The Hiblog

How to create a more effective meeting culture using agendas (plus templates!)

HR leaders hold unique power. You can influence every part of your organization and its culture—and its processes, including meetings. Running effective meetings is always important, but especially in our new video-call-dependent work environment. Your influence on organizational culture puts you in the position to create an inclusive, productive meeting culture, one conducive to helping employees communicate, collaborate, and connect. Allow us to introduce the meeting agenda: a tool for reducing meeting creep and Zoom fatigue, ensuring that all voices in the meeting are heard, and keeping meetings on track.…

HR metrics that matter: employee growth rate

In this strange world, where it can feel like we’re treading water trying to stay afloat day by day, it can be hard to imagine planning for the future. Lockdowns begin, lockdowns end, and after seeing our world come to a screeching halt once already, who knows what the future holds? But to keep our heads above water, we need to make an effort. We need to keep looking ahead and do our best to plan for an uncertain future. Employee growth rate is an HR metric measuring your company’s…

Metrics that matter for succession planning

Every employee matters. That’s why we invest so much in recruitment and retention: because we know that every talent we bring in is valuable. So, when an employee departs, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, they’ll leave a hole—responsibilities that need to be covered to keep the business running smoothly. Succession planning, defined by SHRM as “a focused process for keeping talent in the pipeline,” is a safety net for your organization. Investing in succession planning is an investment in your people and teams, building an action plan that will last long…

5 ways to keep your HR career going and growing

Feel like your career is stalling out? It's natural. Maybe you've been in your company or role for too long; maybe you don't have the kind of clear growth path you need to feel like you're making moves. But feeling stuck is dangerous, and it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Career growth is closely tied to engagement; chances are, if you're feeling out of touch with your best career self, you're feeling distanced from your organization too. Taking advantage of these five tips will help you get back in your groove,…

How to help your employees understand their workplace rights and protections

The traditional workplace model was hierarchical, inflexible, and authoritative, and some organizations still cling to it. But, for many companies, modernizing and staying competitive means embracing a culture of open communication, collaboration, flexibility, and mutual respect.  So how can you tell if your workplace is prioritizing cultural safety? This is not about protecting basic rights and avoiding litigation: it’s about going above and beyond the law.  From HR’s office you can do your best to help and support employees, but they need to know their rights: what they can ask…

Why you should be working with performance management templates

Newer perspectives on employee performance and productivity are designed to facilitate frequent conversations between employees, managers, and other stakeholders about growth and development.  For HR leaders, ensuring that performance management systems are applied efficiently means strategizing, designing, training, implementing, monitoring, and reviewing the system and its processes. One way to streamline this huge task is by using online performance management platforms and templates.  Performance management groundwork Knowing which templates to use will depend on your performance management framework, and before knowing which framework to adopt, organizations need to first lay…

HR leader Dana Barzilay on flexibility and sensitivity in the new normal

Dana Barzilay, CHRO at Cyberbit, shared with us her insights on effectively managing people as the new normal of a COVID-19 world sets in. The key, according to Barzilay, is to listen and be sensitive: to meet employees where they are; communicate in new, creative ways, and highlight elements of people’s lives outside of work. Hibob: How do you handle sensitive discussions at work, like differing opinions about COVID and mask-wearing? Dana Barzilay: When it comes to COVID-19 and mask-wearing, we are following local regulations for each of our sites.…

Metrics that matter: why attrition isn’t like other retention metrics

Employee attrition and retention are like peas in a pod—attrition is the peas, retention the pod. While they’re not the same, they need to be addressed as a package deal. When employee retention is low, we have a problem: employee happiness is down, engagement is off, or maybe the economy is strong and people are leaving for greener pastures. When employee attrition is high, however, we might not have a problem—but we do have something to address. Let’s go into: Attrition vs. retentionCalculating employee attritionWhat high attrition says about your…

5 tips for transitioning your compensation management process to HR tech

Compensation management is one of the most important parts of people management—and the stakes are high. One misdirected email and you’re toast. When discretion is of utmost importance and there’s no room for error, you need to make sure you’re working with tools that keep your information safe, organized, and error-free. That’s why spreadsheets are a no-go for compensation management. To run something as tricky as compensation management, you need HR tech. It’s not easy to transition legacy processes, though—we know it takes thought and effort. Use the following five…

Metrics that matter: the Bradford Factor

The cost of absenteeism is high. Whether it’s resulting from employee burnout, lack of motivation, or just really nice weather outside, if your people are choosing to ditch work, then your organization is in trouble. The Bradford Factor is a specific type of absenteeism measurement. Based on the theory that shorter, more frequent absences are more detrimental to the organization than longer, less frequent ones, the Bradford Factor measures absenteeism per-employee by duration and frequency. Let’s get into: Measuring the Bradford FactorWhat could be causing a high Bradford FactorHow to…

6 tips for supporting employees through the second wave (and beyond)

It’s been over six months since the whisperings about COVID-19 began, and what may have been up for debate then is now widely accepted: COVID-19 is here to stay, and so is the “new normal” it’s enforced upon the workplace. Many companies have announced plans to keep their workforce remote through 2021, and employees who are returning to the office are finding a very different environment than the one they left.  This reality will impact employees’ motivation, emotional wellbeing, and productivity, if it hasn’t already. Companies need to respond, and…

Discussing productivity, furloughs, and remote engagement with HR leader Hailey Wojcik

If you’ve seen or read The Devil Wears Prada, you might think you have an idea of what fashion media looks like. Hailey Wojcik, Global Head of People at fashion media company Business of Fashion, is here to shatter that stereotype. Wojcik sat down with us to share her experiences keeping employees united during a pandemic, managing morale from a distance, and making virtual happy hours just a little less awkward. Hibob: How are you keeping your people engaged and motivated? Hailey Wojcik: We’ve decided to heavily invest in our…

A metric that matters: quality of hire

Every new hire that comes through your doors (or logs onto your Slack) is a big investment. It’s taken a lot of time and money to get them in front of that computer. Hiring costs go beyond salary and benefits: you’re looking at headhunters, promoted job ads, travel reimbursements for interviews, and time spent recruiting and interviewing. If the folks you’re hiring aren’t a perfect 10 then not only did all that time and money go down the toilet, but you’re going to be spending even more on your next…

Plan your back-to-the-office strategy using this survey template

To plan our return to the office, we need the support of our people. The post-COVID return is an emotional issue, touching on family, health, and mental wellness. [marker yellow-mark]To understand how your people feel and what they need while maintaining confidentiality, we recommend using surveys: private, anonymous, and honest. [/marker] Using surveys, you can keep your finger on the pulse without putting people on the spot. Your back-to-work survey can include open-ended questions to encourage more open and nuanced communication, in addition to Likert scale and multiple-choice questions. To help…

5 unexpected joys of working from home in quarantine

If you’re like us at Hibob, your entire global company has gone remote in the blink of an eye. And, you’re uncovering new and uncharted challenges every single day. But as with any crisis: positivity, silver linings, and gallows humor are crucial for our sanity and wellbeing.  And aside from being downright grateful to have any work at all, we’ve discovered some quite unexpected joys from the new remote situation! Here’s our top five: 1. Physical distancing has resulted in emotional closeness with colleagues With everyone stuck in the same…