By: Brian Hostetter

In light of Uber’s sexual harassment scandal, there’s a a few lessons to be learned for fast-growing companies, especially when it comes to HR — it’s about human capital, not large-scale talent recruitment. Startup leaders need to be savvy when it comes to human capital, or else it will be too late.

Let’s take a look at some of the top mistakes fast-growing companies like startups and unicorns make, and some tips on how to avoid them.

#1 HR is solely used as a hiring machine

In fast-growing companies, HR can commonly be designed and staffed to provide the “services” – such as onboarding employees –  that are most visible to leadership, which is usually large-scale recruiting. According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, “If risky managerial behavior is tolerated while HR is focused on recruitment, that behavior becomes accepted.” It’s essential to organizational growth and value that checks and balances are established early.

#2 Your company’s core values aren’t identified or reinforced

Your company’s core values, vision and mission are a great tool for strategic planning and scaling by design, rather than a headcount. Unfortunately, many companies only go as far as hanging them on the walls, but never actually follow them. Core values need to be brought to life as often as possible by incentivizing your employees, and recognizing and rewarding  employees who follow them.

#3 There is no HR person established

Quite often in fast-growing startups and unicorn companies, HR gets hired too late and stays understaffed for a long time. This makes HR unable to perform its duties to the fullest, which is taking care of people and team performance, as well as maintaining happiness and satisfaction. There should be at least one HR manager for every 50 people.

#4 Your CEO is distracted by bright and shiny objects

CEOs and boards can easily overlook basic personnel tasks, being attracted to bright and shiny objects like agile culture, holacracy, best-place-to-work lists or a cool physical space. “The key is to maintain your long-term love affair with the problems you need to solve and the business you are here to serve.”

What do all these mistakes have in common?

The root of the problem in all of these mistakes is that the company isn’t focused on the basic needs of their employees. With an employee focus, you can scale your company’s success with a strong company culture.

Along with the benefits of a company-wide, employee-focused culture, emphasizing learning in your culture can have tangible payoffs as well. According to a study by Bersin at Deloitte, high-performing learning organizations are 92% more likely to innovate, 46% more likely to be first to market, 58% more prepared to meet future demand and 37% of their employees experience more productivity:

Learning culture is company culture

Too often, startup leaders view such investments as costly training on things that seem to be ‘common sense’ or issues that they can afford to get around to later. But taking a strategic approach by implementing a learning culture can make engaging your employees and risk mitigation easy.

• L&D gamification: By gamifying online training topics like compliance, audit preparation and cultural inclusion/diversity, your employees will be more motivated to learn and retain information. Gamified elements, such as leaderboards and badges, can also be applied to your learning management system (LMS).

• Peer mentorship & leadership development: Not only does a peer mentorship provide new hires a collaborative, comfortable outlet for on-boarding, it can also provide current employees (especially those pursuing a management position) with leadership training opportunities to teach new hires.

• Tuition reimbursement opportunities: Providing growth opportunities, such as tuition reimbursement for your employees, has been proven to make them more committed to their company and are more engaged in their job. Our client, JetBlue, is setting the stage for a cost-effective tuition reimbursement model with their program JetBlue Scholars. Check out the case study.

We invite you to check out our services to see if there’s anything we can help you with! Webanywhere provides learning platforms and custom content solutions, and can partner with you with to nurture a learning culture within your company.

Brian Hostetter is a Senior Account Executive at Webanywhere who is passionate about employee training and development, leadership and HR/HCM technology. Brian connects with L&D professionals on a daily basis helping them find the right learning platforms and content solutions to meet their precise needs.

 [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post Top 4 Mistakes Fast-Growing Companies Make appeared first on Webanywhere.

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the largest human resources membership organization in the world. The organization strives to advance global HRM practice through research, training, networking and the publication of articles, papers and more on HRM topics.

The SHRM website contains a wealth of information on HRM that is freely available. As a paying member you get access to premium resources, such as HR templates and tools, a subscription to HR Magazine, webcasts, and more.

There are also over 575 affiliated chapters in the US that provide more local networking possibilities and other resources. The professional membership fee is $190.
Find out more.

HR BLR

The HR section on BLR.com (Business and Legal Resources) contains a wealth of helpful information, document templates and other resources for HR managers. The site covers HR and employment law topics on subject areas such as:

• Benefits & Leave
• Compensation
• Discrimination
• Health & Safety
• HR Admin
• Performance and Termination
• Staffing and Training

There are many different types of resource available, including: calculators, checklists, policies, presentations, training resources, whitepapers, and more. You can access some of these resources free of charge by signing up on the website.

To get access to all HR resources and other features, you need to subscribe to their premium service, which is $1,195 per year.
For more information.

National Human Resources Association (NHRA)

The NHRA organizes professional networking events and offers career development services for HR professionals throughout the US. They also produce on demand and live webcasts and audiocasts. The association aims to be a career partner for any HR professional, whether they are just starting their career or have been working in HR for many years.

Membership fees start from $110 for individuals and $300 for corporations.
Find out more at human resources.

Human Resources on About.com

The HR blog on About.com contains hundreds of articles on a variety of HR topics. They also offer templates for job descriptions, employer letters, HR policies and a great number of other resources, free of charge.
More information at human resource section of about.com .

HR.com

HR.com doesn’t just have the best domain name in the business, they also provide an excellent selection of resources for HR managers.

Free membership gives access to thousands of articles, whitepapers, case studies, surveys, polls on HR topics, forms and other templates.

The free membership also allows you to attend 5 live or archived webcasts and 1 virtual conference per month. Additional features include the ability to share your own content on the website to showcase your expertise and connect with peers through your profile, as well as use of the job board.
Find out more.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post Great HR Management Websites appeared first on Webanywhere.

Why Annual Performance Appraisals Don’t Work

A lot happens in the course of a year and performance will most likely fluctuate. Waiting to tell a staff member why they did or didn’t do particularly well 11 months earlier makes no sense; that feedback needs to be communicated asap. Another point is that the way modern organisations work means it’s unlikely an employee will work under just one manager, necessitating an in-depth collaboration to provide an accurate appraisal. And sitting listening to a year’s worth of feedback is uncomfortable for the person being reviewed.

Better for Companies – Better for Employees

Organisations who set performance goals quarterly increase the positive performance outcomes by 31%; those who set and reset goals monthly do even better. Any staff member worth their salt will want regular feedback so they can set job goals. This will help motivate and raise confidence. Assigning a mentor to offer coaching is a proven way to increase performance and job satisfaction. Having regular evaluation from a mentor will help an employee see the potential to not only perform their current job to the best of their abilities, but to aspire to greater things.

Alternative Strategies

Promote a culture that is feedback-oriented. Provide online tools to make regular evaluations simple and convenient. This will also allow reports to be created, to better inform how an employee is performing at any given period. Most people will have an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, which is why self-assessment can be so useful. This also promotes a collaborative culture, rather than inciting resentment that can arise from a manager-led, negative appraisal. Another useful strategy is peer feedback, although it’s possible you could get subjective comments, depending on the relationship between reviewer and reviewee.

The ultimate aim of appraisals and feedback should be to help improve staff performance, which is why annual performance appraisals need to go.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post The Demise of Annual Performance Appraisals appeared first on Webanywhere.

Over the next twelve months, these are the top trends we expect to see alter HR departments around the world.

1. Requests – self service and management approval

Self Service has become a key factor in the successful integration of a new HR system into your business. Rather than waiting for a paper form to be processed, staff want to be able to make requests themselves, and then have managers sign them off in real time – without HR involvement. The more HR processes that can be optimised in this way, the more time HR have to focus on their other duties. Self service will allow users to process their own requests, and allow the management team to manage their own teams.

2. Reporting to deliver more

Analytics & “big data” are becoming key to understanding both your customers and your staff. Information gained can help the business as a whole react to change and help keep HR ahead of the curve when it comes to development. If, for example, you can see the sales team are smashing their targets, it may be worth planning an advert for new production staff, so you’re ready when you’re asked for it. Analytics can also help you deliver staff development sessions and training, by seeing how they learn best, you can tailor these sessions to your staff.

3. Revolutionary Technologies will become rarer

Whenever a new sector is tackled by IT for the first time, lots of new players enter the field and you can quickly see rapid innovation changing the face of the market on a regular basis. However, HR has been using IT solutions for many years now and it has become a very mature market – you’re more likely to see refinements in technologies from existing providers, than a revolutionary change.

4. Responsive Design will be expected and crucial

Mobile has become the cutting edge field across a variety of sectors and HR need to make sure they’re not left behind in this development. Ensuring that your HR and learning systems are mobile compatible will ensure you get the highest take up possible from your staff. Younger tech friendly job applicants will expect webpages to be responsive, as they generally access the web from phones or tablets. Making sure your careers pages are responsive will encourage applications from this demographic.

5. Return on Investment trumps everything

As technology revolutions reduce, companies will start looking more at long term return on their investments. One of the most interesting trends connected to ROI is the change in attitude to licensing. Both the UK Government and a lot of large businesses have started to put their faith in open source solutions. This can greatly reduce costs by eliminating per-user license fees. HR departments will need to show all of their spending has a strong ROI, this will include any technology that is used by the department.

6. Rationalisation of Systems

A lot of HR departments have tried out various systems to help them manage their staff. In the next year we are much more likely to see a reduction and rationalisation of these systems. A large number of systems are now moving to “cloud” solutions on online data centers, this reduces upfront capital costs for the organisation. Integration between systems and the ease of use will be key indicators of success here.

7. Recruitment & training using social media

The social media sphere is becoming second nature to a lot of staff, and being heavily utilised by other departments (e.g. Marketing). HR must ensure that it grasps the utility of this technology as it can be great for encouraging staff engagement and conducting research. Equally, recruitment can greatly benefit from connecting with prospective employees via social media channels. Encouraging social interaction between your staff is also greatly beneficial, as this can build a better culture at the organisation.

8. Restricted learning is dead!

The idea of staff only learning in proscribed sessions has long passed as staff are now constantly learning both on the job and in their own time. HR need to ensure that its own systems are flexible and that any LMS can be used for a variety of learning available 24/7. This easy access learning can soon create a culture of knowledge sharing in your organisation which is of great benefit to any group.

Technology is still moving quickly in all sectors, but in HR it is undergoing a period of stabilisation and consolidation. HR departments need to be ready to keep on top of the latest developments, but also keep an eye on their ROI and their strategic direction.

If you want to get in touch to see how we can help your HR department develop please contact us or call us on 0800 862 0131.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post The 8 R’s of Workplace HR Technology appeared first on Webanywhere.

The irony is that while the supply of free resources is accelerating, the demand for these also seems to be growing in response to the need for more flexible, cheaper and on-demand applications. The problem is that even after hours of trawling the internet and reading numerous  blog entries (like this one!),  willing users may be no nearer to finding the right software tool for them.

One such example is the area of business presentation software. After the recent ‘Death by PowerPoint’ uprising, and the advancement of new web 2.0 tools, users are scanning the marketplace for solutions that not only extend their presentation capabilities, but provide real audience engagement and drive the changes in behaviour that are desired outcomes for most business presenters.

This is of particular importance for HR and Training Managers that use Learning Management Systems (LMS) within their organisation. Since an LMS is designed to track and report on individuals’ progress, sometimes it is beneficial to create learning plans that incorporate a variety of tools within the learning environment as opposed to repeatedly force-feeding a SCORM activity with the standard reading followed by a test or quiz.

Having considered this dilemma, I believe I have identified a useful solution option. It’s called Prezi, and is available at www.prezi.com. I’ve seen several free or low cost online presentation tools which enable the user to create Flash animations, but in this writer’s view, very few provide the invigorating presentation experience that Prezi does. Instead of the viewer being subjected to a long series of standard PowerPoint slides (which can sap the willpower of even the most enthused and dedicated audience), the Prezi tool delivers a dynamic interface which is all created in a single page that the PC or laptop screen tracks, in a similar way to a smartphone touchscreen.

Within the Prezi tool, users can also embed other Web 2.0 tools which include YouTube video, images, audio media files and even Screenr files (for on-screen demo recordings). This means your now-fully-interactive presentations can throw off the shackles of static PPT slide shows for good, letting you engage with the audience in previously unknown ways!

Training managers can even embed Prezi presentations using the HTML code within their LMS and link to them directly within individual courses. Although this presentation is not trackable (unlike a SCORM object) within the LMS, it can be used as an introduction to a topic, as a learning object which can be referenced from within a discussion forum or an online quiz.

That’s about all for now!

• If you are a content provider looking for an affordable way to create your own learning content and host it online to provide a new client service, please go to our website at www.traininganywhere.co.uk.

• To learn more about Prezi you can visit this website www.prezi.com

• If you are looking for some inspiration from a best practice example you can view the recent Coca Cola Prezi presentation.

Conor Gilligan, Head of Corporate Operations at Webanywhere Ltd

The post Create Engaging Presentations with your LMS appeared first on Webanywhere.