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Upon entering Harrods, the world’s largest and most famous department store, visitors are instantly transported to an enchanting land of luxury, where everything one could dream of can be had (for a price, of course). Even alligators, tigers and camels could be bought as household pets until 2014. Former American President Ronald Reagan once rang up to buy a baby elephant as a party mascot.

Steeped in history, grandeur and legend, it’s no wonder that Harrods, established in 1894 as a single roomed grocery shop, has been crowned Britain’s top retailer with over 100,000 daily visitors. Its exceptional customer service and spectacular range of the finest goods, displayed over seven floors and 330 departments, remains universally unrivalled.

But behind the dazzling façade, there’s a powerhouse of people making the magic happen every day. Research has proven that happy employees equal happy customers and happy investors – a formula that Harrods has obviously mastered. For the third time, the British institution has been voted one of the UK’s Best Places to Work 2018. Winners were determined based solely on feedback from employees — arguably the best judges of what makes a company an amazing place to work.

You might be wondering: what are Harrods’ secrets for recruiting and retaining the brightest stars responsible for making it the greatest store in the world? To find out, we caught up with their HR Operations Director, Abi Weeks.

Glassdoor: What does it mean to you to have employees and colleagues rave about working at Harrods?

Abi Weeks: We are very proud to be recognised as one of the Best Places to Work in the UK, particularly as we are the highest-ranking retailer to appear on the list. We are delighted to be at the forefront of our industry in providing varied and fulfilled careers in retail to our employees.

Part of what makes Harrods such a special business to be a part of is the variety of roles we are able to offer, all under one roof.

[Related: Get in the Running for Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work]

Glassdoor: What are some of your best practices when it comes to recruiting the best talent?

Abi Weeks: Harrods have a dedicated in-house recruitment team, comprising a skilled team of experts who specialise in retail across all levels, from Sales Associates and Boutique Managers to Store Directors. Existing employees are encouraged and incentivised to recommend a friend, or to become part of our ‘Talent Spotting’ team, reporting back on exceptional service wherever they receive it.

Our team also place importance on identifying future talent, and we run various future talent programmes such as School Leavers, offering students fast-tracked, educative and immersive opportunities. We want people to recognise retail as an industry where school-leavers can build long-lasting, varied and fulfilled careers, and this programme allows us to cultivate talent from an early stage.

Glassdoor: What do you look for in informed candidates? What makes someone a perfect fit to work at Harrods?

Abi Weeks: At Harrods, we are looking for candidates who want to build a career with us, so we are always thrilled to hear about candidates’ long-term career goals. I’m always impressed by candidates who showcase their commitment to being the best at what they do, whichever area of the business this lies in. Every single employee can improve the way our company works, whether on the shop floor or by providing essential support from other areas of the business. We also look for a customer-focused approach. There are many different types of customers at Harrods, but only one type of customer service: exceptional.

[Related: How to Recruit the Informed Candidate at Scale]

Glassdoor: Recruiting is only one part of the equation. How do you retain talent once they are employees at Harrods?

Abi Weeks: At Harrods, we are dedicated to making sure our employees have the opportunity to build a career and not just a job. We encourage employees to apply for other roles within the business, and commit resources to helping staff grow and engage their skill-sets; holding a Careers Week biannually and offering training and accredited educational opportunities through a dedicated learning and development team. We also run secondment schemes throughout the year. The purpose of these secondments is not only to allow the participant a taste of working in another area of the business, but to allow them to develop new skills and gain experience which may enable them to change the direction of their career should they choose to do so. For instance, a member of the retail team might be given the opportunity to experience working within the marketing team or with Harrods.com.

Glassdoor: What have you done this year to foster employee trust and engagement at Harrods?

Abi Weeks: Every year Harrods HR team challenges itself to improve our employees’ experience of working for Harrods. We recently reviewed our benefits package for our teams and now have thousands of offers from gym discounts to healthcare plans available to every employee to really help them feel the benefit of working for Harrods in their daily lives.

We also update staff on the wider business strategy and development at regular all-company Town Halls. For example, we recently showcased some of the new product which will be unveiled when the first stage of ‘The Taste Revolution!’, a redevelopment and restoration of the store’s famous Food Hall, with an engaging talk from the store’s Director of Food & Restaurants. This engagement and feedback process allows us to ensure employees feel part of the success of the store.

[Related: ]

Glassdoor: Your employees love working here as we see the strong rating on Glassdoor. How do you make this a great place to work day in and day out?

Abi Weeks: From day one of their career journey at Harrods, we are dedicated to making sure our employees have the opportunity to build a meaningful career here. We believe that a good work environment is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact on employees’ personal, as well as their professional lives.,

There are a number of things we do, for example, we make sure that a Director attends every Welcome (induction) for new employees and talks about their role and Harrods culture, as well as answering any questions new joiners might have about what it’s like to work for Harrods - the aim of this is to inspire new joiners to maximise their potential.

We deliver a range of programmes through our Health & Wellbeing department – such as stress management, counselling services, podiatry, Physiotherapy, as well as the support of an onsite team of doctor, nurse, and occupational health advisers.

We know how to have fun. This year we hosted two summer events, where we hired out two theme parks for our employees and their families – all of whom had a great time.

Glassdoor: How do you work with your management teams to make sure employees have great leadership?

Abi Weeks: We feel it’s important for our retail teams to have a clear sense of direction. At Harrods, we have set a clear ‘north star’, a collaborative ambition for everyone to connect to and aspire to achieve. This is to deliver exceptional results by providing an exceptional experience for the Harrods customer every day. We refer to this as ‘#BeExceptional’ and it's great to hear the teams challenging themselves and each other on how they bring this ethos to their daily roles.

Harrods has a strong cultural DNA. We pride ourselves on our culture of service excellence and the exceptional experience we provide our customers every day. The leadership team needs to live and breathe these values and build loyalty and commitment from their teams and a sense of pride in our iconic brand. Our Directors, like all employees, are custodians of the Harrods heritage and it’s an important part of all of our roles.

We work hard as a leadership team to ensure our Directors are as accessible as possible, that’s not always easy but we try to create as many forums as possible to enable this to happen. From daily floor-walks to quarterly all-business updates, senior Directors from across Harrods are involved in all aspects of the business, and meet with employees on a daily basis. This visibility and on-going engagement are particularly important, not only to ensure that the highest standards are being maintained for customers, but also to show employees that everyone is working towards the same objectives and taking pride in the work that we are doing as an organisation.

[Related: 5 Traits of Best Places to Work Winners]

Glassdoor: What are some of the coolest or most unique perks and benefits you offer?

Abi Weeks: All Harrods staff are enrolled in our Harrods Rewards Card scheme, on top of an attractive discount and business clothing allowance to be used in store. We also recently reviewed our benefits package for our teams and now have a range of over 6,500 offers from gym discounts to healthcare plans available to every Harrods and Concession employee to really help them feel the benefit of working for Harrods in their daily lives.

Recognition of achievements is extremely important at Harrods. We believe that if you recognise and praise the behaviours that you want to see, then it will inspire other employees to go above and beyond. We hold regular ‘oscars-style’ Abi Weeksards ceremonies to recognise members of staff across different areas of the business for exceptional service and top salespeople as well as for our the longest-serving employees.

Learn More & Download

Employee Engagement Checklist & Calendar

Everything you need to create an employee engagement programme – guaranteed not only to improve employee productivity and retention but also your bottom line.

The post How to Recruit Like the Best Store in the World appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

By 2025, millennials will make up 75 per cent of the UK workforce, becoming the largest occupying generation. But the career landscape is far different than in decades past.

Today, a record 4.63 million people in the UK, or one in seven of the workforce, are self-employed. Because of this, millennials around the world are becoming entrepreneurs at a higher rate than previous generations. Good thing, considering these folks prefer working remotely.

But that’s not the only reason they are striking out on their own. Falling wages and a new slowdown in earnings growth in the UK have proven that corporate jobs are a dead end road for many.

While notable companies like Google, Expedia and Facebook have managed to attract top talent with vibrant company cultures, employee perks like great snacks and top-notch health benefits, and similarly desirable bonuses – nothing beats a fatter wallet.

People want to pay their bills, buy a home, go on holiday, put “bread on the table”, and save for a proper retirement while not working themselves to an early grave.

So if businesses are unwilling or incapable of doling out the extra dosh, what can they possibly do to keep their employees engaged and advocating the brand?

Teach them to make more money on top of their current salary – a “side hustle”, something millennials are fast embracing.

This creates a win for the brand by cultivating a fervent promoter who is actively taught by the company to be a self-starter and can generate their own resources. Employees also gain new skill sets that smash the glass ceiling on wages.

It’s a little like the famous quote by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

So if your company is ready to turn its workforce into brand ambassadors and future CEOs, here are a few expert strategies for making it happen.

Deploy eLearning

eLearning platforms are a huge deal right now. Sites like these provide users with an affordable and convenient channel to deepen their skill set and knowledge, no matter what stage of their career they are in.

Employers can leverage this toolset one of two ways:

• Create courses that teach employees new skills to succeed outside of the company.
  
• Train employees to embrace their unique abilities and teach them to create their own courses in order to succeed outside of the company.

No matter which route feels most appropriate, platforms like Kajabi supply all of the tools businesses and employees need to succeed – and then some.

With these kinds of comprehensive learning platforms, brands can easily create courses that consist of text, audio, video, images, and other content formats to create a dynamic and engaging learning experience.

Engage through Gamification

Another method for creating brand ambassadors that will increase your company’s profile is through different employee engagement tactics and platforms.

Tools like PostBeyond, GaggleAMP, and similar applications increase a company’s reach by creating a curated content hub where employees can share materials with their own networks.

This not only increases the brand’s social presence, but it assists in transforming workers into thought leaders within a given space.

Many of these types of tools target a variety of social media websites, so employees can choose where they think will be most beneficial to build their audience.

And since most of these tools have gamification elements like leaderboards, rewards, and similar features, employees not only gain a larger audience, but they have a blast doing it.

These types of community and influence-building tools can lead employees to landing columns, speaking gigs, consulting opportunities, and other revenue-boosting possibilities.

Reward Employee Referrals

Through this method, businesses can leverage the corporate benefits that advocates tout while simultaneously enriching an employee’s paycheck.

Referral marketing is pretty much what it sounds like – leveraging the power of word-of-mouth marketing through your advocate’s networks in order to drum up new prospects.

This method is highly effective because people are much more likely to buy a product with the recommendation of a trusted friend than an ad campaign. It also works because it is cheaper to run than a traditional marketing push.

By incentivising employees – perhaps with a monetary bonus for each referral or each stage of the marketing funnel their referrals reach – you provide employees with additional income without sacrificing profit margins.

Outside of providing a financial incentive for employees to gain referrals, brands can also highlight their top advocates through blogs published on company websites and shared via social media channels. This raises the profile of the employee and shows their distinct value to the brand – more ways to transform a workforce into influencers and thought leaders.

Moreover, through successfully referring friends, family, associates and acquaintances, workers gain valuable sales skills that can benefit them inside or outside of their current role.

If your brand implements any sort of initiative that enables your employees to earn more money – no matter if it is through incentives or skill sets – they will be more engaged and productive. This type of synergy helps to elevate all parties and maintains positive sentiment towards a brand.

Help your employees by teaching them to help themselves. This is the ultimate workforce win-win, and it will ensure you, too, can attract top talent and keep them engaged, incentivised, and loyal.

For everything you need to run a successful employee engagement campaign on Glassdoor, download Glassdoor’s Enterprise Employee Engagement Playbook or the Complete Guide to Employee Engagement Activities

The post How to Turn Employees into Brand Ambassadors by Helping Them Earn More appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Recruiters, listen up. You need to invest time into writing your job descriptions properly - and we know that some of you don’t – because it is essentially the “face” of your job. Why, oh, why would you not want to perfect this in order to further increase your chances of hiring the right person?

Writing might not be your strong suit, but it is so important for the recruitment process, and in turn, your commission… so start taking notes. Lizzi Hart, a Marketing Assistant at the Graduate Recruitment Bureau, runs through seven essentials for improving your job descriptions:

1. Play it cool.

Don’t be too eager, but also not too vague. Think about this specific job as that pivotal first date in high school. You want to give them the main details, and hopefully persuade them to join you, but you don’t want to kill their interest with too much waffle, or come across as too keen.

In this vein, think about this: what would persuade you to join the company/what did persuade you? What do you actually need to know about the job, and what is just overkill? For instance, do you need to draw up a detailed plan of their ‘average working day’ from their 8.45am tea run to their 4.15pm toilet break? No, but they need to roughly know what they would be doing, such as ‘compiling weekly reports’ or ‘posting daily social media content’. You also don’t need to fill your description with exclamation marks, but equally, don’t fill it with uninterpretable jargon.

2. Don’t annoy your marketing department.

If you are an agency, recruiting for your client, by just copying and pasting the original job description they gave you onto your site, or various job boards, you run the risk of not being the first person to publish this on the internet. Non-unique content presents an SEO risk as Google does a good job at ranking original content, based on the time it’s posted. So ideally, Google will avoid presenting the same content more than once in one search. Therefore, your ‘copy’ will massively benefit from being re-written.

If you’re an internal recruiter, you still need to have a decent job description because most people will come across your job online, or at least look at it after you’ve drawn their attention to it. It will also be duplicated everywhere by various job aggregators; it needs to be well written if you stand any chance at getting it right first time. Copying and pasting last year’s version is just not good practise, for both recruitment and SEO, and frankly, it’s a bit lazy.

3. Include job benefits.

Don’t get complacent: you need to offer (and mention!) perks, as most candidates are passive and will need persuading in order to leave their comfort zone. What is your holiday package like? Does your company hold social outings? Are there travel opportunities? What software packages will new candidates be trained in? Who are your clients? Have you won any awards? Don’t underestimate the power of free food – do you offer it? What’s the bonus structure like? Make sure you include everything that is relevant, and anything that will make someone excited about working for your company.

4. Can you skim it?

There’s no point trying to deny it. We’re lazy when it comes to reading because we’re so used to short, bitesize content. So, if your job specification isn’t skimmable (bullet pointed, the important bits bolded, or italicised in an aesthetically pleasing and logical way) then the perfect candidate might get bored, then get distracted by a cat gif and all of a sudden, they’ve completely slipped through the net. If you want the right people to see – and read it – make sure your job specification is easily digestible.

5. Understand – and address – your audience.

This is paramount, because the wrong voice in a job description can put someone off instantly; they will not feel that the job specification is tailored towards them, therefore the job is not appropriate for them.

Are you recruiting recent graduates? Don’t try and throw in some ‘slang’ to seem current, just adjust your tone to a chattier one. If it’s software engineers for a consultancy, you might want to come across formally, but try and humanise your communication nonetheless.

But it’s not just your tone – your intended audience have specific wants and needs, so you need to hone in on these; if hiring a recruiter, you‘ll want to capitalise on the commission packages, while a marketing agency might want to show off their existing clients to attract new talent.

6. Be honest.

Are there aspects of the job that the public have preconceptions about? Call them out, and explain why your company does things differently. The worst thing you can do is lie, because you will lose both trust and your reputation that may have taken you decades to carve.

7. Talk about work culture.

New candidates want to know that the office is like, who they will be working with, what sort of working environment they will be joining, and how relaxed, fast-paced or conservative the workplace is. If a candidate can imagine themselves working at your company, then you have a well-written job spec.

The post You Need to Rewrite Your Job Descriptions: Here's How appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Every week that goes by we see a new social recruiting tool, social media app or an announcement of a new product launch from one of the big players like LinkedIn. Of course these updates are exciting, and as an early adopter I want to play with them. But the reality is this: I would much rather have companies focus on getting the basics right first, before they start live streaming on Periscope or planning recruiting Apple Watch apps.

Getting back to basics

Social recruiting is not just about using social media sites to share content, it is also about being social with your audience – communicating, engaging and embracing the conversation. To do that successfully, you need to understand exactly why you are doing social recruiting and what objectives you want to achieve from it. Without clear objectives and goals, you have nothing to measure against to determine if social recruiting is working for you.

Once your objectives have been set, take some time to understand what your target audience looks like and where they are socially. As obvious as this sounds, many companies overlook this step. Too frequently, companies make big assumptions on candidate audience locations on social media without doing their homework or exploring other platforms.

Taking the time to build out candidate personas will help you in the long run. Consider all required information, including job title synonyms, industries, competitors and keywords to ensure they can find out where your target talent stands with social media. This is fundamental step to social recruiting success.

Creating relevant content

Now that we know what the audience looks like and where they are, we can focus on serving them content that is interesting and relevant to them. Don’t start with too many social networks to begin with – pick two or three and get acclimated slowly.

There are many different tools and platforms in manage your social media, but whichever you use, make sure you are sharing content when your audience is likely to see it and potentially engage with it. This usually means before the working day starts while they are commuting, or are on the way home, or relaxing in their own time in the evenings and at weekends. Tools like Sprout Social can help you schedule messages in advance and hit your audience at optimal send times.

Adjust as necessary

Once you’ve set your objectives and begun testing content and building a following on these new platforms, you can actually start to measure your growth and success. What’s working? Are you hitting your engagement targets? Are you driving the required level of people back to your careers page and jobs? Make tweaks as necessary to improve your social recruiting strategy.

Additionally, each social media platform has an analytics dashboard that will show you the best performing content types and when engagement is taking place throughout the day. Adjust your content and scheduling accordingly to improve your metrics. There is no exact science and sometimes this step requires quite a bit of testing, but analytics will help you hone in and be successful in the long run.

Adding social platforms

Now that you are at a consistent level of activity and engagement, it is time to add the next social platform. Remember your homework you did originally – pick the next relevant one to get started with and start the process again.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing with some of the new platforms, but remember that they are just that: new. They won’t have the mature user bases and these people who are using them are doing it for the same reason as you – just to try it out. Be patient for new channels to prove their worth and invest whatever time and resources you can to understand them and succeed.

The post Social Recruiting Is Not About Shiny New Objects appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

When it comes tointerviewing, it’s easy for job candidates to fake their way through certain questions, unless the company is throwing some behavioral inquiries their way.

Often used to see if a person is a right fit from a cultural perspective, behavioral questions are designed to see if a job candidate’s past behavior will predict the future. “Technical gets you through the interview, behavioral gets you the job,” says Bob Dolan, who provides counselling and professional development workshops for various postgraduate and alumni programmes at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology. “Do you fit the culture of the organisation, do you solve problems the way you say you do, does your work style align with their work style,” are all things companies are trying to gleam when asking behavioral questions.

While anyone can ask behavioral questions, this line of interviewing is most effective when the interviewer already knows what he or she is looking for in a job candidate. For instance, if you ask a job seeker to tell you a time he or she played a leadership role but the company is looking to fill anassistantposition, then that may not the best use of a behavioral question.

“To really benefit from this, you want to go through the job description and identify which competencies are important and pick behavioral questions to go with those competencies,” says Pamela Skillings, co-founder of job coaching firm Skillful Communications. “Make sure you have at least one behavioral question for each of those competencies.”

From the run-of-the-mill to the more unique, here’s a look at five behavioral questions employers should ask anyone looking to work at their company.

1. Tell me about a time you had a conflict with someone within the organisation.Conflict is a part of life, and it’s extremely common within companies given people spend most of their days working side by side with different people and personalities. By asking a job candidate to tell you about a time he or she had conflict with a co-worker or even the boss, thehiring manageris trying to gauge how the person resolves differences with other people. “The hiring manager wants to know if the person recognised there was a conflict and how he responded,” says Dolan.

2. Tell me about a time you worked on a challenging team project.Chances are you are going to have to work as part of a team at some point in your career, and companies want to know that you play nice when you are collaborating, which is why they will often ask this question. According to Skillings, companies want to learn if this person is able to collaborate with others, can he or she handle any problems that may arise and is the job candidate generally a team player. “Every company is going to have some difficulties and dynamic personalities and they want to hear you’ve got the ability to deal with that,” she says.

3. Do you prefer to work alone or with others?Regardless of the type of business, many interviewers ask this question as a way to see if the job candidate will fit into thecultureof the company. For instance, the organisation may be the type of place where everyone works independently and there is little time or desire for interaction among employees. On the flip side, the company may be huge on collaboration and team work and frown upon employees who keep to themselves. According to Dolan, companies know their environment and will use this question to see if the person would fit in or if he or she would have problems acclimating.

4. Tell me about a time you took a leadership role.Suited more for senior level job candidates, this is a classic behavioral question that many companies ask to see if the candidate has leadership potential. Not only is it extremely hard to fake this question, unless the person downright lies and gets away with it, but it’s a great one to use to see if the person possess any leadership abilities or talent. “I’ve seen this stump people,” says Skillings. “It forces the person to think about what defines leadership and share a story about them.”

5. What’s the most difficult problem you had to solve?Problem solving is an important skill in pretty much any job, which is why companies will ask job candidates to tell them about a difficult problem they had to solve. Another way of asking this one: tell me about a time you had to come up with a creative solution to a problem. “They want to hear you understand what problem solving means and what approach you take,” says Skillings. Companies that want to learn if the job candidate is the type to run to their manager any time there is a situation or someone who will deal with it on their own, should ask this question, she says.

The post 5 Behavioural Interview Questions Employers Should Ask appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

It’s 2015 planning time. It’s time to figure out your 2015 recruiting goals, strategies and tactics. It’s also time to nail down what budget and resources you need to hit those goals. And of course, you aren’t done until you’ve convinced your boss that your budget requests are reasonable!

One thing that I’ve always done in my career is to ask peers at other companies if they are comfortable sharing their budget spreadsheets and key strategies for the next year in a hope to understand:

1. How their spend level correlates to the goals they are expected to achieve (e.g. # of hires, types of hires, cost per hire, # of hires per recruiter, % growth vs. previous year)
2. If they are spending on new, innovative ideas or tools that I hadn’t yet considered
3. How they allocate their spend between people, systems, programmes
4. How they organise and track the budget categories

Many times these peers are unable to share their documents outside their company. Sometimes, the best they can do is to share the shell of their budget planning spreadsheet, but zero out the line items. It’s a reasonable compromise.

The result, however, is that it is common to go into budget planning with just your own historical data and planning models, and realise after the fact that youmay have missed some opportunities. When we started ramping our recruiting effort this year, I spent a few hours searching Google and Slideshare to see if anyone had shared their budget frameworks, but came up empty-handed. It’s a bummer when you miss something in planning and have to wait another whole year to invest in a high-impact programme that your peers are already doing.

Thus, I decided to share Glassdoor’s internal recruiting budget with you. If you run recruiting for a massive company, it probably won’t help you much and you may find it “cute.” But, in case you run recruiting for a rapidly growing small company with similar challenges, I hope it may help you both with your planning as well as help you with developing a compelling case with your boss for sufficient budget to hit your 2015 objectives.

By sharing this info, you may be able to poke holes in our budget allocation, tool selection and planning process - that’s ok with us - if there is a better way, we want to know.

A little context first on how we arrived at our 2014 recruiting budget.

Challenge #1: We needed to hire more than 200 people. And we had both high-volume and hard-to-fill positions.

We needed to hire roughly 50 software engineers, product managers, data scientists, and UI designers. These are typically the hardest-to-fill and most competitive positions in the SF bay area.

We needed to hire a CFO, Chief People Officer, and several sales leaders. These talented folks are also not easy to find.

All the while, we needed to scale our Glassdoor for Employers business and hire over 120 sales, marketing and service pros; the sheer volume of hiring was daunting.

Below is what we needed to accomplish, and so far we are on track!

Challenge #2: 2014 was a building year for Glassdoor’s Recruiting team.

In prior years, Glassdoor had relied on small number of contract recruiters and thirdparty contingent search firms to assist the hiring managers. But given the constant hiring volume expected for 2014, we concluded that the best thing to do was bring on full-time recruiters for key job categories like Engineering, Sales, and G&A. We needed sourcers to support the recruiters and we needed recruiting operations folks to fine-tune our systems and processes. We needed to “walk the walk” and deliver a great candidate experience and hire a rockstar for Employer Branding to showcase our vibrant employer brand. We weren’t starting from scratch, but we had big, audacious goals and a huge amount of hiring to do each month. Thus, we had to build our foundation and deliver results to the hiring managers at the same time.

The Talent Acquisition Team – Before and After:

From a budget perspective, here is how our resourcing plan for Recruiting team resulted in “fully burdened” personnel costs. As we built out our internal team between February and October, you will see that the investment in personnel costs did grow substantially from Q1 to Q4.

Challenge #3: It had to happen fast. We didn’t have the luxury to first build our team and systems for a few months before starting hiring. We needed to build and execute. Thus, we needed amplify our brand and turn on all promising recruiting channels.

We needed a high quality candidate pipeline… and fast. We needed employee referrals, active candidates, passive candidates, re-lo candidates, pink unicorns - we needed them all. We needed some programmes that were “always on” – filling our candidate pipeline. We needed to let the world know that we had a lot of openings. We tested a bunch of different sources to see what would work best. We’re fortunate to be able to advertise all our jobs for free on our own site and it is our number one source of hire. Full disclosure: to tap into different talent pools, we also post some of our jobs on LinkedIn, Indeed, craigslist and niche job boards. We test a variety of things - some work, some don’t. Our goal is always to increase our investment in the things that work, and turn off those with a weak ROI.

As recruiters and hiring managers, we are also fortunate to have an amazing company culture. But, we needed to go further to amplify its impact. Post interview, we would hear from candidates that they loved the energy and vibe of the office environment and for the first time had been convinced that working north of the Golden Gate Bridge was a good idea. We thought to ourselves “if we can only get them to come into our office, they’ll see how great the culture is and want to join us.” So, we needed to have candidates’ “first moment of truth” and initial impression of Glassdoor to accelerate to the moment when they first become aware of our opening. We needed to invest in our employer brand and start sharing the inside scoop of what exactly it felt like to work at Glassdoor. For groups like Engineering and Sales, we decided to tailor the message via videos to better resonate with the target audience. There was a bunch we needed to do to achieve this, and it took a concentrated effort and investment. It wasn’t going to happen on its own.

Note: in this budget, we included the cost of advertising on Glassdoor to give a fair depiction of a normal cost-per-hire (CPH).

As a result of those programme investments, here are our “Source of Hire” metrics. You’ll see that Job Advertising and Employee Referral Programmes have been highly cost-efficient and have been strong contributors to our hiring results. For small, growing companies whose relative awareness with job seekers is minimal vs household names like Google and Facebook, it makes a great deal of sense to raise your awareness by promoting both your employer brand and jobs.

There was a great deal of hustle required by all of the hiring managers as well as our growing recruiting team. When it came to Sales hiring, we knew that a delay in the start of any Sales hiring class would have an adverse affect on our top line revenue for 2014. We couldn’t let that happen. Our sales managers and sales recruiters wouldn’t let it happen and moved mountains to hit our hiring goals. In addition to tightly managing our sales candidate pipeline, we also added some sales recruiting events to create a spike in candidate flow. In general, the strategies worked and we are pretty happy with our time-to-hire. See our time-to-fill by department below.

Challenge #4: Candidate use of mobile devices was taking off. Each month our mobile traffic was growing by 2% and eventually surpassed 50%.

We needed to invest in our recruiting systems to make our recruiting team as productive as possible. We wanted candidates coming from mobile devices to have a good experience and be able to apply for jobs with as little friction as possible. We wanted them to be able to read our employer branding content from any mobile device without having to “pinch and zoom.” We wanted all the candidate flow we could get and didn’t want 50% of our candidates to face a roadblock in the apply process. We implemented both a mobile optimised career site and “mobile apply” in mid-2014 to improve the candidate experience and applicant flow.

To help our sourcers, we also invested in a new breed of sourcing tools like Connectifier and extended our investment in the Jobvite platform by purchasing their CRM/Engage product.

Challenge #5: Glassdoor’s HQ is in a beautiful waterfront location just north of San Francisco, but if you live in the South San Jose, it won’t be your “dream commute.”

To hit our hiring goals, we needed to increase our addressable talent pool and needed SF/North Bay residents to know that Glassdoor is an up-and-coming employer that is close to home!

The good news is that Glassdoor is an amazing place to work. Our office environment is phenomenal and directly on the water in Sausalito. If you live in the SF bay area, it’s those two blue-roofed buildings on the water when you get off the Stinson Beach/Muir Woods exit on 101. It’s a dream commute if you live in the North Bay or in Pacific Heights/Marina. However, one of the recruiting challenges is that Sausalito isn’t exactly convenient if you are a software engineer in San Jose.

To help us attract talent, our Facilities team was able to get permission from our building to add a Glassdoor sign to the front of our building. Because we are right next to 101 freeway, candidates who commute to downtown SF and drive right by our office everyday will see our sign and should begin to consider Glassdoor. Our recruiting team also came up with a guerilla marketing tactic – they setup a free “coffee cart” next to the park-n-ride bus stop across from our building that takes commuters into SF.

Our engineers came up with another great idea to expand our talent pool outside the highly competitive SF Bay Area. They came up with a way to allow our jobs to show up in job search results for other cities in the USA. See the example below. They also set up our jobs to highlight to job seekers on Glassdoor that relocation assistance was provided for certain jobs. This allowed us to tap into talent pools all across the country. Note: Because this was part of our strategy, we did include candidate travel and relocation costs in our overall budget.

Summary 2014 Recruiting Budget & Goals:

All in all, it wasn’t an easy task, but with the total budget of £1.1M, we were able to hit our hiring goals and scale our Recruiting operations. While companies outside the SF Bay Area may look at a £4,600 CPH and not be impressed at all, it is a good target to shoot for if you are a startup in hyper-growth mode that is recruiting “hard-to-fill” positions. Do you want to learnmore about building a recruiting budget? Watch our webinar,How We Built our 2014 Budget.

I hope this information about our budget, team size, and recruiting tools is useful. If you have comments (or suggestions), feel free to contact me at steve.roop@glassdoor.com. Want the full Excel document? Download the full 2015 Recruiting Budget Template for Small & Mid-Sized Businesses now! It will help you set hiring goals, organise and track budget categories and model potential spending plan efforts.

I’d love to see others share their format and categories of their budget with the larger community as well. If you are willing to share it on the Glassdoor blog, please let me know and we’ll help you format the blog post.

The post Glassdoor's 2014 Recruiting Budget: Revealed appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Did you know that job postings with video icons are viewed 12% more than postings without videos, and that companies receive a 34% greater application rate when they add a video to their job listings?

That’s because showing, rather than telling job seekers about your company, is much more effective and engaging. A well-crafted recruiting video injects personality and emotion into your brand — it can distinguish your organisation from the vast sea of sameness and make people want to be a part of your story.

And by offering an authentic picture of your organisation’s culture, people, offices, big wins and core values and mission, videos can also help weed out applicants who may not be the right fit.

So while recruiting videos are potentially the perfect medium for attracting top talent, it’s essential that you have a clearly defined employer value proposition before getting started. Here are six of the best company videos that not only effectively convey their brand, but also inspire and engage viewers. Leverage them to jumpstart your video recruitment strategy.

Yell

Some of the best recruiting videos give viewers an authentic, yet entertaining look at what life is really like at their company. In this video, Yell’s Head of Talent Acquisition zooms around the office, asking a diverse group of employees — ranging from new hires to long-term senior staff — what they like most about working at Yell. Many of them answer ‘the people’, which aligns strongly with one of Yell’s core values: ‘Behind everything great we do are our people and a culture empowering them to be at their best’. What’s more, the simple, ‘home video’ format creates a casual, intimate feel, proving that you don’t have to spend loads on fancy cinematography to create an effective recruitment video.

Diageo

Proving that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ to recruitment videos, Diageo takes a different approach to Yell by moving outside the office and around the world. Their video boasts a slick, exciting cinematic format and gives airtime to each aspect of the business —from local distillers to custodians of iconic brands. Dynamic, fast-paced and compelling, it effectively showcases the impact the world’s leading premium drinks brand has on its 33,000 employees and customers around the globe.

[Related:Why Employer Brand Videos Work]

HomeServe

It's critical to convey your company’s core values and mission — having it come from your employees is all the more powerful. Take, for example, HomeServe’s video that follows engineers on the job and captures their genuine commitment to the company’s mission to ‘Provide our Customers with effortless service in order to free them from the worry and inconvenience of home emergencies and repair’. This ‘mission-driven’ video is a powerful hiring tool by appealing to candidates who align with the company’s values and possess the people skills needed to excel at such an organisation. Mission is also a strong selling point for the next generation of workers, with 70% of Millennials expecting their employers to focus on societal or mission-driven problems.

Spotify

Video is the ideal way to show candidates all of your company’s great perks and benefits, which can be your competitive advantage for attracting and retaining the best talent. In this short, fun video, Spotify chose to highlight their Flexible Public Holidays scheme to accommodate a diverse group of employees. With a running time of just 23 seconds and concluding with the catchy hashtag #LeadOnLeave, this video is perfect fodder for social media. In fact, research shows that a 15-second explainer video gets more views and is shared 37% more often than those that run 30 seconds to one minute. Spotify’s video does a brilliant job of engaging viewers right from the start and holding their attention through to their call to action.

H&M

Don’t be afraid to unleash your creativity when crafting your recruitment video, especially if you’re in a creative industry, such as H&M —one of the world’s largest fashion companies. This evocative and beautifully-shot video explores the question: what’s the common thread that connects their 161,000 employees around the world? A red thread is carried by employees throughout the video to symbolise their shared ethos of team spirit, diversity, respect and inclusivity, which they are encouraged not only to work by, but to live by as well.

SAP

Before applying for your job openings, candidates want to know if they’ll fit your culture, on a team or in a department. They want to see how real employees interact, dress and talk — do they seem like smart, friendly people who would welcome new hires and ideas in the boardroom as well as in the lunchroom? SAP’s video presents a diverse group of employees working on ground-breaking projects to highlight the software leader’s commitment to innovation where ‘anything is possible’. Candidates are also keen to hear from company leaders, who are often the main drivers of company culture. The video includes powerful footage of SAP’s CEO, Bill McDermott, who says, “I want to invite you to join me, and come through with me on to the next side of innovation and success.”

Learn More & Download:

The Proven Value of Employer Brand

The post Show, Don't Tell! 6 Brilliant Recruiting Videos appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Well-baked interview questions are designed to serve up high-performing, culture-fitting and long-term job candidates — but with so many options out there, which ones should you focus on?

I asked three recruiting experts if they would be willing to share some of their tried-and-tested recipes for interviewing.Following are their responses, covering a diversity of traits and competencies so you can screen candidates for potential impact, skills, decision-making ability, strategic thinking, culture fit and much more. All the while, these questions can help you allay candidate concerns, which builds confidence and trust in the overall interview process — and your company in general.

Achievements

1. "Tell me about your greatest accomplishments or highlights."

Why It Works:Darryl Dioso, Managing Partner, Resource Management Solutions Group, sayshe queries this for each role featured on a candidate's CV because “it shows what they did and how they impacted their previous company.” It also reveals a candidate’s personally prized accomplishments and provides further insight into personality.

2. "Describe a successful business case you made. What approach did you take?”

Why It Works:Bill McCabe, Talent Acquisition Leader/Consultant, ferrets out achievements based on the candidate’s level, and this is his favourite accomplishments-focused question.McCabe explains, “The ability to influence others is critical in nearly every role.Input to build the argument should first validate that a problem exists that has an adverse effect on … the business. The business case can be made through a data-driven approach (prompting a follow up as to where the data was derived, how the candidate knew the data was valid, how he/she is convinced that taking this approach will have the desired effect, etc.) or an anecdotal one (candidate should describe how using their history and experience led them to apply a proven approach to a new situation). Sometimes an approach used in the past may not apply when attempted in another structure so the candidate should explain why they feel an approach can be successfully duplicated in a new environment or situation.”

Best and Worst Scenarios

3. “Tell me about both the best and worst interview you ever had with someone regarding a career opportunity.”

Why It Works:Sandra B. McCartt, President-Executive Recruiter, Professional Search, Inc., International, aspires to relax the candidate before diving into the meat of the interview by asking this question.In addition, this question, “… will tell an interviewer a lot about the person:What bothers them, something funny or how to direct the interview,” according to McCartt.

4.“Tell me about the best and worst employee that ever reported to you. What might they say about you? How did you handle the worst and utilise the best?”

Why It Works:“This question provides a good reflection of the candidate’s management style in dealing with both good, and difficult, staff; it also checks for a fit with those currently working in the department," McCartt says. "If the candidate has not been in a management position, I ask about co-workers,” she adds.

5.“Tell me about the most difficult supervisor to whom you have reported. What would that supervisor say about you?

Why It Works:This question is designed to unearth potential problems, particularly “if the new supervisor is somewhat like the one the candidate has just described as her worst nightmare,”McCartt says.McCartt then moves on to “asking for a description of the best supervisor, what that supervisor would say about the candidate. When doing a reference check, this question provides a specific question to ask to ascertain if the candidate has a realistic concept of their boss seeing them the same way the candidate thinks they do,” explains McCart.

Failures

6. “When you have failed to achieve your goals/quotas, what plan of action did you take to get back on track?”

Why It Works:We’ve all heard the adage about "failure being the key to success." The job interview is a good opportunity to capitalise on the value of a candidate’s failure in a new role.Explains Dioso, “I see if they are resilient and can shrug off setbacks. Furthermore, I see if they have a continuous improvement process and mindset in place to learn from their mistakes and move on.”

[Related:6 Ways to Transform Employee Performance in the New Year]

Change Leadership

7. “Tell me about a ‘big picture’ project that brought true change to the organisation and built equity with your stakeholders."

Why It Works:According to McCabe, this question moves the focus from transactional accountabilities to “an example of really moving the needle through change that shatters the status quo and serves to allow a team, function, business unit or organisation to run leaner and add to the top and bottom lines.”

Ideal Job

8. “If you could change three things about your current or previous position that would make it the perfect job, what would they be?”

Why It Works:The responses to this question will help ascertain if the candidate’s expectations are in line with the job for which they are interviewing, says McCartt.

Decision-Making

9. “Provide an example of when a decision needed to be made and there were three different approaches to consider. How did you decide which would work best? What was the outcome?”

Why It Works:The ability to make decisions is crucial for most employees to succeed in the workplace, and these questions unearth a repository of results, according toMcCabe.“These questions are less aboutwhichdecision was made and more about the ability to make a decision using as much data, history and instinct as possible,” explains McCabe. “Can the candidate show that they didn’t set out to mitigate all degrees of risk in the decision to go the safe route? Can they illustrate that they can make tough decisions quickly? A candidate should be willing to share if the decision, in retrospect, was the wrong one and why. If they admit to making the wrong decision, can they provide what they learned for the next go-round? Or that the decision didn’t paralyse them in the future from making decisions for fear of the wrong outcome?”

Culture Fit

10.“What three criteria will you be looking for in selecting your next company?”

Why It Works:“I like this question as it gives me insight into their motivation to leaving and also if the employer matches what they are seeking,” says Dioso.

11. “Give me one word that describes you as a professional that you would like for me to remember you by.”

Why It Works:Dioso is seeking out creativity in how candidates describe themselves and screening whether or not it matches with what it takes to be successful at the company.

Metrics

12.“Detail the set-up of a metrics dashboard you created. How did you know the metrics involved provided value to the function and organisation?“

Why It Works:According to McCabe, “The candidate should be able to explain that certain metrics previously used were no longer measured and that new metrics were introduced that added more value. They should be able to communicate how the measures align [with] the strategy and how the key stakeholders had input into which measurements were important to them. Also, are the measurements leading or lagging metrics? Often times, a Sr. Leader will want to know that the metrics that are established are simple, measure what they are supposed to, are transparent and are set into a continuous improvement loop,” concludes McCabe.

Nontraditional

13.“Bring this CV to life. What do you do for fun? Where is the coolest place you have ever visited? What do you read?”

Why It Works:After the interview has progressed through standard inquiries, McCartt lobs this more colourful question the candidate’s way. McCartt explains that these questions provide insights beyond the CV, helping the hiring manager feel they not only have a good sense of the candidate's professional self but also their whole self.

[Related:Why Recruiting for Personality Matters]

14. “What do you think an interview really is, and do you worry about saying the wrong thing?”

Why It Works:McCartt leverages this question to expand upon her interview partnership philosophy. As such, she follows whatever they answer with, “It has been my experience that an interview is really two business professionals sitting down together to see if they have mutual needs, skills and philosophies that would make a partnership a potential success. I don’t think there are wrong answers in interviews if one is looking for a business partner.”

Learn More & Download

How to Conduct Better Interviews

The post 14 Must-Ask Interview Questions This February appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Eighty-nine percent of B2B organisations use content marketing to drive higher website traffic and attract more customers.

This is good news for marketing teams because although content marketing strategies cost up to 62% less than traditional marketing strategies, they actually deliver three times as many leads. But did you know that it’s also good for HR departments? Because while the focus of content marketing is often on how it benefits sales and marketing, content can also play a prominent role in expressing company culture and attracting talent that reinforces it.

The link between content and culture starts with your employer brand. “It’s a candidate’s market, so employer branding is more important than ever before,” says Jamie Nichols, Head of Community at CultureIQ. “And when your employer brand is made up of everything that faces the public, everything you write is a reflection of how your company approaches business – even when your blog covers topics that aren’t related to company culture.”

For all the benefits of using content to boost your efforts in building culture, it’s not something that will happen by itself. Marketing and sales teams, which often control the company blog, are more likely to focus on branding and messaging than how the blog reflects on the company’s internal culture.

If you think your company blog could reinforce your culture, here are five specific strategies you can use to combine the efforts of content marketing and human resources:

1. Pitch it as a campaign

Don’t leap to wrangle control of the blog right away. Instead, pitch it as a strategic cross-functional campaign. This will help avoid a turf war with whichever department owns the blog and encourage more participation.

“Campaigns work because there’s a clear goal and outcome to drive toward,” says Nichols. “It’s easier to build energy and re-evaluate after a set period of time to see what effect it’s had on customers, new hires and employees.”

2. Get employees involved

Employees want to be connected to the company mission and feel like they’re making an impact on the company and the customers. Help them do this by asking employees in different functions to contribute to the blog to talk about their areas of expertise. This gives the blog a wide range of voices and further empowers employees to bring their voice to the forefront.

“When you empower employees to feel that their voice is front and centre, you show prospective candidates that you’re up for that kind of relationship,” says Nichols. “In one example, we asked a software developer to write a blog post. Sharing the perspective of a person who touches the product in a unique way helped us show customers what goes into a product, but it also gave our developer a chance to share his work. He got to exercise his writing skills and reflect on his work in a way that doesn’t always come up in his normal day-to-day.”

3. Check for authenticity

Content plays a strong role in reinforcing company culture, but it can also send contradictory signals if you aren’t honest. Whether you’re writing about your company culture or how you plan and implement email campaigns, the messages you send through content need to align with how things actually work within your company.

“An authentic culture is a consistent one,” says Nichols. “The content you publish should align with how you run your company. Otherwise, employees will wonder why their employer says one thing but does another and lose trust in leadership.”

4. Follow style guidelines and blogging protocol

Your submission should be reflective of the company culture, but it also needs to meet the standards set up by the marketing or sales team. Working with the guidelines and editorial process will ensure that the piece fits in with the broader content strategy but also stands on its own with on-target messaging.

“Marketing teams work so hard to create an amazing blog that communicates the right messaging,” says Nichols. “Use the guidelines they’ve set up to make sure that your culture contribution meets those standards. That way, if something’s changed in your submission, it’s not personal, it’s just protocol.”

5. Don’t ask content to do the heavy lifting

Content can support strategic company culture initiatives, but it can’t replace them. As you approach a content strategy for building culture, make sure that the content you produce is a sign of what’s going on within your company culture, not the proposed solution to culture issues.

“Ultimately, if it’s something that’s just happening on the surface, and the underlying assumptions don’t align, it will backfire,” says Nichols. “If employees are rolling their eyes when they get assigned to write a blog post, that means this is not an authentic expression of your culture. Employees need to believe that the leadership really cares about what they have to say and that it’s valuable to express their opinions before they’ll buy into the campaign.”

Every effort to develop company culture comes down to aligning a company’s values with how it does business. Content is one more way organisations can show that alignment to customers, employees and prospective hires.

LEARN MORE & DOWNLOAD:

How to Recruit the Informed Candidate

A guide to attracting, recruiting, and hiring informed candidates on Glassdoor.

The post 5 Strategies for Building Company Culture with Content appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Many industries are facing a hyper-competitive situation, with disruptions in business practices, products, services and delivery occurring like popcorn – you never know which kernel is going to erupt next, but you know it will! As such, leaders are scrambling to maintain a competitive advantage or at the very least, remain in the game.

In a time when so many popcorn kernels are erupting, brainstorming how to maintain that competitive advantage may feel like grasping at air, but it doesn’t have to.

Here are several key strategies successful leaders are leveraging to ensure survivability – even thrive-ability – while not (always) running at breakneck speed.

1. Quit chasing the competition.

Awareness of the industry trends as well as regular marketplace research is imperative in order to maintain an edge in your market. However, too much of a good thing can be stifling. This applies to a constant focus on what neighbouring entities are doing to win clients. A savvy leader will slow down from time to time and immerse in introspective business development sessions apart from the competition.

Because innovation comes from two different sources — from within or as a result of outside forces — it’s important to also take time to develop an internal think tank of your own. Round up top talent and ask questions that spark deep analysis of how the company is running on its own — is there anything that can be improved? Have employees noticed a bottleneck? How can systems be made more efficient? Giving you and your employees the time to look within will build out a better basis for a competitive analysis.

2. Pare down services and/or products.

Trying to be all things to all customers can create internal cacophony. Battling industry disruption, growing at breakneck or some other scenario that has left both leadership and staff battle weary, with no signs of relief, may be signs that it is time to whittle down services, focusing on the core customer base.

By doing so, you may actually stumble upon your best competitive advantages — skills and time. Limiting the number of products or services you offer gives you the opportunity to really focus in on what the company does best, and ultimately, on how it can distinguish itself. Your margins will thank you just as much as your employees will.

3. Close down shop for a while.

While this doesn’t mean to put a going-of-business sign on the front door, it does mean that shutting down an office or entire operation for brief periods of respite and regrouping can be valuable to speeding up overall performance down the road.

Some businesses which operate on a seasonal schedule might choose slower periods for temporary shuttering, but even if the business is not seasonally oriented, shutting down for brief periods can be exhilarating and rejuvenating for almost any company’s bottom line. It’s in those windows of time when the brain is given a moment to rest that ideas really start to flow. Spark innovation and your next big step by slowing down your current one.

Related: Download 5 Employee Engagement Strategiesto learn why forward-thinking employers are starting to realise the ROI behind satisfied and engaged employees.

4. Get coaching.

Leaders who find themselves running ragged, continually tired, mismanaging their emotions and tempers or exhibiting other signs of overdrive may consider hiring a coach. Whether company-sponsored or someone hired externally, a leadership coach can provide an outside perspective and also help illuminate, through professional Q&A, other exercises and collaborative sessions, areas where the leader can streamline, amend or even discard certain habits, behaviours or practices.

Investing time and energy in a coach may require the leader to slow down a bit, but in the long run offers amazing returns. It provides she or he with an opportunity to have a fresh set of eyes on their career, the company as a whole and the goals with which they are aligned.

Related: 11 Tips from Top CEOs

5. Step out of your comfort zone.

Slowing down long enough to learn the basics of social media, email marketing or how to move your business online, especially if you’re a more traditionally based company, can seem daunting. Nonetheless, it could be the biggest addition to a strategy that will help you stay ahead of the curve. The discomfort of stepping outside of your comfort zone and asking for help on a new skill (when you’ve been the expert in your field) will eventually wear off, and you’ll only have the wins to show for that time!

Good leaders understand that not everything is about an instantaneous, short-term win. Use the time you’re gifting yourself when you slow down to really strategize what a long-term gain looks like and how you can get yourself or your company there. The pain of slowing down will soon be a distant memory once you’re back on the right track again!

Related: How Being Vulnerable Strengthens Leaders

The post Slowing Down So Your Company Can Speed Up appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Online learning has a bad reputation, and deservedly so. For decades, eLearning courses have been clunky, ugly, awkward, difficult to use, boring and just plain ineffective. As teachers of face-to-face, interpersonal skills, we’ve seen the live classroom as the only place where complex interpersonal behaviours could be taught—or at least taught well.

But slowly, we’ve watched as online learning platforms started leveraging best practices in learning design. Technology began to allow for more social interaction, bite-sized and easy-to-integrate content, and content with spaced and blended learning options. So, we ditched our role as skeptics and converted to the idea that we could build an online course that would deliver a high-quality and effective learning experience—especially for modern learners.

This evolution in learning technology was driven by, although walking a pace or two behind, an evolution in the learner who boasted increasingly shorter attention spans, higher expectations, and greater susceptibility to distractions. In addition, learners today are increasingly data-driven and protective of their time, and value efficacy. Most importantly, the modern learner sees the internet, not the classroom, as the primary place of learning.

Utilising the latest eLearning advances, and leaning on our decades of experience in designing training, we’re ready to debunk four common myths of online learning.

Myth #1: Instructor-led training is the “gold standard” for every learner.

The Truth: Online learning is designed to be the gold standard for many learners.

This is the most common myth of all. But as it turns out, not all learners are created equal. We often receive feedback that learners struggle in a classroom designed to move at one speed. Slower learners fail to grasp key concepts let alone think about ways to apply them outside the classroom. These learners feel like they are “drinking from a fire hose”. Meanwhile, faster learners disengage when the instructor slows the pace.

In an online modality, slower learners can engage with the content at their own speed. They can learn new skills, spend time with challenging concepts, and even review content they’ve already covered—luxuries that are difficult to pull off in the classroom. Faster learners can move quickly, leading to increased engagement, shorter time to application, and less time away from their job.

Data also shows the modern learner is distracted. Each day, they check their phone eighty-five times and their email fifteen times. They’re also bombarded with chatty co-workers and a barrage of meetings. Online learning addresses (if not mimics) these constant distractions with bite-sized modules delivered through a variety of modalities from videos to discussion threads to quizzes and games. And when learners do get distracted, they can easily pick up where they left off.

The spaced nature of online learning also better accommodates workforces that are remote or can’t carve out the full days required to attend classroom training. Online, learners can learn when it is convenient or in the very moment they need new skills to solve a pressing problem. And while convenience is key, the supreme benefit of spaced learning is skill mastery. Research shows that transference demonstrably improves as people digest and apply small amounts of learning over time.

Myth #2 Online learning’s primary purpose is to serve scale, not individuals.

The Truth: Online learning is designed to serve the individual.

Most people assume online learning is only preferable when you need to train a large workforce quickly and inexpensively. When you have more time and money and can prioritise effectiveness over scale, that’s when you turn to the traditional classroom. We politely disagree.

Instructor-led courses tend to treat learners as a monolithic group—forcing people to learn in specific ways through rote modalities. On the other hand, online learning can be mapped to the learner with a variety of pathways and tools. Visual learners are drawn to videos, auditory learners lean on podcasts, and hands-on learners gravitate towards role plays and journaling sessions. This level of flexibility and control allows learners to move through the content at a comfortable pace aligned with their learning style and scheduling demands.

When done well, online learning does not take an assembly-line approach to learning. Instead, it offers the ultimate experience in personalised learning—allowing each learner to wander and discover, to explore and ponder. Two wildly different learners may go through the same online course and both leave feeling like they’ve had an experience handcrafted just for them.

Myth #3: Online learning creates a lack of accountability for the learner.

The Truth: Online learning is built to provide a greater sense of accountability.

When it comes to learning, engagement is measured by attention, not aptitude. Facilitators do their best to juggle the demands of both teaching and keeping people engaged. But with a large class, that juggling act is challenging—to say the least. Not to mention, the accountability a facilitator creates typically ends the moment the learner walks out the door.

While keeping an online learner engaged presents new challenges, there are also benefits. Moderators can view each learning activity a learner has (or hasn’t) completed, signalling learners’ progress through the course. And because of the spaced nature of the modality, moderators can follow up with learners frequently to offer encouragement and coaching—all while holding the learner accountable to applying the skills outside the classroom.

Myth #4: Instructor-led training is more social and better leverages social learning.

The Truth: Online learning allows for more social interaction and learning when it counts.

When teaching interpersonal skills, many practitioners see social learning as imperative. We agree. Online learning is optimised for social learning—especially when it matters.

In a traditional classroom, learners interact with a handful of peers during discussions and often practice skills in small groups or in pairs. In addition, they may get a smidgen of personal interaction with the instructor.

In online learning, a cohort of learners can discuss the application of a skill in social threads. When a learner practices a skill, they do so for the rest of the class to observe and provide feedback. Conversely, learners can also see how the other members of their cohort apply the same skills. Rather than seeing a partner demonstrate the behaviours, they see how everyone in the class approaches the skills, allowing them to pick up even more social nuances than they might in a classroom. Rather than a handful of social exchanges, online learners experience dozens and dozens of interactions.

Additionally, the spaced nature of the course allows course moderators to give feedback to each individual learner—this type of one-on-one coaching is at the heart of effective learning.

A Powerful Modality for the Modern Learner

For modern learners who are comfortable with technology and thrive in an online environment, who crave social collaboration and learning, who want their learning on demand and specific to their immediate needs, and who find it difficult to carve out the time or impossible to sit through day-long classes, online learning is ideal. And we can comfortably wager that while this type of modern learner may feel few and far between today, they will fit the archetype of learners in your organisation in the very near future.

Equipped with traditional classroom training, live instructor-led online classrooms, and now the online asynchronous class, learning professionals have a powerful arsenal to meet their learners when and where learning will be most powerful.

Emily Hoffman is the Vice President of Product Development and Client Delivery at VitalSmarts. She leads the VitalSmarts product teams, works with clients to customise products, and sets the standard for all VitalSmarts facilitators.

Chase McMillan is the VitalSmarts Research and Development Manager. He brings credibility and data-driven insight into the classroom. He’s researched trends in patient safety to project management in industries as diverse as healthcare, finance, and technology.

Justin Hale is a subject matter expert on the VitalSmarts development team and is the VitalSmarts virtual training guru. He has led the effort in virtual and online development and instruction, and seventy percent of attendees rate his virtual courses as equally engaging as or more engaging than, face-to-face training they’ve attended.

The post Debunking the 4 Myths of Online Learning appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

What do you do as a manager when love notes are flying as fast as doughnuts on a Monday morning, gossip is travelling faster than a teenager’s snapchat, or when that relationship-fostering you did as a part of onboarding worked a little too well? When love is in the office air – it’s all about communication.

With a high potential for conflict, drama and hurt feelings, office romances are hard for everyone to navigate – the lovestruck themselves, their teammates and managers. But the truth is, many significant relationships start in the office. In fact, according to a survey cited in the Wall Street Journal on March 27, 2014, about one in 10 Americans meets their spouse through work. There’s even evidence to suggest that workplace relationships are more likely to end in marriage, according to a survey cited in the Daily Mail. So despite conventional wisdom, office relationships can be more than a taboo romp — they can actually end in happily ever after.

Just because something can work out, though, doesn’t always mean it will. Office romances are tricky, and as such, need to be handled with care. Here are our tips for keeping employee engagement high when the rules of romantic engagement are fuzzy.

Make sure your company dating policy is clear

Instead of having employees guessing about the propriety of dating colleagues, make sure your policy is spelled out in the office handbook. “Certain companies have strict policies that prohibit dating at any level, or require employees to inform their supervisor or HR,” says Erica Perkins, Director/Human Resources Business Partner at Glassdoor. “Some have less restrictive policies that allow romances to happen between individuals, but not between direct reports and managers or other relationships where there would be an inherent conflict of interest.” Since it’s not terribly romantic to thumb through the company’s official dating policy before accepting a dinner invite, it’s important to make sure that employees are aware of your policies upon taking a job with your organisation. If you don’t have an HR function to back you up, consider drafting policies for your small business yourself.

Ask for and model appropriate behaviour

If you’re the manager of one or both of the employees in a relationship, be sure that you coach your team member(s) to be subtle with their in-house interactions. You want your team members to feel as comfortable as possible, and you want to make it clear that they are expected to keep all outward signs of their relationship to a minimum. We recommend sharing U.S. News and World Report’s 5 Cardinal Rules of Office Romance with colleagues in an office relationship.

And, just as it’s critical for the two people involved in the relationship to stick to the utmost model of propriety, it’s key for you as their manager to be discreet about your awareness of their relationship. While there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the relationship publicly if they are “out” with colleagues, don’t ever contribute to the gossip mill. Instead, stay focused on business goals and team-building efforts.

Encourage engagement

No, we’re not talking about workplace marriage proposals – not *that* kind of engagement. We’re talking about making a concerted effort to keep morale high when there’s a team romance brewing. Any time you see one strong alliance forming – whether it’s professional or personal – you run the risk of having others feeling marginalised. So it’s important to make sure your team feels chemistry as a whole. Look for opportunities to reinforce team bonding with off-site events, team parties, and even simply by encouraging positive feedback with one another.

Look out for conflicts of interest

When you’re assigning projects to subordinates, be sure that you minimise any potential for conflicts of interest. If both members of the relationship are on your team, try to have them work on separate projects as much as possible. And if your direct report is dating someone on another team, work with his or her manager to make sure that all cross-functional activity is set up in a way that would sidestep competing interests.

As long as you’re following all the right steps to stay compliant with your company policy, making sure everyone conducts themselves appropriately, encouraging large-group engagement, and delegating projects to eliminate any conflict of interest, it’s safe to let Cupid do his thing.

The post How to Keep Employee Engagement High When an Office Romance is Brewing appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.