Regular Habits of Effective New Managers

By Rob Cahill, Co-Founder & CEO of Jhana.

Whether newly promoted or hired externally, brand new managers are going through one of the most exciting—and most challenging—transitions of any upward career trajectory.

Drawing from my company’s research and conversations with HR teams and new managers—and also speaking from personal experience— I’ve put together a list of 10 habits that new managers often struggle to build. Not coincidentally, they’re also critical for new managers to get right.

1.     Hold regular 1-on-1s.  You can’t know what’s going on with your team unless you talk to them. No matter how busy your calendar, schedule 30 minutes of face time every week with each team member. Never cancel.

2.     Give and request regular feedback. No one can work in a vacuum—not you, and not your team. Make sure you are giving each member of your team regular feedback and that most, but not all, of it is positive. Likewise, it’s up to you to solicit feedback on your performance from both your boss and your direct reports.

3.     Proactively manage up. Your boss isn’t a mind reader. If you need help, notice something that needs changing or just want to keep your boss in the loop, it’s on you to speak up.

4.     Clearly define expectations. If someone’s not delivering what you wanted, it likely means that you, the manager, haven’t done a good enough job communicating your expectations. For every project, use specific language to describe what a successful outcome looks like to you, and double check—in writing—that your instructions are clearly understood.

5.     Set fair goals. If possible, ask for your team's input to select and shape goals. They'll be more committed to goals they've contributed to in some way. Once you've set goals, be sure to also define how you'll measure success.
 

6.     Delegate well. It can be hard to let go, but it’s imperative to your team’s success that you trust them and enable them to do their jobs. Assign tasks, and then oversee, but don’t micromanage.

7.     Don’t shy away from tough conversations. It’s your job as manager to address problems head on, even  and especially when doing so makes you uncomfortable. Waiting will only make things worse.

8.   Own your mistakes. It’s common for new leaders to want to seem invincible. Resist the urge to fight or deny mistakes. Instead, admit your error, and describe what you’re doing to fix the problem and how you will ensure it doesn’t happen again. This advice applies to everyone you work with, not just your manager.

9.    Take hiring seriously. Don’t assume HR will do all the heavy lifting. After all, this person will be a part of your team, so it’s on you to ensure you’re hiring from a diverse, qualified pool of candidates. Don’t rely on your network. Some of my best hires have come from unexpected backgrounds.

10. Embrace your peers. Cultivate strong relationships with different groups and departments. The next time your team needs something quickly from Marta in sales or Jamal in Accounting, the trust you’ve already built will pay off tenfold. 

Rob Cahill founded Jhana in 2011 after personally experiencing how proper management can make or break retention and help reach company goals. Rob's mission is to provide effective and relatable management training that is available around the clock. Today, Jhana's clients have grown to many Fortune 1000's including AOL, Orbitz, CARFAX, Career Builder, Groupon and more. Rob was previously at Sunrun as chief of staff to the founder, helping the company scale from 20 to more than 200 employees. 

Slow and Steady: Majority of Employers Globally Anticipate an Increase in Hiring for Q4 2016

42 of 43 countries plan to increase payrolls; strongest hiring prospects reported in India, Japan, Taiwan and the United States

Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Employers intend to increase hiring in 42 of 43 countries and territories through the end of the year, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, released today by ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN). Employer hiring confidence remains strong despite uncertainty associated with the slowdown of the global economy, the Brexit vote and continued financial market volatility. Hiring confidence is strongest in India, Japan, Taiwan and the United States, while employers in Brazil, Belgium, Finland, Italy and Switzerland report the weakest hiring plans. Only employers in Brazil expect payrolls to decline in the October-December timeframe.

View complete Q4 2016 survey results: www.manpowergroup.com/meos

Of the nearly 59,000 employers interviewed globally, 42 of 43 countries and territories anticipate increasing their staffing levels in Q4 2016. Compared to Q3 2016, hiring prospects strengthen in 23 of 43 countries and territories, are unchanged in nine and decline in 11. Compared with last year at this time, Outlooks improve in 21 countries and territories, weaken in 15 and are unchanged in six.

"The Brexit vote in the UK, along with other recent geopolitical events, has added an additional level of volatility – real or perceived – to the global economic outlook," said Jonas Prising, Chairman & CEO, ManpowerGroup. "Despite this uncertainty, the labor market picture remains cautiously positive, with many EU and Eurozone economies slowly pushing back towards pre-recession levels as well as improving prospects in other key markets like India, Japan and Taiwan."

Global Hiring Plans by Region

• EMEA: Employers expect staffing levels to increase again in all 25 countries in the EMEA region during the upcoming quarter. The strongest EMEA labor markets are forecast by employers in Ireland (their strongest Outlook since Q2 2007) and Israel, while the weakest Outlooks are reported in Belgium, Finland, Italy and Switzerland. Despite the Brexit decision, the jobs market in the UK remains strong at a national level, though there are signs of hesitancy in several sectors including Finance.
  
• Asia Pacific: Employers in all eight Asia Pacific countries and territories expect workforce gains during Q4 2016. Indian employers report the strongest regional and global hiring prospects for the fifth consecutive quarter, while the weakest Asia Pacific labor market is anticipated in China, also for the fifth consecutive quarter.
  
• Americas: Employers in nine of the 10 Americas countries expect to increase staffing levels during the next three months. Employers in the United States report the most optimistic hiring prospects in the region, while the weakest hiring activity is forecast by Brazilian employers – the only negative Outlook globally.

To view complete results for the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, visit www.manpowergroup.com/meos. The next survey will be released on 13 December 2016 to report hiring expectations for Q1 2017. To receive email notifications when the survey is available each quarter, visit press.manpower.com.

*Data for Portugal is not seasonally adjusted as Portugal only joined the survey in Q3 2016 and does not yet have year-over-year trend data. Seasonal adjustments will be available once 17 quarters of Portuguese data are accumulated.

How to Start a Candidate Community that Attracts Top Talent

By: Katie Calhoun, Executive Director of Client Services, Seven Step RPO

The better relationships you build with candidates the better chances you have of finding the right people in your prospective talent pool when you need them. One of the best ways to engage candidates and build relationships with them is to provide them with a talent community. If you haven’t started one, now is the time to do so.

What is a talent community? When someone visits your career site and is invited to sign up to receive communications from your company, they are being invited into your talent community. This lets you track potentially interested candidates and provide opportunities for them to learn more about your company. It also keeps your employment brand front and center so that when candidates are ready, they will apply to a job. (Just to be clear, this is not a social community, such as brands’ customer community where there is interaction between customers and brand agents.)

A talent community allows candidates to receive digital information from your employment brand regularly. Ideally, this information doesn’t just promote job openings; it shows candidates that they could have a great career with your company.

How do you build a talent community?

Here are four steps to building a powerful, engaging candidate community that inspires people to want to work for you:

•  Determine the business goals your candidate community supports. What is your company  looking to gain from a candidate community? More traffic to your career site? An increase in  applicants? Better quality candidates? Once you determine the business goals, establish  metrics to track those goals, measure the community’s success and see where you need to make adjustments.

• Always keep the candidate experience top of mind. Your community should be easy to join and the sign-up offer should be prominent on every page of your career site, in the application process and in email signatures from recruiters. Keep it simple: Name and email. Next, how your candidate community will benefit candidates? A candidate won't join if they don’t have a compelling reason to do so. What can you offer them that will help them get to know your company’s culture, learn more about the career paths available to them, and set your company apart as a great place to work? Explain these benefits through your career site and/or candidate communication.

• Build a socially connected (but not annoying) community. You want to keep information flowing regularly by determining what type of information candidates want to hear from your company and planning to provide it. Don’t be annoying by flooding them with too much “marketing” type content. You want candidates to perceive you as helpful, genuinely interested in their success. If you make it all about you and how great it is to work at your brand without giving them a vision for how they will thrive with you, candidates will be turned off and unsubscribe. Also, identify how you’ll distribute different types of information: social media, email, newsletters, holiday postcards, etc. Remember, your goal is to build a sense of relationship between candidates and your employment brand.

• Don’t overlook passive candidates. Every community has what are called “lurkers”—people who are listening and watching, but prefer not to interact. These are your passive candidates. Some of them may be top talent who are feeling out what your brand is all about. Keep these people engaged by becoming their career advocates. Provide thought leadership, tips on how to advance their careers, stories of career paths in your company, individual success stories of current employees, company perks, culture videos—all of these paint a picture of what it is like to work for your company and even more importantly, why it’s better to work for you than anyone else.

Follow these four steps and you’ll be off to building an outstanding candidate community that attracts top talent, keeps them interested and inspires them to apply!

Shaking off Manual HR Tasks with Technology

By Jen Stroud, HR evangelist, ServiceNow

If you’ve been in HR for very long, you may have noticed that your typical work week focuses less on meaningful human interactions than you probably expected when you entered the profession. You likely became part of the industry to be involved with developing people and helping your organization thrive, but perhaps time that could be spent on strategic projects is getting swallowed up in high-touch, low-value tasks—responding to routine questions, checking and rechecking email, and the like.

In a day and age in which a pizza can be ordered using a slick iPhone app, you can’t help but wonder why basic HR requests can’t be processed in the same automated fashion.

If you feel this way, you’re not alone. Recent research backs you up, and the numbers are telling. In an HR study conducted by Engage ESM and ServiceNow, respondents said that they focus just 31 percent of their time on strategic activities. That means that more than two-thirds of a typical work week consists of just trying to keep things moving.

The majority of the respondent workweek consisted of using labor intensive methods—drafting detailed emails, updating complex documents and making phone calls—to complete routine assignments like onboarding new employees, processing requests and fielding employee inquiries. 

These high touch, low value assignments use time that could be spent one on one with employees in a far more meaningful way.

More than 90 percent of the HR managers in the study believed that they could make a greater contribution to high-touch and high-value initiatives such as career development if they could break free from these manual administrative tasks.

Many routine processes are complicated and done manually, which provides minimal visibility to those involved. Just think of the administrative steps required to prepare for an employee’s first day in the office. The overwhelmingly manual nature of these steps in most organizations today as well as the possibility for delay and human error increases with each touchpoint needed to complete the on boarding process—from facilities and security to finance and IT. The result is an overwhelmed HR department, a frustrated hiring manager and a puzzled and discouraged new employee.

While most companies have invested heavily in HR technology, there continues to be gaps that lead to challenging outcomes. HR is still far too tactical, and employees lack a modern employee experience—an HR portal that allows them to manage all HR needs. Perhaps because of this, the study also found that a substantial 74 percent of HR departments plan to restructure within the next year. The next 12 months will be a time of progress for HR as more organizations explore how technology and service management can help transform the employee experience and how work gets done and is tracked in HR. Consider these results:

·      

•      The study found that streamlining technology is a priority for 63 percent of respondents
  
•        Eighty-three percent believe that their department could add more value to their organization by employing a higher level of technology
  
•        Ninety-one percent said that technology is the key to improving HR responsiveness, which keeps business moving and employees satisfied

What would you do with the time you could save by putting the right technology to work for you? The survey’s respondents unanimously agreed that they could make strategic contributions to their organizations. A well-run HR department is absolutely critical to the success of any organization and HR budgets are increasing year over year, a trend that is expected to continue.

As organizations continue to increase HR budgets and HR budgets continue to make technology a priority, these investments will help HR shed unnecessarily manual tasks and focus on projects that are high value.