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Are Job Hoppers Really Bad for Business?

By admin •

Job hopping. This spritely term refers to when employees move between jobs frequently, rather than remaining at one position or within one company for a long time. So, one doesn’t necessarily have to leave an organization to be considered a job hopper: just the position for which they were hired.

While job hopping is on the rise, there is a widely held conception that the practice surmounts to career suicide for the employee and a serious waste of resources for the company.

But is this true?

Let’s find out. But first, let’s get a little background on the job hopping phenomenon.

Why Job Hopping is Increasing

Simply put, people  — particularly younger generations — see rewards in changing positions often to get higher salaries and more benefits. A recent study found 63% of employees between the ages of 18 to 34 see job hopping as good, compared to 54% of talent between the ages 35 and 54 and 52%of those age 55 and older.

Job hoppers are not necessarily moving between positions because they’re indecisive or unmotivated. On the contrary, job hoppers are often extremely driven, know their goals and want to get there, fast. This impatience, however, can be a major turn-off for prospective employers.

The Weigh-In: Is Job Hopping Good or Bad?

Job hopping is like eating black licorice: a little bit is good, but too much and you’ll end up in the toilet. This applies whether you are a job hopper or are hiring one. You want motivation. You want passion and drive. But you don’t want to be an employee or hire an employee who is looking for a quick fix and is easily distracted by the prospect of a brighter, shiner job.

While 57% of professionals polled in Canada think that job hopping may be beneficial (a 14% increase from a survey conducted a few years before), 59% of CFOs reported they were unlikely to hire prospects with a history of job hopping. The reason? They didn’t want to lose them in the future.

In the end, stable businesses are built on hiring discerning, hardworking people; those who want to work and be rewarded for that work, but who also understand not all that glitters is gold. These are most often the people HR departments want to hire — and it makes sense. Hiring and training new recruits is a time consuming and expensive process.

The Take-Away

Job hopping can have its benefits for employees, but has relatively few from an HR perspective. Even for employees, the perks of job hopping are short-term: one may be hired for a better paying position with more benefits, but if the pattern of hopping continues, they are unlikely to be hired at all.

HR Solution: What to Do About Job Hopping

Prioritize employee retention. Make a plan to increase employee engagement. Employee engagement nurtures feelings of loyalty and emotional investment in a position, and employees are less likely to be tempted away where and when they feel they are truly valued and needed. Also, implement a solid rewards program to show your talent you’re grateful. Last but not least, hire the right people for them in the first place. A lot of job hopping boils down to poor candidate selection: the person you hired for the job was not the best person for the job. Enlist the help of Total Hire’s ATS hiring solutions and streamline and simplify the hiring process.

HR Made Easy: 5 Solutions to Today’s HR Problems

By admin •

Ask any layperson about what an HR professional does and you’ll likely hear that they are involved in the process of hiring people or firing people, processing payroll, managing benefits and vacation days. Or you’ll hear that they deal with workplace training or conflict or legalities. And this is true — all of it, and because it’s all true, HR professionals have a lot on their plates. With full plates come a few digestive issues.

HR professionals have many challenges with which to contend, not only because their job descriptions cover a smorgasbord of responsibilities, but because today’s job market and workplace culture is more complex than ever before. The difficulties facing HR are likewise complex, though not insurmountable. Not if you know how to deal with them. While every HR department will face its own unique challenges, they will all experience shared obstacles in the more general arena of HR.

What obstacles? These ones. Here are five of the most common HR problems, and how to fix them.

1. Adapt or Die

Businesses need to be able to adapt to technology changes. HR departments in particular need to not only adapt but to use these changes to implement better hiring and training solutions. Whether it’s an ATS system like Total Hire to help you manage and process new applicants, or a performance tracking system that will inform compensation like SAS from Mitrefinch, it’s important to use robust and cutting-edge tech to help make HR — and the whole business — run more efficiently, effectively and ultimately, lucratively.

2. Communication

Let’s say you do decide to utilize Mitrefinch to track employee performance. Don’t just set up the system and expect employees to love it. Communicate why you are making changes so they understand why taking on a new approach benefits them. For instance, with Mitrefinch, you’d explain that tracking software allows the employee to have more control over their own time since it can facilitate remote working, easy scheduling, and it can allow management to see how employees are spending their time, which not only can help management better address employee needs, but also see when people need to be rewarded for a job well done.

3. Recruiting Talent

Good help can be hard to find. That’s not because it’s not out there, but because the job market is saturated and the right people for the job may not be aware of your job. Again, employ the power of agile tech to get your message out to the right people. Total Hire helps you attract the right people, right away, so you can save time and money you would have spent looking for and finding the talent you need.

4. keeping Talent

You’ve got the good employees, now you have to keep them. To do this, you have to engender employee engagement. Not to be confused with being happy with your job, which can be accomplished with free access to snacks and a beer fridge on Fridays, employee engagement is when your employees feel they are emotionally invested in the company. The promise of pay raise wouldn’t be enough to tempt them away: they feel they are valued and appreciated where they are. They feel they have control over their career and a say in the business. They feel like what they do matters. This is what creates an engaged employee who will stick around, as opposed to a contented employee who won’t.

So how do you do this? Use that tracking software to make sure you are rewarding people who work the hardest — these are your top performers. You can even implement an employee reward system. Also be sure to recognize hard work with incentives, benefits, and lots of gratitude. Saying thank you doesn’t cost a company a thing, and it can do wonders to boost the employee morale that’s part and parcel of employee engagement.

5. Diversity Training

Ask any kindergarten teacher: teaching tiny humans to play nice is one of the fundamentals of a happy, productive classroom. Sometimes big kids need a refresher, too. Unlike small children, adults also come with solidified prejudices and poor interpersonal skills that need to broken down and refined. Enter diversity training. The good news is many of your employees won’t need these lessons, but it will benefit those that do while showing the ones that don’t the company cares about their feelings — and this will help bolster that all-important employee engagement.

HR professionals already know that employees (not customers) are the lifeblood of their business. What we can all lose sight of in the daily grind is how to remain connected to these employees so that we can all enjoy the better life that comes from a better career.

Here’s Why Your Employees are Leaving (And What You Can Do About It)

By admin •

Employee turnover is expensive, time-consuming, and does nothing to help employee engagement. Keeping the right talent makes more sense for a company, in more ways than one, but figuring out how to do it is the tough part. Your first step is identifying why employees are leaving your company, but this reason can vary from company to company. It’s tough to look for your company’s weak spot, but it’s a crucial step towards fixing your company culture and setting up your employees for success. Read on to find out the top four reasons why employees are leaving your company, and how you can turn it around for good

1. Leveraging an Employee’s Skill Set

Everyone has different skill sets, and a manager’s job is to figure out what their employees are most suited for. When you’re not being challenged or have an opportunity to do what you’re best at, your job gets old really quickly. You become unmotivated, frustrated, and likely to find another job that makes more use of your talents. Companies tend to hire for very specific positions, but it’s more important to hire the right talent and to work to retain them, even if their current role isn’t exactly right for them. Instead of trying to make employees fit into the role, hire employees that can grow with your company.

2. Negative Teams

One bad apple can sour them all, and this is particularly true with the wrong employee. When an employee is underperforming, someone else has to pick up the slack and it’s likely the hard-working talent you want to keep. Hiring the right talent the first time around for each position is crucial to maintaining a positive atmosphere in the workplace, having a great culture, and keeping the rest of the team happy. TotalHire makes it easy to hire the right people on the first try, as well as make the entire process seamless and pain-free so that your company can spend its energy and resources where it counts.  

3. No Opportunity to Grow

Employees are no longer satisfied with being loyal to one company their entire career—not unless they’re given adequate opportunity to grow their careers. Training programs, mentorship programs, paid courses and mapped career paths are par for the course now with companies, but this is actually a complete positive for your company: when employees have the opportunity to learn, they’re improving their skills and knowledge, which in turn can only benefit your business.

4. No Recognition

Employees want to feel recognized for the work they do, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Recognizing employees doesn’t have to be complicated, but there should be a known system in place to ensure that employee recognition is being done fairly and consistently. Whether it’s peer-to-peer recognition cards, regular bonuses for performance, or even monthly call-out emails, it’s important to take the time to recognize an employee for a job well done—or else another company will.

Don’t let this happen to you. Keep the talent you have and get the talent you want. Contact us for cutting-edge hiring solutions.



Easy Ways to Decrease Employee Turnover

By admin •

Employee turnover is an unavoidable part of doing business. Even businesses with stellar employee relationships experience some turnover. You win some. You lose some. Sunrise, sunset. Right?

Well, sort of.

Employee turnover is at an all-time high. The increasing prevalence of job hopping is certainly one of the reasons behind this costly trend, but the cause does not all lie with the employees. Turnover higher than ever mainly because employers are not doing enough to make their talent want to stick around. As a result, companies are spending up to $4,000 and over 30 days training per employee to hire and train new staff.

Now, for medium or large size companies, getting hit with this price tag for a few employees isn’t that big of a deal. However, when your turnover rate is upwards of  20% — especially if that 20% is made up of top performing employees — then the cost of turnover adds up. Example: let’s say your company has 15,000 employees. If you lose 25% of these people (and for the sake of simplicity, let’s say they are average performers: top performers will increase the value of the end number significantly), you are losing 3,750 people per year. That’s $15,000,000 wasted on hiring and training that could have been avoided.

So avoid it. Here are easy tips for decreasing employee turnover within your company.

Hire Right, Right Away

When you hire the wrong person for the job, turnover is almost unavoidable. You know what they say: the best defence is a good offence. Fine-tune your hiring process, reviewing it to ensure you are attracting the right people for each position. Invest in tools like our TotalHire Applicant Tracking System, which uses intelligent and agile software to help you to find the best possible applicant for the job, the first time. No wasted resources, and less chance of turnover due to employee unsuitability. TotalHire takes out the guesswork. If HR is seeing an application, it’s because that person is a good fit for the job.

Here’s another important reason to hire the right talent: the more high performing employees you have, the better for your bottom line. The obvious reason is that high performing employees are more productive, and therefore better assets to your business. The other, less obvious reason is that when high performing employees are surrounded by low performers (i.e. people who are not cut out for the job), they have to pick up the slack. These hardworking people are made to work even harder and this is going to get old, fast. It’s only a matter of time before they leave.

Increase Employee Engagement

Not to be confused with employee loyalty, employee engagement happens when a member of staff feels like they are invested emotionally in the workplace: they aren’t just happy to be at work because of Free Beer Fridays or a lunch social once a month — they are happy to be there because they genuinely care about the well-being of the business. Without this emotional connection, it is easy to lose people to jobs that pay a little more or are a little closer to home. However, when someone genuinely loves working for a company, they are far less likely to be tempted by a bigger paycheck or closer commute.

Simon Sinek — an author and leadership mentor who has gained an impressive following through TED Talk —said it best:

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.”

When companies nurture engaged, committed talent, they are rewarded with 6% higher profits and shareholder returns that are five times higher over a five year period.

Employee engagement isn’t hard to foster. Here are a couple easy (and inexpensive) tips for engendering more of it in your workplace:

Say Thank You.

Two little words can do a world of good to help your employees feel appreciated. Much like a hardworking parent will jump through hoops for their children when they receive a little gratitude, as will employees when they are acknowledged.

While you can certainly say thank you with a work appropriate gift, like a new cell phone case or a beautiful plant for their workspace, a note or public thank you at a meeting or a special lunch is also a great way to bolster employee engagement.

Give them a Voice.

No one likes being told what to do all the time. Allow your employees to have a say in their workplace. Even if it is just about what foods go in a vending machine or what colour sticky notes you buy, giving employees an opinion over aspects of their workplace helps them feel connected to it, and invested in its wellbeing. Of course, these are just examples and employees can (and should) definitely be encouraged to weigh in on more weighty matters, but if you’re not sure where to start soliciting opinions, office supplies are a harmless place to begin.

Use Employee Tracking Software.

Tracking software is an amazing way to increase employee engagement. It allows your talent to have more control over their own work life. It helps facilitate a more agile and responsive career in which they can work remotely, schedule their time off and monitor their pay. In other words, tracking software (like the software from MitreFinch) will create feelings of transparency and trust between the business and the people working there, and that’s at the heart of employee engagement.

Hiring, firing and resigning happens, but the process of onboarding and offloading staff shouldn’t consume more than its fair share of your company’s valuable resources. Use these strategies to help decrease employee turnover and enjoy a more robust bottom line, and happier talent at every level.

The Positives In Tracking Employee Performance

By admin •

With employee turnover at a record high, it’s time companies look at how they can retain the right employees. Tracking employee performance isn’t a negative practice; instead, it’s a way to help employees grow within the company, increase transparency, and help companies find gaps and areas to improve. It shouldn’t scare employees, and it definitely shouldn’t scare management. Read on to find out exactly why your company needs to embrace employee performance tracking software because disengaged employees and high turnover is a lot more expensive in the long run.

  1. Sets Expectations and Goals

Tracking employee performance doesn’t just tell you how your employees are performing, it also tells them what your expectations are and what goals they need to work towards. If no one is tracking their progress, employees don’t have much incentive to work hard. Tracking employee performance forces managers to figure out what an ideal performance from their employees look like, and this doesn’t happen without a clear process in place.

  1. Improves Job Performance

Tracking employee performance helps your employees understand that the goal isn’t just to ride out the clock. They’re not being paid to just fill a seat for the day, but instead, they have to work smarter to ensure the job gets done and targets are being met within the time they have. Tracking their completion of duties, tasks, and projects helps shift the focus from finding ways to fill the hours to finding creative and smart ways to ensure the job gets done while making sure employees are working to their full potential.

  1. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses

A good manager knows their employees’ strengths and weaknesses, and tracking employee performance is a great insight into those areas. Seeing where employees thrive helps ensure promotions and raises are being directed appropriately, and it also helps figure out areas for improvement, so your company is running as efficiently as possible.

  1. Boosts Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is surprisingly important for the success of your company, but too few managers understand this. Employee engagement isn’t achieved by hosting the occasional employee appreciation BBQ; it’s built by ensuring employees are invested in the success of the company and knowing that their career growth is linked to that success. Tracking their performance helps show employees that managers care about their growth, and that good performance will be recognized.

So now you know how to manage your employees, but first, you need the right employees. Total Hire can help get you the right talent to make employee management easier than ever. Not only do you cut down on a costly turnover by hiring right on the first try, but you also find ambitious talent that embraces performance tracking and other measures that help them grow their career. Click here to find out more about how Total Hire can revolutionize the way your company hires employees, because saving time, money, and resources are always good for business.

Benefits of Employee Time Tracking

By admin •

At first, the idea of monitoring how long it takes for your employees to complete a task may seem a little Mother Hen at best, and Big Brother at worst. However, monitoring your staff is often less about seeing what they are doing for you and more about seeing what you can do for them. After all, you hired them for a reason: you believe they can do the job — they simply might need some guidance to do the job to the best of their ability.   

A Democracy of Accountability

We all thrive when we’re held accountable. Whether it’s by ourselves or by others, being accountable for our actions ensures we not only perform better at work, but it also helps ensure our happiness in the workplace, and as a result, with life in general. A report by the US Office of Personnel Management agrees:

Workplace accountability results in increased confidence and capability, as well as a heightened sense of engagement to and satisfaction with the position.

What is workplace accountability, exactly?

Simply put, workplace accountability refers to initiative in day-to-day operations and ownership over performance and behaviour. And again, accountability doesn’t apply just to employees: it applies to management as well. In fact, when management does not encourage an environment of accountability and live by that same principle themselves, it creates a workplace culture where a few hard workers carry the brunt of the workload for less motivated staff. The result? You best employees get fed up and leave.

Mitrefinch

Employee tracking software is an easy and effective way to help keep (or get) your employees motivated. It can help you identify who may need help, and give them the extra training or encouragement to complete tasks in a timely manner. But more than identifying potential problems, this same software can also be used to create solutions. Employee tracking software can also help you:

  • See which employees are performing well, so you can reward them.
  • Synch up for streamlined payroll and provide in-depth reporting so you can see exactly where time is being spent, and can ensure that resource is being spent properly.
  • Allow employees to schedule vacation time for easier holiday management.

Of course, not all employee tracking software will do this for you — but the best will. That’s why we’ve partnered with MitreFinch to bring our clients the best of breed time management and tracking platform. Once TotalHire has helped you hire the ideal talent for the job, MitreFinch’s solutions can save you time and money by nurturing happier, healthier, more accountable employees.

Corey Sparkman – HOCO Entertainment & Resorts Testimonial

By admin •

Corey Sparkman is the HR manager for one of the most competitive hiring firms in the Niagara Falls region, with seasonal workforce fluctuations ranging in the hundreds. This means they needed a competitive edge, a set of tools that allowed them to manage their applicants and hire new talent more effectively.

 I think the benefit is greatly recognized through the efficiency that the platform brings to your business. Big or small on any level you have to manage applicants whether that’s through email […] dealing with paper resumes, you know this eliminates that. [TotalHIRE] is a one-stop shop.
Corey Sparkman, HR Manager, HOCO Entertainment & Resorts

HOCO is one of the leading organizations delivering entertainment to thousands of tourists every year, and improving the experience to individuals travelling to Niagara Falls. We’re proud to be providing the tools they need to help ensure their team is the best it can be and helping hundreds of people find work every year.

Check out the video below:

Amazing Ways Tech Can Improve Your Landscaping Business

By admin •

 

Whether you own or operate a landscaping business, you know first-hand that staying on top of your game is the best way to ensure you stay in the green. Today, that means taking on some tech — specifically, landscape management software. Businesses are held to a higher standard than ever before, and whether it’s customer service, job efficiency or an eco-friendly approach to business, the connectivity of our world means that word of mouth travels faster than ever before.

This is really good for good news, and really bad for bad news. The most effective way to make sure there is as little bad news out there as possible is not to generate it in the first place. In other words, do great business. Management software can help your landscaping business by helping you stay on time, on-point and in the good graces of your client. Oh, and your business? The right tools can help it flourish.

The Right Tools

The best software for your landscape business is software created for your business. That’s why we love LMN: an agile and robust software solution designed specifically for the complex terrain of the landscaping industry.

Here’s how LMN can work for your business.

LMN can help you stay on schedule. Time management is one of the main ways businesses lose money. Landscaping businesses have it tougher than many, since they are at the mercy of the elements. This makes precise scheduling is even more important. An innovative tech solution like LMN will allow you to keep your crews on schedule and in the right place without having to hire extraneous staff to micromanage dispatch.

LMN can help you price jobs. Innumerable hours are wasted every week pricing jobs, but software made for the landscaping business can actually correctly price jobs the first time. Not only will this save you time, but it will also save you money you could lose on inaccurate estimates.

LMN can manage your customer service and sales. Customer service is a vital and extremely time consuming (and therefore costly) part of operating and profitable business. LMN offers an agile CRM to help nurture the best client relationships possible.

LMN can track crew performance. Accountability of your staff is important. Not only does it help you reward employees who are doing a great job, but it can help you identify people who may need help. Time tracking tools will allow you to spot even minor issues before they start causing big problems.  

LMN can help your crews get to your clients. GPS and routing capabilities mean that your crews get where they need to go quickly and easily. This way they spend less time on the road and more time taking care of your customers.

LMN integrates with QuickBooks. This is a powerful combination. LMN and QuickBooks integration allows you to link work to QuickBooks for simple and fast export of payroll and invoices. The QB Integration tools also allows you to use this information to analyze productivity and generate billing reports and job logs right away.

Streamlined, effective and cost-saving software solutions for your business: this is what makes LMN such an incredible investment in the success of your landscaping business  — and it’s the reason LMN is one of TotalHire’s valued partners.

Ellen Barton – Procter & Gamble Testimonial

By admin •

Ellen Barton has been working with us over the last few years to develop a platform that provides a unique and effective solution to a problem they have been facing with the closing of the Procter & Gamble plant out of Brockville, Ontario. Working together we have helped countless applicants find new fulfilling employment in successful businesses across the region. Our primary goal was to help Ellen find a suitable solution for helping her people find careers in a non-opportunistic scenario, what we ended up providing is a longterm tool that helps connect great businesses with talented individuals who could provide decades of experience and value to new employers.

Somebody might have a cheaper product, somebody might have a flashier logo, however, personality and personal interaction is huge and that’s the number one thing coming out of TotalHIRE

Ellen Barton, Procter & Gamble

We’re are extremely pleased with the fact that we’ve been able to help so many people find jobs that appreciate their knowledge and experience, as well as provide them with rewarding opportunities. We look forward to the continued success of the platform we’ve built with Ellen, and the continued improvements and support we will provide over the years to come.

Watch the video here: 

TotalHire Partners With Indeed

By admin •

Socks and sandals. Slasher flicks and sweet dreams. Sunburns and back slaps. Bad breath and first dates. There are some things that are obviously not meant to go together. TotalHIRE’s partnerships with Indeed is not one of those things. As a driving force in creating revolutionary, resource-saving talent acquisition software, it makes sense that Total Hire would team with Indeed, the premier job application platform.

TotalHIRE’s is excited to announce the full integration of our cutting-edge Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with Indeed, the #1 job site in the world,  the integration allows our clients to seamless access millions of job seekers with the click of a button.

Cameron Wilson, TotalHIRE President

In the brief time since the commencement of TotalHIRE’s partnership with Indeed, clients are already witnessing the amazing, cost-saving benefits, including a marked increase in valuable candidate submissions received from this job application powerhouse.  200 million people visit Indeed every month, and well over half of them use their mobile devices to browse opportunities. This means businesses looking to hire the right talent need to make sure they’re in the right place at the right time.

Cameron expands: “All of your existing your jobs and screening questions are pushed instantly to Indeed, with seekers applying directly into the TotalHIRE ATS system, all of this requiring no additional effort on your part.”

Saving you this effort is one of TotalHIRE’s main objectives. Effort is time, and for HR process, time is one of the most precious — and most wasted — resources.

“TotalHIRE is constantly striving to save our clients time and money in finding the right person for their company, this integration is a large step in helping to further that commitment.”

Learn more about how your business can reap the rewards of this powerful partnership. Talk to us about getting started with TotalHIRE.

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