Nothing says “welcome back from summer!” like a fresh and focused Adway live stream!
On August 25th, Sara Dalsfelt, Adway’s Senior Advisor of Digital Talent Acquisition, sat down with Stefan Robsen, Director Nordics & Baltics at Cornerstone OnDemand, to talk about a very trending topic: how to engage a workforce that’s notoriously and currently… disengaged.
In this session, they covered everything from re-engaging the hybrid workplace to building trust with candidates and employees to bridging the gap with 24/7 storytelling and communication that evokes true emotion.
Background Check
Stefan is an international leader with extensive experience driving business transformation in the space of HR tech and IT. He has held numerous international positions at global technology companies and worked closely with the largest companies in the Nordics on their global HR strategies.
In his current work at Cornerstone OnDemand, a software solution with 75 million users that helps major organizations like Amazon recruit, train, and manage their people, Stefan is the Director of the Nordics and the Baltics where he works with over 20% of the top Nordic companies.
HR’s #1 Post-Summer Goal: Re-engage the Hybrid Workplace
In the wake of a particularly disconnected pandemic-stricken period of time, fall is a great time to think about RE-connecting candidates and employees and engaging the hybrid-workforce.
And it’s up to HR to take the lead in this situation. How?
Focus content and messaging on mental health awareness and self-growth. There’s a new day ahead!
Factor in employee inertia from what might be a monotonous routine spent working from home and living on video conferencing platforms.
Pick the right platforms to engage with your people.
Communicate clearly, especially the leadership. Interact, check in and tap the pulse on a consistent basis. Not just from a work perspective, but from a mental health perspective and a personal perspective as well.
Create social context in a digital space. For workers who are sitting at home, confidence can be stripped when they’re not actively and socially engaged. It’s up to HR to create and hold that space, even if it’s in a digital capacity.
Lay out clear career paths. For employee confidence to be restored, they need to feel like they’re on an upward trajectory. HR, recruiters and TA should help set these goals for them, so they can visualize their journey of growth.
Make your employees a FAN of your brand. Get them excited to work at your company! Create that environment by focusing on culture.
Engage Employees With Wildly Different Interests
Different initiatives, ideas, technologies and programs make different people tick. How can HR engage an employee audience with a wide range of interests?
Each generation needs to be seen as who they are. Employers should have an overarching, 360-view of employee needs at all levels, ages and preferences. It’s important to sit down and distinguish which tools will help them succeed based on what their specific needs are. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
Tackle Talent Mobility & Build Trust
Talent mobility is a crucial aspect of engagement and re-engagement, and it’s a responsibility for the entire organisation to share. Employee retention isn’t just cost-effective, it also helps leverage recruiting initiatives and reinforces a strong company culture.
Building trust in this hybrid world is another essential component. Allowing employees to chart their career path without feeling as if they’re being micromanaged bolsters employee loyalty and boosts their confidence to do a great job.
Bridge the Gap Between Recruiters & Hiring Managers
Many hiring managers simply don’t understand what recruiters are doing, they just want to be fed a steady stream of candidates and set up with interviews. On the flip side, hiring managers don’t think recruiters really understand the skills that are required to ace the job opening. Bridging this disconnect is essential to bringing ease and engagement into the hiring process.
Start a 24/7 Candidate Journey With Constant Communication
Communicating with candidates is another key aspect of this divide. A human being has an attention span of ten seconds. A goldfish has an attention span of eight seconds! You have to be able to sell a position in less than ten seconds, and it all starts with clear and engaging communication.
With Adway, a 24/7 candidate journey starts with solid storytelling and meeting candidates right where they are. It’s possible to create the kind of communication architecture that keeps your organization on the candidate’s radar and at home in their digital habitat. During a time of disconnection and uncertainty, being in front of candidates constantly is the perfect way to keep them connected and engaged and add emotion back into the equation.
The Top Three Takeaways
As a recruiter or TA professional engaging with candidates, it’s essential to let them know not only what the job itself is, but where they’ll be in three years. That’s the question that defines their path and connects them and gives them confidence.
Paint clear career paths for your people and be clear about the skills that are required. This will allow candidates and employees to de-stress and be more comfortable in their environment, which can build further connection, trust and loyalty to the company.
Go for the culture ADD, not the culture FIT. Engaged employees are diverse, inclusive and constantly evolving.
No matter what kind of office you work in, isolation and loneliness can happen. What can HR do?
It’s not fully an HR issue, but, as a company, you might think about offering a “Wellness Day,” where employees have a day designated to focusing on their own physical and mental wellness. They can participate in anything that makes them feel good and post it and tag the company to create an inspiring campaign!
“Development days” are another option, where employees can focus on pursuing their career development and learning opportunities.
Create virtual events and check-ins or use tools that stay on top of your people, offering them support, solutions, career development opportunities and much more.
Digital disconnection is high. People are not very adaptive toward digitalization and feel concerned and disconnected. How can we find and address this issue?
This is another generation-based issue. In this digital world, not everyone will feel fully comfortable. One key is to keep content fresh. No one wants to look at a ten-year-old Power Point! Pick one topic, deliver it in small, digestible bites, and you might notice how much more connected the audience will be.
Whether they’re working from a cubicle or their home office, almost all employees want to feel their company offers them opportunities to develop new skills and advance themselves. What are the steps HR can leverage here?
Let’s start with: what skills do they have? That’s an important place to begin. A lot of people don’t even understand which skills they currently have. Just because you started in one industry or position, doesn’t mean that’s the entire spectrum of your skills. It’s important to dig deeper into where you excel before you can whittle down how to develop.
You might grow into a certain desired role IF you have particular skills. This can help employees inform their unique talent mobility options and to-dos to create that clear path toward career growth.
Most disconnected from what? Seems like the challenges from the last couple of years connected humans with other important aspects of life. Maybe that is a channel to connect with the workforce! Besides technology and HR, it seems like we need to keep evolving towards what is really important lately. People engage nowadays in jobs that allow them stability and balance more than ever!
Since we find ourselves working 24/7 and never shutting down, this idea needs to be recognized and infused from TA all the way through to offboarding. We need to keep the employee experience empathetic, reasonable and sustainable.
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