The first, a recent Survey on Workplace Flexibility from WorldatWork, found that:

• The vast majority (98 percent) of U.S. employers offer at least one workplace flexibility program.
• The most prevalent programs include flex-time (flexible start/stop times), part-time schedules and teleworking on an ad hoc basis (to meet a repair person, care for a sick child, etc.).
• The way these programs are administered varies.  Nearly 60 percent of these companies take an informal approach to the concept  – leaving program development and administration up to managers’ discretion, or offering flexible work options without written policies or forms.
• Furthermore, most U.S. organizations (79 percent) that offer flexibility programs do not provide training to the managers of employees using these programs.

This study also found that:

• A stronger culture of flexibility correlates with a lower voluntary turnover rate.
• A majority of employers report that workplace flexibility positively impacts employee satisfaction, motivation and engagement.

The second report, Workplace Flexibility and Low-Wage Employees, was released in February 2011.  This report analyzed data from the nonprofit Families and Work Institute’s National Study of the Changing Workforce.  For the purposes of this study, low-wage employees were defined as those earning less than $12.82 per hour (which accounts for a little more than one-third of the U.S. workforce).  Here are some of the key findings:

• Workplace flexibility correlates positively with:  overall job satisfaction, degree of engagement, degree to which home life interferes with job performance, physical health, mental health and likelihood of remaining with current employer.  The prevalence of each of these outcomes is higher (regardless of income) when employers offer more workplace flexibility.
• Regardless of wages earned, workers are equally pressed for time in their personal lives – and place equal value on having a flexible workplace.
• Low-wage employees are just as likely to have responsibilities for children and elders.  But because they have fewer financial resources to meet these responsibilities, having job flexibility may be even more important.

What can we learn from these studies?

• Workplace flexibility produces a host of benefits, including increased employee engagement, satisfaction, motivation, retention and productivity.
• A comprehensive workplace flexibility program can be an effective recruiting and retention tool, providing a real source of competitive advantage for your company.  Offering flexibility options that matter to employees, and featuring those options when recruiting talent, can help you distinguish your company as an employer-of-choice.
• When it comes to workplace flexibility, it’s not about the quantity or formality of the programs you offer.  It’s about how well supported and implemented those programs are across your organization.  To be successful, managers must understand the real value these programs bring and be properly trained to administer them.
• Workplace flexibility is here to stay.  As organizations continue to evolve, workplace flexibility will eventually become the new normal – an accepted and expected part of how all organizations operate.

In March, 2011, ABR Employment Services conducted a survey of our supplemental staffing workforce.  When we asked respondents to rank the importance of the benefits they receive, nearly half (48.7 percent) of supplemental staff stated that a flexible work schedule was important to them.  We understand the important role workplace flexibility plays in your organization, and can provide on-time (temporary) and supplemental staff to increase flexibility for your employees.

What can ABR Employment do for you?  Contact us today.

But just what, exactly, is the “right fit”?

For many employers, it means finding a candidate who shares the same belief systems and values as the company, and who meshes with the corporate culture.  To identify this type of individual, these employers often turn to values-based recruiting.

Values-based recruiting goes beyond examining competencies and experience.  It’s about creating a values match by building a model that outlines behaviors associated with corporate values, and then assessing candidates for those behaviors.  The process typically yields hires whose thinking, values and ways of doing business closely match those of the employer.

But what if your company needs a proverbial “shot in the arm” to fuel its success – a new direction, fresh business perspective or innovative ideas to re-energize your organization?

In a case like this, the right fit for your organization will be an individual who, by definition, is not a perfect values-based match.  Rather, this candidate should be selected based on a model that outlines behaviors associated with leading your company in a new direction.  To begin this process, your company must first determine new goals, create a list of competencies and values for the available position that will support those goals, and then recruit and select accordingly.

Which type of recruiting is right for your business needs?

ABR Employment Services’ recruiting experts will work with you to determine how to find the right fit for your company’s needs.  Whether you require an individual whose values closely match your company’s, or someone who will bring fresh ideas and perspective to your business, ABR will deliver candidates who exceed your expectations.

We hold all our employees to the highest standards of quality and ethics – our Expectations of Excellence – and only present those who are:

• Trustworthy – honest, reliable, loyal, ethical and obey all rules and regulations.
• Respectful – demonstrate consideration for others, respect for authority, tolerance of differences and an appreciation of diversity.
• Responsible – demonstrate self control and self discipline, deal peacefully with anger and disagreement, and positively with criticism, and be accountable for their actions.
• Reliable – have a proven work history, demonstrate sound attendance and punctuality, and exhibit strong work ethic.
• Professional – present themselves in an appropriate manner.

Contact us today to find out how our Expectations of Excellence can create successful hires in your organization.

“The pace of temporary job creation after the most recent recession – an average of about 25,000 per month – has been faster than the past two, potentially a good sign for a labor market struggling with a jobless rate of 9 percent.”

This Reuters graphic of BLS data illustrates why experts look to the staffing industry for signs of recovery:

If you compare temporary employment to overall employment, you can see how the number of temporary workers declines faster heading into a recession and rises more quickly in a recovery.

In fact, research from the American Staffing Association indicates that temporary help employment is a strong coincident economic indicator when the economy is emerging from a recession.  Overall, temporary hiring rose steadily through 2010, with U.S. employers adding more than 300,000 temporary jobs (about a quarter of the 1.17 million in overall job growth last year).  Translation?  The sustained upturn in temporary staffing is good news for the economy.

But Cooke goes on to temper this enthusiasm, noting that a faster pace of temporary hiring hasn’t yet translated into significant full-time job creation – a critical piece of the recovery puzzle.  Experts such as Peter Capelli, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, say that because employers are now using temporary assignments to try out potential employees on the job, the increase in temporary hiring could be masking direct hiring.

ABR Employment Services – Driving Wisconsin’s Recovery

As businesses throughout southeast Wisconsin begin to staff-up again, ABR is driving the recovery.  We deliver complete human resources services to help companies like yours Comprehend, Fulfill and Achieve their business goals.  What can we do for you?  Contact ABR Employment Services today.

Set clear expectations.

Establish mutually agreed-upon guidelines for interacting with your supplier.  If you haven’t already, create processes for placing orders, conducting quality control checks, measuring results, and keeping in touch.  Setting these expectations up-front can prevent communication breakdown and ensure expedient service.

Provide feedback.

Once you’ve set expectations, it’s important to maintain an ongoing dialogue with your staffing service.  Keep them abreast of changes in your company.  Give your staffing rep useful, honest feedback on his company’s service and the performance of employees placed – unless he’s aware of a concern or problem you’re experiencing, your rep can’t do anything about it.  So make sure you regularly discuss what you can do, together, to improve quality of service and placements.

Take advantage of all your staffing provider can do for you.

Good relationships have fringe benefits.  Many staffing services offer valuable “extras,” at little or no cost, which could be beneficial to you, such as:

• computer software training for applicants
• detailed reports on your staffing usage
• applicant drug screening
• productivity analysis of your work processes
• assistance in developing position descriptions
• customized orientation and training for on-time (temporary) workers and new hires
• paycheck drop-off for on-time (temporary) workers

Ask your staffing rep what value-added services his company offers.  Then take advantage of the ones that make sense for your company.

ABR Employment Services is committed to developing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with client companies.  We want to help you save time and money, while making it easier for you to find the qualified people you need.  Contact us today to take your staffing relationship to the next level – we’ll show you how better staffing can make your company even more successful.

– Harold S. Geneen

If you’ve ever managed a single person, then you know that employees make excuses.  They procrastinate, miss deadlines and blame others when they fail.

So how do you get them to consistently perform to the best of their abilities?  Use these smart suggestions to get better results – and fewer excuses – from your staff every day:

Make performance management a daily activity.  Annual and quarterly reviews definitely play their part in gauging performance, but nothing replaces the day-to-day guidance you give to your staff.  So talk to them regularly, leveraging every opportunity to improve employee’s efforts:

• Give them honest feedback about what they’re doing right – and what they need to improve.
• Discuss new projects and the opportunities they present for employee development and growth.
• Talk about overdue assignments or project difficulties and how to resolve them.
• Reinforce the importance of consistently doing a great job.

Limit excuses.  Eliminate the external factors on which employees often blame their poor performance by:

• Ensuring employees have the resources they need to do their jobs;
• Ensuring employees are adequately trained to do their jobs;
• Setting clear, mutually agreed-upon performance expectations for each employee.

Ask the right questions when problems arise.  Uncovering the cause of poor performance is the first step in creating a plan to remedy it.  So when an employee is failing at work, ask the following types of questions to diagnose the reasons why:

• What about the work system (e.g., tools, time, training, support) is causing the employee to fail?
• Does the employee know exactly what you want him/her to do, as well as the expected outcome?
• Does the employee practice effective work management?
• Does the employee feel valued, recognized and fairly compensated for his/her contributions?

Make performance goals SMART goals.  This goal-setting acronym is still widely used for one simple reason:  Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound goals are more likely to be achieved.  So as you work with your employees to set higher standards for the next quarter or year, teach them how to create SMART performance goals that will get them there.

Create a “performance mentality” among team members.  Football players won’t play their hardest in a game where nobody keeps score.  Likewise, your employees won’t deliver superior results when they merely see themselves as “doing a job” everyday.  Foster a “performance mentality” by showing your team why their efforts matter – and what’s at stake.  Make sure employees understand your mission, how their jobs fit into the “big picture,” and what they need to do to help your company win.

Improve Performance with ABR Employment Services

Performance management is a vital component in your organization’s continued success.  Ensure that success with ABR Employment’s full complement of staffing solutions.  Whether you need to improve productivity, increase operating efficiencies or streamline your staffing function, we can custom design a solution to fuel exceptional performance throughout your company.  Contact us today to learn more.

When you hear this saying, you may envision a nervous job seeker, compulsively straightening his suit and repeating his 30-second “personal sales pitch” before an interview.  But quite honestly, the saying is just as relevant for the hiring company.  Why?

When you mainstream and orient a new hire, you set the tone for his work experience with your organization.  The more positive that initial experience, the more welcome and prepared the individual will feel in his new position.  This will, in turn, give him the confidence and resources to quickly begin making a positive impact within your company (which is why you hired this person in the first place, right?).

So make a commitment to create a great first impression on your new hire by implementing a thorough and effective onboarding process.  Use these tips to make him feel welcomed, valued and prepared to hit the ground running:

• Welcome a new employee with a letter.  Before the individual’s first day, send a friendly and informative letter to welcome him and review his first day’s schedule, helpful tips for parking, to whom he should report, etc.  Alternately, you can post new employee schedules, materials, benefits forms and a FAQ on your company Intranet, and make it accessible from a link in a welcome e-mail.
• Prepare a corporate “family tree.”  Familiarize new hires with your company’s “who’s who.”  You can make photos, names and job titles available on your company’s Intranet, or maintain a simple bulletin board with the same info to facilitate the getting-to-know-you process.
• Pre-orient existing staff members.  Provide employees with your new employee’s résumé and job description before he starts.  Advise each team member to conduct a meeting with the new hire in which he shares a description of his own position, reviews the ways their roles interact and covers how they might work together in the future.
• Approach the process from the employee’s point of view.  The onboarding process can be complex and overwhelming for your new hire.  To keep your new team member feeling valued, try to create orientation procedures that make the process fun, interesting and as painless as possible.
• Provide and review a written plan of employee objectives and responsibilities.  This step will eliminate confusion about job functions and will open the floor to discuss concerns or new opportunities.
• Give the new employee your undivided attention.  Be careful not to let e-mails, phone calls, or other employees distract you during orientation sessions, because this sends the unintended message that the new hire is not worth your time – a real morale-killer.
• Make day one personal.  Prioritize interpersonal relationships with key colleagues as soon as your new employee starts.  Make sure you welcome the whole person – not just a set of job functions – from the outset, and you’ll be sure to make a great first impression.

ABR Employment Services works to make new employee transitions as successful and simple as possible.  Our stringent screening process ensures that the candidates we refer (whether on-time or direct) have the skills, experience and traits necessary to integrate seamlessly with your existing workforce.  Contact us today to learn more about our staffing solutions for Wisconsin employers.

This is not news, of course, but their mass exodus from the workforce does create a potential problem for many organizations – namely, identifying new leaders to fill the boomers’ shoes.  In addition to closing the talent gap this generation will leave, other reasons to proactively develop new leaders include:

• Keeping pace with constantly changing business strategies
• Quickly filling new roles created by organizational growth, as we emerge from the recession
• Adapting to job realignments caused by mergers and acquisitions
• Heading-off potential skill shortages
• Increasing employee engagement and productivity

Does your company’s succession plan address all these issues?  The truth is, many organizations are too busy managing the daily pressures created by a lengthy recession to look that far down the road.  But to win the talent war, you need to start assessing, planning and developing leaders now.  Here are a few strategies to make your succession planning more effective:

• Create a plan before talent needs become talent crises.  Remove some of the stress caused by finding the right person for a job by planning for future needs now.  Careful planning will minimize workforce disruption, increase knowledge transfer and increase employee engagement / loyalty by providing clear career paths.
• Let your best employees know about your plans for them.  Tell your key talent that your company has high expectations for them.  Prepare them and increase their buy-in by letting them know that you will be investing in their futures and will be facilitating moves to enhance their professional development.
• Define criteria and profiles against which to measure employees’ potential.  Logically, you want to develop employees with the greatest potential – but potential for what?  Work together with key executives to map out the future requirements for success in key positions (i.e., what will tomorrow’s leaders have to be able to do to succeed in these roles?).  Use these criteria as a measuring stick for evaluating each individual’s potential.
• Assess current employees’ skills and competencies.  Once success criteria have been defined, you must invest the time and money to objectively and validly assess what your internal talent can do.  While each company must decide which tools best fit its individual needs, popular ones include:  assessments from the candidate’s circle of influence; career achievement summaries to capture work experiences; psychometric tools; behavioral interviews to probe against established criteria for success.
• Create plans to close the gap.  Once you understand where current employees are and where they need to be, you can customize talent development plans to close the gap.  As potential leaders progress in their growth, keep them updated on hiring decisions.  Monitor their interest and involve them in the development process as much as possible, to keep them invested for the long-term.  Most importantly, make sure their career aspirations are aligned with your succession plans, to keep you both working toward the same goal.

After assessing employees, some businesses find a lack of internal talent with the potential for leadership.  That’s where ABR Employment Services can help.  We can recruit, screen and identify individuals who have the skills, competencies and behavior traits to become future leaders within your organization.  Call us to find out more about our direct hire staffing solutions for Wisconsin employers.

In a word, yes.  Here are just a few of the ways search and placement services can simplify your job and help both you and your company be more successful:

• Save Time.  Posting jobs, screening résumés, scheduling and conducting initial interviews, testing and reference checking are extremely time-consuming activities – especially when candidates are abundant.  Use a direct placement service to eliminate both the time and cost associated with these processes.
• Increase Focus.  Use the extra hours you gain (by offloading time-consuming recruiting activities) to focus on other key HR priorities or revenue-generating activities.
• Access Top Candidates.  The market may be flooded with job seekers, but are they people you really want to hire?  Recruitment specialists are experts at sourcing the best talent.  They use extensive candidate networks, internal and national databases, direct recruiting techniques and referral sources to identify individuals – even highly desirable “passive” candidates – with the skills, experience and personality traits to succeed in your organization.
• Shorten Your Time-to-Hire.  Because staffing firms maintain such robust candidate databases, they can dramatically reduce the time it would take to find the right person on your own.  And in cases where immediate placement is required, most staffing services can provide an on-time (temporary) replacement to handle the workload while conducting your search.
• Reduce Your Hiring Risks.  Our tough job market has caused a rise in résumé fraud, as desperate job seekers feel compelled to stretch the truth in order to get hired.  Unfortunately, the employer pays the price, when a new hire who has misrepresented himself has to be replaced.
  Direct placement services reduce the risk of a bad hire in two ways.  First, the referred candidate is thoroughly screened, interviewed, background and reference checked to verify skills, experience and work history.  Additionally, most staffing services guarantee the quality of their direct placements for several months – and will find you a replacement if you’re not satisfied.

Save Time and Money with ABR’s Direct Placement Service

ABR’s search and placement service saves you time and money because we do the searching, screening, and preliminary interviews for you.  We can identify a large group of candidates via our web site, our extensive database and numerous other web partners.  You interview only the most-qualified candidates who can have an immediate impact on your organization.  Your hiring decision is made with confidence, guaranteed!

But while a blog typo may be easily forgiven, other mistakes on the job can have serious consequences – for you, your boss, or even the company as a whole.  And frankly, the way you handle your slip-up can be just as critical as the mistake itself.

So what should you do when you make an error at work?

• Assess the situation.  As soon as you realize your misstep, take a minute to consider the ramifications, as well as whether or not you can correct the mistake yourself.  If you can solve it, do so immediately; but if not, take a moment to brainstorm possible solutions.  This way, when you approach your boss you’ll appear proactive and responsible.
• Own up to it.  Never try to cover up your mistake.  If a boss finds out later that you hid a problem, it can permanently damage your credibility.  So take the initiative and bring the situation to your supervisor’s attention.  When you’re honest from the outset, your boss won’t feel the need to underscore the situation’s importance to you.
• Take responsibility.  Don’t make excuses, act defensively or place blame elsewhere.  Negative reactions like these will cause equally negative reactions from your boss.  Instead, use your mistake as an opportunity to step up to the plate and demonstrate your responsibility and problem-solving abilities.  If someone else is involved in the mistake, encourage him or her to follow your lead and do the right thing.
• Explain what happened and what you plan to do about it.  Once you’ve acknowledged your misstep and apologized, you must present a plan for correcting it.  You can say something like, “I’ve made a mistake and I apologize for the error.  I’ve come up with some possible solutions and would like your feedback on how to best resolve the situation.”  It’s fine to ask for help developing and implementing your solution – the key here is to not simply ask for your boss to bail you out.
• Demonstrate that you’ve learned from your mistake.  When a mistake occurs on the job, it’s not enough to just solve it and move on.  Once you’ve resolved the problem, you need to determine what caused it in the first place – and discuss your plan to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.  Explaining to your boss what you’ve learned from your mistake demonstrates that you’re conscientious and have the organization’s best interest in mind.

You’re human.  You’ll make mistakes from time-to-time (we all do).  And if you handle a mistake at work correctly, you can turn a difficult situation into a learning experience – an experience that actually provides an opportunity to demonstrate your honesty, integrity and problem-solving ability.

Handle Your Job Search the Right Way

Don’t make the mistake of going it alone in your job search.  Contact ABR Employment Services today.  Whether you need a flexible opportunity, or are searching for full-time employment, we have rewarding clerical, light industrial, technical and professional opportunities with leading Wisconsin employers.  Finding a job through us is fast, easy…and free.