However, I still manage to always deliver on time. Same applies to the millennial’s who somehow are tweeting, snapping, hash tagging, but when it comes to work, they still manage to complete their assignments within allocated time.  So, what is the deal with this? How does this work and how is this even possible? Let us analyze this and either justify the “waste” of time or categorize it as something being useful despite of giving the illusion of being wasted time.  

You might have heard of a tool called Yammer. It was a Facebook like service, but for the corporate sector. Microsoft bought this service back in 2012 if I am not totally mistaken. This was a surprising move for many. However, speculations were that Microsoft had to do something to compete with Facebook being total dominator within their field which is social networking. But again, as I mentioned the product was primarily meant for employers and businesses not as such for private persons. Facebook later wards came with something called Facebook at work, which was quite similar to Facebook for private persons or end consumer. You might also have heard of Slack, that too is a similar product, which is widely being used in businesses. Just to point out, all these tools that have been mentioned here, can be considered counterproductive products, which cause waste of time and waste of productivity. Yet employers are not only implementing these but are also encouraging their employees to use these products actively. So, what is the deal with that? 

If you recall the 50,60 and even 70 and 80 eras you might recall that smoking var becoming a more and more trendy thing to do. Employers were even encouraged and, in some situations, forced to allow smoking breaks. Besides that, unions made sure that being minority at work you should get free on days special to you. Same was the rule for religions, where some employees were even allowed to perform religious rituals during work hours. If you take either of these activities, none of them have productivity written over them. A matter of fact they are not even remotely associated with productivity. However, they are related to well-being. In most of the cases these activities lead to social gathering, which either were productive or not, but small social gatherings they were for sure.  

You might also remember the boom of open offices without cabins and no permanent desk policies, which were all justified with the fact that these changes will increase the collaboration and productivity of the employees. Even for these suggestions or change in work environments there were a lot of discussions with both people for and against the new trends. However, in the end of the day things happened as they did and most of these things are now considered as a natural part of a modern office space. Coming back to our original discussion, as we at least can learn from 50-70 years modern history is that humans have been and will remain to be human. They have a social need to interact with other people, despite of being at work, they still need to mingle or talk about none job related things. In these processes people learn other colleagues as human beings and make bonds. These bonds make the work environment much more suitable for creativity and teamwork cause increased productivity. This is also the reason that big companies strive to make work environments joy full, full packed with non-job related but stimulating activities. You might have read or heard about how employees of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon etc. can work out during their work time. Or how these very same employees can play table tennis, or even video games without managers getting agitated. Managers and leaders from the newer generation are brought up and into this modern work environment where they realize that happy and healthy workforce is a key to success.

Organizational investment in health and well-being of their employees are very much in the zeitgeist right now. It’s being fueled by the latest science, the growing costs of unsustainable workforce practices and the recognition that promoting smarter workplace behaviors can also have a significant impact on the bottom line by driving employees to greater job satisfaction, engagement and productivity. One of the principal challenges for businesses today, though, is how to manage change in a way that keeps employees engaged and productive, while also readying them to be the driving force behind transformation. This is why it is very important for every organization to place the employee experience at the core of employee engagement, health, and well-being is essential to building a purpose-led organization. 

This human-focused approach to addressing the future of work is one of the many reasons why well-being is increasingly important across the enterprise and with stress and burnout continuing to be two of the biggest challenges for both employees and employers many people wrongly assume that digital overload and burnout are problems reserved for the tech industry, when in fact it is a global conversation. With technology, innovation, and competition all getting faster, job stress in all industries is on the rise, this is why the most successful companies in the world are heavily investing in a more comprehensive, personalized, and science-driven approach to health and well-being in the workplace through technology.  

With the support of technology and the leaders across industries, we’re continuing to think how to maximize employee health and well-being, and engage employees in new ways. Organizations are seeing an incredible opportunity for growth in AI and people analytics, where technology and data can be infused into career development and recruitment to eliminate bias, give real-time feedback, and engage employees. Imagine with the use human-focused AI, how much healthier, happier and more productive your workforce could be. 

To capitalize on this monumental opportunity, organizations need to adapt to the demands of a highly-competitive environment to attract, retain, and support their most valuable resource – their workforce.  

And since work-life integration continues to be an important factor in winning the war for talent, building a different kind of culture from what existed 10-15 years ago will be paramount to an organization’s success. Focusing on improving and well-being of people’s lives – along with the long-term health of the bottom line – will enable companies to go from surviving to thriving. 

The post The Essence of Social Nosism at Work for an Employee appeared first on Job Prospect.

This is a dilemma that almost all employers face, it does not matter if your office is in Ireland and situated in Dublin, Dundalk, Louth, Cork, Belfast, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Drogheda or Galway. There is always competition present in the job market when it comes to employees or whether we are talking about employers. The press to attract employees with goodies will always be there.

A matter of fact is if you consider large companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify or any other renown company you almost always have a dedicated budget for personal development i.e. a budget tied to the skill development of each employee. This employee might be a desk worker or a field worker and ranging from a new hire to a senior manager. So why is that important? These multi-billion companies have loads of cash and can surely spend some bucks on keeping the skillset of their employees up to date. But how can a small or even medium company do this? How can budgets be tied or allocated for skill development for every employee? If you have ever wondered about this or tired to figure out the answer but have not found the answer you have come to the right place. Let us give you some free advice worth a lot of money. These advices might even be considered as saved money that you did not have to spend on skill development and skill maintenance of your employees, but still managed to get/keep them up to date. 

Previously we have published a blog post for employees, describing and enlisting the most generic IT skills required for a worker in this digital age. If you have not read this blog post you have some catching up to do. You can read the blog post here:  http://jobprospect.ie/mastering-office-products-for-fulfilling-job-requirements/ 

As we stated in that blog post referenced, there are a lot of free resources available online, just waiting to be used. The least and employer can do is to require a certain level of competence within each tool from a specific job position. Keeping the legal things in mind, you certainly cannot impose employees spending their off duty time on learning these skills but you certainly can impose setting off some time each day for a period to learn a new skill or brush up old ones to the latest technology. Back to the phrase or example from social media, do you really want to sit around with a workforce which gradually is getting outdated? In today’s competitive market this is not an option, and before you know it you get caught up by your competitors who leverage and try to capitalize your every weakness and use it to their benefit. We do realize that there are some certain aspects that need to be considered, the genitor might not gain benefit by becoming a racer in a specific tool or technology, but by learning let’s say more about building management and automation systems he might be able to gain valuable knowledge that might prove useful in the effective operation of your office building.  

Every business, being an employer, should have an overall policy for all managers. This includes manager at executive level as well as in the middle level and lower level managers. Each level should be responsible for creating a 3-5 year’s plan for people/employee skill maintenance and development plan. This can be as generic as describing the goals or as detailed as describing the goals along with a detailed execution plan. Whatever the detail level is, a plan should be made available and executed.  

Having up to date skills makes the employees more valuable for the business/company. The older the knowledge or technology the more the experience counts, but the newer the technology the more the new skills counts towards a successful execution of a plan or project. Companies that have a plan aiming towards a clear goal in the horizon tend to be more inspiring for employees as well being more robust and adaptive to change as compared to the ones who choose or stick to just traditional values and tools.

Consider a hiring process where a candidate or potential employee asks about carrier development and investment in the future of people, what will be your answer? We do not have the budgets as the fortune 500 companies or would you rather want to gladly describe how you invest in people within the budget you have to make them even a more valuable asset for you company? We know for a fact that the later choice explanation would encourage the right candidate while the other choice may result in a hire that really is not so much into investing in the future themselves. Some companies operate with bonuses for employees while other do not afford to have this kind of luxuries available.

In either case, if you educate your employees and make sure that they understand that you being the employer value them the most will make them invest more effort in makes them even better and not to mention the amount of effort they will be willing to put in to do their job. If you have your development plan and strategy ready you might even would have started to crouching numbers.

For example, if being an employer you provide each employee 40 hours for skill and personal skills development and you have 50 employees you are spending 40 x 50 (200) hours for non-productive work per annuum. However, if you think about how much these 40 hours are in terms of time spent each year divided by month you will roughly end up under 3 hours per month per employee. If you further break down this to weeks the number becomes even less than an hour. Then again, if you have done your homework and these hours are spent correctly and meaningfully you would be investing this exact amount of effort in the future of your business.  

If you have any questions related to the content presented here please feel free to make contact as we can guide you and even hook you up with the right resources to guide you to create the right level of policy for your business.  

The post Investing in Your True Asset by Investing in Employee’s Skills appeared first on Job Prospect.

One of the things that was probably most unanticipated during and before the Covid19 pandemic was the impact of it on businesses both new ones, already established ones, the ones growing, the ones been there for decades and any other category of business that you can imagine. One thing that became evident is the saying that “one thing that is constant in the world, is change, embrace it!” 

A Leader’s Role 

If you think of a leader, what will you use to describe this role? And what will the definition be when it comes to a generic description of the role vs your personal experience with various leaders and manager through the years? In general, terms a good manager and leader is considered to be a person who leads by example. The one carrying the flag and leading the troops in the right direction. The same person can be described as the general that is encouraging the troops and keeping the morale high through any circumstances and conditions. Probably one of the most important jobs of a good leader is to make sure that the entire team succeeds and that no one is left behind. It is also the leader’s responsibility to make sure that the employee’s interest is taken care of and that an employee’s desire for challenges is met in their daily work.  

Need for Teamwork 

Why is teamwork so important is a question which might have different answers depending on whom you may ask and what position they might be in. But with respect to business, teamwork is key to success. Consider a team of engineers developing some software, a team of salesmen trying to achieve their sales targets or goal, consider a team of teachers, factory workers producing something or whatever scenario where more than one person is involved in producing or delivering a product or a service! As soon as more than a single person is involved in work, the teamwork becomes crucial. One component must deliver so that the other component depending on the first can continue to be developed/delivered to the right person being the customer in this case. 

Manager’s Toolkit   

In traditional terms a manager might have had a limited arsenal of tools, however, in the modern era, a plethora of tools are available just waiting to be used. The challenge is no longer if there are any tools that are suited for the needs, and has rather become how to identify the available and relevant tools. Let’s explore a modern manager’s toolkit that can be utilized during the Covid19 pandemic. We will also spend some time exploring available options. 

I) Available Tools for Teamwork 

A large number of tools, both paid and free versions are available. The functionality greatly differs from product to product depending on the service type, region availability along with competing for availability in your area. To use one of the available tools as an example, you might choose to utilize, Google Meet, Teams, Lync, Slack or Zoom. All the products mentioned here can be used to collaborate between teams, however, each and every one has its benefits and drawbacks. Hence, the question for a manager becomes what to use and what not to use?  

ii) Choosing the Right Tools 

 While choosing the tools, it is very important to consider the needs of your workforce. Who better understands the needs of their workforce than a very engaged leader? The tools selected must be easy to use and must fulfil all the needs and functionality that is required by your team to complete the job in hand. More than often, it is difficult to find a single tool which fulfils all the requirements and you end up choosing a number of tools making the life of those who you care about most (at work) a living nightmare. When several tools have the same functionality the choice of tool falls on the mercy of the employee’s preference. The preference falls normally down on ease of use and end user-friendliness. Therefore it is quite important to consider these factors before the acquisition of new technology and products. 

Tools in Desperate Times 

The tips provided in the previous sections are valid in the time of peace, I.e. in the time of normal operation. What do you do in the time of chaos and the time of Covid19 pandemic? You can definitely not start procuring new tools. You are surely dependent on using the existing tools. Office 365 is used by more than 180 million customers around the world. If you have a business that has an online presence or you use computers at your workplace the chances are high for you being one of these 180 million customers. By the way, these 180 Million customers are not numbers of active users, each of these 180 million have a varying number of active users ranging from 1 to several thousand or even hundreds of thousands.  

If you are so lucky that your business is using office 365, the next section applies specifically to you. Even if you are not a paying customer and using Office 365, there still all tools that can be utilized free of charge.  

Using Office 365 as a Collaboration Tool 

Office 365 is a complete suite of different products consisting of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Sharepoint, PowerApps, PowerAutomate, Planner, Teams and several others. The most important tools are the tools for collaboration. We can write a blog post on each of these tools but we are not specifically focusing on the technology here and rather on the employer’s options so let’s keep our focus on the Office 365 collaboration tools and how these tools can be used to increase employee’s productivity and help the business grow.  

1) Use of Outlook 

Reaching individual by email is still 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined. This is a powerful statistic and should not be ignored in talent acquisition. Receiving a text or a call with a job offer can come across as intense, invasive, or spammy. This doesn’t mean that emails coming from recruiters or your future employer won’t come off as spammy, but we do know that emails are generally perceived as the more formal and official way to communicate something as important as a career move.  

If you use email, you might be familiar with Outlook it is the second most used email client in the world after Gmail. A lot of paper working has been replaced with email communication. During the day, employees communicate with each other using email. The email is also quite an important tool to communicate with external resources as clients and customers. The email client is used by individual users or can be utilized by several users by utilizing the shared mailbox functionality. By utilizing shared mailbox functionality, save mailbox is available for a team of employees. This approach works well but is quite a traditional approach for collaborating with your team.  

2) Use of Sharepoint 

Sharepoint is a document handling and management system, a system providing processes to create, manage and update documents during their entire lifecycle. It is a bit unfair to describe Sharepoint as only a document handling system, as it offers so much more. You can create libraries, create blogs, internal wikis, create collaboration sites etc. Automated processes can be created, emails can be sent directly to rooms (project folders), RSS feeds can be enabled and utilized, tasks can be created and assigned by utilizing integration with a planner. Sharepoint also provides RBAC (role-based access control) which enables creating of virtual teams. This teams can be projects or departments or something as simple as job roles. As Sharepoint retains the data indefinitely, it is a good archive solution. In order to use Sharepoint, it is important to create good processes to define the flow and to define the structure in advance. Not properly planning and just starting to use Sharepoint will surely cause creation of a lot of unstructured data, which might become difficult to process. However, predefined Sharepoint roles as author, contributor, reader and visitors to make life a bit easier.

3) Use of Teams 

Microsoft’s latest addition to the collaboration family is Teams. Teams simply put is the recommended tool for collaboration. Teams provide a lot of functionality that Sharepoint provides, but with an even more modern touch. In addition, in Teams, Channels can be created and users can be added to these channels. Both internal and external workers/users can be added to these channels. Teams also provide a very rich platform for online meeting, Chat, and file and screen sharing. Teams have also officially replaced Lync, but with added functionality. Collaboration is made easy as you easily can differentiate based on individual users or teams/channels. Teams have a rich integration with other applications which can directly integrate with teams. As with Sharepoint, it is imperative to have a good structure within Teams. It is wise to invest some time in planning the exact use of Teams. A more systematic adaption approach is better than using every available functionality. In many SMB organizations, internal employee start using Teams for it has officially been adopted by the organization. This means, you no longer can have a planned structure or deployment. However, there is still possible to create a structure that works.  

As with most the products, there is no one size fits all solution. The solution must be designed according to your organization and your employee team requirements. If you have not started to use Teams, it might be the collaboration tool that you were missing. If you only want it to be used for internal communication, or for it to become a tool for collaboration or whatever use, make sure to access it properly and deploy it gradually. 

The post How to Collaborate effectively with Your Team using Microsoft appeared first on Job Prospect.

Recruitment process 
I am not going to focus too much on the interview process, if you are interested in reading my opinion you might want to consider reading other blog posts that we have available. However, I still have to include some basic principles of recruiting for the purpose to show the change and the challenges caused by Covid19 pandemic.  

During the recruitment process at either the first or second phase, you end up talking to a person from HR. Normally the first conversation is made on a phone while the second tends to be in person. During this process both the recruiter and the one being recruited (a potential employee) get the chance the evaluate the other partner I.e. the employer evaluates and gets the first impression of applicant and vice versa. As 70-80% of communication is non-verbal and mainly body language the social interaction becomes quite important. This element is quite important if you ask both the participating parties, also considering how to evaluate someone who you really do not know boils down to the first meeting. You might have heard or read the saying; The first impression is the last impression! 

Covid 19 – Lockdown 
So along now comes Covid19 and social distancing along with complete lockdowns. Every business is trying to minimize the impact of this new disease and is trying to do so by following advice and recommendations made by health authorities. One of the most common advice made from several health authorities in Europe has been to avoid having gatherings, and rather use internet-based conferencing. So almost everyone who can, in spite of they being technically capable or not is trying to follow the recommendation. The result though is very different for everyone trying. To be honest, the chances are, if you are a normal worker with an average non-technical job you would not know that much about online conferencing. I see that you disagree with me, yelling at me how ignorant I must be making such a claim, when Skype has been around for ages, Facetime, and not to mention Facebook messenger, and what about Signal, WhatsApp, Viber etc the list just keeps ongoing. Well, I understand your frustration, but please bear with me as I try to make my case. As you might have noticed and guessed, most of these products are target on private use and probably are not even for the business market. Those products which are or at least are worth mentioning a very least is Lync! Now back to the problem description, as you use a product to talk to your family, friends or someone else with whom you have a personal relationship is NOT the same as talking to someone whom you have a business relationship with or might end up getting a business relationship with, do you now see the difference? Let’s use a quick and short example, you might want to have a facetime, or video session with your girlfriend, boyfriend, family member etc. Will such a session force you to be well prepared? What I mean to say, you shall most probably have some general discussion or topic that are important and/or relevant to you. But there is not formalness with it.  

Now consider the scenario where you are trying to land your dream job, which is a position in a big company. Will you just make a call without being properly prepared? And if your answer is yes, you might end up not getting that job. Based on this justification, we can at least agree on the fact that using a tool privately is not the same as using it in a professional context.  

Remote interview 
The saviour for businesses being in need of new resources in the form of recruits and employees, is something called a remote interview, especially during this Covid19 pandemic. This is the better option as compared to interview in person, or is it? Let’s explore some of the key elements of a remote/online interview, both with regards to being an employer and being an applicant 

Being host or organizer  
This definitely can introduce some challenges for the employer if online interviewing and the online meeting has not been a part of the company’s history. There are number of things that need to be considered both before conducting the interview as well as during and after the interview. As previously stated in this post, the applicant who will be interviewed will also form his picture of the potential employer. Hence being the representant of company/business you must be professional and make a professional impression. There are some best practices for online meetings that can and to be honest should be followed. Let’s enlist these in random order and describe each element briefly 

1) Internet Connection Speed 
Being the host or guest participating in the online interview, internet speed does matter. If you have bad WIFI coverage or in general a lot of bandwidth consumption chances are that the quality of your online meeting will suffer. And when this happens, you might say sorry a couple of times, but after that, you are starting to make an impression, which will be quite long-lasting. Representing the business, you might give the idea that the company has or uses sluggish, outdated or malfunctioning systems. Being on the other side of the table you might give the idea that you might not have properly prepared for such an important event namely the interview. This too does not score well with the recruiter. 

2) Background Environment 
Please make sure that you sit in an office, room or a cabin without background noise. Have you ever had a phone call where the seller is trying to sell you something, you are interested in buying but you just can understand half of the conversation due to the background noise. Or you are describing relevant job experience, but in the background you dog is barking, kids are listening to nursery rimes or watching cartoons.  As people do have a lenient approach and might understand your position, this might still weaken your position and give the impression you not being professional enough! 

3) Presentation 
The presentation is also one of the most important things during and online interview. This applies to the presentation of the participants I.e. being in presentable condition as well as the presentation that might be used as material for the meeting. Having a good structure is pivotal to keep you audience engaged and keep on having their attention. Use of monotone speech, choice of a bad theme, or simple choice of colors that might not be easily visible on the screen all are part of the presentation. 

4) Being human 
Even though the interview is being conducted online, remember that we are humans and need to stretch out our legs, visit the toilet or have a need to fetch a glass of water, tea or coffee. But please also bear in mind that even though dirking beverages is permissible eating is strictly off-limits. Imagine have a meeting with someone who already has their mouthful while trying to talk to you. 

5) Correct Equipment 
Use of camera makes sure that all the participants are engaged. However, it is sometimes difficult to remember or easy to forget that you are being watched. Always make sure that your background is presentable while using the camera. Using the camera in the mobile might seem to be a good idea, but if you attending to be the host, remember that you would be using the same pair of hands to take down notes. A camera attached to the computer gives a much more professional image rather that you holding your mobile camera with your arm extended out to provide a good enough picture.

6)  Media Files and Sensitive Data 
Often if not always, a presentation includes information that is considered confidential, I.e. the information is meant to be available for the general public. This information can be a part of the presentation that you present for a candidate who meets you in person, as the person will not be taking the contents with them. While when the same content is presented during an online interview, the guest might take screenshots or pictures. Rather be safe and careful than being sorry. 

7) Presentation Skills 
It is a good idea to have gone through the presentation and interview theme in advance. You do not want to start using functions during the interview, which you are not comfortable using. For example, if you are asked a question about benefits the company offers to employees, and you do not remember and you start searching on your intranet site. During the entire process you expose information unintentionally, or in the other scenario where you have files opened on your computer while you are sharing your screen.  

8) Wrapping it up 
Make sure to have a summary at the end of the interview, as you would in person and answer any questions. Agree upon how you will provide feedback on points, concerns or questions raised during the interview.  

9) General Tips 
For online meetings, it is generally a good practice to make people wait in the lobby before you let them in the meeting room. This has several benefits like for example you have control over who is participating and entering the interview. Besides that, if you have any technical issues these can be resolved before you start people enter the room/meeting. It is also a good practice to test the meeting room and equipment before the meeting starts. If there are several people attending/conducting the interview it would be a good idea to put everyone on mute and allow one person to talk at a time.

Online meeting tools have functions as raising the hand for questions, or chat-based communication. It could also to be wise to inform about the data collection and retention especially with regards to GDPR.  

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