by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 31, 2016 | Background Screening
Background Screening | 5 Reasons You Should Eliminate Chairs From Meetings Pt. 1
Background Screening | Take a quick walk around a corporate office and you’ll likely see some people standing at their desks working where a chair used to be. But it doesn’t stop there. You may also see groups of people standing around having a meeting. No need for a conference room with a large table.
What’s with all the standing? Are there truly benefits to it? Do standing meetings, also known as standups, check-ins or huddles, help teams accomplish more, or are they a corporate fad to accompany the latest set of fashionable buzzwords?
The standing meeting is a gift that comes from the world of Agile software development. Standups are primarily a way for project team members to give daily updates on what they did yesterday, what they’ll do today and any obstacles they’re running into. The frequency and focus can be altered to fit the needs of your team or project.
Standing meetings have distinct advantages over traditional meetings where team members sit and discuss their topics. Ditch the chairs and embrace a new way of conducting meetings to reap benefits ranging from higher productivity to better health.
1. It’s a more efficient way to meet
Because standups are quick, happen regularly and take place in the location where the people are doing the work, rather than in a conference room, they create an environment that’s well-suited for efficiency. When was the last time you heard a colleague lament about the need for more and longer meetings? The opposite is generally true. You and your team members will appreciate the time you’ll save by running more efficient and effective meetings.
In fact, there are strategies to create a good standup meeting. Several things up the efficiency factor of standups and set them apart from traditional meetings. Participants in standing meetings should be there ready to share goals, problems and solutions with one another in the moment.
Issues can be identified and therefore addressed in a more timely manner. When issue do come up, the affected people know about it sooner and can begin to work toward a solution more quickly.
Tools such as visual management boards, also known an improvement boards, are an efficient way to acknowledge problems that need to be resolved. Using aids in standing meetings are one way to provide helpful visual cues to participants about what’s being discussed to keep the group on-task and moving swiftly through the topics.
2. Standing meetings get people talking
Standing meetings open lines of communication between team members. This type of meeting creates an opportunity to start meaningful conversations that will enhance your business and project work. If team members take information they’ve heard during a standing meeting and begin to collaborate on projects or seek support from one another, you know the meetings are useful. And the goal is to always hold valuable and effective meetings.
What you don’t want to happen is for people to sit in meetings and then walk away having had no meaningful dialogue, solved no problems, developed no plans or created no opportunities for follow-up. This, unfortunately, is the result of many meetings in the workplace that take at least an hour or more to conduct.
After the initial background screening and once hired -standing meetings are concise by design, they help people quickly make their point or get to the core of an issue. In longer, more formal meetings, people may meander when talking or cloud their main content with unnecessary details. This can cause someone who may have been a potential partner, or someone who could use the information to not grasp the main point and therefore not make the connection with the person presenting the information.
3. Standing is a healthy choice
Moving around and standing at work have both been shown to have health benefits. By standing at work, even briefly, you cause your muscles to contract and prompt your body to burn calories. This is a healthy option for people who normally work in a seated position for the majority of the day.
In fact, too much sitting can contribute to adverse health effects such as insulin resistance and the development of belly fat. Busy professionals who may have a hard time fitting an exercise routine in their busy schedules can benefit from any help in leading a healthy lifestyle. -Recruit Loop
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss background screening services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!
by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 31, 2016 | Background Screening
Background Screening | 7 Pitfalls to Avoid in Managing Remote Teams Pt. 2
Background Screening | “Remote teams are not as flexible as you may assume,” – she explains. “You can’t accept any order knowing you have people ready to work for you from their homes. Remember: you’ve hired them to do a specific job and they still expect to have some free time, so don’t count on their flexibility too much. If you want to keep a remote team efficient, you have to be an efficient delegator.”
5. Hiring great employees who have no idea how to handle tasks from home
You can have the best workers in the world and you know they are suitable for the tasks you have in mind, but that doesn’t mean they will master the job from home. Someone may be a very hard worker in a more traditional office environment, but they may get distracted performing the same tasks from home.
Do they have the conditions to work from home? Can they set up a home office, or do they live in a tiny apartment with no space for a desk? Remote working requires proper conditions, but it’s also a skill that not everyone has.
If you want to make sure you have the right workers for the job, hire people who have worked remotely before or have experience running their own projects. If you already have an office team and you want to shift towards remote work, make sure everyone is able to handle the challenge before making a drastic change in their lives.
6. Failure to use the right communication tools
What’s the most important thing to maintain when you manage and engage remote teams? Let me hear you say it: communication!
Since you can’t count on direct (face to face) communication, the connection within the team may be disturbed. That’s why you have to make up for the gap, and you need to use the right tools for that purpose.
Email is the first thing that comes to mind. Yes, it’s an effective tool for communication with individuals and teams. However, written communication can get a bit dry and boring. You don’t want your workers to feel the daily correspondence as a burden. Thus, you need to add the element of fun into it.
What happens when you want to explain new projects or tasks to your team members? In that case, written text can be misinterpreted or misunderstood, and it doesn’t convey the message in the clearest manner possible. In such situations, consider using digital whiteboards, private chat rooms, or internal social networks incorporated into the organization’s website. Asana, Wrike, and similar project management tools can make the communication within the team very effective.
7. Focusing on talent and forgetting about team-fit
Of course you want to hire talent within the remote team. That’s your main focus, since you want all tasks to be completed by exceptionally talented and capable people. Strong individuals are great achievers, but their attitude can often become a problem when you put them inside an existing team culture. In an office, it’s easier for them to feel the vibe and fit in. In a remote team, however, they may find it difficult to sense the culture and they won’t make an effort to become part of it.
When you hire new members to join a remote team, you have to make sure they are on the same page as everyone else. Ask the candidates about their personal interests, the way they perceive the tasks, and the opinions they have about the company’s challenges. -Recruit Loop
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss background screening services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!
by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 31, 2016 | employment background check
Employment Background Check | 7 Pitfalls to Avoid in Managing Remote Teams Pt. 1
Employment Background Check | Some of the most prominent and successful companies in the world, such as Zapier, Buffer, and Groove, have built a culture out of remote working. Their managers are effective in maintaining the team spirit and the community vibe, although every individual covers the work from home.
However, other companies are having second thoughts about introducing remote teams in their culture. In 2013,Best Buy followed the practice of Reddit and Yahoo by announcing the end of their flexible work program.
Why did these companies, which are famous for relying on technology, decide to change their work-at-home policies? Were they worried about the speed and quality of the work being sacrificed when the workers stayed at home?
As always, there are two sides of the coin.
These are the benefits you’ll most likely experience by promoting a culture of remote teams:
- Lower expenses;
- Access to a greater talent pool;
- Higher productivity; and
- Flexibility
Some managers of remote teams, however, mention these disadvantages:
- Security issues (home-based systems are not as resistant to hacking as office security systems);
- Connectivity problems; and
- Not having full control over the team’s work.
If remote team managers establish effective communication and avoid the most common pitfalls, the pros of this working method will definitely prevail.
Here are 7 pitfalls to avoid in managing remote teams:
1. Paying too much attention to bad examples
Okay, remote team work didn’t work for Reddit, Best Buy, and Yahoo. So what? Does that mean you should completely give up on this idea? Absolutely not! Why not follow the example of companies that did make it work?
The only way to find out what works for your specific company is to analyze its needs and culture. Are the team members capable of working from home? Can you keep remote workers in the loop through virtual means of communication? If you think this could work out, you should certainly give it a try.
Think about it: your workers will be saving a lot of money they would spend on commuting and lunches if they work from home. That sole fact will keep them motivated to do the best job they can. Have a long talk, explain the way the team would function, and feel their vibe. If they are willing to take the business home, you’ll be one step closer to making a good decision.
2. Treating remote workers as individuals
Jim Mullaney, the CEO and founder of Edoc Service, has a nice experience to share about managing remote teams. One of his important recommendations is for the managers to maintain the team spirit as healthily as possible.
“If you’re going to have remote workers, you have to remote them as a team,” – he explains. “Salespeople are often competing with one another, and they’re not interested in other members winning. It’s all about themselves. In a team environment, a win for the team means that everyone has to win, and everyone wants to help one another win.”
That true team spirit has to be maintained even when people work from home. Keep reminding them that they have to support each other for the sake of achieving great results at a group level.
3. Not soliciting feedback
Remote employees are still employees. You still need to know what they think about the job they are doing, and they want to be heard and understood. They have unique ideas that may improve the way the entire team works, so building rapport is one of the main factors that promotes progress.
Try not to keep the communication limited to work, though. You still need to maintain the sense of community, so try to engage them in conversations they would usually have in the office. Start a common message thread to ask how everyone is doing and support the conversation with spontaneous prompts. If you lack ideas, mention the latest episode of Game of Thrones for instance. It’s always a nice conversation starter.
When you manage to maintain the connection beyond work tasks, you’ll be able to congratulate yourself about being a great remote team leader.
4. Allocating the wrong tasks to the wrong people
Remote arrangements can certainly fail if you fail to estimate the capacity of a worker and delegate the wrong tasks to them. Ashley Stewart, the coordinator manager at EduGeeks Club, runs a remote team of writers who complete different tasks for clients. She has to delegate each order to the right member of the team. -Recruit Loop
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss employment background check services or complete the form on
www.esascreening.com now!
by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 26, 2016 | employment background check
Employment Background Check | Save Time When Screening Resumes
Employment Background Check | The resume provides a first snapshot of your potential new employee. It won’t tell you if someone’s right for the job. But it’s a good way to screen the applicants that clearly aren’t. As a hiring manager, use this to your advantage to save time in the initial employment background screening. Look out for warning signs rather than applicants’ strengths, to get through that pile of resumes faster.
Here are 5 warning signs to help with an initial screening:
1. Excessive length. A great resume can condense everything into one page. While the single-page resume is more common in the US, in Australia most hiring managers are used to 2 pages. But beware anything longer than 3 pages. If a candidate can’t write concisely on one of their most important documents, what hope do they have in business communications?
2. Poor presentation. There’s nothing wrong with using a template to present a resume. But depending on the role, watch out for signs of unoriginality and even laziness. If creativity or attention-to-detail are important requirements, a boring or poorly presented resume is a good warning sign. The web is full of inspiration for truly creative resumes. While not everyone’s a designer, it’s easier than ever to achieve a professional polish.
3. Lack of customisation. We’ve all seen the application that looks like it was written for another role. Did they even read the ad? This is a surefire sign that your applicant is a little careless with details. You’ll know if they took time to tailor their resume to fit your requirements. If it looks like an applicant has sent a generic resume to numerous jobs without considering the specifics of your role, they probably have.
4. Cheesy fonts and sizes. Being creative with a resume is different from being sloppy. A resume that tries to impress with the use of non-standard or ‘artsy’ fonts rarely achieves that objective. It’s more likely a sign of inexperience or unprofessionalism. Forget comic sans. In most business environments you’re looking for sleek, professional formatting that adheres to the standard fonts.
5. The grade10 email address. Plenty of us had one. But then we wised up and upgraded to something mildly more serious. Do you really want your employees logging into webmail at hotstuff_69@hotmail.com? This applicant is either not ready to go of their old ways, or is too lazy to create a more a professional email address. Either way, best not to waste time with someone who is not willing to put in the extra hours to come up with a professional looking resume. -Recruit Loop
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss employment background check services or complete the form on
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by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 26, 2016 | Fingerprinting
Fingerprinting | Benefits of Outsourcing Occupational Health Programs
Fingerprinting | While there are any number of reasons that an employer may desire to conduct medical screening on their employees, employers generally conduct medical screening on their employees for two basic reasons:
1. An employer may be required by regulation to perform some form of medical screening.These regulations are often based on either federal or state laws. Examples of employers subject to such regulations are those in the Transportation, Healthcare, and Mining industries. There are, of course, other regulations and industries that may have the need to conduct medical screening beyond those highlighted here.
2. Create a safer and more effective workforce. The major benefits of these programs are:
- Reduce absenteeism due to injury
- Reduce work related injuries
- Help assess an employee’s ability to safely perform your particular job requirements
- Reduce employee turnover
- Establish a baseline health condition for future comparison
While many employers are aware of the need to perform medical screens, some employers may be unaware of the hard costs associated with these types of testing.
Examinations, immunizations, respirator clearance testing, audiograms, and other such related exams all cost money.
One item, however, that employers often overlook is the administration cost of managing these programs.
The costs that employers often miss are:
- Cost of clinic selection
- Picking the best clinic at the best price
- Cost of clinic management
- Making appointments
- Tracking down exam statuses
- Cost of a poor applicant experience (use of an inconvenient clinic)
- Candidate attraction
- Employee retention
The cost of clinic selection is an easy concept to appreciate, but it is hard to quantify.
Companies often have static clinics networks that do not change. Over time these clinics often increase their fees.
Since companies do not routinely go out to bid for these occupational health services, these fee increases will cause a substantial increase in their program cost.
Not managing clinic selection could cost companies a substantial amount of money since they are not leveraging their size to help mitigate program cost inflation.
Cost of clinic management for companies is substantial.
In the post offer arena, companies have their Talent Acquisition team manage making clinic appointments for candidates as well as track down occupational health service paperwork.
In the post-employment arena, the responsibility may be managed by another team, but the hard cost remains the same.
The management cost can be quantified by tracking the number of hours the personnel managing the program spends dealing with the clinic.
According to a recent report by Bersin by Deloitte, companies reported that their average talent acquisition cost increased to nearly $4,000 per hire.
A positive candidate experience should definitely be valued while spending this much per person.
If a candidate or employee has a better impression of a company, their employee retention rate may increase as well.
Outsourcing the management of clinic services also coincides with a positive candidate experience, along with other significant cost savings.
When opting to use a third party vendor, the following benefits are appreciated:
- Clinic Selection – vendors who are in the business of managing clinics may be able to select clinics with the best price point. Vendors also can regularly evaluate clinics for performance and compliance. Even though it is hard to quantify this value, it is easy to appreciate the benefit of using the best clinic at the best rate possible, while also saving you time in the process.
- Clinic Management – setting appointments and tracking down occupational health service statuses and paperwork cost companies significant amounts of money. The real cost is figured by tracking the number of hours spent managing this program in-house. For example, a large telecommunications company states that they saved over $900,000 in one year by outsourcing their clinic management to a third party. This cost savings was garnered over 10,000 candidates making the savings per candidate around $90. This figure per candidate is most likely pretty standard. Outsourcing the clinic management can be an effective way to mitigate this line item expense.
- Candidate Experience – using a vendor who can work with your candidates to establish a convenient testing site location will enhance their candidate fingerprinting experience. This positive experience is fostered by individual coordination of the medical screening event. When services are individually coordinated, the candidate feels that they are being treated as an important individual. This may make a positive impression on the new employee which may enhance employee retention rates. The impact of reducing employee turnover, even as little as 1%, is huge when it comes to return on investment. -HireRight
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss fingerprinting services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!
