By Kimberly Kafafian

Candidates have control of the labor market right now. Full stop. Between COVID and the Great Resignation, the playing field has entirely changed and employees are no longer beholden to their employers. The circumstances of the last two years have employees at all levels, across all sectors and industries, rethinking their options and leaving their jobs in droves. When it comes to employees deciding where they’ll land next, they are being incredibly selective, and doing lots of research on companies and their cultures before even applying for a position. One of the candidates we recently worked with had turned down multiple offers, from October to January, until she found exactly what she wanted, with whom she wanted. All this being said, the importance of employer branding, now more than ever. Regardless of size or number of employees, organizations need to understand how they’re perceived as an employer, how that perception is impacting attracting and retaining the right talent, and the actions they need to take to build a visible, positive reputation.

The Stats Speak for Themselves

Last April, Glassdoor released an article titled The Most Important Employer Branding Statistics to Know. The findings they culled speak volumes as to why focusing on branding is so important for organizations in today’s climate. Here are just a few eye-opening numbers:

• 86% of employees and job seekers research company reviews and ratings to decide where to apply for a job (Glassdoor/Harris poll)
• 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the company actively manages its employer brand (Glassdoor survey)
• 68% of Millennials, 54% of Gen-Xers, and 48% of Boomers indicated they visit employer’s social media channels specifically to evaluate the employer’s brand (CareerArc study)

What does your brand say about your culture? Is your brand even visible online? These are questions HR & Marketing departments need to be asking right now if they want to successfully navigate today’s labor crisis. Branding is how you’re going to stand out from the competition during the research phase of the job search. 

What Exactly Is Employer Branding?

To put it simply, employer branding is the perception employees and potential employees have of a company. In essence, it speaks to a company’s desirability and its ability to attract and retain talent.

Employer branding all comes down to defining and positioning who you are as an organization at every touchpoint:

• Website career page
• Social media channels
• Job postings
• Review sites like Glassdoor
• Employees
• Communication with candidates

Why Employer Branding Is so Important

To be honest, employer branding takes effort, but the outcome is so worth it. It just might be your best weapon in the war for talent. Here are a few of the benefits businesses experience as a result of powerful employer branding:

• 50% more qualified applicants (LinkedIn)
• 28% reduction in turnover (LinkedIn)
• 50% reduction on cost-per-hire (LinkedIn)

And now, let’s look at the inverse. These stats shed light on what you have to lose if your employer reputation isn’t so great:

• 50% of job candidates wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation – even for a pay increase (LinkedIn)
• 86% of women and 67% of men in the United States wouldn’t join a company with a bad reputation (Glassdoor)

While employer branding has been a buzzword for a few years, its gaining even greater importance in recruiting talent in the current climate. 

Stay tuned for our blog on devising a successful employer branding strategy. 

By Kimberly Kafafian

Everywhere we look, businesses of all sizes, and across all industries and locations, are suffering from unprecedented turnover and struggling to attract new talent. With staggering resignation rates and an incredibly tight labor market we couldn’t have imagined two years ago, organizations are currently focusing efforts on cultivating the right culture. As HR Consultants, we work day in and day out with business owners and C-suite leaders to rethink the employee experience and create an employee-centric environment designed around our new work world. After all, research clearly demonstrates the strong connection between culture and engagement, as well as culture and recruitment. But in my experience, this strategy isn’t sufficient on its own to lessen the blows brought on by the mass exodus of workers. We need to get more creative when it comes to recruitment. And one out of the box strategy is to actively pursue retirees. This is something hospitals have been doing since the outbreak of the pandemic, which we think the business world could greatly benefit from emulating.

Today’s Retirees Are Not Idle Workers

You may be thinking to yourself, “Wait, don’t people retire because they wanted to stop working?” Well, yes, some do. Others, however, leave their careers to pursue something different. Or to become consultants. Or to start new businesses. Or to spend significant time volunteering. And some just simply change their minds! The point is many of today’s retirees remain active in the business world. And even of those who don’t, a good percentage would consider being active once again. In fact, a recent survey of retired workers by Resume Builder found that 34% of retirees have considered going back to work because of job opportunities available in the current labor shortage. So, considering this group definitely expands your talent pool.

Benefits of Hiring Retirees

Back in 2019, Josh Bersin and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic wrote an insightful article titled The Case for Hiring Older Workers. While it was written to offer one solution to the number of job vacancies outnumbering job applicants at the time, I believe it’s extremely apropos for today’s environment. The authors wisely dismiss outdated misconceptions that being older means being “less capable, less able to adapt, or less willing to roll up your sleeves and do something new than your younger peers.” They aptly point out that many people, especially those that had long and meaningful careers, like to work, as it allows you to give back, network with friends, and do something with your intellectual energy. But even more importantly, the authors highlight the benefits organizations gain by hiring older, experienced workers. 

Throughout my decades of work in the HR arena, I have engaged with workers across generations. I believe older workers and retirees can offer so much to an organization, such as:

• Vast knowledge and expertise that only comes from years of work experience
• Competence to be able to take on complex tasks or roles
• Maturity to recognize they have nothing to prove
• Ability to work well in a corporate setting
• Cognitive diversity, which can boost productivity and spark innovation
• Strong work ethic
• Enthusiasm – which can be contagious

While “returnships” typically relate to women returning to the workplace after substantial periods, some companies are using them to invite older workers to come back. With so many amazing benefits, I’m a strong proponent of “retiree returnship”. It will not only help fill current talent needs; it can also make the organization stronger overall.

Ensuring a Successful Returnship

For a retiree returnship to work as envisioned, companies need to create an environment where retirees want to work and where they can thrive. Here are a few suggestions:

• Be flexible in terms of schedule and remote work
• Help retirees adjust back into the workplace with a formalized training process as needed, i.e., new skill sets or technology
• Team retirees with other employees who can answer questions and provide support
• Offer opportunities for mentoring and reverse mentoring
• Promote your corporate culture and purpose in job postings so retirees can get excited about working for your organization
• Provide benefits retirees care about, such as dental plans, vision plans, and other perks

The tight labor market doesn’t show signs of easing any time soon. Recruiting retirees can help companies fill vacancies and build a stronger organization overall.

By Kimberly Kafafian

An essential part of managing employees is addressing performance issues. I admit, even for the most seasoned People Managers and HR professionals, these are not fun conversations. These conversations are, in fact, one of the most challenging aspects of a manager’s role. Because of that, managers quite often (ok, almost always) delay having these discussions. But delaying talking to an employee about their less than positive performance is detrimental to everyone.

Monarch is located in the NY tri-state area and we often commute into Manhattan to meet with clients. Our commute puts us on trains operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA. The MTA has a slogan for commuters: If You See Something, Say Something (which was coined on Sept. 12, 2001). Good performance management is just like that: done in real time. 

All too often, performance problems are brought up for the first time during annual performance reviews. When you wait too long to raise performance concerns, you unleash a host of problems:

• The employee may be under a false impression that they are doing a good job. As an HR professional, I all too frequently hear, “No one has ever said anything to me before about concerns with my performance.” If nothing is mentioned (and more importantly, documented), the employee’s actions may seem acceptable and then the person will see no reason to change. Plus, if you terminate after this one mention at such a late date, you open up the possibility of legal action for unfair dismissal.
• At this point, it is often too late to fix the issues as the unproductive behaviors exhibited by the employee have become commonplace, deteriorating the manager-employee relationship. Said differently, your employee now has an unproductive habit that wasn’t kept in check.
• You missed the opportunity to quickly correct the performance issues, which negatively impacts not only the employee’s performance, but the performance and value of the entire company. The moment you see behavior that needs correction, correct it. Let’s face it, People Managers, that’s part of your J-O-B.

Discuss Performance Issues with Employees

When they First Arise

Hoping that the employee’s performance issues will go away is wishful thinking. If no one told the employee that there was an issue, how would they know they should work on it? You need to have a discussion with the employee as soon as you are aware of the performance problem. Here are some reasons why it’s so important to do so:

1. It ensures that the manager and the employee are in sync of what is expected.
2. It helps the employee better understand what is needed for good performance.
3. It provides an opportunity for the employee to correct the issue.
4. A quick resolution leads to better outcomes for the organization overall as the issue could also be hindering the work of colleagues or subordinates.
5. Providing regular feedback, both positive or negative, helps build better working relationships and trust.
6. Giving feedback in smaller doses, more frequently, can help employees maximize their strengths and grow.
7. It ensures that the feedback is current and in context, rather than out of date and irrelevant.
8. During the annual performance review, there should be NO surprises. Both of you should be going into this conversation on a level playing field. 

Nobody likes having tough conversations, but it’s important not to put them off. And honestly, the more often you have these conversations, the easier they become. Frank and timely discussions with employees about their performance problems can help them improve, which is good for the employee, good for the employer, and good for their relationship.

By Kimberly Kafafian

In a magnitude of ways and for a magnitude of reasons, COVID-19 (and oh hello, Omicron variant) continues to turn our worlds upside down. Remote work, telework, working from home, working from anywhere, virtual work, and hybrid work are all real things now. But what happens when managers, business owners and employees aren’t all in the same location? Let’s face it, when you’re in the same workplace as your team, it’s pretty easy to ask them a question or provide feedback on their performance. You can simply walk right up to them and start a conversation. And not only are you able to hear their verbal response, you’re also privy to what their body language is exhibiting. Performance management is a lot trickier, however, if a team member is working remotely. When you’re not physically present in the same space together, the feedback or question may be neglected, and miscommunication can easily occur. 

Monarch has always been a virtual company. For the rest of the world though, it was rare for managers to have remote teams two years ago. And although it began to look like things were returning to somewhat normal, COVID-19 variants keep rearing their head. Companies that had set new year timetables for employees’ return to the office, have delayed plans because of uncertainties over the severity of the variant. The remote work world is not going anywhere in a hurry. And if companies want to drive growth and continue to innovate, they’re going to need to continue reshaping their performance management strategies too. What they started doing in 2021 for 2020, they can refine and calibrate for 2021 in 2022.

Managers who may have kicked the proverbial can down the road when it came to performance management for remote workers, now must figure out how to have valuable conversations, provide effective feedback, and set clearly defined goals with their remote teams. They’re going to have to discard the old concept of connecting presence with performance. This is particularly important moving forward, as employers are likely to have a mix of in-office, hybrid, and remote workers. They cannot favor one group over the other simply because of physical presence. A conscious effort needs to be made to instead focus on contribution, results and outcomes. Where performance assessment takes place doesn’t really matter as long as a company has the right assessment strategies and approaches in place.

Remote Performance Management Strategies

Ensuring that remote employees are productive and engaged hinges on having an effective plan and following through. Below are the performance strategies I recommend to my clients who have a remote workforce.

1. Set expectations and review them often

If employees are expected to do their jobs, they need to know what their parameters are. Managers should clearly define each team member’s work requirements, giving them as much information as possible. They should be apprised of project requirements, priorities, milestones and goals. Explain what their daily schedule should look like and how you plan on communicating with them. Today’s world is rapidly evolving, so it’s important to consistently review expectations and pivot accordingly.

2. Be flexible

One of the things Covid has changed is not only where we work but when we work. Be flexible with hours. If the employee is getting the work done, it shouldn’t matter if they are working in the morning, afternoon, or evenings. It is the performance that matters.

3. Schedule regular on-on-one meetings

Don’t meet with an employee only once a year for an “annual review.” One meeting in a year’s time is so far from sufficient that it’s a ridiculous concept to me. Regular check-ins keep everyone updated on progress and provide opportunities to quickly address problems when they arise. In general, employees want to do a good job, they want feedback. Frequent meetings help to enhance their performance. A lot of our clients have developed the scrum, agile and/or stand-up approach to performance management – briefly, daily check-ins that keep everyone on track, in compliance and in communication. 

4. Ask for status updates

Simplify keeping track of performance by asking for frequent updates. Daily or weekly logs keep both parties on track and allow you to quickly see progress.  The updates are also useful to review during the one-on-one meetings. Our team shares a Slack channel called #monarch-daily-check-in. At the end of each day, everyone posts 4-5 brief bullet points about the client and internal work they completed during the day.

5. Give feedback often (aka daily)

When it comes to managing remote workers, it’s all about communication. By routinely providing feedback, you keep the lines of communication open. Be clear about what is and isn’t working, but remember if you have something negative to address be sure to do that privately with the employee. You should always address any performance concerns promptly, as letting them linger only makes matters worse. 

6. Celebrate good performance

Don’t just be on the lookout for poor performance, you should also keep an eye out for great things your team members do. Celebrating successes is just as important as addressing any performance concerns. Our team also shares a Slack channel called #good-sh*t where we call out and celebrate our individual and team successes.

7. Listen and empathize

Today’s employees are juggling a lot. You need to make sure workloads are manageable. When receiving status updates or conducting meetings, really listen to what the employees are saying. So many workers are overworked right now, which is impacting performance. Managers need to have a pulse on how they are feeling (hint: your workers are still feeling really stressed out about managing work, kids, pets, partners, the doorbell, the landscaper, the need for lunch/coffee/water/a bio-break, etc. all at the same time).

8. Trust

In handling performance management for remote workers, trust is the key element. Managers need to trust that their remote teams are working effectively and efficiently. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Treat your employees like adults. I guarantee they will pleasantly surprise you. 

9. Don’t micromanage

When teams are working remotely, you can’t keep your physical eyes on them, which may raise concerns about whether or not they are working efficiently. But even when workers are in the office, you shouldn’t be constantly watching them. For your remote teams, it comes down to trusting rather than observing. Of course you need to monitor progress and performance, but you don’t need to over manage. Again, you hired your employees for a reason. Let them do their thing. (Also, micromanaging is about you, the People Manager, and not your employees. More to come on that in a future blog).

Performance management for remote workers may be a bit different, but with the right strategies in place, it can be simple. And even easy! With remote work looking like it’s here to stay, now is the ideal time to reshape your performance management processes.

By Kimberly Kafafian

The most wonderful time of the year is also the craziest. Crazy busy. Crazy crowded. Crazy expensive. Each and every December, I contemplate how hard it is to juggle end of year obligations with still performing our regular daily tasks. And as anyone that works in HR knows, the end of 4th Quarter is our busiest month of the year. (Quick! Let’s implement that performance management program we talked about 11 months ago!) Then add in the shopping, the wrapping, the baking, the travel, the driving of kids to and fro, and the parties. Between work, home, family, and community obligations, the to-do list grows, the calendar quickly fills up, but the number of hours in the day never changes. Every year, I wonder not only how will I get everything done, but will I get a chance to actually enjoy the magic of the season? As the mother of a ‘tween and teen, I want to be physically present and enjoy these fleeting moments in time with them. I have committed myself to creating work life balance in general (it’s a work in progress) and I make even larger efforts during this time of year.

As the holidays creep up, the anxiety builds. I totally get it. It’s hard to balance the time we must spend completing work projects with the time we want to spend with family and friends. But there are some things we can do to help prevent holiday overload. 

How to Handle Hectic Holiday Schedules

Make a must-do list

I always start by taking stock of all the activities I MUST do and events I MUST take part in during the holiday season. Make a list of both your absolute work responsibilities and personal to do’s. Once you have these items identified, you can work all the “like to do” items around them.

Prioritize your activities

During the holidays there’s so much to do. If you want to achieve a healthy work life balance during this time of the year, you need to prioritize. Of course, there will be plenty of “must dos” on your list (work projects due, holiday shopping, family gatherings), but some are more important than others, and usually there are varying deadlines. Sit down and really think about what you need to do first and what you can schedule to do later on. This will help you better navigate the crazy weeks ahead. Place everything on your calendar and re-arrange accordingly when something new pops up. Having it all in black and white – and maybe even color coded – will help you feel focused and less anxious.

Work from home or set a flex schedule

If you can still work from home, do it. You can grab some extra time in your day by cutting out your daily commute. Working remotely may even make you feel a bit more festive. Put a small tree or some twinkling lights in your office, work in your holiday PJs, make a quick batch of cookies during your lunch. Do something to help maintain your seasonal sanity.

Put in more hours before the holidays approach

If you know crunch time is coming, try to work some longer hours right before the holidays to complete those must-do projects. If you can do this, be sure to make your manager aware so they’re not caught off guard if they see you leaving early or asking for a day off.

Set boundaries

If you’ve been working from home during the pandemic, you’re probably thinking to yourself that setting boundaries has been difficult. The lines between work and home life have definitely blurred in a remote work world. But it’s more important than ever to keep the work and personal life separate during this time of year. At work, focus on what you need to accomplish there. Don’t address your personal holiday to do list during work hours. And try not to bring your work “home.” Do your work tasks during work hours and don’t check email after hours. Make your holiday out of office message personal, such as saying that you’re spending time with your kids, or that the holiday is for some rest and relaxation. Setting these boundaries will help you from becoming too frazzled.

Make a plan and stick to it

Now that you’ve identified the must-dos, prioritize your activities, created a strategy for finding extra time, and drew an imaginary line between work and home, you need to sit down and formalize all of this into a plan. I’m not saying that this plan is set in stone. Things will come up and plans will need to be revised. But you need to keep track of your time and your tasks. This will help you stay focused, and may even identify ways for you to find some extra time in your day. The important thing is to have a plan for moving forward.

Just say no

If saying yes will send you in a downward spiral, remember that you can always say no. No to another party. No to that neighborhood cookie exchange. No to more responsibilities, such as a new project that doesn’t really need to be worked on until the new year. This doesn’t make you a bad person. Saying no is a form of self-preservation and self-care. Full disclosure, saying no is really hard for me to do but I’ve been told that the more we practice saying no, the easier it becomes. This, too, is a work in progress. 

Hopefully these tips will help you achieve a much better work life balance during the holiday season : )