Beyond the Beanbag Chair

Company culture is about much more than beanbag chairs and company-sponsored happy hours. As defined by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), organizational culture “consists of shared beliefs and values established by leaders and then communicated and reinforced through various methods, ultimately shaping employee perceptions, behaviors and understanding.” It’s all about the value systems your company upholds and acts upon.

While fun office benefits can be a manifestation of these value systems, arbitrary perks that aren’t grounded in strongly-held beliefs don’t mean anything. In many cases, they’re just distractions from underlying cultural shortcomings. The last thing you want to see is a group of disgruntled employees lounging around the office flex space, fiercely resenting their employment with you. To get ahead of positively shaping workplace culture, you have to articulate your company’s value systems first.

Defining Core Values

Even without writing them down, all companies hold and demonstrate certain values. As SHRM explains, these show up socially, materially and ideologically. Social culture can be seen in how colleagues speak to and about each other and how supervisors relate to their direct reports. You can examine your values and culture in a material sense by looking at the goods or services you create. And any mottos or ideals expressed around the office demonstrate your values in an ideological sense. When defining organizational values, take stock of these three aspects of your company’s culture. Dig deep and speak with a variety of constituents for a 360-degree perspective on your existing culture.

You might find that certain beliefs are fundamental to the way you do business, while others are holding you back. Find out which values work and which ones don’t. Work with senior leadership to articulate and, if necessary, rewrite your core values. Put them into words and refine the phrasing until it feels right.

Reinforcing a Positive Culture

Once you’ve codified your values, think strategically about how to get these across in a meaningful way. As SHRM’s definition points out, culture starts with leadership and trickles down throughout the rest of the company. For this reason, the C-suite and HR teams must act as role models, living out the values you’ve identified as central to your company culture. Human resources professionals can exhibit these values in a variety of ways. You can start by celebrating behaviors and achievements that reflect core values in action. In the long term, work to align benefits and rewards with your value systems and develop interview questions that assess cultural fit.

Takeaways

Achieving a spectacular company culture takes time and concentrated effort. But here are some tips new HR teams should remember when they begin shaping workplace culture:

• First, work with leadership to articulate your organizational values.
• Communicate these values across the company and lead by example.
• Ground any perks and benefits in your company’s values.

Request a free JazzHR demo to find out how automation tools can save your team time and energy, so you can focus on cultivating a positive workplace culture.

Together, JazzHR and VIZI create a positive candidate experience and help employers attract and engage with more qualified applicants early in the candidate journey.

Breaking down the VIZI-JazzHR partnership

VIZI is a team of driven innovators who believe a career choice is a life choice and that methods of talent attraction are transactional by design and do little to create authentic connections.

Enter VIZI, the patented approach to recruitment marketing that takes the job description and transforms it into an effective visual marketing, branding and advertising tool that communicates a brand story, conveys the corporate culture, and clearly outlines the desired qualities in an ideal candidate.

• By breaking up the heavy-text of the existing job description with visuals and icons, VIZI enables candidate’s to process the information and understand what it could be like to work for your company.

Through JazzHR, VIZI transforms the candidate experience at the job post level by instantly converting customers’ text-based job descriptions into a mobile, social media-friendly, enhanced job description.

By working directly with the VIZI team, JazzHR customers are empowered to visually market their unique story to attract top talent using their branding, real photos and videos. According to VIZI, visuals drive the time spent on a VIZI up to 140%, resulting in a more thoughtful review from an invested candidate.

To learn more about what a VIZI is, watch this brief video. For more on how to drive candidate conversion through a unique branded experience, schedule time with a JazzHR expert today.

Managers are responsible for ensuring team success, creating a positive atmosphere, and solving complex problems, among others. These varied responsibilities can quickly become unbalanced, and a sudden shift in the market could take leaders’ attention away from their teams. This can then lead to a drop in productivity.

Leaders can stabilize their own resources by adopting various leadership styles, including:

• Autocratic leadership: Creating a clear separation between leaders and employees. This style centralizes decision-making powers in a single person. Decisions are made quickly and employees are expected to follow their instructions.
• Democratic leadership: This style uses a consultative approach in which leaders solicit feedback from individual team members. Decisions are made more slowly, with leaders considering the input of relevant stakeholders.
• Participative leadership: In this approach, leaders leave most of the decision-making process to trusted team members. Leaders provide guidance as necessary and delegate tasks to individuals based on their skills.

Orgs may use a combination of these leadership styles. Enterprises might take an autocratic approach to their investment strategies, but use a more democratic style when developing products, for example.

When evaluating different types of leadership, managers must also consider how well their team members trust their decisions.

Evaluating leadership styles’ effects on employee performance

A study of leadership styles found that each has a unique impact on employee performance. Likewise, researchers identified various business scenarios that naturally lend themselves to specific styles.

• The autocratic approach was found to be useful for driving short-term performance. Researchers revealed that in situations where teams are made of new employees, authoritarian leaders are better at defining solutions to difficult business challenges.
• The democratic approach was shown to be effective in both the short and long term. Specifically, researchers indicated that the feedback loop created by soliciting opinions from team members led not only to higher productivity but also higher morale.
• The participative approach proved less effective in the short term, but very useful in the long term, with a positive impact on employee performance. Researchers found that the style led to a positive work environment where creativity was encouraged.

These findings indicate that there is no single best style of leadership. Rather, leaders need to assess their goals and determine which style – or combination of styles – is right for the current situation.

The role of trust on improving employee performance over time

Trust in leadership is a critical factor in employee performance, regardless of what style leaders adopt. A 2017 study found a strong correlation between trust and employee behaviors that stimulate performance, including the willingness to stay with the organization long term.

Building trust with employees may be one of the best ways to boost performance. In fact, only 37% of employees say they trust their leaders. Leaders can win the trust of their employees by:

• Always telling the truth
• Following through on commitments
• Listening to employees’ concerns and opinions
• Promoting a positive work environment

Trust has to be built up over time. But the more leaders strive to gain employee trust – and demonstrate their trustworthiness – the better gains they can see from employee performance. Leadership styles have a direct impact on employee performance, and trust is a vital factor.

Managers should ultimately understand that:

• An authoritative approach can be effective in the short term when decisions need to be made quickly
• A consultative approach can be useful when creative problem-solving skills are needed to make progress
• A participative approach can be useful when leading a group of experts and competent team members
• Trust and employee engagement go hand-in-hand; empowered workers are more likely to take initiative

What the JazzHR-Choice Screening partnership means

Founded in Denver, Colorado back in 2005, Choice Screening discovered that businesses were making the wrong hires far too often. Over a decade later, Choice Screening is an industry leading provider of Background Checks, Drug & Alcohol Testing, Professional Verifications, Driving Records, Credit Reports, Rental History, Medical Registries, Workers Compensation and International Screening.

• Background checks are an integral part of the candidate screening process. According to a survey conducted by Right Management Consultants, the replacement cost of a bad hire is 1 to 5x the salary of the job in question.

From the resume to the interview, Choice Screening fills in every gap with an array of background services, including form I-9, drug screening, criminal record searches, and more. JazzHR customers can rest assured knowing that they are armed with the best info to make the right hires, faster.

JazzHR customers will also have no problem meeting regulatory, insurance, and company requirements. You’ll have the opportunity to partner with dedicated Choice Screening experts who are familiar with the FCRA standards in your particular state and other liabilities.

How Choice Screening helps JazzHR customers

Available for all plans, customers will be able to automate the entire screening process right from within their JazzHR account. Start by navigating to the Integrations section from Settings to connect your JazzHR account with Choice Screening.

• Once you’ve connected your accounts, make your way to the Assessments tab of the candidate’s profile to select a background check package you’d like to send to a candidate.

Once the package has been requested, the candidate will receive an email from Mock Background Checks prompting them to start the background check process. It will read Completed once the candidate has completed the background check.

Simply click View Results and you will be redirected to Choice Screening to see the candidate’s results.

Getting started with the Choice Screening integration

The JazzHR and Choice Screening integration will greatly improve the quality of job applicants and new hires. For a step by step tutorial on how to connect the two systems, check out our Knowledge Base.

For more info and insights on how to leverage background checks in your recruiting and hiring efforts, schedule a demo of JazzHR today to learn all about our applicant tracking system for SMBs.

Give your employees time to handle personal affairs. The reasons for time off may include:

• Personal travel
• Sabbaticals
• Attendance of non-job related seminars
• Wedding and honeymoon
• Looking after a newborn or adopting kids
• Adopting pets

Limiting Carryover of Paid Time Off

Encourage employees to use all their PTO days in the current calendar year. Limit how many PTO days an employee may carry over.

Conclusion

Candidate negotiation is a relationship-building process. Each candidate negotiation is unique, so recruiters may want to personalize each approach. An effective employer branding campaign can work to attract the right kind of candidate. Money can play a central role in persuading a qualified candidate to join your team. Other factors, such as work-life balance, may also play a differentiating role.

About the Author

A skilled content creator and editor, Olivia Harp’s easy-reading, approachable pieces help bring important business and negotiation skill-building content to new audiences in an accessible way. With a degree in linguistics, Olivia excels in creating her own engaging content, as well as shepherding others through the writing process to ensure they produce high-quality content.

Guest blog by Olivia Harp, Content Editor at Negotiations.com

What motivates a candidate to leave his/her current job and join your team? Is your company perhaps a better cultural fit, or are you offering more growth opportunities?

Just as you screen candidates, today’s savvy job seeker conducts thorough research with set criteria to qualify their target companies. A skilled recruiter works to balance the needs of a company and its candidates. Here are a few tips.

Effective Use of Content Marketing

Recruiters can, and should, adopt employer branding strategies to attract and pre-qualify strong candidates, and weed out those who may not fit the role.

Recruiter negotiation seminars advise that you think carefully about the framing of your language and images.

An effective content marketing strategy can educate prospective employees, and better incline them to accept offers from brands they know and trust. An effective campaign may benefit candidate negotiations by:

• Providing better knowledge for prospective employees
• Informing recruiters on how best to optimize the employer’s value proposition
• Providing recruiters with a broader pool of candidates

Pre-define a Job Description

The job description can build the foundation of staff management processes such as:

• Candidate selection
• Salary expectations
• Performance management
• Training

As a recruiter extends an offer to a candidate, the well-defined job description acts as a reference.

Money Is Still a Key Motivator

While today’s job hunters may request more than cash incentives, salary is important. Over 73.3% of candidates admit that money is at the top of their list during employment negotiations.

Negotiation seminar facilitators recommend including a salary bracket in your job ad to increase your chances of attracting the right-fit candidates. Using a salary bracket can increase the chances of hitting the company’s set salary target and give the company the advantage of a starting position in salary negotiations.

Work out what margins you can afford if a qualified candidate pushes your offer’s boundaries. Consider the candidate’s skills, experience and character, and what those attributes may bring to the role.

Negotiate Work-Life Balance

Many job hunters are aware of how their professional lives can affect their personal lives. Does your company’s culture and values support a work-life balance? If so, draw the candidate’s attention to relevant policies. A few work-life balance policies that can attract candidates include:

Paid Time Off

Allow your employees to have paid vacation days and sick days.

Unpaid Leave Days

Give your employees time to handle personal affairs. The reasons for time off may include:

• Personal travel
• Sabbaticals
• Attendance of non-job related seminars
• Wedding and honeymoon
• Looking after a newborn or adopting kids
• Adopting pets

Limiting Carryover of Paid Time Off

Encourage employees to use all their PTO days in the current calendar year. Limit how many PTO days an employee may carry over.

Conclusion

Candidate negotiation is a relationship-building process. Each candidate negotiation is unique, so recruiters may want to personalize each approach. An effective employer branding campaign can work to attract the right kind of candidate. Money can play a central role in persuading a qualified candidate to join your team. Other factors, such as work-life balance, may also play a differentiating role.

About the Author

A skilled content creator and editor, Olivia Harp’s easy-reading, approachable pieces help bring important business and negotiation skill-building content to new audiences in an accessible way. With a degree in linguistics, Olivia excels in creating her own engaging content, as well as shepherding others through the writing process to ensure they produce high-quality content.

Guest blog by Olivia Harp, Content Editor at Negotiations.com

What motivates a candidate to leave his/her current job and join your team? Is your company perhaps a better cultural fit, or are you offering more growth opportunities?

Just as you screen candidates, today’s savvy job seeker conducts thorough research with set criteria to qualify their target companies. A skilled recruiter works to balance the needs of a company and its candidates. Here are a few tips.

Effective Use of Content Marketing

Recruiters can, and should, adopt employer branding strategies to attract and pre-qualify strong candidates, and weed out those who may not fit the role.

Recruiter negotiation seminars advise that you think carefully about the framing of your language and images.

An effective content marketing strategy can educate prospective employees, and better incline them to accept offers from brands they know and trust. An effective campaign may benefit candidate negotiations by:

• Providing better knowledge for prospective employees
• Informing recruiters on how best to optimize the employer’s value proposition
• Providing recruiters with a broader pool of candidates

Pre-define a Job Description

The job description can build the foundation of staff management processes such as:

• Candidate selection
• Salary expectations
• Performance management
• Training

As a recruiter extends an offer to a candidate, the well-defined job description acts as a reference.

Money Is Still a Key Motivator

While today’s job hunters may request more than cash incentives, salary is important. Over 73.3% of candidates admit that money is at the top of their list during employment negotiations.

Negotiation seminar facilitators recommend including a salary bracket in your job ad to increase your chances of attracting the right-fit candidates. Using a salary bracket can increase the chances of hitting the company’s set salary target and give the company the advantage of a starting position in salary negotiations.

Work out what margins you can afford if a qualified candidate pushes your offer’s boundaries. Consider the candidate’s skills, experience and character, and what those attributes may bring to the role.

Negotiate Work-Life Balance

Many job hunters are aware of how their professional lives can affect their personal lives. Does your company’s culture and values support a work-life balance? If so, draw the candidate’s attention to relevant policies. A few work-life balance policies that can attract candidates include:

Paid Time Off

Allow your employees to have paid vacation days and sick days.

Unpaid Leave Days

Give your employees time to handle personal affairs. The reasons for time off may include:

• Personal travel
• Sabbaticals
• Attendance of non-job related seminars
• Wedding and honeymoon
• Looking after a newborn or adopting kids
• Adopting pets

Limiting Carryover of Paid Time Off

Encourage employees to use all their PTO days in the current calendar year. Limit how many PTO days an employee may carry over.

Conclusion

Candidate negotiation is a relationship-building process. Each candidate negotiation is unique, so recruiters may want to personalize each approach. An effective employer branding campaign can work to attract the right kind of candidate. Money can play a central role in persuading a qualified candidate to join your team. Other factors, such as work-life balance, may also play a differentiating role.

About the Author

A skilled content creator and editor, Olivia Harp’s easy-reading, approachable pieces help bring important business and negotiation skill-building content to new audiences in an accessible way. With a degree in linguistics, Olivia excels in creating her own engaging content, as well as shepherding others through the writing process to ensure they produce high-quality content.

Phone interviews are an essential part of any hiring process. It’s a great way for HR professionals, recruiters and hiring managers to gauge the quality of a potential employee before bringing them in for a face-to-face interview.

With a multitude of job applications flowing in each day, phone interviews are a smart way to save time and identify unqualified candidate’s from the start. Here are three easy steps to consider when conducting a phone interview.

Step 1: Prepare

Start by spending at least 15-30 minutes going over the candidate’s resume or LinkedIn before making the call. Jotting down notes and having your questions ready to go prior to the call will help guide the conversation.

As a manager, you know what kind of candidate is ideal for your team, so keep the qualities of your ideal employee in mind when having these conversations with applicants.

Conducting the phone interview in a quiet room with minimal distractions will also ensure that you’re fully engaged in the conversation. Try to avoid multi-tasking like responding to emails while you’re on the phone. You want to be present and give the candidate a fair chance.

Step 2: Conduct

First, introduce yourself and give the candidate a brief description of the role they’re interviewing for. Give them details about the position requirements and what a typical day looks like in that specific position. Always start with an explanation of the role so you can find out if the candidate is still interested and could see themselves in this position.

When it comes to the questions, make sure they’re consistent with each candidate so to remain fair and compliant. Potential questions may include:

• Why are you interested in this role?
• Why are you leaving your current position?
• Describe your work style
• What type of management do you work best under?
• What are your greatest strengths/weaknesses?

There is recruiting software, like JazzHR, that make it easy to conduct phone screens with guided interview templates and a place to record notes under each candidate’s profile. Odds are you’re conducting several phone interviews, so platforms like this help automate the entire process.

Step 3: Review

Look back at the notes you took during the call. Though you couldn’t see the candidate, what did the tone of their voice tell you? Did they sound interested and passionate when answering your questions, or did you get the impression that they were uncomfortable or bored?

When closing out an interview, you should have a good understanding of whether or not you would like to bring the candidate in for an onsite interview. Be clear when communicating those next steps, and be timely and respectful when rejecting others.

Takeaway

Phone interviews help cover the basics so when the in-person interview comes around, you can dive deeper into understanding what candidate will be the perfect addition to your team. To learn how to conduct efficient interviews and accelerate your time to hire, watch a brief demonstration of the JazzHR platform today.

About the Author

Corey Doane is a contributing editor for 365 business tips. She has a B.S in Public Relations from San Jose State University and has experience in PR, marketing and communications

As an employer, it is your responsibility to have a proactive approach to the health and safety of the people in your office. Neglecting the status of your workplace is overall detrimental to the health of employees, and often results in high employee turnover.

The following article highlights 5 key steps you can take to implement or improve the active compliance and management of workplace health and safety.

Designate a health and safety officer

Wether you’re a small business or large enterprise, consider hiring a designated health and safety officer for your workplace. Having a professional consultant to advise you on and oversee the status of your company’s health and safety will put employees at ease knowing management is taking necessary action to eliminate potential hazards.

Create a health and safety policy

Another way to implement health and safety management is by making it an official matter in the office. By creating a health and safety policy that is specific to the work matters of your company, you are showing that you’re dedicated to protecting your greatest assets – your employees.

Your policy should emphasize management’s responsibilities and commitments to improving and maintaining a healthy and safe workplace, and effectively communicate the implementation of the policy.

Conduct safety training with employees

Training is necessary for all employees to ensure that they are aware of any potential risks associated with their job. Make sure you provide them with detailed instructions that they can go back and reference at any time, as well as on-the-job supervision to determine whether or not they are performing their duties as safely as possible. Training also protects you, the employer, from certain liabilities.

Prevent foreseeable risks

Take the necessary steps to ensure incidents that compromise the health and safety of your people don’t occur. Look into your industry and your company’s usual work processes and identify key areas that you can see potential accidents happening. Regularly conduct maintenance checks on all equipment and tools to make sure they are safe to use.

Have first aid arrangements

When it comes to emergencies in the workplace, it is crucial that employees are prepared. The usual response to a severe health and safety incident is to provide them with first aid.

With that in mind, you should set up preventative measures that can address this problem. In particular, you should arrange for the right protocol for first aid response. You can start by arranging a first aid training session for some, if not all, of your employees. Make sure employees have access to a first aid kit at the very least.

Takeaways

A sign of an excellent business isn’t found only within its monetary value, but in the manner in which employees are treated. With a focus on health and safety management, you are communicating the true value of your business to employees, consumers and stakeholders alike.

About the author

Raymond Chiu is the Director of Operations for Maid Sailors Office, a trusted office cleaning services in NYC. Maid Sailors provide a wide range of cost-effective, yet high-quality office cleaning services that are sure to delight their customers.

Insight into our new partnership with GoCo

GoCo automates your HR workflow with streamlined onboarding, PTO, compliance, and benefits administration that employees and HR teams love. GoCo provides a secure, compliant hub for sending, digitally signing, and organizing your sensitive HR documents and data.

• It works flexibly with JazzHR and supports your existing HR policies and processes.

No more printing out onboarding packets or chasing down new hires for their paperwork. By sending offer letters and other onboarding documents from one central location, JazzHR customers can take candidates from applied to hired within a matter of minutes. 

This integration further accelerates the hiring process by allowing JazzHR customers to automatically export new hires directly into GoCo. Candidate info including first and last name, address, city, state, ZIP code, phone number, and email address will sync over directly.

To get up and running, gather your integration credentials  from your GoCo account, including the Integration [webhook] URL and the Secret Key.  Next, head into your JazzHR account, navigate to the Integrations section from Settings, and click connect with GoCo.

Once you’ve synced the two systems, you’re ready to export candidates. The candidate will be created as an “incomplete” new hire on GoCo where you can then finish the hiring process by sending them a link to begin onboarding. And just like that, you’re good to go.

Looking to take advantage of this GoCo integration but don’t have JazzHR? Book a demo with our team today for all the info you want regarding our built-for-purpose applicant tracking system for SMBs.

Breaking down the JazzHR-Wedge partnership

Wedge is founded on a small but mighty team of six, dedicated to creating a unique experience for applicants and hiring managers by pairing “who you are” with “what you have accomplished” in a short video elevator pitch that highlights a candidate’s abilities beyond the resume. 

Wedge helps JazzHR customers easily uncover their best candidates by leveraging the power of video interviews early on in the recruitment process.

• The easy-to-use and cost effective video assessment tool helps our shared users search, evaluate, and hire candidates in less time.

As an employer, you get to know the person behind the paper by allowing candidates to record, save, and send video responses to interview questions. Applicants, in turn, get the chance to leave a lasting impression on your company in a short video narrative.

By keeping the questions consistent from one applicant to another, you gain enough valuable information to compare candidates and make the most informed hiring decisions. With our Wedge connection, you can Spend less time coordinating interviews and chasing down team members by simply sharing the video interview with your hiring team. 

• The Wedge video interview integration is available for all plans. Companies that deal with remote hiring, in particular, greatly benefit from this video assessment integration.

Have distributed teams who need to hire for cultural fit? Not a problem. Rather than flying out to meet with a candidate face-to-face, teams can hire with predetermined interview questions. 

Other businesses we see benefitting from this integration are organizations who are hiring for job-specific soft skills, and larger organizations with a strong hiring velocity. Use Wedge to easily screen and knockout unqualified candidates from the beginning.

Improve your interviewing and better identify, engage, and convert top talent with our complete ATS. Schedule a demo with our team today to learn how our recruiting software can help your SMB scale.

Together, JazzHR and Job.com will streamline the entire candidate sourcing process, and offer an unrivaled user experience to job seekers and employers alike. 

What the JazzHR-Job.com partnership means

Job.com is a digital recruitment platform that combines cutting edge technology with traditional agency services to enable huge cost savings and efficiencies.

Their utilization of AI-matching technology, smart contracts on the blockchain, enhanced feedback and financial incentives, has allowed them to disrupt and revolutionize the digital recruitment industry.

• Creating a no-risk recruitment model where a fee is only charged when a hire is made. It is also the first hiring solution that turns recruitment fees into rewards.

Rewards? That’s right. Job Seekers simply upload their resumes, and Job.com uses AI-matching technology to match candidates’ skills with suitable roles.

The Job.com support team is there every step of the way to help applicants chat directly with employers and arrange interviews. After 90 days in the new job, candidates can then claim a signing reward equivalent to 5% of their first year’s salary on Job.com Visa® Prepaid Reward Card.

JazzHR is committed to finding new ways to bring the best possible candidates to our customers.

• By teaming up with Job.com, JazzHR customers have full access to Job.com’s AI-powered platform, presenting them with the most relevant candidates while keeping active job seekers alert to top opportunities.

For JazzHR customers looking to fill more unique or hard-to-fill positions, this integration offers an additional avenue to reach more qualified candidates, faster and reduce overall time to hire. Not to mention it’s free to post and only pay a small fee once you make a successful hire. 

Get insights into our Job.com integration as well as our connections with countless other recruiting tools and our leading ATS by hopping on a call with our team. Schedule your JazzHR demo today.