With a turnover rate that is more than double than that of all other occupations, LOCAL CALL CENTERS struggle TO maintaining a reliable workforce. Here are some tips for retaining your best call center reps..... … Read More »
Check out this HIRING GUIDE that will help you find and hire great employees each and every time - a step by step approach to the right hiring decisions! … Read More »
One-on-one meetings with your employees might seem like a time-consuming effort, but the return on investment is huge. … Read More »
We know how important the hiring/recruiting process has become. And it all starts with selecting the RIGHT RECRUITER or RECRUITING ORGANIZATION … Read More »
The PACE Staffing Network has been around 40 years - long enough to experience the changing role of Human Resources in the local business and professional community. … Read More »
PACE Celebrates HR professionals who play a critical role in the success of NW businesses! … Read More »
Today, the requests we get for Administrative Assistant or Executive Assistant roles are just as detailed as any request for someone to fill a professional or managerial role. … Read More »
We know there are some timeless “best practices” for hiring right that are particularly important when talent pipelines are lean. … Read More »
We’ve Signed Up to be at the NHRMA Conference in Bellevue, WA... Have You? … Read More »
While large employers have been beefing up their HR teams for the last several years, smaller, more medium sized companies are just getting into their recruiting rhythm and are adding HR staff as their way of getting into the race. … Read More »
PACE Staffing Network knows this trend first hand. Over 65% of the “temp orders” we fill are being tagged by our client as “possible hires”. Over 35% of the employees we place into “temporary roles” end up being hired by our clients directly. … Read More »
“Above the Crowd” is just one more way for us to talk about “making a difference” which has been a watchword for our company, the PACE Staffing Network, since its founding over 35 years ago. Being different by finding people for our clients who “make a difference”, and by helping our clients differentiate their businesses from their competitors, is, for us, the one and only way to truly rise “above the crowd”. … Read More »
instead of abandoning your employer, consider how you could take a page out of an entrepreneurial playbook and inject new energy into your organization. … Read More »
Beginning April 1, both large employers (501 employees or more) and small (500 or fewer employees) located in SEATTLE must pay their employees no less than a hourly rate of $11/hr. – or a base of $10/hr. … Read More »
By Josh Tolan The winter season, and all its attendant holidays, can make you really take stock of what you have. This is why many companies throw holiday parties for employees. It's a great way to say "thanks" for a job well done this past year. But holiday parties can come with their own set of minefields to navigate. An awkward holiday party is like an employee getting coal in their corporate stocking. Here are some tips to avoid this fate and keep your holiday party as merry as Santa Claus: 1) Keep Your Spirits Bright...but Under Control Tis the season to keep spirits bright, but employees who imbibe too many spirits can be a recipe for a holiday party disaster. By spirits, of course, we mean alcohol, which is often a key component to an office holiday party. You just need to look toward pop culture for an example of how dangerous drinking to excess at the holiday party can be. On the AMC's 60s-era drama Mad Men, a booze-filled party turned into a disaster when a drunk employee ran over the foot of a superior with a lawn mower. Most likely having a few too many drinks won't result in bodily injury, but it can certainly hurt your employee morale. Instead of pouring out hard liquor, pick something more mellow such as wine or something seasonal like eggnog. Watch employees who look like they might be on the verge of drinking to excess and quietly cut them off. Or you could even decide to forgo the alcohol entirely and instead provide fun seasonal beverages. Whatever you do, make sure employees don't wake up regretting their actions at your holiday party in the next morning. 2) Know Your Staff To craft the perfect holiday party, you'll first need to understand the makeup and needs of your employees. These are the same people you connected with in the hiring process, whether through an in-person interview or through online video. Think about their unique needs before scheduling your office party venue. Do most of your workers have families or are they single and ready to cut loose? If your employees are mostly family-minded, you don't want to schedule your holiday party at the new hip bar in town. Instead, you might decide on a holiday fair or family-friendly activity everyone can take part in. Likewise, if your employees are mostly single and looking to have fun this winter, a night out might be more alluring to them than going to a production of The Nutcracker. Many offices, however, have a mix of both types of employees. In this case, you'll want to schedule something that will be fun for everyone. For instance, going bowling or attending a karaoke night will allow the single workers to grab a few drinks and have fun while the families can still tag along and enjoy themselves. 3) Rock Around the Holiday Tree Winter is a great time of year in which many holidays occur. Staying clear of religious affiliation is a great rule of thumb in the office in general, but it's even more important around the holidays. Not all of your employees will observe the same religious holidays, and therefore it's good to keep this time of year as nondenominational as possible. Put aside the manger and Hanukkah candles for twinkle lights and snowmen. It will make your entire workforce feel included instead of just the members that share your religious views. 4) Consider ditching Secret Santa Secret Santa can be very stressful, especially if you end up with a coworker you don't know very well. The episode of NBC's The Office, where horrible boss Michael Scott reacts badly to a homemade present, shows the shortcomings of secret Santa present swaps. Avoid the awkwardness of buying the wrong present by encouraging your office to give to others instead. Start a toy drive or pool all the money that would be spent on gifts to give to charity instead. After all, the season is about giving back and being grateful for the gifts we already have, and no one really needs another scented candle from a coworker who has no idea what to get you. Holiday and Christmas work parties can be great ways to bond with your workforce and say a special thanks for a job well done in 2014. So before hanging up twinkle lights, make sure to check these holiday party tips twice.
By Valerie Grubb Managing employees can be one of the most challenging–and also most rewarding–responsibilities as you move up within a company. When your management works and you see your employees surpass even their own expectations, it's wildly exciting and incredibly fulfilling! If you're new to managing employees – the great news is that you don't need a big budget to inspire your employees. The strategies listed below can help you motivate and engage your employees, even under the tightest financial constraints. 1) Provide Interesting Work Management theorist Frederick Herzberg once said, "If you want someone to do a good job, give them a good job to do." So give your employees good jobs by making sure that at least part of their responsibilities includes something of great interest to them. Even for those jobs that are inherently boring, having at least one or two stimulating projects can motivate employees to perform well in the mundane tasks, too. Recommend your employee to a new task force your CEO is forming, for example, or let him or her take the lead at your next staff meeting. Find out your employee's career aspirations, then identify assignments that will expand his or her skill set in the desired direction. The increased productivity you gain by providing interesting projects beyond the day-to-day tasks will more than compensate for the time your employees are away from their regular jobs. 2) Require Managers to Coach and Develop This strategy may sound like a no-brainer. But it bears repeating, because we all know managers who are slackers when it comes to coaching and developing their employees–and in these uncertain times, employees need feedback more than ever. Remember, employees join companies, but they leave managers. So hold your managers accountable for coaching employees to achieve outstanding results and developing their staff through mentoring and training opportunities (see the next two bullet points). If they aren't fulfilling those responsibilities, replace them with people who will. 3) Establish a Mentoring Program Seventy-one percent of Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programs to their employees. Why? Because those companies recognize that such programs bring a multitude of benefits to both protégé and mentor. Mentoring employees (especially new hires) can lead to better retention while mentoring aspiring talent can form the cornerstone of succession planning. Mentoring programs traditionally pair a junior employee with a more experienced colleague, but there's no need to stick only to this format. Reverse mentoring, for example, can help senior executives keep up with cutting-edge technology and with company issues that are usually only on the radar of junior staff. Group or situational mentoring is also on the rise for issues such as diversity or high-potential training. And if your company doesn't have a formal program, create your own! Establish mentoring relationships for your employees by tapping fellow executives (and agree to mentor their employees in return). 4) Train Your Employees Training doesn't have to cost money. No-cost and low-cost internal training options include:
By Chad Savoy Who gets the bulk of your attention? The people who do really, really well at everything, consistently exceed targets, go over and above and serve as a shining beacon of light, hope and inspiration to the rest of the organisation? The people who never seem to get anything right, to the point where you're left wondering why exactly they're working for you in the first place? (For a given value of 'work'). Or the other people. The quiet inoffensive ones who come in and do their work with zero fuss and then go home? It's always never the quiet ones Nearly 80% of employees are 'consistent performers' (* Bersin & Associates High Impact Performance Management research 2011), while managers spend about 80% of their time focusing on the other guys. What usually happens is that these solid workers live under the radar, going largely unnoticed while attention and energy gets spent on the flashier people; your stars or problem children. The people in the middle may have the potential to be stars themselves, but without development that potential may just go to waste. Stars get retreats, fancy rewards, training and development; low performers get more supervision, additional coaching and mentorship...and the middle child usually gets by with a performance review. How many of them interpret this lack of attention as a sign of their work's unimportance and slip quietly away? Look past the stars It costs you less to keep your average workers around than it does to hire in new people. ESPECIALLY stars, who – frankly – you just can't afford outright. Hiring new people also usually results in losses from a drop in productivity due to onboarding and upskilling and orientation and all that just starting out stuff – and even then the new hires might not fit. Your consistent performers are already attuned to your culture, and hold a wealth of company-specific knowledge and experience. They've already proved themselves reliable, stable, sane workers so they're pretty good ambassadors for all things you and shouldn't go maverick if elevated to management positions. They're a known quantity, and that quantity is a decent one. And face it: every company needs employees who'll just...produce. Solidly – without requiring a parade when they deliver, and without needing constant supervision. Your reliable performers have a history of supporting your stars and picking up the problem kids' slack, so why wouldn't you want to keep them around? Be the phone booth How then do you make sure you hang on to these solid if unremarkable performers; maybe even encourage your Clark Kents and Peter Parkers to live up to their superhero potential (costumes optional)? Figure out who they are and what they do. Collect detailed information on their skills, competencies, what they've worked on and how they've worked with others. Profile them and record their progress over time. Then explore these things: Recognition. By making thanks and recognition part of your culture, you start actively looking for things to celebrate – big things, small things, the kind of things the quiet people work quietly on. Training opportunities. Open access to a range of professional and skill development courses would be a good start for your average joe. Just don't waste resources pushing them into something generic and irrelevant that's not going to pay off! Career paths and obvious development opportunities. Give them somewhere to go and something to aspire to; make the path to stardom an obvious one and support them on their way. Goal contribution. So they AND YOU can see how their good work is actually making an impact on the organisation's overall achievement. Bottom line: you hired them for a reason It's easier to keep these people than to hire new people. So show them a little love and one of two things will happen: 1. They'll stick around and keep on keeping on. This is good. 2. They'll thrive under the attention and join the ranks of your stars. This is better. Then you just have to work on keeping them! Chad Savoy is Cornerstone's VP of worldwide sales for the SMB market. A seasoned sales professional, Chad is passionate about recruiting, hiring, training, and mentoring high potential professionals to become high performing stars.
Doing the work to build a high performing team always seems like a daunting task. So many different personalities, agendas and styles have to come together in order for the team to achieve its goal of accomplishing considerably more than what could be accomplished by individuals, working separately. And when you think you’ve (finally) arrived, figuring out how to keep a successful team motivated to keep performing at increasingly challenging levels can be an equally daunting challenge. What does it take to keep a team continuously improving? To embrace a new mission? To tackle new goals? Sometimes the real issue isn’t about the team’s performance, but about a lack of recognition of where the team is going, or knowing when you’ve arrived—making it easy to get lost or disillusioned along the way. The following is a list of eight characteristics we believe define a high performance team. To get your team involved in their own self-assessment, ask each team member to rate their team on each characteristic using a scale of 1-5. At your next team meeting, have each team member share their scores and comments to see where the team agrees there is opportunity for improvement. 1. Problem Solving. The team has normal and routine ways of tackling problems, addressing issues, and handling conflict together. All team members know when and how to escalate issues to team problem solving formats and do so as needed. Problems tend to be addressed proactively, before they have grown into serious issues. Rating 2. Synergy. It is clear to all team members that they accomplish more together than they could individually. Team members feed off one another, generating new and creative ideas that wouldn’t be generated by working alone. The team regularly sets goals for what they can do together, that are much bigger than the sum of their individual efforts. Rating 3. Adaptation. Flexibility. High performing teams have learned how to be flexible, responsive, orderly and direct. They regularly move into unknowns where they must quickly adapt to new information or situations as they are presented. They have routines, but are open to changing them quickly when they no longer work. Rating 4. Open and Authentic. The team regularly uses active listening to ensure information is exchanged between team members as intended. Conflict is encouraged as a way to constructively explore something new or different. Curiosity is more important to the team than is judgment. Rating 5. Results Focused. No matter the obstacle, the team finds a way to deliver the high quality work they all know is ex pected of them—on time and within budget. The drive for results frequently trumps other considerations and team members “buckle down” when the going gets tough. Personal challenges are acknowledged, but are never allowed to supersede the team’s mission. Rating 6. Always Learning. The team places a high value on its collective learning and is constantly exploring new knowledge and new ways of working together. Individuals frequently take responsibility to bring back information to the team as a way to grow the team’s expertise and ultimately its performance. Rating 7. Accountability. Team members take full accountability for both team results and their own contributions to those results. When things go wrong, there is no finger pointing or blame—team member’s step up to the plate regularly to diagnose personal or team mistakes and explore ways to avoid them in the future. Rating 8. Support. Members of most high performance teams spend time supporting one another in a variety of ways that reflects their mutual respect and encourages their enjoyment of each other. Team members regularly extend their personal efforts to ensure the success of others on the team. Rating The PACE Staffing Network has been helping HR and Hiring Managers put together the right combinations of people and skills to create high performance teams for over three decades. Our Assessment Centers help customers not only select employees who have the hard skills needed to be successful on a team, but the necessary aptitudes and work styles needed to become strong team contributors. If you’re having difficult putting together the right team, please contact 425-637-3312 for a complimentary exploration of the many things you can be doing to improve team performance.
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If you’re a staffing manager or an administrator for a successful healthcare facility, then you already understand the value of selective hiring, strong retention efforts, fair compensation, and worker friendly company policies. You know how to earn the respect of your staff by placing patient care and employee needs at the top of your long list of corporate priorities. But how much do you invest in workplace branding? The best way to manage and retain great employees is to attract great employees in the first place. And sometimes the best way to attract great employees is to leverage the ones you already have. Keep your teams happy and thriving, and they’ll become excellent ambassadors and terrific recruiters. Here are a few ways to set the stage. 1. Keep an open door policy between your teams, their managers, and your HR department. Strong relationships based on open communication form the foundation of any healthy workplace culture. If your employees have complaints or suggestions, they should feel no sense of hesitation about speaking up. And when they need to clear the air or make a request, they should have easy access to all the proper channels. 2. Keep a close eye on bad apples. If you have individual staff members or managers on your teams who bring others down, recognize the signs and know when it’s time to step in. Coaching and clear performance management can keep toxic vibes from spreading. Walk chronically angry employees toward the door, and recognize the red flags that indicate bullying and harassment. 3. Take complaints and resource requests seriously, and act on them immediately. Don’t make your employees jump through hoops to gain access to the basic tools they need to do their jobs. And when something goes wrong and it’s brought to your attention, act. Don’t delay your decision hoping your employees will forget about the issue. 4. Show gratitude. Thank your employees loudly and often. Show appreciation verbally every single day, and make sure your individual managers and team leaders do the same. 5. Spread the word. If you have a great culture that makes you proud, and your employees feel the same way, encourage them to share this fact. Reward employees for posting positive comments about the company on social media. And when you have an open position to fill, ask your current teams to solicit applications from their friends, family and personal networks. Provide generous bonuses for successful referrals. For more on how to make your employees happy, and then leverage that happiness into a magnet for talented applicants, reach out to the Seattle healthcare staffing pros at Pace.
