On Tuesday, April 3rd I attended an HR Summit in Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel about the HR Trends that are facing businesses nowadays, as well as the future of it. While this summit was targeted towards for profits in general, it could be applied to a great extent in the non-profit or non-governmental organizations.
Speakers in the summit came from different backgrounds. Some work in health insurance, outsourcing, retention, entrepreneurship and marketing. They were all directly or indirectly concerned with what is driving or shaping the employee workforce nowadays in the US and North America.
Benefits and Health Insurance Trends:
According to the keynote speaker from League, a benefits and health insurance providers for other companies, employee engagement is more important now than ever, and one of the most effective to retain them is to:
- To attract and retain employees, 60% of employees report that benefits are a major factor when choosing a job.
- Get more out of your benefits investment and save money while building a culture of health. Healthy Employees = Healthy Business
- Employees who are engaged are 31% more productive than others, and 81% less likely to look for a new job.
Talent Sourcing and Recruiting Trends:
Nowadays, and due to factors like competition among skilled workers, the need for achieving cost efficiency and effectiveness, and the importance of bridging the gap between posting a position and filling a role, recruiters and HR personnel or hiring managers have turned their attention on social media. HR practitioners, or even, anyone who’s looking for a new hire is posting on LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook!
Social media has made it much easier for both recruiters and applicants to find positions online, whenever and at whatever platform they are using. Simply by clicking the “Apply” button on LinkedIn for example, the candidates’ profile and CV will be shared with the recruiter in seconds. No need even to add a link to fill in another form on another website, which also decreases the complexity of hiring and applying equally.
Also, a lot of companies and NGOs are asking for employee referrals. Some organizations have also added bonuses for those who have referred good candidates that were later hired.
This has led for a faster hiring process and shorter recruitment cycle in a lot of organizations.
Organizational Culture Trends:
When we talk about organizational culture, we don’t only talk about the possibility of working from home, or brining your dog to your office, or having flexible time. Here we are talking about the vision of the top management of how the organization should look like when they look at its people, also on how do employees perceive their relationships between their managers and their colleagues.
A good organizational culture, according to a recruitment agency manager at LaSalle Network is the one that has a buy in from its executives. Managers and supervisors should understand the needs of their employees and how to make their office spaces more attractive to increase their motivation and performance. Rewards should be for all those who contributed to the success of the organization. This company has done an all staff trip to different places and flew all its employees to different places to celebrate the organizational success, without adding any costs from the employees’ pockets. Also, a good organizational culture is the one that celebrate personal achievements of its staff, as well as understands that employees might have hard times. In both cases, special arrangements and support should be provided to those employees, whether it could be an early leave, or a day off to sort out their personal stuff!