Blog Classic – HR Bureau Ghana

29Apr

How to Manage Millennials at the Workplace

The term Millennial is used to describe people born between 1980 and 2000. They are also known as Generation Y (Gen Y). The term Millennial usually applies to individuals who reached adulthood around the turn of the 21st century. Millennials are identified by the following common behavior traits technology savvy, job-hoppers, skeptics, impatient and disloyal, non-conformist, insubordinate, ambitious-yet-lazy, digital and social media addicts.

Workplace satisfaction matters more to Millennials than monetary compensation. Work-life balance is often considered essential. They are less likely to put up with an unpleasant work environment and more likely turn to social media platforms to voice their concerns. Satisfied Millennials on the other hand advocate for organizations they work for, provide honest, free and convincing public relations (PR).

A study conducted by Bloomberg in 2018, noted that Millennials accounted for 31.5% of the world population. In a similar survey by Price Waterhouse Coopers, it projected that Millennials will account for half of the global workforce by 2020. Data from the Ghana statistical service show that 57% of the working population is under the age of 25. These statistics make it imperative for institutions to put in place measures that will effectively manage Millennials at the workplace to boost performance.

We share some strategies that can be used by institutions to manage Millennials at the workplace.

Assess employee engagement factors at least once every two years

Use employee engagement surveys to identify employee needs and gaps at the workplace. This will help identify determinant factors for each demographic group which may vary at the workplace. Essential management decisions can be made from the information obtained from such surveys to strengthen organizational performance. Questions relating to work-life balance, participation in decision making, flexible work schedule, use of technology at the workplace and games could be asked. Ask open-ended questions to give staff the opportunity to express and share their opinions about the issues.

Promote work-life balance activities

The quest to achieve organizational targets can be stressful some-times for everyone at the workplace. These may require staff to work longer hours or during weekends placing their work-life out of balance. Work-life balance has been found to have a relationship with labor-turnover. When an employee’s personal life conflicts with their work schedules, there is a tendency for them to leave a job based on how such a situation is handled by their supervisors. Organizations in their quest to manage Millennials may consider practices such as paid vacations & weekends, Happy hour activities, paid sports subscriptions, etc. This assessment should be done on a regular basis and objective to determine if staff are performing at their optimum and in cases where challenges exist to address them.

Create opportunities for growth

It is important that Millennials know there are opportunities for growth at the workplace. The absence of such opportunities brings them to a point of evaluating their role and future with the organization. If they feel stuck in a routine role for a long time, they will leave the organization. Career discussions should be held with their line managers and HR at least twice in a year to bring direction to their career growth. Rotation of roles similar to their career choice should also be considered as a means to create growth opportunities.

Embrace Technology

The effectiveness of technology and social media in promoting business growth in recent times cannot be overemphasized. Millennials by virtue of their period of birth find themselves in a digital age and are tech-savvy. Studies have shown that Millennials spend an average of two and a half hours on social media every day, and send on average 50 texts a day. Multi-networking is the new norm and presents great opportunities to meet other professionals, promote businesses and generate leads as well as revenue. Organizations should adopt technology at the workplace to get the best out of Millennials. It is however essential that the organization institute control measures prevent abuse of technology.

Conduct Stay Interviews

At the core of the practice of Stay Interviews is to reduce employee turnover. Instead of waiting to hold exit-interviews when staff is leaving, conduct Stay interviews particularly with Millennials to identify key areas to improve. Steps should then be taken to address possible concerns in the broader interest of promoting long-term stay in the organization.

Enhance your organizational

Practices aimed at promoting team cohesion and staff performance are evolving and it is essential for the organizations to keep up with industry trends. Millennials are usually expressive, and like every other staff want to work and stay in organizations whose values they identify with. Practices that are autocratic, procedural & process inclined, command-and-control driven, dismissive of employee voice, and overly conservative will not attract and retain Millennials for the long term. An organization’s culture should be friendly to attract people especially Millennials. Practices that will enhance organizational performance includes promoting inter-generational working teams, adopt workgroup concepts, brainstorming sessions, adopt inverse-mentor system (where a young staff is paired with an older employee to learn new skills usually in technology).

The argument of singling out one generation and proposing measures to manage them at the workplace has been questioned by People Management and Business Professionals in recent times. The concern has always been that every generation thinks that the subsequent one is lazy and does things differently.

That notwithstanding, we believe that staff in an organization must be categorized and studied for effective management to ensure they give out their best at the workplace. Clearly, inter-generational conflicts cannot be avoided in the workplace neither can Millennials as they make up a good percentage of our workforce globally now.

Indeed, Millennials are clearly the most misunderstood and discussed generation of our time.

Organizations must, therefore, adopt creative ways to manage Millennials at the workplace to get the best out of them. Using people management practices that worked in the past may not necessarily yield the expected outcome with Millennials because of their unique needs.

25Mar

Cost of Living Crises

The cost-of-living crisis: Five ways you can support your employees

Employers shouldn’t leave their people to cope with rising prices on their own – here’s how you can help to ease the strain.

It’s no secret that prices are rising faster than they have in a generation. Inflation is heading rapidly for double figures, energy bills have doubled in 12 months, and millions of employees are feeling the squeeze. According to a survey by the Post Office and The Trussell Trust, 38% of Brits had to choose between heating or eating in the three months from November to January.

At the same time, employers are facing a slowing economy and the prospect of recession – financial reality dictates that simply offering more pay is not an option for many. Research by the Chartered Management Institute in April found that almost half of UK organisations (48%) were not planning to offer any pay rise at all this year, due to fears over their future financial performance. Of those that were, the average uplift was 2.8%, a long way short of keeping up with prices.

Does that mean employers should simply leave their people to face the challenge alone? No, says Francis Goss, director, people experience consulting at Gallagher: “Employers are in a unique position to support their employees through financial difficulties. In doing so, they are discharging their social responsibility as an employer, as well as delivering better business outcomes for all. When employees are worried about how they are going to pay their bills or put fuel in their car, it’s not surprising that the financial stress can have a negative impact on their work, so anything that employers can do, even with limited budgets is welcomed.”

Fortunately, there are a range of practical and cost-effective ways in which organisations can help employees cope with the cost of living crisis, and support both their people and the future of their business.

Access to external debt support and advice

The best solution for debt support is to have an Employee Assistance Plan in place, but in the absence of one, there are a number of reputable, free-to-use debt management support services that provide advice, liaise with creditors and help employees avoid the long-term stress of unmanageable financial commitments. Signposting sources such as StepChange, National Debtline and CAP on your intranet and via regular internal communication can be very effective.

Streamline your existing offer

What benefits do you already provide that help employees save money? And how easy are they to use? Many firms offer discounts with retailers and supermarkets, for example, but if they are only available through a complicated registration and sign-in process then take-up will be less than it could be. The same applies to discounts on home, car and pet insurance, all great ways to save money in hard times. It’s also worth looking at any benefits that are consistently less popular and replacing them with more relevant and compelling alternatives. Whatever you do offer, make sure that money-saving benefits are as quick and easy for employees to access as possible.

Look at the latest innovations

It’s always worth checking out the employee benefits market, especially if you haven’t reviewed what new innovations are available. Here are a couple of examples:

Prepaid cashback cards. Like the bYond card, a new prepaid debit card that offers up to 15% cashback to a maximum of £900 a year and is accepted by a wide range of popular retailers. It also comes with an app to help users track their spending and top the card up from their bank accounts.

Sidecar savings schemes. Also known as emergency savings. These help employees save for a rainy day – or an unexpected bill such as a broken-down car or washing machine – and are an innovative use of the same self-enrolment principle that is familiar from pension schemes. Members contribute an additional sum direct from payroll that goes into a savings pot they can access in an emergency, building short-term financial resilience and encouraging a habit of saving. Research by provider Nest has found that eight out of ten employees struggling with bills believe a sidecar scheme would help them.

Ensure your expenses policy is keeping up

When did you last update your car mileage allowance to reflect current fuel costs? And what about homeworkers – do you encourage them to maximise the tax benefits of working from home? Do you provide an allowance to help them cope with the cost of heating their home offices in winter?

Spread the word

You may have amazing benefits in place that can save your employees hundreds of pounds a year, but if they don’t know what’s available to them then your hard work has all been in vain. The rule of thumb when it comes to messaging is that however much you are doing it, it’s probably not enough. Make it more engaging by describing it as saving money rather than employee benefits – initiatives such as holding a Money Saving Week or a Cost of Living roadshow can drive the benefits message home to employees in a more relevant way.

Coping with the cost-of-living crisis is going to be a major challenge for many of your people over the next year or two. “Having the right benefits in place, and making sure you communicate effectively about them, can really help your employees cope with the cost-of-living crisis and keep them engaged and productive at work,” says Goss. “It’s doing the right thing for the business and the right thing for your people too.”

This article was culled from the People Management Insight Magazine of the CIPD. UK

19Mar

Preaching Virtue but Practicing Vice

Over the last decade, we have witnessed strong storms blow, disorienting big and small fishes alike in corporate Ghana leaving behind debris that has not be restored till today. Are these failures the result of poor governance structure or the exhibition of unethical behaviours at the workplace?

We see fancy and beautiful display of organizational values on pull-up stands, ceiling drops and walls in reception areas, offices, board and conference rooms. Values such as integrity, speed, honesty, respect and passion are quite common. These values are to guide behaviours at the workplace.

The recent storms in corporate Ghana raised a lot of eye brow about preaching and boldly displaying these values in organizations to make it look like our lives depend on it. It shows how hypocritical we are as a people when it comes to preaching and not practicing what we preach. It means that corporate governance and ethics in business is not adhered to and people generally are not sensitive to them.

Behind closed doors we go against these very values we preach to our team and clients in the name of profit making or keeping the organization alive.

Heads of Accounts are directed by top management members on what to do in preparing financial statements to make organization’s look good in the eye of regulators and customers. In fact different management accounts are prepared for different stakeholders when bidding for the same project. When the Head of Account expresses misgivings about such practices, he/she is given the ‘get out of the kitchen if you find it too hot’. Where is your value of integrity?

Your production team take up overtime assignments only for you to refuse to pay them the approved rate. Your mood and desire to make profit determines the rate and not what is approved. Honesty is shoved out of the window in this scenario I guess, it just needs to be hanged on the ceiling and displayed for people to see but not act it out.

You indicate your disdain for preferential treatment at the workplace time and time again. Yet vacancies in the organization are filled by your friends and family. The organisation’s neatly written recruitment and selection policy is of no relevance here too.

When staff are nominated for external training programmes as part of the organization’s learning & development policy you refuse. Even internal training with external facilitator’s are not regular. All this happens in the context of the organization recording high profits.

There are cases where employee salaries are not increased for over 5 years. The excuse being ‘there is no money’. Yet employees see senior managers and their family living affluent lives.

It has been observed that managers receive low scores even when sales performance is overachieved by over 120%. The motive is to avoid increasing their salary and to eventually reduce cost. Fairness & Equity doesn’t really matter.

During your presentation on corruption and anti-bribery at this year’s Business Executives Summit, you expressly showed your concern on the effect this is having on our society. Great presentation by all standards. As a further step to illustrate your commitment to fighting bribery and corruption, you have also signed several anticorruption/bribery policies that are beautifully framed and displayed in your reception and office. In fact, staff are required to take a compliance anti-bribery and corruption test on an annual basis. How then do you direct your Marketing Director to ‘find’ something for the Procurement Manager of that institution to influence the award of that contract in your favour? How then is it the practice in your organization to pay ‘facilitation fees’, ‘donations’ and all manner of ‘sponsorship’ to other persons for conducting one business or the other with your organization? What happened to the anti-bribery and corruption policy? I guess it doesn’t apply here because in your opinion if business is not approached that way ‘nothing’ will happen.

An organization’s values determine its accepted behaviours and ultimately its culture. When an organization’s values are weak, one does not need to think too far about practices that pertain in the organization. Senior Management for that matter play a crucial role to achieve this. In most SME’s the culture of the organization is determined by the Chief Executive Officer. It therefore means leadership should be strong enough to hold such values in high esteem and live it in the day-to-day operations of the company.

Leadership now cannot be separated from values of an organization. Your personal values as a leader of an organization must tie in with that of your organization. That is how it must be to develop a value-based business leader. It is not enough to be just a lip-service leader anymore. If you don’t believe in those values please don’t have them visibly displayed and please don’t preach it! We cannot be led to believe that only ruthlessness and profit can enable us run businesses successfully in this country.

14Mar

HR Retention Strategies

4 key retention strategies to ensure you don’t lose your best HR talent

Thanks to HR’s position on the frontline of so many of the seismic shifts that have hit the workplace in recent times – from hybrid working and the Great Resignation, to the cost of living crisis and now the challenge of ‘quiet quitting’ – life has never been more hectic for hard-pressed people teams everywhere.

Under such trying circumstances perhaps it’s not surprising that looking after the people who look after your people can sometimes take a back seat when it really shouldn’t. A recent survey of 200 UK HR managers showed that almost half (45%) had considered leaving their current roles due to the pressure of dealing with employee burnout and mental health concerns. Furthermore, 23% reported suffering compassion fatigue as a result of two years spent supporting struggling employees while not being adequately supported themselves.

Left unchecked, the consequences are not hard to predict – your top HR talent will start to leave, just at the point when you need them most. In fact, this may already be happening, data released by LinkedIn in June shows that the level of churn in HR roles globally was 15%, over one-third higher than the average and the highest turnover rate of any job function.

So what can you do to help keep them onboard? Here are some retention strategies to help you hang on to your HR team, and ensure that they are positive, engaged and ready to meet whatever fresh challenges the fast-changing world of work can throw at them:

Prioritise the team’s wellbeing and mental health

HR people are programmed to look after other people, it’s the nature of the job. But that shouldn’t mean that they don’t get looked after themselves. Despite the progress made since the pandemic on sharing our personal lives with colleagues, admitting to mental health worries at work can still be taboo.

So, senior leaders need to be role models, who talk openly about the issues, use the company’s mental health support services (assuming there are some – if not, then that’s the first job on your to do list) and don’t expect their teams to work themselves to a frazzle at evenings and weekends. HR managers should also be briefed to engage with their teams and encourage them to prioritise their own wellbeing – because it’s hard to help someone else when you need help yourself.

Create a joined up expression of your culture

The difference between the ‘external’ culture a company presents when it is looking to attract candidates and the ‘internal’ one that those candidates experience once they are hired can be stark. This is something that impacts HR people more than most, because they are immersed in both the external and internal view on a daily basis. If the contrast is too jarring, retention will always be an uphill struggle because disappointment will turn to demotivation and ultimately to departure.

So, try to present a joined up experience of your culture, one where attraction and retention are no longer seen as separate functions, but rather as conjoined parts of a single whole. As Personio’s Attraction Plus white paper reveals, talent attraction can benefit from internal input – such as feedback from hired candidates – just as talent retention can benefit from external input, like secondments to other organisations and peer feedback.

Give your people the work they want to do

Job satisfaction is about feeling that you’ve done something worthwhile at the end of the day, but it’s hard to get that warm glow if you’ve spent eight hours filling in a spreadsheet or processing holiday applications. Personio’s HR Study 2022 white paper identified the burden of admin as a major brake on higher value HR activities (55% of HR managers said time spent on admin was getting in the way of more strategic work, and 19% said that too much admin and process was preventing HR from supporting business success).

Smart HR tech can help automate low-value admin and process tasks, digitising workflow and freeing up your team to apply their skills and experience where they can have the biggest impact. Berlin-based NGO Kiron cut the time spent on HR admin by 30% when it adopted Personio as the central hub for all its HR processes. More rewarding work leads to greater job satisfaction and higher retention rates. It’s a win-win!

Keep on top of performance and development

A clear and well managed path for career development – and the performance support needed to follow it – has always been crucial when it comes to retaining talent. Never more so than in today’s tight market, where if you don’t manage performance and develop your people, they will vote with their feet and find an employer who will. The impact on retention is unarguable – research from LinkedIn shows that 94% of employees would stay longer at a company that invested in their development.

Nevertheless, Personio’s 2022 HR Study found that performance reviews are on the whole, neither fair nor frequent, with only 51% of employees saying their reviews were fair and a mere 39% saying they received regular performance feedback. A sobering 18% said they never received a review from their manager. Technology can help automate the review cycle, but it’s up to managers to have fair, transparent and regular performance conversations with their team, and to follow them up with tailored development plans for each individual.

With the cost of replacing a typical employee running at around £3,000 a head, improving retention makes sound commercial sense across every department. But keeping your HR team on board, engaged and productive is doubly vital – because they are the people who can help you hang on to all of your top talent, whatever department or function of the business they work in.

This article was culled from the September 2022 Edition of the People Management Insight Magazine of the CIPD, UK

22Jan

HR Bureau Ghana Newsletter

HR Bureau Ghana Limited, over the past 10 years has provided indigenous and foreign companies with excellent Human Resource services. HR Bureau was established with the vision to be the leader in HR consultancy services by providing client focused solutions through innovation, competence, precision and professionalism.

Our team of experts are experienced Human Resource and Business Management professionals with a good track record of transforming organizations through effective people and talent management.

We are guided by the belief that solutions should be aligned to the vision and culture of an organization. This approach has attracted local and international organizations whom we provide a wide range of services including Executive Recruitment, Outsourcing (Employee, Payroll Management & Salary Administration), Research & Surveys, Hospitality Services and Training.

HR Bureau Ghana advocate for solutions that meet the needs of our clients and their employees because we believe people are the core of every business.

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS CHANGING RECRUITMENT IN GHANA.

With the advent of Facebook and the now defunct hi5, social media presents a means to connect with friends and families who we no longer see. These platforms helped reconnect with old classmates, long-lost family members as well as find new friends. Social media has kept conversations going and helped keep connections growing.

Although social media is still being used for these purposes, we have witnessed a progressive and diverse transformation from its usage as friendship-making tool to business-generating and support tools. Social media these days is being used by businesses to promote sales of their products and services, assisting entrepreneurs in finding investors, supporting law enforcement agencies in their investigations and connecting recruiters with suitable candidates during talent acquisition exercises.

RECRUITERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Recruitment, in Ghana, in the early 90’s to 2000’s was mostly done through; posting of advertisements in various newspapers, notice board publications, the occasional staff bulletins or newsletters and by verbal referrals. These mediums though relatively effective at the time, had a small reach as there was just so much connections one could have or just a small number of people who read the various newspapers and saw these advertisements. But with platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn coming onto the recruitment scene, the reach for an advert is broader, targeted and diverse. A survey carried out by Jobvite in 2018 in the United States of America showed that 92% of employers had used or plan using social networks for recruitment. Research conducted by HR Bureau Ghana in 2019 showed that 3 out of every 4 recruiters have used social media in their recruitment process within the past 1 year.

Let’s look at the most popular social media platforms and how they are used for recruitment, starting with the biggest platform we have at the moment – Facebook.

FACEBOOK’S ROLE IN RECRUITMENT

Facebook has grown in leaps and bounds since it was introduced in the 2000s. In 2010, Facebook unveiled the job posting button on business pages allowing companies to post vacancies on their social media platform. Recruiters and Organizations have the option of posting jobs on business pages either by advertising or simply posting to attract suitable candidates for roles. A usership of 5.8 million Ghanaians on Facebook presents a good audience for job adverts giving credence to the result of 1 in every 4 recruiters has successfully found a candidate for a vacancy on Facebook. Companies and recruiters alike are using Facebook as an effective tool to discover talent.

WHATSAPP’S ROLE IN RECRUITMENT

Since this messenger’s introduction, it has become one of the most popular messaging app; with millions of people using WhatsApp, the reach of this app is infinite. These days, recruiters put job postings in groups for students, colleagues and contacts who then share these vacancies with their contacts and network. The reach and scope for these postings is truly endless and immeasurable for the recruiter. In some instances, candidates are given the opportunity to chat and send messages with recruiters on WhatsApp platforms thereby introducing an interactive phase to the recruitment process.

LINKEDIN’S ROLE IN RECRUITMENT

LinkedIn is the crème de la crème of social media when it comes to recruitment. With an estimated 1.3 million Ghanaian users, LinkedIn offers professionals an avenue to network, share ideas and connect with other experts across the globe. LinkedIn is home to businesses who use the platform to grow their brand equity, connect with potential customers and more importantly, recruit able and highly qualified staff. With LinkedIn, a recruiter can scout and approach professionals directly or post jobs and receive applications from interested applicants. With recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms, recruiters receive tailored applications based on chosen benchmarks selected when jobs are posted. To curb spam and scams, LinkedIn now charges recruiters when jobs are posted. This ensures that only accurate information is posted and by serious recruiters.

DIGITAL RECRUITING

One huge plus of social media is reach. Sitting in Accra, you can post and recruit a qualified person in Lusaka without having to travel all the way there. Social media greatly increases the pool of applicants that recruiters have to choose from and helps sort through the pool to ensure businesses reach out to only the most highly qualified of the applicants.

PRE-EMPLOYMENT CHECKS

A growing trend in pre-employment checks is the use of social media to verify the potential employee’s educational background, previous places of work and the person-organization fit. These checks have turned social media into not only a recruitment tool but a recruitment verifier tool that assists organizations in the hiring process.

OUR VIEW POINT

While social media presents a fresh perspective to job vacancy advertising and pre-employment checks,

it is essential for recruiters and organizations to employ a blend of selection tools in filtering unsuitable candidates during the shortlisting process. It is equally important to approach social media profile searches with caution bearing in mind that information presented online may be inaccurate, may not be up-to-date nor provide the full story of the potential employee.

Recruiters and Organizations must establish the specific purpose of using social media profile searches for pre-employment checks. Merely using it to ultimately find something unsuitable about the candidate is counterproductive. Such searches may be used to; verify details on the CV/Resume, qualification and educational history, enquire into reputational risk of the candidate depending on the position being recruited. There should therefore be clarity on which area the profile check is being used to ascertain

Secondly, candidates must be informed of the possibility of online searches being conducted prior to the check and must be given the opportunity to respond to information obtained during the search. Information and data obtained through such searches must be handled with confidentiality and within the framework of data protection legislation.

THE FUTURE

Technological advancement in business management brings us to the awareness that we indeed are in a digital age and offers us exciting times in people management. Social media will continue to be a true tool for recruiters and businesses as these platforms innovate and evolve technology. There is really no limit to what recruiters and organizations could use social media for.

STARTING OUT: 10 KEY POINTS TO NOTE ON YOUR NEW JOB.

Taking up a job in a new environment presents challenges to everyone. Adjusting to organizational and role requirements, meeting new colleagues and building relationships can be overwhelming but central to your success in your new role. Here are some tips to get you going in your new role:

Understand your role requirements. Speak to your Manager or supervisor to know more about what is expected of you and from them as well.
Take note of the organization’s culture and their way of doing things. Then plan on how to adjust, improve or manage this culture. This is key to eliminating stress and frustration on the job.
Be informed of the organisation’s communication culture. Observe the preferred channel of communication, i.e. email, face-to face and make adjustments.
Make a chart of the names of your work colleagues and their respective positions. This helps in identifying your colleagues and staff at work in the first month of taking on a new role.
Be punctual to all meetings. This indicates your enthusiasm and commitment to your new role.
Show a willingness to learn and be teachable. You cannot know everything.
Take notes as people talk you through processes and systems.
Ask questions to be abreast with matters quickly and ask for support when needed.
Make adjustments to your routine if your hours of commute have changed i.e. get enough sleep to enable you wake up early, increase personal reading time to keep up with current trends of your new role.
Build strong connections with your colleagues to enjoy your new environment.

Give yourself time to grow and integrate into your new work environment. Be you and enjoy your time at work!