THE BENEFITS OF TEMPORARY recruitment

Often when companies need to hire staff, the first thing they consider is to hire a permanent staff member, these appointments come with on-going monthly employee benefits and additional payroll administration. If one looks at the cost associated with hiring a permanent employee, it is sometimes worthwhile partnering with a recruitment agency that can provide temporary employees.

There are many benefits to hiring employees on a temporary basis via a recruitment agency:

Flexibility

Temporary staff can fill the void instantly especially when staff members are on vacation, maternity leave or when there is an urgent need for more staff members during busy periods. As the employer, you have the flexibility to decide on how long the temporary staff service is required for, at an all-inclusive rate.  

There’s less direct responsibility

One of the biggest benefits to sourcing staff from an agency is that the pressure isn’t directly on you. A recruitment agency will take over the whole process; the agency becomes the employer and takes over all administrative procedures, responsibilities and liabilities that come with hiring an employee.

Evaluation

Hiring temporary staff provides you with an opportunity to evaluate the employee performance without committing to any full-time employment. It’s almost like a long interview process.

If your company is urgently looking to place a candidate and has no time to search and interview someone, a Temp may be available to you through an agency.

Pakanyo HR Solutions is an HR Solutions company that specialises in Recruitment of Permanent, Temporary and Contract Hire. For more information please call contact us on 011 046 9667 or email us on info@pakanyo.co.za

How to Measure Return on Investment (ROI) in Training

The ROI guru Jack Phillips defined return on Investment (ROI) as “a measure of the financial benefits obtained by an organisation over a specified period in return for a given investment in a training programme.” There comes a time where management needs to review and reflect on its training and development activities against its mission and vision. This process allows for critical questions to be asked, such as how relevant is the HRD function, how effective and most of all is the money invested adding any value?

Throughout my training career, I have observed how training professional focus on measures of attendance, completion, and delegates satisfaction to determine the success of training initiatives. The biggest challenge with this approach is that over the years it has failed to help business understand the impact of training on the organisation. Measuring the return on investment of training programmes is not only a necessary exercise but also an effective way to show the powers that be, that there’s financial value in training investing in training.  So how do you determine if your investment in training is worthwhile?

Here are some useful step on how to calculate your return on a training investment (or the ROI in training):

STEP 1: UNDERSTAND THE BUSINESS NEED

You need to ask yourself what are the challenges the business is facing, this could range from customer services issue, performance management, conflict situations in the workplace. This is a critical step as defines the way forward.

STEP 2: IS TRAINING IS THE RIGHT SOLUTION

When most organisation experience challenges, the assumption is always that training can fix those challenges; training isn’t always the solution to problems. Do determine if training is a need; ask yourself the two questions, do employees know how to perform the job? Do they know the product? The answer to this will determine if training is indeed a need. 

STEP 3: DEFINE THE OUTCOMES FOR THE TRAINING

In order to determine the learning outcomes, think about the challenge that the business has and ask yourself what will the training intervention achieve? What skills should the participant walk away with? Always make sure that the outcomes are directly related to the business need.

STEP 4:  DESIGN THE TRAINING PROGRAM

Part of the design process it is important to understand what type of training is compatible with your target audience and the outcomes you need to achieve. i.e. is it going to be classroom based, how long will the training be, the training activities involved, the type of equipment needed and lastly what type of support is required after the training to make sure that new knowledge and skills are transferred into the workplace?

STEP 5:  DEFINE YOUR METRICS

In this step, you need to determine how you will measure the success of the training programme. For example, if the organisation is experiencing issues with productivity, the intended outcome would be, increase productivity.  The metrics to measure the success of the training could be, the percentage increase in productivity is, after the training intervention.

STEP 6: CONDUCT THE TRAINING & MEASURE YOUR RETURN ON INVESTMENT

After the training intervention, track the metrics you have identified, monitor changes on a regular basis and determine the success of training, if productivity improves and this improvement is worth more than the total cost of the training, then there is a positive return on your training investment.

Remember change will not happen immediately, you need to give the participants’ time to apply their new skill and knowledge. 

The Benefits of Customer Service Training

Great Customer service is essential for any organisation to survive in a long run. Yes, there are a variety of elements that create a successful business; however customer service is at a centre stage of that. Organisations providing good customer service are successful in retaining existing customers and building long- term relationships with them. Therefore, I cannot overemphasise the importance of customer service training.

Some of the benefits of training customer service staff are as follow:

1.   Improved Customer Service Skills:

Although all training interventions are meant to improve the knowledge or skill set of an individual, but when it comes to customer services the focus is on improving communication, listening skills, problem-solving and managing human relations more effectively and organizational skills.

It is advisable that all employees undergo training that has the same set of competencies; this will give your entire workforce a standard process to deal with customer issues or questions and creates a sense of team spirit at the same time.

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2.   Increases profitability:

The formula is simple; improved customer service + increased customer satisfaction + increased customer loyalty = an increase in profit. Great service allows the company to achieve higher customer retention, acquire new customers, reduces employee turnover and increases sales. The training has a great impact on employee motivation and morale, which leads to increased productivity.

3.   Enhances Customer Experience:

Customer service training workshops have the potential to change the behaviors of employees consequently will help them deliver a better customer experience, these workshops teach employees to develop a customer-centric approach, encouraging them to be empathetic to customers.

A variety of training activities and games can be developed in order to enhance the customer-centric philosophy which goes a long way to deliver and improve the overall experience for customers.

4.   Increased Employee Retention:

According to a study 40% percent of employees who receive poor job training leave within the first year, to a large extent this impact on the companies' ability to maintain the same customer service standards. High turnover is problematic for the business as it adds to the cost of re-hiring and training as well.

Providing adequate training and upgrading the skills set of employees is likely to encourage them to stay with the company since it signals a potential for personal growth and development.

5.   Improve reputation and standing

Despite the fact some customers may choose to leave because of the cheaper price elsewhere, countless customers will remain because of the great experience.  There's a quote that says "Customer services inspires stories" What that basically means is if customers have bad experiences with the organisation, the news will spread very fast and potentially hurt the organisation's reputation So, if you manage to deliver an enjoyable experience, which comes about through well trained, motivated and knowledgeable staff, your customers are sure to pass on favourable recommendations and reviews. 

5 Reasons Why Good Employees Leave

It's pretty amazing how you always hear managers complain about their best employees leaving, the truth is, the departure of any good employee can be costly and very disruptive to the company.  There are a number of reasons why employees decide to up and leave the company. Most of them are not personal, but they are a sign of a poor workplace environment. 

Managers have to realise that in most cases employees don't leave the company but they leave them instead. This can easily be avoided; all that is required is a new perspective and some extra effort on the manager's part.

Here are the common mistakes that happen in a workplace that cause the employee to leave:

1.   Promotion Issues

Many employees leave jobs because there is no upward mobility, no matter how hard they work or how well they succeed, there are no opportunities for advancement into higher and more demanding positions. Alternatively, when you have worked your tail off only to get passed over for a promotion that is given to a colleague who is less qualified or less capable, now that is a massive insult!  

No wonder good people leave.

2.   When hard work is not recognised

It's easy to underestimate the power of a pat on the back, especially to the company's top performers who are highly motivated. Managers to need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good, as for some might be an incentive while others are public recognition.

When employees do good work, they should be recognized financially and publicly. Otherwise, someone else will.

3.   Managers don't care about their employees.

Employees don't need to be friends with their boss but they need to have some sort of a good working relationship. A majority of employees leave their jobs because the relationship with their managers is fractured.  Smart companies invest in up-skilling their managers on how to balance being professional and the human relation aspect.  This will go a long way in ensuring that bosses celebrate employees’ success, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge people, even when it hurts. Bosses who fail to really care will always have high turnover rates.  

It's impossible to work for someone eight-plus hours a day when they aren't personally involved and don't care about anything other than your production yield.

4.   Poor Management

According to research, one of the major reasons cited in exit interviews is bad management. Bad management practices deflate employee morale; causes stress and cost the company more than just the cost of high turnover.  Managers need to have sufficient emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills to manage people; therefore, companies need to invest in empowering their manager in training soft skills.

5.    A Toxic Work Environment

A toxic work environment is any job where the work, the atmosphere, the people, or any combination of those things makes you so dismayed it causes serious disruptions in your life. Organisations need a workplace culture where people can unplug and relax, something as seemingly minor as snacks at meetings can make a big difference, planned social events can also go far to gain employee loyalty and forestall a toxic work environment.

As a manager, if you want your best people to stay, you need to think carefully about your conduct and how you treat your employees.  You need to create an environment that makes them want to work for you.

The cost of hiring the wrong person

 Hiring a wrong person for the job can be an expensive exercise!

In a study done by Career Builder survey in 2012, it was reported that 69 percent of employers reported that their companies have been adversely affected by hiring a wrong person that year, with 41 percent of those businesses estimating the cost to be over $25,000, for smaller companies where every employee often juggles many important responsibilities, the cost of bad hire can be even more devastating.

Here are some of the effects of hiring a wrong person:  

The Financial Cost

Making a wrong appointment not only wastes the company’s time, it costs money because you are not only paying a salary to someone who can’t perform to your expectations, but might incur additional training costs and in extreme cases you may also incur the cost of severance pay where the employee is let go.

The Employee Low Morale

When you are spending your time and money trying to correct your mistake of hiring the wrong person, the rest of your team may become disengaged; it’s difficult to stay upbeat when one team member requires so much attention or manages to bring the whole team down.  As a manager you stand a risk of some staff questioning your judgment and will start to doubt the company’s leadership.

The Reputation of the business

The company’s reputation can weaken as customers come to realize that the company is performing below the required standards. Your company brand will be jeopardised if you continue keeping an unsuitable person in the company.

 Managers Lose Time

If you have ever supervised a poorly performing employee, you know how time-consuming it can be and as a manager you need to work harder to maintain team moral and make sure that service delivery is not negatively affected. Your team goals may take longer to achieve as time is wasted on performance reviews and potentially ‘fixing’ problems that were made.

Rather than wasting all the time and money making bad recruitment choices, the next time you need to recruit, make sure of the following:

1.     Have a clear idea of the job requirements;

2.     Draft an accurate job description;

3.     Conduct background and reference checks;

4.      Ensure the candidate is a right cultural fit;

5.     And lastly, trust your instincts; 

5 Important reasons why you should set goals

It is a tradition to set goals at the beginning of each year, but sticking to those goals proves to be very challenging. According to numerous researches only 3% of people set goals, why so low I ask?

Another study conducted on students by Mark McCormack at Harvard MBA program, 1979, in that he asked students the following questions: "Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?" Only 3% of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13% had goals, but they were not in writing; and 84% had no specific goals at all. Ten years later, the same members of the class were interviewed again, and the findings were incredible. The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all. What about the 3% who had clear, written goals? They were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97% put together. All this proves that Goal Setting is a fundamental component of successful goal achievement; it gives you clarity on what you ultimately want and by far the most important exercise in ones’ life.

Below are 5 key reasons why setting goals is so important:

1.   It Gives You Clarity

Setting your goals gives you clarity on what you want to achieve. It helps you crystallize and articulate your heart desires and ensure that you put time, energy and effort into things that really matter in your life. It makes you live more consciously.

2.   It Drives You

Your goals are a representation of your inner desires; desires that motivate and inspire you. They are a source of motivation and the fuel that drives you when the going gets tough. When you don’t have goals, it is easy to find yourself getting distracted by everything that’s going on around you.

Until you clearly articulate what you want as a specific goal, you are not channeling your efforts properly. You may think you are driving in the certain direction, but with no clearly defined goals, you have no focus.

3.   It gives you focus

Your goals help you focus your time, efforts and energy on exactly what needs to be achieved. When you don’t have goals, you find yourself wondering around every day, have you ever found yourself surfing the net or chatting excessively or maybe running errands that play no role in your larger scope of life but you are not aware because you are just living life as it is?  A goal acts as your funnel which guides and channels those inputs effectively into your desired output.

Remember No Goals…No Focus.

4.   Makes You Accountable

Setting goals makes you accountable. Having someone, alongside you to make you accountable is extremely important. It enables you to have someone who's always reminding you of when you're falling behind on your goals and keeps you motivated to remain on track.

 It creates positive pressure.

5.     Achieve Your Potential

Humans are creatures of comfort, there is nothing wrong with being in your comfort zone, unless you get too comfortable and start holding yourself back instead of challenging yourself to learn, grow and try new things. Your goals will help you step out of your comfort zone and allow you to reach new heights by giving you challenges that can make you better.

Start Setting Goals, make a habit of daily goal setting and achieving, for the rest of your life. Focus on the things you want, rather than the things you don't want.