“Employee turnover at all-time highs.” “Lowest unemployment rates in 18 years.”
Discrimination in the Workplace vs. Culture, do these headlines sound familiar? They should, as they have dominated the business news media and the Human Resources forums for the past year. The facts behind these headlines are a reflection of the challenges that all employers are having in their ability to attract and retain employees, including 3.9% unemployment rate; employee turnover 35% times more than previous generations; and compensation and benefits the third most important aspect of what attracts Millennials.
These converging forces of a tight labor market and generational influences has left the challenge of competing for candidates keeping HR up at night. Savvy employers know that they need to change their strategies in order to be considered an employer of choice. The tactic of only offering a competitive compensation and comprehensive
benefit package is outdated. The candidates are now driving the interview asking, “Why should I work here?” Employers need to show how they elevate themselves above (or at least equal to) the competition with innovation, teamwork, career progression, holistic wellness and being technology driven. These are the faces of the culture that
are…[continue reading]
The article above was written by Bobbi Kloss and featured in Los Angeles Advertising Human Resource Professionals and on the Entertainment Human Resources Network.
Bobbi Kloss is the Director of Human Capital Management Services for the Benefit Advisors Network, a national network of independent employee
benefit brokerage and consulting companies. For more information, please visit: benefitadvisorsnetwork.com or email the author at bkloss@benefitadvisorsnetwork.com.
In Part 1 of our three-part series from the October 2017 newsletter, Company Culture is the First Draw for Candidates, we explored the converging forces that are creating a competitive labor market for employers. At 4.1% – the lowest unemployment rates in 10 years based on
January 2018 Bureau of Labor Statistics data – employers are concerned with the scarcity of talent. In Part 2 from the February 2018 newsletter Company Culture is the First Draw for Millennials we took a deeper dive into the characteristics of past and current generations and how advancement in technology is the driving mindset of the generations that carries over into the workplace.
The ability to attract and retain quality employees is always a top-of-the-list business objective for any employer. How well a business runs is dependent upon the workforce being productive. With the tight labor market and one of the highest turnovers in generations, how can an employer establish a culture of employee engagement to not only attract but retain their employees? Let’s first look at the value your organization places on its employees.
Back to Basics – Elevate HR within Your Organization
You can generally tell how an organization perceives their employees by looking at the HR Department. A company’s Human Resource Department should be a strategic partner with the CSuite, connecting the employees to the mission and the goals of the company as well as to the success and challenges in meeting those goals. Why?
When the C-Suite is working off a defined, continuously updated business plan, the direction of the company is established, the needs of each department within the company can be identified, and the ability to attract and retain a workforce is mapped out, budgeted, and executed upon through HR. Everyone is rowing the boat in the same direction. The following graphic shows what this would look like.
A challenge for management, and one which HR should be adept at being able to guide the organization
through, is directing the employee through the trials of the outside world that they bring inside to the workplace. Physical ailments, financial struggles, emotional turmoil and social disconnections are a part of everyday life. No matter how hard we try, they affect our productivity.
An HR Department can work to ascertain today’s needs, as well as future needs, and engage with their benefits provider for necessary resources. As the health and welfare agency’s role has expanded to not only select a competitive benefits package but also provide education and additional resources to help an employee maximize their plans in all areas of holistic wellness and work-life balance.
A Two-Way Positive Communication Street
For an effective culture of employee engagement to occur, it comes in knowing that for an employee they are defining job satisfaction as a mutual relationship based upon values of trust, respect, and appreciation. How does this look?
Employee engagement articles will name benefit after benefit and program after program that employers should implement for an effective employee engagement program. These include but are not limited to onboarding programs, flexible work hours, non-traditional worksites, pets on the worksite, job sharing company volunteerism opportunities, wellness programs, student debt reduction plans, borrow forward on paychecks, recognition, and rewards programs.
I would agree that these are all great possibilities for an organization to survey and determine if any of or combination of these and other benefits/programs work for their needs. Employers, be forewarned though, you can pile on these benefits and many more and they can all be meaningless if there is not first a value-based system established built upon mutual trust, respect, and appreciation between employer and employees. This begins with an environment that respects each person for who they are.
There are many lessons that we learned from the Me-Too movement that developed off the sweeping sexual harassment allegations throughout the movie Industry. First, discrimination and harassment still rampantly exist in this country. Another lesson is that within today’s generation, both males and females are uniting to say this must stop!
Employers must not allow these behaviors to continue. Not only is discrimination and harassment behavior illegal but it is also costing employers thousands upon thousands of dollars for violations of EEOC regulations. The EEOC investigated over 84,254 workplace discrimination charges, obtaining $398 million for victims and 6,696 sexual harassment charges with $46.9 million in monetary benefits for victims of sexual harassment. These behaviors are toxic to the work environment and can harm a company’s reputation in the community, which affects its ability to attract and retain employees.
Employers must have not only a written policy and continuous management and employee training, but an environment must exist that says, “We prohibit discrimination and harassment and we will ensure that the policy is upheld.” All the written policies in the world will not help an employer – from the CEO to the employees – if all are not working in harmony to support the policy.
What are next steps?
Now that your employee value system is established, and HR is supported to meet that value system, an employer can now look at the needs of its
workplace to determine what benefits and programs will support those needs. Communication needs to continue. Employers should be surveying their employees so that they can build a foundation of policies, tools
and resources including benefits and programs that are not only compliant but based
off meeting today’s needs and future needs. Again, an advisor can guide you through this process. Helping you balance the needs of the employees against the strategic business objectives of the organization an advisor will assist an employer to establish programs that drive the organization forward with engaged employees.
Then HR should manage
your expectationsof your programs. Once your programs are implemented, they may not immediately provide a return on your investment. Continuous communication, feedback, and retooling will need to occur for long-term success.
Today, turnover costs a company anywhere from six-to-nine months of an employee’s salary, according to SHRM. With unemployment at 4% and millennial turnover already at 34% more than the average, why wouldn’t an employer start employee engagement with recognizing the value of their employees and elevating the HR Department to support the value? Seems like a no-brainer.
About the Author
Bobbi Kloss is the Director of Human Capital Management Services for the Benefit Advisors Network, a national network of independent employee
benefit brokerage and consulting companies. For more information, please email the author at bkloss@benefitadvisorsnetwork.com.
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (DOL-WHD) recently announced its Payroll Audit Independent Determination (PAID) program to assist employers in determining their compliance status to the Fair Labor Standards (FLSA). The PAID program is a six-month voluntary pilot program which FLSA–covered employers can participate
in to self-audit their compliance with the overtime and minimum wage provisions of the FLSA. An employer who has a claim under investigation, in litigation, arbitration, or one where an employee’s attorney has initiated communication is not eligible to [Read the Full Article]
Article published on BenefitsPro.com, May 29, 2018
Quotes included by BAN Directors Bobbi Kloss and Peter Marathas
When Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on March 16, just two days before his 50th birthday, it kept McCabe from qualifying for early payout of his pension and other retiree benefits. The firing also raised issues about what is legal and fair regarding benefit vesting when an employee is discharged.
McCabe was set to retire and receive an annual pension payout calculated at a special enhanced rate and available at the early age of 50, CNN reported. Formulas published by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management show that his payout would have been around $60,000 annually if he had retired after his birthday.
Now, McCabe may not be able to draw an annuity until sometime between age 57 and age 62, resulting in a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he could also lose out on retiree health care benefits because he was fired before he turned 50. Sessions said in a statement he fired McCabe because… [read the full article]
Gallup, LinkedIn, and Recruiter.com all have studies showing that recruiting and retaining millennials tops the list of the most challenging HR business objectives for employers across the country. It is not surprising when you consider the following statistics:
At 75 million, Millennials make up the largest generation, according to the U. S. Census Bureau;
They have been entering the workforce over the past 15 years and now are moving into management roles. The oldest millennials in workforce are 35+;
By 2030, seventy-five percent of the employee workforce will be Millennials.
As discussed in Part 1 of our three-part series, the Millennial generation is far different than its predecessors, the Baby Boomers and Gen Xer’s. They are challenging – and changing – the way employers manage their workforce. The Millennials have completely different career priorities, with culture being the draw versus a traditional benefits package, according to SHRM. The low unemployment rate, at 4.2% as of Sept 2017 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, means that employers are vying for the same talent pool.
In this part of our three-part Attraction and Retention series, we will look at the characteristics of the Millennial generation that employers should be working with to be the “employer of choice” for this new generation.
The Age of…Technology
Millennials have grown up in the Knowledge Age. This post-industrial age sees knowledge as the main form of economic growth. The ability to manage knowledge is critical to the success of today’s businesses and organizations.
Looking back through the 20th century (1901-2000), we can see how access to and sharing of information progressed and advanced into the 21st Century. The 20th century began without cars, planes, television, and computers but ended with these familiar technological inventions:
1980’s Personal Computers first hit the market;
1990’s the volume of email surpassed regular mail;
1999 Bluetooth, WIFI and social media hit the market.
Into the 21st Century we find technology growing at an even greater speed, changing the way business operates. In a short time, we have seen the invention and rapid adoption of various technologies, such as Facebook, YouTube, Nintendo WIii, Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android Mobile phone, and 4G broadband standards, to name a few.
While the 20th Century provided what seemed like a more leisurely introduction of the technology advancements, it also gave employers time to introduce – and adapt – these inventions to their workforce. Today, the rate of speed and almost simultaneous advancements in technology creates opportunities for businesses to achieve greater efficiencies and streamline processes in ways that leave employers struggling to keep up.
We see that with these instantaneous-like advancements, technology continues to improve and expand our methods of communication. Employers have opportunities for greater bandwidth in worksite mobility, both in expanding their customer base and in an employee’s outreach – from the ability to diversify worksite opportunities to offering non-traditional working hours and instant accessibility across the country and around the globe. For Millennials, this has been their world: technology consistently providing instantaneous and current information, multi-directional access to information, and ever-changing information.
A Change in Values
Throughout the 20th and into the 21st Century, we started to see a major shift in worksite values that morphed with the Millennials. How has this played out? In the 20th Century there were multiple World Wars, the Great Depression, women entering the workplace, employers taking on more responsibility for employees (i.e. unemployment taxes and pension plans). Work that was traditionally an obligation of the men to provide stability in the family began to shift to a career focus as the two-person working family evolved. With more two parent workers, the children of the Baby Boomers, Generation X, the latchkey kids became known as the “lost generation” without a voice. This generation fights for their chance to be heard and to make an impact; and as part of the shift to viewing a job as “just a job” when not heard they jump to another employer. Promoted by cries of education first, the college debt ridden Millennials see a job as a way to get out of debt first and balance their life second.
Note how the paradigm shift evolves in the valuation a job. The Traditionalists believed in a long-term career and today Millennials see a job as a means to an end, whatever that end may be (debt, work-life, career advancement). The chart below, taken in part from the Workflow Management Coalition Generational Differences Chart, evidences the work values definition that has been created as we shifted from the 20th into the 21st Century.
With a job just being a means to an end, what additional characteristics and values exist within the Millennial generation that an employer can work with to attract and retain this worker? Again, return to the collective data that has been obtained on Millennials from groups like Gallup, SHRM, and Korn-Ferry. This tech-savvy, independent, altruistic generation is seeking employers that allow them to incorporate their purpose into their jobs. What is the purpose of the Millennial generation?
Collectively, we see that the Traditionalists punched the clock and kept work distinctly separate from family life. Baby Boomers feared taking time off from work and losing the momentum up the corporate ladder. They set the 50-hour workweek standard. Seeing the workaholic behaviors of the Baby Boomers, Gen Xer’s decided that wasn’t for them. Work-life balance began to take shape as a required benefit employers needed to offer. The Gen Xer’s had employers implementing the fun things at work that spurred creativity, engagement, and collaborative work environments, such as concierge services to ensure that life continued while at work, pool tables, table tennis, and latte machines, in favor of water coolers.
Millennials have moved even further across the spectrum and the continued push for work-life balance is now expanding outside of the traditional workplace. They are searching for jobs that offer the four pillars of holistic wellness: physical, financial, social, and emotional values. They are also searching for opportunities that are supportive of developing work ethics. This includes companies that offer the opportunity to be engaged with management, collaboration with co-workers, an ability to participate in furthering the company’s purpose, and access to employer resources through technology.
Employer Reinvention
Employers are also finding that they need to reinvent their message to attract this group of employees. This in turn means that they need to reinvent themselves. With the competition in the marketplace, 6.1 million jobs and the lowest post-recession unemployment rate (4.2%), employers are continuing to find that they cannot just be marketing the skills and qualifications they are looking for in an employee. Employers need to equal the marketing efforts of other advertisers who are attempting to reach this generation. They also need to market their career openings, treating prospective employees like consumers. Employers should use techniques that provide access to current and instantaneous information that is generationally directed as well as incorporate multi-directional messaging through the use of multiple channels to demonstrate why they should be considered the “employer of choice.”
Business spends a lot of money and time gathering customer feedback and satisfaction data to create and maintain market share. This helps them survive. Consumer engagement is critical to revenue from both new and repeat customers. Why buy here when they can buy elsewhere? The same concepts apply to employees and today’s buzz phrase is “employee engagement.” However, this is not a new concept. Business 101 has always taught company owners that employees impact the bottom line. For employers, this was translated into policies and practices, that dictated long hours, high production rates, monitoring absenteeism rates, no question of management and zero tolerance for poor performance. While production and performance are still integral to the bottom line, turnover is measured differently with the changing tides of Millennials view of employment. Employers find that without changing themselves to move with the changing tides, they will continue to have high turnover rates.
In Conclusion
Employee engagement today begins with an interview flip-flop. Instead of employers asking, “Why should I hire you,” candidates are asking, “Why should I come to work here?” Has management asked itself that question? Have they asked their current workforce what is keeping them in their job? If finding that money or benefits is the key motivator, and while being competitive with compensation is still important, employers should be looking at redefining their business objectives and weigh them against the motivating characteristics of the Millennial worker.
If not, as statistics from Korn-Ferry show, the employee who is only motivated to work at the company because of money and benefits will be gone as soon as the next best offer comes around.
How can you change that culture that is driving the “I am only here for the money attitude?” In the last part of our three-part series, we will look at a how an employee engagement campaign could look to attract and retain your Millennial worker.
About the Author
Bobbi Kloss is the Director of Human Capital Management Services for the Benefit Advisors Network, a national network of independent employee benefit brokerage and consulting companies. For more information, please visit: www.benefitadvisorsnetwork.com or email the author at bkloss@benefitadvisorsnetwork.com.
