With more competition for qualified candidates, a proactive recruiting strategy is more critical than ever. Brilliant HR Talent Management can help your company build a stronger talent pipeline, populate talent pools, and reach the key talent you need to staff your next big project. And, did you know that we recently added a candidate relationship management feature to our Talent Acquisition solution?
Let’s take a closer look at this latest enhancement to Brilliant HR Talent Acquisition: Talent Relationship Management. This new candidate relationship management feature works well in conjunction with Talent Pools and provides the foundation project-focused companies need to deepen talent pipelines and prepare for future workforce requirements.
A solid Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can be a game-changer for your recruiters. If you are not currently building and maintaining Talent Pools, you may be missing a huge opportunity to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your recruiting engine. According to the Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering Industry Study, 51% of A&E firms report that finding and retaining talent is their top financial challenge. Talent Pools help by flagging candidates that you want to stay in touch with for future opportunities. When that next project is won and you need to quickly scale the workforce, you will have the opportunity to tap into potential candidates with whom you have already established credibility. As resumes are added to your ATS, you can review and flag those that are a good fit for future openings.
Where Have All The Candidates Gone?
Maintaining Talent Pools by continuously accepting and flagging resumes from strong applicants can help you move faster when you win a new project, or when someone leaves unexpectedly and a succession plan for that individual is not in place. In his post The Smart Move for Growing Companies Is to Always Be Recruiting Talent, David Ciccarelli further expands on how having a strong talent acquisition pipeline in place can help.
What happens when someone leaves unexpectedly? This is where having a pipeline of candidates is critical, so your company can fill the gap sooner rather than later. There is nothing worse than having to delay a project start date because you lack the appropriate talent management resources!
When you review a resume, you can add that resume to a pool so that you can easily find them in the future:
Talent Pools enable you to keep lists of candidates with specific requirements, helping you stay in touch with those job seekers with email communication. These lists can be generated manually or through the use of search agents that automatically add to the list. They can also be shared for easy access to information. Inviting job seekers in these pools to apply to job openings they are a good fit for and have the appropriate skill set:
No one wants to spend months finding, attracting and hiring candidates. The real key to successful talent acquisition is speed. The ability to easily review candidates, engage in conversations and perform the necessary interviews, convert the best candidates to new hires, and get those new hires billable faster are underlying parts of the bigger picture.
Setting Up Campaigns
Talent Relationship Management (TRM) is available as a part of the Talent Acquisition module. This new feature is disabled by default, but your system configurator can enable this functionality. Once enabled, new navigation items for Talent Relationship Management (TRM) will appear in the Recruiting section of the left navigation menu.
You can create letter templates for use within TRM campaigns. These work similarly to other letter templates, and can include merge codes to personalize the messages being delivered:
You can setup the details of the campaign, including which pools, employees or candidates the campaign will go out to. You can save and edit later at any point during campaign creation:
Campaigns can be scheduled for delivery or sent immediately. You can select how frequently to send and between which dates you would like emails sent:
A preview of the campaign is available before publishing the campaign:
Once campaigns have been created (either published, saved to send later, or saved to finish later), you can view all campaigns on one page, similar to the existing Manage Requisitions page:
The Brilliant HR team is excited about this new feature of Talent Management because we heard from so many of you that finding candidates and filling open positions is a huge challenge. We are not stopping here. Talent Relationship Management offers us plenty of opportunities to build additional functionality that will continue to support your recruiting efforts.
In life we are constantly looking for as many guarantees as possible. We are turning to predictive analytics to anticipate successful hiring, employee and manager behavior, etc. We are consuming massive amounts of data, reviews, and research when we buy items to ensure we are getting quality for our money. We are even looking up reports on people we are considering dating.
We should strive to be as certain as possible whenever we can, and make well-informed decisions, especially regarding people. With that said, studies continues to show how critical Learning and Development are towards retaining and engaging talent yet only 14% of firms report using a Learning Management System (LMS) according to the 40th Annual Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering Industry Report.
A recent EdAssist study indicates the following. When asked to choose between two similar jobs, nearly 60 percent of Millennials would pick the job with strong potential for professional development over one with regular pay raises.
So, why does this large gap exist? There seems to be a common misconception that the Learning function is one of the most expensive functions for HR to build and maintain. In fact, the Clarity Report indicates that 40% of respondents view developing and implementing Learning as one of the top three most expensive HR-related processes.
Despite having this viable solution to mitigate engagement and retention issues, firms don’t have an understanding of to afford a Learning Management System and even see a significant return from it. Keep reading to gain a full understanding of just how affordable this solution is, and how quickly your firm can be on the path to mitigating such challenges.
Misconceptions Dispelled
Generally speaking, there have several misconceptions firms have about implementing Learning:
Myth #1: We need to hire an LMS Administrator. An LMS Administrator’s salary can range from $50,000 to $75,000 base salary (or higher) plus 30% burden = $65,000 – $97,500. We simply cannot afford that.
Truth- We absolutely do not need a dedicated LMS resource to get the Learning function up and running. With the assistance of Deltek’s highly talented implementation team, this process is quite easy (and quick). After configuring the LMS, we can have access to powerful e-learning content less than one day later.
Myth #2: In addition to finding the LMS Administrator, we need time to build a full Learning function. On the e-learning side, it can take 1-2 weeks to build just one course.
Truth- As noted above, we have a solution to having a full library of content that we can access within a day of completing our LMS configuration. We do not need to have in-house expertise in building e-learning courses.
Myth #3: We have to plan Learning tracks in order to have a sophisticated model, and we just do not have time for that level of planning.
Truth- Yes, it is preferable to have Learning paths and a well-thought out strategy and plan for Learning; however, like most things, implementing this in phases is a great approach. With this in mind, simply getting great Learning assets in front of our staff is a significant first step that can provide immediate return. Paths can be developed in phase two, but why not get excellent material in our employees’ hands now?
The Promised Solution
Deltek has invested in a partnership with a premier 3rd party Learning content provider specifically focused on project-based businesses. Access to the full LMS along with a bundle of over 130 powerful e-learning courses can cost less on a per employee per year basis than taking that employee out to lunch one time during the year.
Yes, let me state that again. For what we would spend on an employee and a manager going to a nice lunch to thank the employee for his/her contributions (including meal and tip), that employee could instead have access to nearly 200 hours of project-based e-learning training, along with a robust LMS that tracks Learning history, certifications, and much more. This content includes: Project Management training, PMBOK training, Leadership, Compliance, HR Essentials, and more. So…a couple Turkey Reubens, iced teas, desserts and tip for that employee and manager, or nearly 200 hours of e-learning content access for the employee? Tough call, because you really can’t overestimate the value a good Reuben has on retention.
Let’s look at this one more way. If we failed to retain just one key member of our organization (perhaps an Engineer in this scenario), and had to pay a 3rd party recruiting fee to replace him/her, at a typical 25-30% fee on first year’s salary, we may be spending $25,000 or more on one employee replacement fee. With proof that Learning and Development fuel engagement and retention, what if we could spend roughly a third of this and have an LMS and nearly 200 hours of content to engage our entire workforce?
We generally don’t budget for these recruiting fees, yet they eat away at the bottom line. These extraneous Acquisition costs, generally unplanned, are paid frequently by firms like ours because we “have to have qualified staff for projects to support our customers”. Why not spend significantly less, retain those key team members who have intimate knowledge of and relationships with our customers, and yield even more profit (or even use the savings on more engagement and retention initiatives)?
We stated that simply hiring the LMS Administrator represents a substantial financial commitment. For a typical organization, the LMS and content can be implemented at less than 10%-20% of the cost of that LMS Administrator’s salary plus burden. Can we still say the Learning function is too expensive to invest in?
Next Steps
We would rather reduce turnover, retain our key personnel, and improve productivity in our staff with a much smaller investment than continue to spend unnecessary costs. These acquisition and attrition-based costs such as: project, customer disruption and dissatisfaction, increased unnecessary acquisition and recruiting costs, additional onboarding, training and administrative costs, and survivor’s burnout are completing eroding profitability, customer satisfaction, and employee retention.If you are ready to act and are ready implement a powerful Learning function quickly and affordably, please contact us today to initiate the process. Our talented implementation team is ready to help you implement the Learning function quickly and effectively, mitigating and solving many of your employee-based challenges.
Let’s face it, recruiting today is tougher than ever and finding top talent is like finding a needle in a haystack. Unemployment is at an all-time low, it is a job seeker’s market and they’re going to play hard ball when you do find them. However, is it really that hard or any harder than it has been in the past? Maybe we just need to take a different approach and look for talent in another way. Maybe the talent you seek is already available and you just forgot where to look.
Statistics show that 62% of the talent you need is readily available to you and are twice as likely to accept cold emails if they have interacted with your company brand before. That’s right, 62% of the top talent you’re looking for is already in your database, just waiting for the right opportunity to join your company. That is why it is more critical than ever to create a proactive recruiting strategy and ensure Talent Pools are an integral part of that strategy.
But it doesn’t end with just creating talent pools, you also must establish a relationship with the candidates in those talent pools and build their trust. You need to stay engaged and encourage candidates to keep their resume data current and accurate. You must show YOU’RE still interested long after they’ve applied and that there is future opportunity for them.
What does ‘establishing a relationship’ mean? By definition, a relationship is the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected. The way we each view a relationship can differ broadly, but at the core it still means the same thing. To have a relationship with someone means being connected at a deeper level than a mere association. Talent Relationship Management is the engagement between recruiter and candidate; it is building trust and maintaining interest on both sides so that time to fill future awarded projects can be reduced exponentially.
Talent Pools and Talent Relationship Management (TRM) can work lockstep and create an immersive experience for your candidates. They can help you develop and maintain relationships with your candidates and stay engaged with your top talent, nurturing that talent early and often. The ultimate goal is that you are never behind the 8 ball when projects are awarded. You have the talent to fulfill any project need with the right skills, competencies, certifications, and experience level, you just need to remember where to look.
Capitalize on your existing candidates with Talent Pools and TRM campaigns! An engaged relationship = opportunity for both you and your candidates. Win/Win!
Did you know that over 60% of employees feel that they are not provided with opportunities to learn and grow! (Gallup) Learning accelerates employee development, fuels prosperity, and is about much more than continuing education credits. By offering the right learning opportunities for your employees, you can ensure your firm is leading the industry and that your teams will be ready to take on the next new project.
Learning plans are an underutilized, but powerful tool. According to HR Magazine, companies that invest even $1,500 on training per employee can see an average of 24% more profit than companies who invest less. Learning opportunities go hand-in-hand with employee engagement. They increase the productivity of individuals, teams, departments or locations; prepare the workforce for the planned turnover of key leadership positions; and align learning with employee development plans and goals.
Providing learning opportunities to your employees will drive a variety of positive business outcomes across the firm from onboarding to organizational alignment.
#1 Learning and Onboarding
Learning plans should be used to support the onboarding process. You can shorten the length of time it takes to get new hires up-to-speed and assigned to billable projects. Help new hires feel you are willing to invest in them by sharing all of the learning options your firm offers. By focusing on learning and development during onboarding, you can help your new hires get acclimated to their role (initial or transitional) and integrated into your firm’s culture.
You also have valuable information regarding skill and competency gaps for the initial role and an understanding of how the employee envisions bridging existing gaps quickly. You may have asked about the new hire’s preferred learning style and how they best implement learning and knowledge gains, as well as their preferred frequency, style and methods for receiving feedback. Effective interviews and early new hire feedback sessions will help you understand what motivates them to succeed and what you can do to incentivize them.
#2 Connect the Dots between Learning, Development, & Performance
Want to have a serious impact on your organization? One of the most overlooked opportunities to increase engagement is by shifting focus to development plans during performance reviews. We all know the traditional performance review process. Employees meet with their manager to discuss the results of their previous year’s performance, and learn their new goals for the next review. How effective is this retrospective approach? Does is motivate your employees and project teams to do exceptional work? Probably not. Instead, focus on the future with a forward-facing strategy to help your employees recognize a tangible benefit.
Development plans, when leveraged consistently, can help you to facilitate alignment between your business goals and employee performance and growth. Learning and development plans help to prevent stagnation in your workforce, which results in increased employee engagement AND improved client satisfaction. As a result, you will be able to more accurately identify the key strengths (and weaknesses) of your employees and course-correct to utilize those strengths or address the gaps.
#3 Learning is Larger than Certifications and Professional Licenses
Many of the industries we serve have very credentialed workforces, so tracking and maintaining the certifications, licenses, and even security clearances needed can be a handful. Regardless of tenure, career path, or level within your business, your employees need so much more than certification tracking.
Leverage learning plans throughout the employee life cycle to address gaps, and to prepare employees for stretch projects and growth. As part of employee growth, learning and development plans should also be used to prepare an employee for a lateral transition or promotion.
#4 Fuel Prosperity and Support Organizational Goals
Learning and development plans wrap objectives together to ensure an employee has accomplished a set of variable items, including things like internal learning, external learning, certification, stretch assignments, and shadowing, on-the-job learning, and skill and competency gains.
Managers need to balance corporate goals with an employee’s personal development goals to ensure the company’s success. Once the manager fully understands the employee’s career goals, they can collaboratively create a learning plan that will assist the company in reaching their growth goals, but also includes training and development for the employee to reach their personal goals.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
By leveraging learning and development plans, you will gain the competitive edge you need to win the next contract or project by keeping your workforce on the cutting edge of your industry. A focused learning strategy will help your firm to attract even more great talent by cultivating a development culture that helps establish your employer brand in the talent marketplace.
Many of us are highly “visual” individuals. We visualize conversations going favorably, relationships lasting forever, and being wildly successful. These are largely examples of how “hope” shapes our thoughts. The power of positive thinking can aid us in guiding our paths towards positive outcomes and hopefully create self-fulfilling prophecies. Unfortunately at the end of the day, some things just don’t work out the way we visualize them. Relationships end, both personally and professionally. Conversations don’t go quite as planned and projects end prematurely. Our best ideas and most desired outcomes, ones we spend incredible time and effort on, fail.
The most challenging part is investing, believing, and trusting in something or someone and finding a way to be “ok” when the process, project, or relationship ends before we are ready for it. It takes maturity to understand that (simply put) sometimes change, endings, etc. are in fact, totally “ok”. If I can promise you one thing, it is this: There is an absolute peace in the personal and professional world when we get to a point where we understand that all we can do is go about everything the right way, build the right framework, put the right people around us, work hard for those in our lives (again personally and professionally) and know that sometimes it just isn’t going to work out the way we see it in our minds. That also doesn’t mean we have failed, in any way, shape, or form. It just means our visions and reality didn’t really align.
Although sometimes endings and/or changes are the best things that can happen to us, emotion and ego often times cloud our ability to recognize this. Where this ties in for purposes of this blog is the employee lifespan at our organizations. In the modern employment landscape, we are called upon to enact a superior employee experience, where our brand and every touch point with employees is critical. It presents a lot of pressure for employers, at times fair and at times exhausting. We will discuss organizational fatigue later on. For now, let’s provide some help, direction and relief.
Are We Ready to Pop the Big Question?
Let’s start with a personal example everyone can relate to, and then quickly correlate it to a similar workplace situation. We aspire to know we are in good relationships, we are on target, in sync, and progressing in a mutually positive direction. Ever think about asking your significant other this question? “How difficult would it be for you to leave me?”
This question can trigger a ton of thoughts. Your significant other could be thinking “Maybe I would just be happier alone. People find me attractive and others would want to be with me. I am only marginally happy and I feel somewhat disregarded and unimportant.” It could yield positive thoughts, such as: “We have many mutual interests and we communicate so well. I would miss the partnership and friendship.”
The answer they may come up with could be something like “Honestly, it would be tough to have that conversation and there would be a few bumps in the road, but I can see myself being quite happy outside of this relationship.” Or it could be “It would be far too difficult for me and honestly, I wouldn’t want to be outside of this relationship. I belong here and am incredibly happy.”
Let’s think of that question in a professional setting. We are conducting a feedback discussion with a direct report. We ask the same question tailored to employment. “How difficult would it be for you to leave our organization?”
It will trigger the same thoughts. “Am I happier going out on my own? Is there a good market for who I am? Will someone else be more open to my thoughts and ideas, and care more about my development? Do we have similar mutual interests for my career path, and will they communicate with me frequently?”
This one question has a ton of impact. The answer (quality, depth, etc.) to this one question will support or challenge our assumptions and tell us everything we need to know assuming we have fostered a culture where honesty is encouraged and valued. It truly is the one question we can ask that can provide us with what we need to know about how this employee feels about their entire experience with our organization.
The next big question is one that we must then ask ourselves…“what do we do with all the information, and how can we avoid organizational fatigue by going too far with change?” Although it goes without saying, if we ask questions like these, we must be prepared to act on or address issues and concerns, or at minimum provide follow-up communication on the “why or why not” as this is critical to gaining/retaining trust.
Avoiding Organizational Fatigue
Organizations need to be careful when compiling feedback and implementing change. Heightened understanding, empathy and care for the employee experience is wonderful…but making constant change in a panic just to try and raise retention rates is exhausting and will end up fostering an inconsistent, uneven, and “squeaky wheel” culture.
So What Can/Should We Do
Here is a short list of what could be many items we can or should do, but if we follow these suggestions, we will be able to achieve some balance.
Unselfish leadership and support: we build and support those around us for the right reasons, and we do it unconditionally. This provides us with peace that we did things the right way, and outcomes will fall where they may.
Great programs and processes: in the workplace, we facilitate that great communication with continuous feedback programs and use those conversations to launch development, growth, reskilling and upskilling, learning, and most importantly, compassion.
Balanced decision-making: we need to be agile, nimble and adapt our culture to modern ways, but there is a balance needed to ensure we aren’t just making changes every time an employee is dissatisfied. These changes must align with our mission, vision, and values and not foster “squeaky wheel” issues.
Remember This One Thing
And that one thing is to ask “How difficult would it be for you to leave our organization?” As stated, if you have developed trust, you will get all the answers you need. From there, prioritize and implement the ones that make sense for your culture, and do your best to avoid changes just to save people. Stick to your mission, vision, and values and avoid fatigue…but remember, change and evolution to some degrees are table stakes.
