bringing behavior intelligence so that managers can plan and decide their best moves. This simple yet in depth view can even help the leader assign reps to the type of clients they are best suited to serve.

Take a recent sales organization client who was tasked with increasing the number of signed contracts from small to large-scale accounts.  Management wanted to understand how to optimize productivity and personalize their approach to coach and mentor individuals. We reviewed diverse styles of team members in areas such as engagement, workstyle and interpersonal.  The engagement quadrant view showed the ‘ideal range’ in light blue and plotted individuals on the graph.  We discovered that some team members worked best with structure and defined processes. Others were highly responsive and their effort were “all-in”. There are advantages and disadvantages to both groups but now the managers were able to personalize training, coaching and feedback to optimize future performance.

We also looked at a comparative view of key sales competency strengths which showed who needed training on areas such as presentations skills, negotiating and closing the sales process.  It also identified team members that excel in those areas so they could provide real-time mentoring of peers.

Every business leader wants skilled and capable team members — that goal is a given. But managers must be able to unify the diversity of talent around common goals by providing clarity on responsibilities and expectations. The Team Comparative reveals differences in motivators and workstyles and can facilitate assigning small teams to solve problems, with individuals that complement one another and collectively will build a better solution.

Tech Specs:

Individuals take the PeopleBest assessment. The results are aggregated and the output creates a comparison in several key areas such as styles, competencies, traits and mindset. All of these elements create the story on how to grow and leverage your team’s performance. This output is reviewed with all team members who engage in ideas that will increase their effectiveness.

Content Summary:

Whatever your business challenges are, the ability to see your team’s strengths and opportunities side by side will bring clarity and give you the ability to leverage people’s capabilities and diversity to achieve new levels of success.  Managers learn how to have more effective one-on-one sessions which will lift performance of the entire team. Contact PeopleBest today and schedule a team comparison assessment.

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People

It’s Time To Grow The People You Have

With so many companies reeling over the effects of the Great Resignation, leaders are considering all kinds of strategies to help them find and keep good talent.

A focus on finding and keeping good talent is a natural response when you’ve got open roles that desperately need filling. But I’d like to point out that the phenomenon embroiling the job market is called the Great Resignation, not the Great Recruitment. The name — and the problem — should remind employers to focus on not just backfilling open roles, but stopping workers from resigning in the first place.

That’s no easy task. Today, I’d like to discuss one method employers can use to tackle this problem: Growing the workers you have.

What does upskilling have to do with the Great Resignation?

A lack of opportunities for growth can cause workers to quit. The Sitel Group, a customer experience management company, released a research in 2019 that concluded 37% of employees would leave their current job if they were not offered training to gain new skills. A LinkedIn report approached the question from the opposite direction, asking employees whether learning opportunities would convince them to stay. Sure enough, 94% of respondents said they would stick around at an employer invested in their learning.

Some employers have launched learning initiatives designed to bump up retention and recruitment. Big tech companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, for example, have created tech training programs aimed at filling the pipeline with savvy workers who hail from diverse backgrounds.

Employers that invest in upskilling wield a powerful tool capable of both stalling resignation rates and bolstering recruitment success.

But there’s something you should know about upskilling: It works best when you know something about the workers you’re offering it to. A training on public speaking may terrify someone who excels at independent, numbers-based work. But it could offer incredible motivation to the worker who’s keen on scoring a leadership position in the next couple of years.

To find out how PeopleBest can help you approach upskilling intuitively, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

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Why Team Dynamics Still Matter

In many workplaces, teamwork ain’t what it used to be. The pandemic replaced good old fashioned meetings with Zoom calls, Slack standups and other tech-enabled solutions. Those fixes got us through a terrible time, but they couldn’t reproduce the camaraderie and collaboration of in-person coworking.

Meanwhile, essential workers reported to work, masked up and ready to go. But teamwork faced stressors in those environments, too: safety, resources, turnover and other issues threatened the success of teams working in-person during the pandemic.

In-office operations are possible again these days, but many have decided to forgo a total return to the “before times.” And while workplace safety has grown more dependable, other problems spawned and strengthened by COVID still exist. So where does that leave teams?

Why is teamwork at risk?

The pandemic threatened the success of remote and in-person teams alike.

For workforces that could transition to online operations, many leaders attempted to galvanize teamwork by doubling down on employee engagement. This strategy wasn’t necessarily bad, but it didn’t always have the intended effect.

A recent Paychex poll asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of certain team-building measures. Nearly 40% of those whose leaders allowed them to vent about current events during meetings said they felt closer to their teams. Compare that to the 9% who said the same thing after attending virtual or in-person workplace social events.

All those online trivia nights and outdoor happy hours? They didn’t work.

Getting to good

If employee engagement isn’t the answer to broken team dynamics, what is?

A panel hosted in December by the Academy of Management discussed this very topic. California State University’s Hakan Ozcelik concluded that organizations must focus on respect and relationships as they set out to mend and bolster teamwork.

“Organizations and leadership should find ways to foster an emotional culture of love—my research indicates that relationships sustained people during turbulent or trying professional environments, much like we have seen with the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “Respect is a huge phenomena right now that we all have to think about—companies who foster a culture of respect will create great teams and will also allow the company to perform better over the long run.”

Hakan is right. Organizations can enable teams by respecting individuals, and I’m convinced that the best way to do that is through knowledge. When we understand how and why workers thrive, we can match them to the right teams and the right assignments, respecting their natural inclinations and passions better than we ever did before. With AI-driven insights into how workers operate, employers can study their teams in seconds to determine who excels where and why.

To find out how PeopleBest can help your team reach its potential, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

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Translating Passion into Purpose and Possibility

Everyone knows the famous story about President John F. Kennedy’s visit to the NASA Space Center in 1962. As lore has it, JFK stopped a man carrying a broom, introduced himself, and asked the worker what he was doing. The janitor’s next words would be repeated for years to come: “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr. President.”

The story is a favorite among motivational speakers, TED Talk hosts, and, yes, bloggers because it illustrates the importance of purpose so well. When workers don’t understand the greater significance of their job, they lose a sense of purpose. Without this, they’re not oriented toward the overarching mission of their organization, and they’re bound to be less satisfied with and engaged in their work.

The multifaceted mission

The man stopped by President Kennedy possessed a keen sense of his employer’s mission. His efforts as a janitor were helping put a man on the moon as much as the work from engineers and mathematicians.

It’s important workers have a sense of mission in other ways, too. They need to feel that their work connects to their personal passion — it motivates them, and it impacts the bottom line. For example, employees who feel that their day-to-day tasks relate to their interests and strengths are happier and more productive. Happy employees are linked to higher customer satisfaction. And according to MIT research, organizations offering a top-quartile employee experience “achieve twice the innovation, double the customer satisfaction, and 25 percent higher profits than organizations with a bottom-quartile employee experience.”

Unite purpose with possibility

There’s another way to think about purpose and mission in the workplace. Companies that teach workers to understand their skills as scalable are in a much better position to retain talent. When workers see how their current job prepares them for another position — one that also furthers the company mission and their own passion — they’ll dig into their work and stay.

This strategy requires a thorough understanding of a worker’s skills and interests. Your moonshot challenge is to make darn sure you know what each person on your team or in your company is passionate about. Your next mission is to help them take that passion into the vision and objective you are trying to achieve.

I’ll leave you with a scene from Alice and Wonderland:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Our job is to ignite the passion to help them find their path with purpose! To find out how PeopleBest can help you discover what makes your workers tick, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

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It’s Time to Challenge the Recruiting Status Quo

Many job opportunities unfold with a predictable cadence: A candidate submits a resume and cover letter, gives a couple of interviews, and waits to hear the news. This sequence has been standard for years, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way.

This tired recruiting flow causes both candidates and employers too much grief. It’s exhausting for job seekers, who are crafting, tweaking and submitting resumes and cover letters for every opportunity they’re even slightly interested in. The process is just as miserable for the people on the other side. Recruiters and hiring managers are besieged by documents, scheduling and meetings — and that’s before they have to approach the decision-making process.

Here’s the good news: There’s no law that says employers have to require resumes, cover letters or interviews. You’re free to design a recruiting process that works for you and your candidates. In today’s blog, I’m going to discuss the shortcomings of the status quo and the opportunity of a reimagined recruiting.

Rethink the Resume — Look Harder, Faster

Did you know 40% of hiring managers spend less than one minute looking at a resume? Resumes communicate a list of accomplishments that help hiring managers quickly decide whether to grant a candidate any more attention.

But the data resumes provide for this incredibly important decision is inherently flawed. It’s a widely known fact that many applicants lie on their resumes. Even when resumes are 100% honest, they don’t do a good job feeding hiring managers valuable information. They may sum up a candidate’s experience, but they can’t provide a deep knowledge of someone’s skills, talents and potential. It’s just a piece of paper.

The Cover Letter Doesn’t Have You Covered

A cover letter communicates more about a candidate’s capabilities than a resume, and hiring managers’ reliance on them backs up that fact. 83% of HR pros say cover letters are important for their hiring decisions.

But do cover letters offer insight in a way that’s fair and illuminating? I say no. A candidate with decent writing chops may be able to tell a convincing story about their professional abilities. Meanwhile, a job seeker with less prowess for the written word might come off as inexperienced or dispassionate. Ultimately, cover letter-writing skills may not say much about a candidate. If the workers are applying to positions that have little to do with writing, their ability to showcase their experience in a short essay shouldn’t matter to you.

Reimagine recruiting

Imagine recruiting without the resume and cover letter. There’s less work for recruiters and candidates alike. There’s fewer formalities, headaches and papers. But what’s left?

If you take resumes and cover letters out of the recruiting equation, you have to find something to take its place. Are you recruiting 24/7?  Are you announcing your open positions to everyone in the company, so THEY are your hidden recruiters? Remember the great person at Starbuck’s who always seems to know what you order and has it ready?  Don’t laugh — one of our clients found their best reps this way.

A reimagined recruiting process should eliminate the frustrations once caused by the recruiting tactics of old. Instead, it should provide data-driven insights into candidates’ skill, potential, and passion. It should help you see where job seekers belong in your organization, streamlining and fireproofing the talent decisions that were once messy and haphazard.

PB takes the guesswork out of the candidate search. No bias, no discrimination, no opinions, no agendas… just looking at who can or can’t do a specific job. To find out how PeopleBest can make this dream a reality at your organization, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

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PeopleBest Expands PeopleDNA™ Profile for Finding the Best Candidates with the “Right Stuff”

The PeopleDNA™ Profile matches a person’s behavioral DNA with the exact job iin your company that’s right for them, using your exact requirements. PeopleBest offers several options to provide pin-point accuracy exactly when you need it most.

Pursuit of top talent poses a competitive challenge in a marketplace where job seekers are plentiful in many job families. Candidates are more discerning about culture fit as well as job expectations. With so many in the talent pool, how can recruiters and hiring managers identify the most capable candidates?

Talent science offers predictive data identifying success factors on job performance that can be measured by assessments. PeopleBest’s agile talent system offers a completely automated, web-based SaaS solution for recruiters and hiring managers an efficient online assessment that measures job specific competencies establishing a “code of success” that will delineate candidates’ capabilities. 

The results can address questions such as: Who can build productive relationships and enlarge them over time?  Who can manage and engage a team located in multiple time zones? Who can master detail and correct gaps in a time efficient manager?  The PeopleDNA™ profile will save hours of time searching for insights on how candidates can contribute.

Winning the war for talent requires strategic positioning and efficient tools, processes and execution to ensure that no quality candidates drop out or are hired by a competitor.  PeopleBest clients determine the competency sets measured that fits their unique needs. Candidate results are available instantaneously and reports can be sent directly to the hiring manager for review.  No time lost to find out critical information to inform talent decisions.

Using the PeopleDNA™ profile, a hiring manager can easily compare and contrast candidates and use interview questions to further understand the value individuals bring. The Profile will also show areas where performance can be boosted through training or mentorship so that the new hire has a positive onboarding experience.  

Tech Specs:

Competency sets are available to measure capabilities of external or internal candidates related to the role or leadership level.  Once the job is set up, a link is sent to candidates who then take the PeopleBest assessment by responding to a series of statements.  The assessment gathers responses to score behavioral areas related to the competencies being measured.

Content Summary: 

Avoid the pain and heartache of back hires, low retention and poor performance — all upfront.  Allow PeopleBest to show you how you can rebuild your hiring and development process more accurately and quickly, with no obligation. Call us today at (714) 685 1020 to see how we can help you! 

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What Does It Take To Beat Boredom

Why do employees quit? It’s a question that keeps business leaders up at night, and it’s also a question that’s hard to answer. Thankfully, research helps us pinpoint a couple of the most common factors that cause employees to quit.

A recent Korn Ferry survey asked job hunters why they were planning to look for a new gig. Nineteen percent said they were on the lookout for a higher salary. Twenty-one percent said they lost their job. And a quarter said their employer’s culture or values didn’t align with their own.

The rest, a whopping 33%, said they were looking for a new job because they were bored. That’s it. They weren’t frustrated, overworked or underpaid. They were just plain bored.

My fellow employers: We cannot let boredom be the reason our workers leave our ranks. Let’s dive into the ways we can defeat boredom and help our employees’ reach their full — and most fully engaged — potential.

What’s the opposite of boredom?

When workers aren’t bored, they’re engaged. Engaged workers understand what’s expected of them, know how to navigate opportunities for growth, and feel like their voice matters. They’re involved and enthusiastic.

These characteristics don’t just make them pleasant coworkers. Engaged workers are linked to many business outcomes, such as profitability, productivity, customer service, and — surprise, surprise — retention.

Getting engaged

Now that we understand the ingredients of engagement, we have to review the steps to get there. Employers can thwart boredom by understanding their workers’ strengths and weaknesses, alongside their motivations, fears and passions.

For instance, an employee who has a natural inclination for learning may thrive in a job that requires them to synthisize vast amounts of information. A worker with a lower capacity may flourish in a role that functions on short, clear and factual pieces of information.

The benefit of knowing your workers extends beyond productivity. Employers face tough people decisions constantly: Who should we hire? Who should we fire? Who will stay? Who will leave? You don’t have time for these decisions — you need a tool that will fireproof your people decisions and boost worker engagement. To find out how PeopleBest can help you beat boredom, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies.

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Examining the call to strengthen the long-term care workforce

What are the hallmarks of a high-quality workforce? How do employers develop those traits in their employees? These are questions every business leader asks themselves, especially in this tricky employment landscape of 2022.Employers face a challenging, changing, shifting landscape as they try to find, motivate, empower, and pay for today’s best workers. 

This reality has not been lost on employers in the long-term care industry. In early April, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued a report calling for improved care at nursing homes. The group identified a number of measures to achieve the goal. High among them: A recommendation to strengthen the nursing home workforce.

What makes a “high-quality workforce”?

The report envisioned a nursing home workforce that is “well prepared, empowered, and appropriately compensated.” To strengthen these characteristics, the group emphasized the importance of education. “Nursing homes and state and federal governments should advance the role of and empower certified nursing assistants by providing free training and career advancement opportunities,” the report said.

The report also encouraged nursing homes to provide diversity, equity, and inclusion training for all workers and leaders.

Making progress possible

The report’s call to action is one that is both necessary and challenging. While the group recognized the need for government assistance, much of its push for improvement placed the onus on one group: employers.

Any employer needing to bolster its workforce understands the weightiness of the task. How do you shift skill, performance, and expectations for an entire group of people?

I’m sure we’re not surprised by these findings, but the report’s call to action is easier said than done.  We DO know there are certain people who thrive in their working with seniors. But why?

We know there are better ways to manage and bolster a workforce: finding each person’s motivation.  Let’ find the “why” inside what makes people thrive so we can help support them exactly where they need it most. With tech-driven insights into how workers operate, employers can examine swaths of their workforce in seconds to determine the strengths their workers naturally possess — and the areas where they most need improvement.

The right tools make a broad call for education much more doable. With a little bit of time and a dash of effort, progress becomes possible.

To find out how PeopleBest can help your team reach its potential, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies.

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People

#InvestInOurPlanet, invest in your people

What do our efforts toward conserving the planet have to do with employment? 

April 22nd is Earth Day, so this question might come to mind as you plan any related events. The planet and our workforce are obviously interconnected, but celebrations like Earth Day challenge employers to dig a little deeper to determine how people management and planet management align.

The theme for this Earth Day is #InvestInOurPlanet, according to the organization heading up the celebration. It’s a helpful theme for employers, because it prompts a compelling parallel: Invest in our planet, invest in our people.

Investing in people is the business of all employers, no matter the industry. This Earth Day, consider how your work to better planet Earth can further your efforts to better the people you employ.

Your people care — and they care that you care

Emerging data has an important message for employers: Workers notice what you value.

A 2021 survey published by the IBM Institute for Value found that 71% of employees and job seekers said environmentally sustainable companies were more attractive than other companies. What’s more, some two-thirds of respondents said they were more likely to apply to and accept jobs at environmentally and socially responsible organizations.

These numbers call employers to care about the world around them. It’s not just the right thing to do — it’s good business practice.

Matching outward efforts with inward progress

When employers engage with social and environmental issues, they need to match their outward efforts with an inner commitment to their employees. Otherwise, their commitments appear hollow, especially to their workers.

So this Earth Day — whether your organization embarks on a tree-planting day or makes a million-dollar commitment to the World Wide Fund for Nature — it’s important to consider not only how you’re investing in the planet, but how you’re investing in your people.

For example: Do you consider your candidates’ strengths as much as their resume? Do you understand your reports’ strengths and divide work accordingly? Have you taken time to identify your team’s goals and chart a path to their success?

Whatever your approach, it needs to be highly personal and deeply customizable. To find out how PeopleBest can serve your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

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How the Great Resignation’s pushing 3 industries to innovate talent acquisition

As we delve into the beginning of the second quarter of 2022, it’s a good time to reflect on how the year started. Since we’re all thinking it, I’ll just say it: It was rough.

More than 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in January, and that was a slight improvement from the record-high 4.5 million who quit in November. The Great Resignation is affecting employers in virtually every industry, leaving recruiters and hiring managers in the lurch as they attempt to maintain even operational staffing levels.

But there’s a silver lining. As employers combat the Great Resignation, many have pushed themselves to offer better experiences to workers in an effort to quell quit rates. Today, I want to review three industries’ approach to the Great Resignation and the innovative solutions they’ve created in the process.

Long-term care: Combating burnout with benefits

According to a Duke University Medical Center analysis of U.S. nursing home data, employers can improve retention by offering benefits like health insurance and retirement. The analysis showed that nursing home employees were happy with their work but unhappy with their workplace. Of the 1,174 participating nursing homes, those with higher retention rates more commonly implemented programs like tuition fee payment and career growth opportunities.

Healthcare: Curing culture

The healthcare industry is experiencing the effects of the Great Resignation in a particularly acute way. A recent McKinsey survey, for example, revealed that more than 30 percent of nurses have contemplated leaving direct patient care. The stat raises an obvious question: How can employers convince them to stay?

In a February Harvard Business Review article, several experts discussed this very question. One solution they proposed: Culture. The authors referenced the Mayo Clinic, who asks all staff to assess the institution’s leaders in an annual survey by five kindness-building criteria. “Published research from Mayo Clinic shows that leading with these five acts of kindness was associated with greater employee satisfaction and fulfillment and lower levels of burnout among staff at all levels,” the authors remarked.

Sales: Coaching

LinkedIn Learning identified coaching as a key aspect of retention in a recent report. “According to LinkedIn data, employees at companies with high internal mobility stay almost two times longer than those who don’t,” the report said. “That’s extraordinary considering the impact of losing an employee in terms of both productivity and expense.”

This lesson isn’t lost on employers working in sales-facing industries. Salesforce recommends employers keep coaching consistent, focused and, most importantly, frequent. While coaching sessions are a great opportunity for feedback, they’re also an important moment for highlighting upcoming opportunities for growth and development. As Salesforce put it: “Reskilling, upskilling, and training your team is never a wasted investment.”

Conclusion

We’ve discussed three broad strategies employers in three unique industries have used to combat the Great Resignation. In reality, your business will need to pick up a combination of strategies to create the approach that best suits your goals and your talent.

No matter how your approach to retention breaks down, it must be personal and adaptable. To find out how PeopleBest can serve your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies