We hear all the talk about how beneficial it is to personalize your onboarding, recruiting and management initiatives, but how much extra time do you have in your day to create a personalized email for every new hire, much less more than one? Chances are, you are as swamped as the next recruiter or HR Practitioner. But that doesn’t mean you can’t send out great emails that let your new hire know you’re excited to have them there!
I was invited to participate in a roundtable of solution providers to unpack human capital investment trends driving venture capital innovation, private equity investing, and strategic mergers and acquisitions.
The temptation was to discuss the digital disruption of Human Resources, machines as talent, applications of Artificial Intelligence on business processes, People Analytics driving not merely actionable insights but measurable business outcomes out of the ocean of data we already have on organizational rank and file. I personally wanted perspective on whether innovation drives investment or vice versa; the old chicken-or-egg scenario.
Slightly more titillating would be flipping a favorite acronym. Is AI (Artificial Intelligence) really the goal, the opportunity? Or does IA (Intelligent Automation) offer more immediate, tangible, meaningful application?
None of that would have been earth-shattering or mind-blowing. Interesting, sure. But the buzzword around which the roundtable hummed, and which enables all of the above, was convergence.
We may be nearing the end of an economic bubble, we bantered, where companies can afford to focus on growth and innovation; where budget dollars come easier and employers can afford to offer a better experience, to find better solutions to the same old problems. Belts might tighten again sooner than later, and organizations will need one throat to choke, one vendor to do more. Further, the ripening of People Analytics and Artificial Intelligence will require aggregation of disparate data in order for systems to talk, data to flow, insights to be derived, and informed intelligence to drive accurate decision-making.
I winced, I’ll admit. Are we then going back to platform plays because it’s easier? Bye, innovation. Adios, sexy consumer front-end experience. Sayonara, UX. Best of breed dies a slow death on the platform vine.
But wait! The conversation shifted… Can organizations achieve convergence another way? Of course they can they can. I violently support the need for a seamless, integrated, front-end experience for end users who don’t know or care what application they’re touching. Just as much as I passionately endorse a back-end configuration where data is handed off from one system to another, triggering workflows and populating datasets and firing off jobs as processes are completed. I’ll shout from the rooftop for normalized data, one dashboard to tell all, true analytics with meaningful insights.
The survival of Human Resources and its ability to show relevance relies on meaningful data tied to measurable business outcomes.
Convergence can be achieved with integration tools so organizations can choose best of breed or best for them solutions that truly meet the unique challenges of their business. When you select the most viable solution most applicable to your use case and implement it well, truly drive it to adoption and value, and understand how to tie outcomes to the bottom line of your business, you become relevant. You become a game-changer.
Here was my challenge to the knights and dames of this roundtable: Customer Success is still an infant concept. I was hired to deliver on a mature Customer Success model nearly 10 years ago, where a trusted strategic solution advisor helicoptered over initial implementation; ensuring correct configuration of a solution to meet the organization’s needs; driving it like a sherpa up the slope of adoption and value; and recommending features, additional products, or augmentative services to get the engine to hum the way it should. I still look far and wide to find many SaaS companies bringing product to life the way they ought. It’s not all vaporware; some of us have truly game changing solutions we’re bringing to market incredibly well. Stop selling it and walking away, HR Technology.
I venture to guess too many organizations are seeing 40% of the value they should out of the solutions they select. Or pick a number out of a hat; it’s still too low. Implement correctly, drive to full utilization and feature adoption, define meaningful KPIs and measure them rigorously, enhance and reconfigure as the product and your business evolves, and stop the vicious cycle of throwing the solution baby out with the change management bath water.
If investment follows innovation and not vice versa, we might consider giving organizations permission to better selection, implementation, and adoption of existing innovation. Give them the knowledge and freedom to select best of breed or best for you solutions. Achieve convergence of user experience and analytics through integration strategies, and truly shepherd programs with meaningful answers to current business challenges.
Perhaps the most innovative play of all is to use it all better.
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© Click Boarding™ is a trademarked company. 2019 Click Boarding LLC. All Rights Reserved.
PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS & CONDITIONS | SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
If I told you your hiring process is biased (despite your new D&I initiative,) you’d probably take offense. Hey, I’d love to be wrong! But you’re not alone. While there are tomes of research tying an inclusive, diverse, culturally connected workforce to better business results, creating and protecting that ideal, empowered environment is a lot tougher than it sounds.
Why? Bias. Specifically, unconscious bias. Think of it like a reflex. Unconscious bias is a set of biases that can be triggered instinctively when we’re met with something, or someone, new. We aren’t aware it happens, it just does. Thus the term ‘unconscious.’
But if we aren’t aware of predisposed biases and they’re triggered without our knowledge, is it possible to avoid them?
Enter the program. You need a structured, consistent approach.
Whether or not you realize it, you’re making instinctive assumptions while reviewing resumes, during candidate selection, in the assessment approach you take, your style of interviewing, your onboarding practices, etc. based on predisposed biases of demographic profiles. Women are caring, men have a short attention span, engineers are pragmatic, this person would probably relocate but that person would never, there’s no way that person knows how to this, I’m sure this one won’t care about that….you get the idea. Bottom line, you’re leaving a lot of risk and potential reward on the table when you assume things about the candidate and employee experiences you provide (or don’t).
Here’s the rub. If we’re standardizing an approach where we talk to everyone the same, treat everyone without a name and face, don blinders in order to avoid the temptation of bias, conscious or not…is there room for authentic culture, for a personalized touch, for a relevant, customized experience? Because that’s been the obsession with the advent of employer branding, recruitment marketing, targeted advertising and so on. You CAN and WANT TO target me if I fit the persona you’re looking to hire. That’s standard practice as we normalize consumer marketing for talent attraction and engagement. Are these mutually exclusive?
Check out my full conversation with Scot Sessions here or by clicking play below. You’ll gain a better understanding of unconscious bias in the workplace, how and where it plays out, and how it impedes the performance of your organization.
Level Up is a web series designed to inspire provocative conversation around top of mind issues in HR technology, the future of work, and all things employee experience. Thanks for joining the conversation!
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© Click Boarding™ is a trademarked company. 2019 Click Boarding LLC. All Rights Reserved.
PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS & CONDITIONS | SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
When did “Employer Brand” became a thing? Closest I can tell, the first book on Employer Brand was written in 2005 and “brought the best of brand management to people at work.” The first academic paper was even stodgier: “We define the Employer Brand as the package of functional, economic and psychological benefits provided by employment and identified with the employing company.”
These days, Employer Brand is considered the backbone of any well-constructed Talent Acquisition strategy. A Google search returns 69.6 million results in 0.62 seconds on all things “employer branding.” My most reliable expert? Craig Fisher. Because Craig Fisher understands it’s EMPLOYEE BRAND and not just a Talent Acquisition strategy. It’s an employee referral strategy. A retention strategy. A productivity and engagement strategy. He’s the first to tell you to keep recruiting your own employees because Lord knows your competition is.
How does one extend employer brand beyond the recruiting process, infuse it in the onboarding experience, collaborate cross-functionally to ensure it’s consistent with the employee experience? It needs to be; an employee experience that is not consistent with the picture painted with the brushes of employer brand, recruitment marketing, and candidate experience is flirting with attrition.
Check out my full conversation with Craig Fisher here. Craig shares insights on how consumer technology trickles down into Human Resources and employer technology. You’ll learn where to start in building or revamping a compelling Employer Brand and Employee Value Proposition, why it needs to be accurate and not aspirational, and how marketing to your own employees takes pressure off constantly acquiring external talent. Take a listen and share your feedback!
Level Up is a web series designed to inspire provocative conversation around top of mind issues in HR technology, the future of work, and all things employee experience. Thanks for joining the conversation!
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© Click Boarding™ is a trademarked company. 2019 Click Boarding LLC. All Rights Reserved.
PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS & CONDITIONS | SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
LAS VEGAS (September 11, 2018) – Click Boarding, a modern onboarding platform provider, today announced the launch of a web series designed to help HR leaders cut through the increasing hype and hyperbole in the HR Technology market and equip them with questions and insights to make better informed decisions. “Level Up: Smart Conversations + HR Technology” will feature conversations with industry senior executives, analysts and solution providers across a broad range of topics related to the future of work.
Facilitated by Click Boarding, the focus will be on guests that include Jason Averbook, Craig Fisher, Madeline Laurano, Laurie Ruettimann, Meghan Biro, Tim Sackett, Scot Sessions and many more. Level Up is a weekly series that will include a mixture of recorded live events and pre-recorded episodes that listeners can soon access on demand at www.clickboarding.com/level-up.
The premier episode will be a live roundtable discussion from the Click Boarding booth (#206) at 2018 HR Technology Conference and Expo on Wednesday, September 12, 2018 at 10:00am PT. The topic “Platform vs Point Solution” will be debated by panelists that represent a spectrum of perspectives:
Upcoming episodes will include discussions across a range of subjects, including:
Click Boarding is a modern onboarding platform that excites HR and new hires by blending great employee engagement, new hire forms and onboarding tasks into a simple, flexible and compliant solution. As companies struggle to effectively engage new employees while efficiently adhering to compliance standards, Click Boarding makes HR’s job easier by replacing disjointed and inconsistent onboarding processes with a single, secure and streamlined platform that delivers the engaging welcome new employees expect. For more information, follow us at @ClickBoardingHR, on LinkedIn or at www.clickboarding.com.
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© Click Boarding™ is a trademarked company. 2019 Click Boarding LLC. All Rights Reserved.
PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS & CONDITIONS | SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Your business has one thing your competition doesn’t: your People. Finding, hiring, developing, activating and retaining the right talent for your business is a competitive edge you can’t afford to let dull. Add the rise of the gig economy, with more of the workforce considering freelance or contract work to be a viable alternative to traditional, full-time employment. The companies that will win through competitive advantage in the next 5 years will be those who actively protect their investment in talent by creating greater efficiencies, retaining key talent who can and want to be retained, shortening the ramp to productivity and sparking genuine advocacy from happy employees who have a great story to tell.
One of the lynchpins – and in many cases the Achilles’ heel – of setting employees up for success is onboarding. It sets the tone from Day 1, and can dictate the success of any given employee. In many respects, onboarding is the answer to the future of work. We’re building a better way to unleash talent in a way that employees expect and companies need.
Click Boarding answers the call to fully and efficiently activate talent as they come into the business. Early and continued engagement leads to faster productivity, higher performance and improved retention. It starts with onboarding well before the employee’s first day – in fact, right after offer acceptance.
Onboarding is not a commodity or a transaction — it’s a business process with revenue impact, shortening the ramp to productivity, driving engagement, spurring advocacy and loyalty, and ultimately improving retention. We’ve built a best-of-breed solution to improve onboarding in its broadest sense; activating the full potential and power of talent for your business.
Click Boarding is a modern onboarding solution that provides a consumer experience for employees while streamlining the HR and compliance end for HR and hiring managers. It’s everything you’d expect it to be — mobile-first, intuitive and self-guided, flexible and highly configurable, secure, and easily integrates with all relevant systems. Nobody marries employee experience and compliance better!
A best practice approach invites a new hire immediately upon offer acceptance to a personalized, branded, self-guided onboarding experience, able to be accessed any time from any kind of device. Engagement might include a welcome video or letter from the CEO along with a virtual office tour and your company mission or vision statement. You begin answering questions before they have to ask – like what to wear, where to go, what to expect on Day 1, etc. All the while, the company can start collecting information from the employee before their first day, like policy acknowledgements and tax forms, direct deposit information, or emergency contacts.
The onboarding experience you deliver across your business may vary, so the solution is highly configurable and onboarding activities can be sequenced over any period of time. We also can integrate with the rest of the HR technology stack, from your applicant tracking system to background screening providers, payroll system, and core HR system of record.
From a compliance perspective, especially now with GDPR, how we handle employees’ information is really important. Having everything unified in a platform with security as its bedrock means all data can be easily, safely managed and parsed out to the relevant systems.
The measurable difference is new hires who are high-performing much faster (impacting top line financials); who will be anxious to make qualified referrals; who become proud advocates of your brand and your business, who are motivated to translate their experience to your customers, and who will stay. So, lower turnover in typical danger zones that directly impacts the organization’s bottom line.
Some of our customers measure a Net Promoter Score (NPS) upon completion of their new hires’ onboarding experience. One customer gained nearly 30 points to achieve a score of 77 – almost unheard of! Imagine the difference when you consider the level of engagement and excitement of those employees coming through the door and what the business is able to do with them. That’s when you really start to understand the impact of great onboarding.
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© Click Boarding™ is a trademarked company. 2019 Click Boarding LLC. All Rights Reserved.
PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS & CONDITIONS | SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS