Sunday, January 5, 2020

5 Avoidable Reasons New Hires Keep Quitting - Spark Hire

5 Avoidable Reasons New Hires Keep Quitting - Spark HireRecruiting new talent for your company is no cheap or easy endeavor. In fact, for many companies with small hiring budgets, one hire can easily exhaust their entire budget. Our recent report confirms, with the average cost-per-hire as high as $2,000 for companies with hiring budgets between $1,000-5,000, its critical new employees are prepared to stay. With opportunities everywhere during this period of record low unemployment, its increasingly more common for new hires to quit right out of the gate. The good nachrichten is, you can stop talent loss by understanding the top reasons new hires leave and proactively fixing the system. Here are five reasons your new hires may be calling it quits1. Company culture isnt what they expectedAttending an event and feeling out of place is an uncomfortable experience. Now imagine that feeling eight or more hours each day. Its no wonder new hires that dont have a strong grasp of the companys culture before coming on board are more likely to quit within the first month. Remarkably, for 44 percent of job seekers in a 2019 CareerBuilder study, company culture is even more important than salary. Make highlighting company culture a foundational part of the recruiting process. Focus on producing videos that feature an accurate and genuine behind-the-scenes look inside your company. This could be as simple as employees chatting about why they love their roles or what makes the company a match for them. You could even feature team-outing photos at special work-related social events or volunteering on your social media and careers website.Make highlighting company culture a foundational part of the hiring process. Click To Tweet2. They feel unsafe in the workplaceFeeling safe and secure in the workplace is indispensable to employee success and retention. If new hires arent fully versed in policies and procedures, they may feel unsafe and seek out new opportunities instead of fo llowing appropriate protocol to find an internal solution. Not surprising, 71 percent of hiring professionals in a 2019 Global Talent Trends survey say anti-harassment policies play a big part in talent acquisition, but only 37 percent highlight the policies during the hiring process. Turn new hires into tenured employees by keeping them well-versed in updates to policies, especially those that impact their safety and well-being. Make their connection to managers and human resources as comfortable and seamless as possible at all times. This could mean setting a check-in with HR a few weeks after their new hire date to establish a good relationship and an open line of communication.3. They werent given the necessary training to succeedWhether entry-level or upper-management, the investment placed on training new hires makes or breaks even the most skilled candidates. Without proper training, new employees feel lost, inadequate, or even cause profit loss due to under or poor performan ce. Designate mentors to onboard and train your new employees. This will provide a personalized, hands-on approach to ensuring they engage and thrive in the first months. The combination of the basic skills they need to work effectively in their new position and a place to turn for immediate answers and assurance gives new employees the confidence and know-how to perform to their highest profil.4. The role wasnt what they thought it would beOutright deceit is never the absicht of companies. Yet all too often, candidates are sold a dream job that doesnt pan out. In fact, according to the 2018 Recruiter Nation Survey, 43 percent of employees report their day-to-day role wasnt what they had been led to believe during the hiring process. Its crucial candidates are provided a clear, consistent, and honest description of the role they will fill from recruiting through hiring. Produce short video clips featuring individuals who performed in the role with their account of the day-to-day res ponsibilities to post along with the job description. Or introduce managers the new hire would be communicating with daily to answer questions about the role during a live video interview. Give candidates an accurate depiction of the role theyre being considered for.Click To Tweet5. They dont see a future in which theyll reach their career goalsIf a new job feels like a dead end, new hires will have no reason to commit for the long haul. Ambitious new employees will be quick to call it quits if theres not a clear career growth path for a long-term stint with the company. Make the full growth potential of your positions evident to new hires. Assess what their individual goals are in their career and with the company. They may want to reach for a new certification or degree, bigger salary, or even see clear potential for mobility into another department in the future. Map out a plan to help new hires feel confident they can reach their goals. Be sure to show how frequent assessments a nd goal-setting meetings help determine the best way to continue down their path toward greatest success.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

The Benefits of an Agile Approach to Project Management

The Benefits of an Agile Approach to Project ManagementThe Benefits of an Agile Approach to Project ManagementThe more traditional Waterfall approach to project management, which all the major project frameworks such as PRINCE2, APM BoK and PMBoK came from, works well in more stable contexts. There is a clear case that the world we operate in since PRINCE2 was launched in 1996 is now far more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (which youll see abbreviated as VUCA. Waterfall approaches that encourage thorough big design at the beginning are still relevant where we can be confident of requirements before work begins that ansicht will not need to change significantly during the life of the project. However, such are the volatility of operational drivers that bear upon businesses that often the customer simply must adapt. The urgency of these drivers will not allow them to wait until the end of the project. So this might require frequent changes throughout a project. With a water fall process, this probably means expensive re-working of the plan and wasted effort. This leads to our belief that taking the Agile approach of frequent small deliveries coupled with a more continuous conversation with the customer allows much greater flexibility and delivers results, and therefore benefits, much more quickly. The beauty of Agile is that customers can decide what they want to achieve as they see what the suppliers can achieve. Its approach is one of learning by doing, allowing teams to reflect on their experiences as they go along and adapt accordingly. The success of Agile comes down to a number of key elements. The 3 main factors in the success of Agile are set out below. Success Factor 1 A Self-Organizing Team To start with, you need a self-organizing team. By moving away from silo working, team members are encouraged to use their overlapping skills and work together, which in turn gives them much greater empowerment and satisfaction. Success Factor 2 Tim e-Boxing and Requirements Management Then theres timeboxing, where the emphasis is on fixing the time and cost elements of a project but also allowing the plan to evolve so requirements can be prioritized, with crucial input from a customer representative, as work progresses. The Agile contract between customer and supplier is radically different to the expectations of Waterfall requirements are flexible, within agreed parameters, but time and cost are not. Its always tempting to put too many priorities into the must haves section of the requirements. Agile practice will usually keep these to around 40% of the total effort. Scope creep is one of the seven things that can derail your project, so this must be managed effectively. Similarly, Agile teams will also ensure there is only a finite number of tasks in the doing category work currently being carried out right now to help reduce the complexity of projects at any one time. Success Factor 3 People Engagement People engagem ent is a critical part of Agile working and is successful because all the different stakeholders within a teamwork closer together and are empowered to have more say in both what they do and the order of the work. This is recognized as being much more motivational than the classic command and control approaches which tend to be common among management. Agile Is Not What You Think Of course, not everyone is ready to embrace Agile and one of the common misconceptions is that there is some sort of overall unifying Agile methodology. That rather misses the point. There is no one right way of organizing and managing an Agile project, and thats what makes it so attractive to some, and threatening to others. Some try to adopt Agile techniques while at the saatkorn time continuing with a waterfall perspective, but as you might expect, this is unlikely to deliver success it is the Agile way of working that makes the techniques work, rather than the other way round. Lastly, there are tho se who think Agile is only relevant to software development, but thats simply not true it can equally be used on a variety of non-software examples, such as renovating a large building, improving business processes or improving job aids for customer-facing personnel. Common Barriers to Agile Working One of the main reasons why Agile wont work is if an organization operates a culture of micromanagement and entrenched silos of working that wont allow collaborative behaviors. Other issues are likely to include weak team leadership or trying to implement it in organizations where the nature of the work is such that working releases is inconceivable in small iterations. Why Agile Is Here to Stay Agile has made such significant inroads that it cannot be dismissed as a fad and should be understood by all managers who are involved in innovation and development. To ignore it now is to miss an opportunity that can deliver quick results and achieve cost savings. Apple, Amazon, GE Heal thcare and Salesforce.com are among those organizations that are already using Agile, having recognized that it is better suited to the complexities of 21st Century organizations. And above all, Agile knows how to get the best out of knowledge workers and ensure they stay motivated. Learn five ways to motivate your team whether you work in an Agile environment or not. Faced with those conclusions why wouldnt you want to be more Agile?