Last week, we talked to Linda Robertson from Financial Finesse about the ways companies can maximize employee benefits, especially in this tough economic environment. We also talked to Vadim Liberman from The Conference Board about non-CEO executive compensation as well as how our understanding of business ethics has changed and progressed.
With end-of-summer activities upon us, this week’s show will be shorter and more open, one where John and I will be talking about some of the top stories of the last few months. We’ll be touching on hiring the unemployed, employee feedback, personal branding and more. As usual, we are always happy to take your calls and questions.
You can listen to it live from the web or you can dial in to (818) 572-8036 to listen to the show or to ask a question. You can also follow the show hashtag on Twitter by searching for #TLNTradio. After the show airs, the archive will be available shortly after the end of the live broadcast.
Hiring the unemployed
TLNT contributor Ron Selewach did an excellent piece on changing the perception of the unemployed. In it, he wrote:
A change in perspective — i.e., unemployed does not equate with unemployable — provides employers with a unique opportunity to tap into a rich and talented labor pool. Organizations can then facilitate the process of identifying the very best from this pool with comprehensive assessments that assimilate an individual’s experience, skill set, and behavioral characteristics, providing a solid indicator of potential performance and success.
Business agility — the ability to adapt quickly to changing trends — is highly regarded as the key to success, and it’s no different when it comes to adapting hiring strategies to current market realities. With the proper tools, reading between the gaps in a candidate’s resume can — and most certainly will — yield great dividends without placing undue strain on resources.
It has been fascinating to watch this discussion progress. When I entered into recruiting, the passive candidates (the ones employed, and not looking) were the diamonds every recruiter was seeking. Now, to be fair, sometimes there were very few options, especially in high demand roles or tough locations. Not too many people talked about the fact that we rather purposefully disregarded those who were actually looking.
Fast-forward a few years and now there is some outrage about this practice of aggressively pursuing only passive candidates while ignoring the rather large contingent of unemployed. How much responsibility does HR and recruiting have in this system?
Employee feedback
Although not a new topic, the question of effective employee communication and feedback always seems to be a hot topic. But often when we focus on employee communication and feedback, we only focus on one aspect of it: how we communicate to our employees. A recent piece by John recently shed some light on the other side of that employee feedback loop: listening. He wrote:
Listening to the opinions of your employees is not exactly rocket science, or some high-level Harvard Business School management practice espoused by Michael Porter. It’s basic and its simple, and its sad that all-too-many managers and executives seems to ignore doing it.
But there are guys like Alan Trefler out there — executives who not only want to hear what the workers have to say, they demand it.
Are you one of those kind of managers? If not, you better re-examine how you do business, because it’s that very kind of management style that our huge and growing population of younger workers not only want, but that they demand.
Now I’ve sat through a lot of training on this topic and listening is rarely mentioned when we talk about communication. And I never really thought about quite so consciously but that’s a bit insane. Great communication is about listening and understanding as much as it is about talking and writing properly, maybe even more.
We’re looking forward to talking about that and a whole lot more on this open show!
Miss our last show?
You can catch it below, or on the show website.