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Let Us Show You What You Can’t See

As employers, we’re always trying to make decisions based on evidence. We want to hire the candidate who hands in the best resume. We want to promote the worker who offers the best track record.

Companies have long operated this way. We base our decisions on what we can see — after all, that’s what we know. At PeopleBest, our mission is to show you what you can’t see. We want to help you revolutionize your people decisions by giving you access to information you’ve never had before using AI-powered behavior assessments that analyze psychology with technology.

Below, I’ll walk you through three instances where PeopleBest can show you what you can’t see.

Area #1: Hiring

Most employers require candidates to submit resumes when they apply for jobs. In my humble opinion, this practice makes no sense. Resumes aren’t reliable sources of information. In a 2020 report from ResumeLab, 36% of Americans admitted to lying on their resumes. Accuracy aside, recruiters don’t spend much time looking at resumes; research shows they give each one only a glance.

My point? The resume is somewhat useless, and not just because it can be fabricated by candidates and ignored by recruiters. The resume is useless because it doesn’t show you what you need to know. It may sum up what a candidate has done in the past, but it doesn’t show you what a candidate can do right now. It doesn’t showcase a candidate’s skills, inclinations, or personality. And it doesn’t reliably predict who will rock a job.

Ok, so I’m sure you can tell my views on resumes, but I will extend one olive branch of peace. If you can use a resume to accurately determine the value of a person’s background and accomplishments related to what you need, then it’s worthy information. But I’m ready to die on this hill: Quality behavior assessments will give you more information than a piece of paper ever will.

Area #2: Growth

Employees are hungry for professional growth. They desire a path forward so intensely that many are willing to quit jobs that don’t offer one. And yet, we rely on the age-old yearly review to drive workers’ progress.

The standard performance review fails workers and employers. It’s taxing. It’s subjective. And it’s vague. Thankfully, there’s another way. 

Behavior data allows managers to speak in specifics with their workers to propel progress all year long. Using scientific tools to unveil the patterns in your employees’ actions, thinking, preferences, and passions, you’ll see how they work and why. You use these tools like you use Google Maps. When you reveal a person’s innerworkings, you understand their starting point. This starting point helps you to set a destination — the place you want to be. Behavior data fills in the dots. It maps out the journey from starting location to desired destination.

Area #3: Performance

Most personality assessments can help employers decode behavior to help them hire better and grow people faster. But PeopleBest uses AI technology to determine the exact combination of behaviors and competencies needed to move the needle on performance.

I’ll return to my Google Maps analogy. PeopleBest not only provides the location, destination, and route. It provides multiple route options and an ETA, all while flagging cops, accidents and gas stations along the way. How? Because we customize our assessments to each job and company we work with.

Each of our clients define success in their jobs and companies differently. Using our analytics, PeopleBest unlocks the code between people and performance. The result is immediate and applicable to each of our client’s unique goals.

In these three areas and more, let us show you what you can’t see. PeopleBest can optimize your people decisions, making them simpler and more effective. Our software is fast, accurate, and cost-effective. Curious to see how it could revolutionize your workplace? 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

3 Steps To Boost Employee Happiness In 2023

This year started with the Great Resignation. The “quiet quitting” trend arrived this summer.

And now 2022 is ending with a probable recession. In other words? It’s been a tough 12 months.

Many of this year’s employment trends have focused on workers’ unfulfilled needs. Employees felt unheard, underpaid and underdeveloped, so they sought out new opportunities. They felt frustrated over high expectations and low recognition, so they decided to give a little less. We’ve seen the trend of dissatisfaction play out in research, too. Workers report that they are lonely and face massive burnout.

Many leaders — myself included — are troubled by the dwindling emotional health of their employees and how the decline is impacting team members. We root for our workers. We want them to thrive. We also root for our businesses, and we know that when worker engagement falls, so does productivity, innovation, and other vital signs.

So how do we make sure our workers are happy?

Step 1: Get to know your workers

The first step to improving employee happiness is to get to know your workers. I’m sure you know your workers’ names and titles. And I know you’ve got a general idea of who’s a superstar and who’s a problem child. But that’s not what I’m getting at — I want to know if you actually know the people on your payroll.

Picture this team. Amy is from Michigan and got a communications degree from a small school somewhere out West. Oscar hails from California and started his career overseas, though you can’t remember where. Before moving over to the private sector, Donna worked for the federal government — but what did she do, again?

Knowing the basics of your employees’ stories shows that you didn’t daydream through their job interview or newcomer lunch. This knowledge also provides a sense of kinship. A familiarity between you and your workers makes them feel seen.

Step 2: Know the WHY Inside

While these kinds of details are important, they may not give you all the information you need to help your workers succeed. Employees’ stories will help you discover what makes them tick. Insights about their behavior will help chart a path to professional success.

For example: Do you know how much or little they like or feel comfortable with feedback on how they’re doing? It’s important to understand your employees’ backgrounds. But it’s just as essential to know WHO they are inside — how they think, how they work, and how they grow.

Take Oscar, for instance: He started his professional life in London after studying abroad there during his undergrad. He moved back to the States to care for his parents, but he longs for opportunities that will satisfy his thirst for learning and adventure.

Behavior data will help decode Oscar’s story and reveal who he is and what works best in connecting with him.  Knowing the behavioral WHY inside can help Oscar’s mentors understand how to help him succeed.

Step 3: Lead workers to greatness

Workers are hungry for new opportunities. This desire is so great that a lack of opportunities for growth motivates some 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.

Behavior data tells employers who needs what kind of opportunity and why. It aligns employees with available opportunities based on their strengths, interests and behaviors. The best part about this? It keeps workers happy, and it strengthens your business.

I’ve just walked through three steps to help you understand your people and boost their happiness in 2023.  As I conclude, I want to leave you with a question: When will YOU start to know your team?

I’ll make it easy for you. Give us a call, and we’ll run a free team study on each of your people and provide you with a free analysis of each person and how you can achieve each of these steps.  All you have to do is call (714) 685-1020 or email us at [email protected] with the code HAPPINESS23.

PeopleBest is in the business of creating happiness and productivity, so we can’t wait to help you.

Happy New Year!

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Hiring Remote & Hybrid Employees

Leveraging Diversity of Individuals and Where They Work

PeopleBest offers an efficient and clear way to measure capabilities by providing insights into individuals’ competency strengths, style preferences and vulnerabilities. It contrasts the individual view to that of other team members. It also provides a ‘coaching map’ for team leaders to unify efforts and challenge individuals to become the best versions of themselves.

People determine the performance capacity of an organization. Securing and retaining top talent comes with a set of trade-offs, like hiring someone in a different time zone who will need to work remotely or offering a flexible schedule to a highly qualified professional who needs work-life balance accommodations. Leaders are making adjustments to traditional workplace realities to prioritize the best “people decisions.”

In-person and remote employees require more flexibility, and these days, they can find it, making the war for talent formidable.  How does an organization face this changing reality?  This weighty matter falls on the shoulders of leadership.  Business leaders must build their teams, find ways to encourage collaboration and engagement, and build trusting relationships among team members. And all the while, they must manage a staff who may seldom step foot in the office.

PeopleBest understands this tension. We’ve brought the best of psychology and technology to help you navigate tough people decisions like these ones. We provide a FIT score related to someone’s “Work from Home” ability, but we also take it one step further in providing a blueprint to assess or help them.  Our STYLES profile provides the simplicity to understand each person in an easy-access profile.

We understand that priority #1 is to make sure we truly and accurately understand what makes a person exactly who they are. This takes the guesswork out of reviewing a potential new hire or existing employee, aiding leaders in making critical “people decisions.”

PeopleBest not only measures the fundamentals of the best FIT for the job or remote work ability but provides insight into how easily they can adapt to being productive when geographically dispersed from other team members.

We employ a proprietary methodology that helps leaders identify FIT for the job by revealing how closely matched they are to critical role-based competencies. The results also weigh other components such as individual workstyle, preferences in working with others and engagement and passion.

The most frequent question we get is, “how can I know the things I can’t learn from a resume or an interview”? Such as, will they work hard, meet deadlines with quality work, will they be a positive influence on the team and will they feel a part of the team being two time zones away? If you are leading geographically dispersed teams and need answers to these questions in building the absolute best results in your people and performance, then our solutions are for you!

Tech Specs:

Individuals respond to a series of online behavioral preference statements.  Results measure participants’ strengths in competency areas essential to the job.  The methodology measures workstyle, interpersonal, engagement and self concept.  These elements create important insights on how to improve productivity by revealing strengths and potential landmines.  Beyond that, the STYLES profile reveals how well individuals work with others and the energy, fire and passion they have for work.

Content Summary:

Do you lead a team that is never in the same place at the same time? The gaps in performance, collaboration or motivation might seem obvious to you. Understanding the “why” behind the observable behavior will streamline your abilities to move the needle. PeobleBest’s STYLES profile provides a “coaching map,” providing insights needed to optimize effort, relationships and output of each team member no matter where they work. Successfully managing a remote, hybrid or in-office team is made easier with a dynamic intelligence that minimizes guesswork and increases productivity and engagement. Reach out to PeopleBest today and get started, [email protected].

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Three Steps To Better Hiring

Many organizations are pushing to make hiring more speedy. The craze has led employers to rethink their hiring processes — what a great opportunity for improvement. 

I believe that the standard candidate experience is not just stale, but broken. We ask candidates to sum up their experience on a piece of paper, sit through a nerve-wracking interview, and then wait weeks as we deliberate on a yes or no. This sequence of events is tedious for the applicant and unproductive for the employer.

There’s a better way. Consider these three steps to rethink your hiring process.

#1: Reconsider the resume

Here is a hot take more and more business leaders share: Resumes are worthless.

I know this idea challenges the recruiting status quo, but hear me out. Resumes aren’t the most reliable sources of information. In a 2020 report from ResumeLab, 36% of Americans admitted to lying on their resumes. The fibbing stemmed from insecurity; most of those who fessed up said they lied because they lacked the required experience.

Despite this, the vast majority of employers require resumes, posing them as the first step in selecting a new worker. Even so, research shows that recruiters look at a resume for only a few seconds. A quick glance isn’t enough time for talent professionals to understand whether an applicant can do the job they’re looking to fill.

This information should cause us to question the current process. Instead of relying on a resume to kick off your recruiting process, consider identifying the most important aspects of the role you’re looking to fill and screening candidates based on how their strengths match up.

#2: Think beyond the interview

I’m frustrated with our reliance on the resume. But I’m simply over our insistence on the interview. Job interviews aren’t inherently bad, of course. But when waste time, money, and energy with a process that requires weeks of scheduling, slotting, and conferencing.

As one lecturer wrote in the Harvard Business Review, interviews cause many employers to pass over great candidates. And not because the candidates underperform, but because employers ask the wrong questions. “If you are working on innovation, you need someone who can think with you,” Nilofer Merchant wrote in the article. “And by focusing on capability over experience, you increase the chances you find that person.”

I believe the problem with interviews runs even deeper bad questions: Interviews can’t produce completely unbiased assessments of a candidate’s strengths. So what can?

Standardize your process with assessments

Companies can measure the strengths and opportunities each candidate presents with standardized assessments. Equipped with that information, they can select the person who best fits the needs of the job — not the person with the nicest resume or the sharpest interviewing skills.

PeopleBest “Profiles” are customized to the exact job you need done. They find the unique ‘code of success’ inside of people, offering insights and identifying missing areas that may frustrate an employer — or drive an employee to quit. By discovering how workers score in the skills most important to an opportunity, companies can better understand what workers want, how they stay motivated, and where they can grow to better contribute to their teams.

We go beyond having killer Profiles — we use analytics to uncover why certain people outperform others, adding to an even faster, impartial, and unbiased way of learning through every person inside your company.

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 will provide you a no-cost opportunity to hire your next person to experience a better way to hire!

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 do employees quit?

Why do employees quit? 

This question has vexed virtually every employer in the last year. Quit rates have been at all time highs, prompting all kinds of nicknames for the widespread business challenge. Call it the Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffle, or the Great Recruitment, but many of us are still feeling its effects.

With so much attention on the workers who say “sayonara,” there’s good reason employers are asking the big question above. Why do employees quit? Is something pushing them out? Or is the grass really that much greener on the other side?

It’s not (just) about money

We all know a job offer that comes with a bulkier salary is hard to pass up. But money is not the only motivation of workers who resign. According to a recent McKinsey survey, the top reasons workers quit spanned from opportunities for growth, to money, to managers:

  • 41%: Lack of career development and advancement

  • 36%: Inadequate total compensation

  • 34%: Uncaring and uninspiring leaders

  • 31%: Lack of meaningful work

  • 29%: Unsustainable work expectations

When McKinsey asked respondents why they accepted a new position, the results largely aligned with respondents’ motivations for quitting. Workers’ top three reasons for taking a new job were: Career development and advancement; adequate total compensation; and meaningful work.

These numbers tell a powerful story. Workers want to grow, do work that’s meaningful to them, and make enough money. The only question that remains: How can employers deliver?

I can’t help you get your compensation strategy in order. But I can equip you with a tool that leads employees to work that fuels their passions, all while outlining a roadmap for growth. We provide intelligent data based on employee performance and aspiration. With this information, we help organizations create environments in which employees flourish based on their giftedness. In addition, we help leaders and managers understand how to lead through change, create synergy in their teams and coach employees for future career steps.  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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Four Marks Of An Effective Talent Tool

There are a lot of tools on the market right now that claim they can assess candidates and workers. But how do you identify the tools that will give you the insights you need to find the right workers and make sure they thrive?

To answer this question, I’ve identified four attributes that mark the most successful talent tools.

#1: Predictable

A talent tool should be able to foretell how well someone is going to perform in a particular job. It will highlight not only who they are but also how they will fit.

#2: Actionable

No one is the perfect fit for a job. A good talent tool should flag the gaps in a hire’s sills and abilities. It will lay out actionable steps to take somebody from where they are to where they need to be.

#3: Repeatable

How do we take this concept — predicting skills and identifying improvement actions — and make it repeatable? A tool should allow you to analyze many workers in many jobs.

#4: Customizable

We know every single company is different. And we know every single job is different: A marketing coordinator will look completely different than a vice president of sales. A good talent tool will be customizable to positions and to companies.

We at PeopleBest have built our platform on these four attributes. To make sure our tool drives results that are predictable, actionable, repeatable, and customizable, we’ve created an assessment that analyzes 29 traits on a scale from one to 10. We didn’t stop there. We’ve developed profiles that are highly specific and unique to a particular job, so we can predict success with an exactness that is unbeatable.

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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3 Behaviors To Pay Attention To For Remote And Hybrid Work

High-profile employers are making headlines as they decide whether to call workers back to the office or leave them at home. Remote work is no longer an option at SpaceX, for instance, after Elon Musk ordered employees to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office each week. The co-founder and CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, took a different direction. His company shuttered several offices around the U.S. in an effort to “double down” on remote work.

Many, many other business leaders will make decisions about work arrangements that won’t get picked up by the press. But that doesn’t make them any less important. As executives, HR teams, and managers meet to discuss whether extended remote work is a viable option, they need to make sure they’re working with all the facts. Behavior data provides leaders the insight they need to determine each worker’s preparedness for remote work.

Workers equipped to work from home possess a blend of skills that position them to be successful away from the office. When discussing your team’s remote productivity potential, consider these three skills:

Takes Initiative

Workers who take initiative feel empowered to make decisions and initiate action — all without being told. These workers generate objectives for themselves or in tandem with managers and do what it takes to achieve them.

Results driven

Guided by their objectives, results-driven workers don’t waver from their commitments. If they’re required to produce results, they step up, at times directing the efforts of others, even when they’re in individual contributor positions.

Works independently

Workers who are strong in independence feel more productive working in the silence of solace than they do against the din of office chit chat. They find it easy to maintain objectivity and focus on the tasks at hand. They are comfortable proceeding with work without much input or direction from others.

PeopleBest measures these skills and more to develop a work from home profile — a set of skills that will measure a workers’ proclivity for remote and hybrid work. Our ‘Work from Home’ model can also be tailored to an organization providing a precise “code of success” for remote workers. A group of employees take the assessment, relevant performance metrics are provided and correlated with the aggregate behavior scores.  The outcomes include setting desired score ranges reflecting high performance and the custom assessment is used in the hiring process with candidates or when evaluating employees for internal moves.

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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People

Coaching As A Preventive Mental Health Tool

It’s no longer sufficient for employers to simply recognize the importance of mental health. Organizations must provide proactive support for employees — or risk serious business consequences.

A recent report from Mercer found that employees deeply need mental health support. One in five respondents worldwide said they experience high or extreme levels of stress on a daily basis. Those numbers rose to 25% among U.S. workers.

The dire state of worker mental health isn’t exactly surprising. According to the World Health Organization, the pandemic triggered a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide. As employees struggle to get the help they need, they’ve turned to their employers.

Eighty percent of respondents in a 2022 poll from the American Psychological Association said they plan to consider employers’ mental health-related offerings when they search for a new job.

Employers have taken note. Many organizations are offering new and enhanced mental health benefits, from wellness rooms and awareness efforts to time off and expanded health insurance coverage.

As organizations devise strategies to support worker mental health, I have one suggestion: Don’t forget the preventive measures. Some of the world’s leading experts in mental health point to the power of preventive care, yet it’s something we employers, in our haste to get workers the help they need, often forget about. Read on to learn more about one way employers can focus on prevention in mental wellness.

The value of prevention

As employers, and as people, we tend to view mental health care as something that comes after: after symptoms get bad, after a crisis occurs. Don’t get me wrong. Mental health support should be readily available and accessible whenever anyone needs it.

But there’s another timing element to consider: before. Consider the perspective of Nick Taylor, a U.K.-based clinical psychologist who founded workplace mental health platform Unmind. In an interview with HR Dive, Taylor spoke about employers’ overwhelming focus on reactive care.

“The historical approach to the topic of mental health has been to put all of our focus on people who have mental illnesses. And the problem is that category keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and we just can’t build enough nets to catch people as they kind of fall into that category of mental illness…All of the focus has been on reactive solutions; we wait for people to get unwell and we try to get them a solution for them. But there aren’t enough therapists, clinicians and social workers in the world to support those people. We’re saying, ‘Hold up. Stop putting all your attention on reactive care and focus your attention on proactive care.’”

What could prevention look like?

So how can employers provide their workforces with proactive mental health solutions? One possible solution: Coaching.

The APA encourages organizations to train managers to promote health and well-being. Managers and supervisors who work directly with employees have a special opportunity to highlight opportunities that create support.

I would suggest employers take this a step further and provide coaching with an eye toward mental health — not only as a way to flag issues but also as a way to build mental health strength. Through coaching, employers can help employees build resilience.

Coaching can be especially successful when employers are equipped with real-time data about their employees’ strengths and weaknesses. With PeopleBest’s AI-powered platform, employers get a picture of where their employees thrive, how they succeed, and where they need to buid. 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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Cultivating A Culture Of Feedback

What role does feedback play in an organization? Surely, it’s important to guide employees throughout their tenure, ensuring they don’t just log hours, but learn and grow.

But feedback is tricky to get right. A recent essay in the Harvard Business Review featured two business leaders’ musings on the subject: “The research is clear,” they wrote. “Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning.”

Where does this information leave managers, leaders, and employers? Workers crave growth – it’s so important to them, in fact, that many say they’d leave their jobs if threatened by stagnation. But how do employers foster growth if we can’t tell them where and how that growth should occur?

In defense of the comfort zone

The authors of the HBR essay had a couple of helpful answers to this question. They pointed to research delving into the learning process, findings showing that learning happens first and foremost in the positive. “Learning rests on our grasp of what we’re doing well, not on what we’re doing poorly, and certainly not on someone else’s sense of what we’re doing poorly,” the authors wrote. “…we learn most when someone else pays attention to what’s working within us and asks us to cultivate it intelligently.”

Growth and learning do not occur when workers are admonished with a vague command to “get out of your comfort zone” or “pick up a new skill.” Instead, workers learn the most when they’re encouraged to explore their strengths.

“It’s clear that we learn most in our comfort zones, because that’s where our neural pathways are most concentrated,” the pair wrote. “It’s where we’re most open to possibility, most creative, insightful, and productive. That’s where feedback must meet us — in our moments of flow.”

Create continual, consistent feedback

As you may have noticed in past blogs, I’m passionate about feedback.  I truly believe that these moments should be done weekly, at a minimum. Share those “quick moments” with your people when their in their zones to improve feedback and trust.  Don’t miss this opportunity to find out the ‘best’ in each of your team members!

At PeopleBest, our technology-forward approach to workplace psychology opens the door for employers to provide continual, consistent feedback hinging on employers’ strengths. With a roadmap to growth, your employees will be unstoppable. 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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Product Features

PeopleBest Finds Innovative Managers Who Lead With Head And Heart

Measuring What’s Important When the Goal line Moves

Feature Set: PeopleBest offers over 100 job templates and 300+ competencies to quickly use what works for your job, or your can create a unique set that reflects your organization’s critical success factors. Managers are critical to directing workflow, time and resource management, engaging employees and helping them stretch to maximize their potential.

Content:

Managers live in a new world these days. Economic pressures, resource constraints and talent shortages have highlighted the importance of managerial skills like coaching effectiveness, stress tolerance, team building and change management.

Among the many demands of the job, managers have to be ahead of the curve to help their staff connect, express and support each other when uncertainty causes angst.  Managers serve as frontline “culture advocates,” setting managing the social and personal dynamics of their teams.  Change initiatives involve personal gains and losses and managers’ empathy, on-point communication and pursuit of restoring rhythm sets them apart.

When managers lead staff through change and growth, they enable the team to shift and restore productivity. This role is therefore mission critical. But, how do you know an employee or candidate has what it takes? A hiring manager can quickly review candidate profiles to see the overall degree of “Fit” for the role. The profile also reveals the percentile of strength for each critical job competency.  Not only will the results show you the “Fit” for today’s role but reveal strengths that can make way for career advancement in the future.

Tech Specs:

Participants respond to a series of online behavioral preference statements.  PeopleBest’s software measures participants’ strengths in competency areas essential to leading their teams in execution, leveraging abilities and managing relationships.

Content Summary:

Managers, as the frontline purveyors of culture, affect retention, time and resource management and quality of service and deliverables. Well suited and equipped managers make a tremendous difference to the bottom line.
Assess Your Managers: Let us help you build your dream team and keep them sharp with precise insights that will help them engage, grow and contribute at higher levels. Reach out to PeopleBest today and get started by customizing a competency set that is Unique to your culture. Ask for a DEMO at  [email protected].