ABR Blog

“It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.”

– 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.

Have you made a New Year’s resolution to find a better career?  Here are several things you can do in 2011 to make yourself more marketable and land the job you really want:

What are strategic and management staffing solutions, and what can they do for your organization?

Many of our clients enjoy the benefits of our Traditional Staffing Solutions for meeting on-time, try-before-hire and direct hire staffing requirements.  But depending upon your unique workforce and human capital management needs, one of ABR Employment Services’ Strategic or Management Staffing Solutions may be the right choice to help your company stay flexible, competitive and efficient.

Here is a quick overview of ABR’s Strategic Staffing Solutions:

Primary Partner Staffing:  ABR Employment Services recruits, retains and manages your non-core workforce and supervises secondary vendors to streamline and simplify staffing procurement.  Use this service to save time, money and resources by reducing training, decreasing turnover, improving performance and increasing production.

Flexible Staffing:  ABR can assist with any part of your hiring process, including screening applicants/applications, interviewing, testing, reference checking or even payrolling employees.  Use our flexible staffing services to offload the time-consuming and expensive administrative burdens associated with hiring and staffing.

Customized Staffing:  ABR reviews your project needs /specifications and uses our full complement of resources to custom-design a comprehensive solution.  Use customized staffing to handle seasonal, occasional or just out-of-the-ordinary projects.

One of ABR’s Management Staffing Solutions may be appropriate when you need a complete human capital management solution that utilizes technology, improves efficiencies and leverages your buying power:

On-Site Staffing:  An outsourcing management program in which ABR becomes an extension of your HR department.  We assign an ABR On-Site Manager to handle every facet of coordinating, ordering, planning and tracking of contingent employees.  Because the On-Site Manager acts as the central contact for hiring managers, coordinates recruiting activities and handles personnel-related issues, you are free to focus on your most important priorities.

Managed Services Provider (MSP):  For all your locations, ABR acts as the single point of contact for requesting contingent employees, management reporting and consolidated invoicing for multiple staffing providers.  ABR’s MSP provides the convenience of having a single source for all your staffing requirements – delivering the best candidates available, saving you valuable time and money, and ensuring consistency of processes and supplier quality by implementing standard operating procedures and objective metrics.

Vendor Managment System (VMS):  A comprehensive technology solution for procuring and managing your contingent workforce throughout all your locations.  Through our strategic alliance with WorkforceLogic, ABR combines a “high-technology” e-software platform with “high-touch” service to manage your contingent workforce.  Our robust VMS solution gives your users unprecedented real-time access to, and control over, your workforce management activities.

How can ABR Employment Services help you?  Please contact us today to discuss your hiring plans, staffing challenges and business goals.  Together, we can create a comprehensive solution that delivers the results you need.

If you’ve ever been on an interview, you’ve probably heard this one:

“Tell me a little bit about yourself.”

Sounds innocuous enough, but in reality this is an extremely important question.  Interviewers ask it for a number of reasons:

• to get a sense of what you feel is most important about yourself;
• to see how well you’ve prepared for the interview;
• to find out why you think you’re the best candidate for the job;
• to see how you handle yourself in an unstructured situation;
• to see how articulate you are;
• to find out what type of first impression you make.

There is a lot riding on your response to this question, so make sure you knock it out of the park.  Here are a few quick tips for answering the “tell me about yourself” interview question the right way:

• Be brief.  Keep the answer short – no more than two to three minutes.
• Develop and include your USP.  Your Unique Selling Proposition, also known as a personal branding statement, is a one-sentence description of who you are, what you greatest strength is and the major benefit that a potential employer will derive from this strength.  Plenty of help for developing your USP is available online.
• Practice, practice, practice.  Write your answer out, then rehearse it until it’s second nature.  The better you know your pitch, the more poised and confident you’ll sound.
• Cite examples.  When you develop your answer, include one or two examples that best demonstrate why you’re well-qualified for the available postition, or highlight your most important accomplishments.
• Stay focused.  When an interviewer asks you about yourself, he or she doesn’t necessarily want to know where you were born, what your hobbies are or a laundry list of your job skills.  Make sure your response clearly focuses on the experiences and accomplishments most relevant to the available position.

The “tell me about yourself” interview question offers a great opportunity to set yourself apart from your job competitors.  So don’t waste it.  Take advantage of your time in the driver’s seat by selling yourself, creating a great first impression and setting a positive tone for the rest of the interview.

ABR Employment Services is committed to the success of your job search.  With offices throughout southeastern Wisconsin, and a great team of seasoned recruiting and staffing specialists, we have the resources and experience to match you with the ideal on-time or direct hire opportunity.  Contact us today or Search Jobs online.

Has technology taken the ‘human’ out of Human Resources?

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently published a report on technology trends in the sector, and the overall conclusion was unsurprising:  today’s HR departments leverage IT to benefit almost every aspect of their daily operations.

Continual technology improvements, coupled with declining costs, have fueled a surge in HR’s usage of technology:

• Software is being deployed to manage areas such as internal mobility, appraisal management, succession planning and personal development.
• E-recruitment and performance management software are dramatically improving HR’s ability to effectively execute PRM (people relationship management) and further solidify their organizations’ employer brands.
• Applicant tracking and hiring management systems are streamlining processes and driving down costs.

But will this IT success come at a price for some HR organizations?  While technology can reduce the administrative burden associated with HR and enable them to focus on more strategic issues, HR will always be about people management – which requires human interaction and face-to-face contact.  As a result, HR organizations should attempt to strike a balance between systems and the human element.

As Jeff Phelps, President of WorkforceLogic/ABE Services says, “We can’t ever begin to think of treating people like equipment or some sort of inanimate commodity…The best of all worlds is a holistic solution that combines technology with the human element to facilitate putting the right person in the right job at the right time.”

HR technologies making the biggest impact:

• Employee self-service
• Workflow technologies
• Vendor management systems
• Applicant tracking systems
• Hiring management systems
• E-recruitment software

Learn more.

Find out more about the evolution of IT in HR, as well as key findings from the SHRM’s HR technology survey, by following this link to the HR Management article “Technology aids the human touch.”

When it comes to staffing your business effectively, both IT and the human touch are critical.  ABR Employment Services leverages state-of-the-art technologies with distinctly personal service to deliver customized solutions that maximize your staffing ROI.  Contact us today to learn more about our Comprehend, Fulfill, Achieve Philosophy.

Part 2:  Co-Employment Tips for Success

Last week’s post featured a link to a brief quiz on co-employment laws.  How well did you do?

If your score was less than perfect, don’t worry.  This week’s post contains practical tips to maximize the effectiveness of your co-employment arrangement, while minimizing the potential for problems:

• Let the staffing firm do its job.  When co-employment problems occur, they often stem from situations in which a client company unnecessarily assumes employment responsibilities over on-time (temporary) or contract workers.  So remember that when you pay an on-time (temporary) or contract employee’s hourly bill rate, included in that rate are the services the staffing firm provides – recruiting, interviewing, testing and selecting candidates.  Head-off potential problems by allowing the staffing service (who is the employer of record for these workers) to perform these tasks.
• Take advantage of on-site coordinators.  If you have a large contingent workforce, ask your staffing service to provide an on-site representative.  This individual can reinforce the staffing service’s role as employer, by carrying out administrative functions, handling performance counseling and addressing disciplinary action.  Although there may be a charge involved, the benefits usually far outweigh the costs of an on-site coordinator.
• Give the staffing firm specific feedback on their employees’ job performance.  If performance issues arise, it may seem natural for you to speak directly with the on-time (temporary) or contract worker assigned to you.  But to steer clear of potential co-employment problems, you should instead speak with your staffing representative about your concerns.  That way, when the individual is subjected to disciplinary action, the staffing service will be able to provide him or her with the performance-related reason for the action – making the individual far less likely to consider the action to be discriminatory, or to file a charge.
• Allow the staffing firm to handle employee termination.  If you are dissatisfied with an on-time (temporary) or contract worker, ask your staffing provider to handle disciplinary action and / or termination and replacement.  Provide information about the individual’s work performance to your staffing representative, and then allow him or her to handle the rest.
• Review your benefit plan descriptions.  Ask an expert to make sure that the language in your benefit plan effectively excludes on-time (temporary) and contract employees.  To guard against lawsuits that stem from ambivalent wording, be sure to incorporate exclusionary language that makes benefit entitlement dependent upon your employment classifications – regardless of common law definitions.

Ensure Successful Co-Employment with ABR Employment Services

As a leading Wisconsin staffing firm, ABR Employment’s staffing experts can work with you to develop effective co-employment procedures from both a legal and operational standpoint.  Give us a call to learn more.

Feeling a little overworked? 

While some would say that “too much to do” is merely a sign of job security in today’s economy, it won’t do you any good if you can’t cope with the stress.  Sure, everyone is trying to do more with less these days.  But over time, being chronically stretched too thin can take a toll on your job performance, state of mind and physical health.

So if you feel like the pressure is too much to bear, here is some advice on effectively broaching the tricky subject of job burnout:

• Make sure you’re not part of the problem.  If you procrastinate or have other bad work habits, your boss may not be sympathetic to your plight.  So before you go pointing fingers, examine your own performance to see if you could make changes that would improve your situation.
• Do your homework.  Before approaching your boss, document your situation in writing.  Detail what your job entailed originally and contrast it with what you’re doing now.  Track the hours you work (both at your company and home).  Preparing yourself with these details will provide a clear picture of your workload and keep you from sounding like a complainer.
• Broach the subject gradually.  Your concerns will be better received if you introduce the topic of feeling overburdened as part of a series of discussions with your boss.  Keep him or her informed of your current responsibilities as well as additional work requests.  Once your boss understands what’s truly on your plate, he or she will be less likely to add more.
• Enlist the help of others.  If co-workers are also feeling the pressure, approach your boss as part of a team.  Develop and present a plan to remedy the situation by:  bringing in temporary employees or increasing headcount; reorganizing responsibilities; delegating outside your department; streamlining processes.  Offering well thought-out solutions may help you gain your boss’ support in alleviating the problem.

Fight Job Burnout with ABR Employment Services

Our staffing services for Wisconsin employers can remedy the problems caused by overwork, such as increased turnover, higher employee absenteeism and lowered productivity.  Whether you need a single employee to assist your team for a few days, or a more comprehensive staffing solution, we have the highly skilled office, professional, technical and light industrial talent you need.

It’s like a bad dream.

You’re in an interview, dressed to impress and feeling totally in control of the situation, when the unthinkable happens – the interviewer asks a question that completely stumps you: 

“If you could have dinner with anyone from history, whom would it be and why?”

“Why is a manhole cover round?”

“Which fictional character would you say best describes you?”

If just reading these questions makes beads of sweat pop out on your forehead, you’re not alone.  In an interview situation, most of us would be stopped in our tracks by off-the-wall questions like these.  But that’s the point:  interviewers ask odd questions intentionally, to see how well job candidates thinks on their feet and respond to stress.

Because unusual interview questions can be about virutally any topic, they’re nearly impossible to prepare for.  Still, here are a few quick tips to help you handle them more effectively:

• Keep your composure.  The question was meant to throw you off your game – so don’t let it rattle you.  Keep your face neutral and recognize that this is the wacky question you’ve been anticipating.
• Take your time.  Smile, take a deep breath and avoid the temptation to blurt out an answer.  Don’t panic – if you have to take a moment to gather your thoughts, it merely demonstrates that you think carefully through a situation before responding.
• Relax.  When it comes to unusual interview questions, your answer is not as important as how you handle the situation.  In fact, most don’t have right or wrong answers.  So take the pressure off yourself.  You don’t have to be brilliant, you just need to answer honestly.

If you’d like some practice answering off-the-wall questions, consider the following popular ones:

• If you could be any character in fiction, whom would you be?
• If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time?
• If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?
• If you were a _________ (insert:  car, animal, salad dressing – you get the picture), what kind would you be and why?
• If you won $50 million in the lottery, what would you do with the money?
• How would you rate me as an interviewer?

Be Prepared for Your Next Interview

Register with ABR Employment Services today.  Our team of staffing professionals will listen to your needs, match you with a perfect direct placement opportunity, and then prepare you to ace the interview.

The word “diva” no longer refers exclusively to a distinguished female opera star.

In recent years, the term has commonly been used to describe any difficult employee, male or female, who:

• is used to getting what he wants;
• thinks he needs no guidance or management;
• lives for drama in the workplace;
• is hyper-critical, sensitive and intolerant;
• is great at what he does.

If you have a diva on staff, you need to learn how to keep him in line without driving him out the door.  You need to find a way for your employees to co-exist peacefully and productively.  Here are some techniques for reigning in this high performing – albeit challenging – type of employee:

1. Nip annoying behaviors in the bud.  Discuss problematic behaviors immediately – before they develop into patterns.  This allows you to address issues without releasing a wave of emotional build-up.
2. Act based on facts – not gossip or rumor.  Too often, co-workers compound problems by spreading gossip.  So when drama unfolds, don’t assume what others tell you is true.  If you haven’t witnessed a diva’s inappropriate behavior yourself, look into it further.  Listen to both sides of the story, to be sure you get all the facts.
3. Keep open lines of communication.  Divas need to vent more than other employees.  Keep drama to a minimum by maintaining an “open door” policy.  If a diva has a chance to voice frustrations to you, he will be less likely to stir up conflict with other employees.
4. Keep your emotions in check.  Never stand around arguing with a diva.  Make your point once, clarify if necessary, and move on.  A difficult employee may get a rise out of seeing you lose your cool, so stay calm and positive.  If you need to, walk away from the situation and come back once you’ve regained your composure.
5. Make your diva part of the solution.  Give your problematic employee the opportunity to help develop a solution to the problem.  He is more likely to implement behavior change if he’s at least partly responsible for developing it.
6. Get outside help.  If sparks fly when you and your diva communicate, ask a neutral third party to step in.  With no ulterior motive or emotional ties to the situation, an objective individual may improve how you communicate and work together.

Of course, the best way to handle difficult employees is to avoid hiring them in the first place.  ABR Employment Services allows you to try a candidate out on the job, to see how he fits in with your corporate culture, before extending an offer for direct employment.  Contact us to find out more about our try-before-hire staffing service.

To get ahead in  this world, you have to “put your best foot forward.”  But, there’s a fine line between respectable self-promotion and shameless bragging.  So how do you use self-promotion to advance your career, without coming across as a show-off?  Use these quick tips to tactfully toot your own horn:

1. Realize that context is everything.  To successfully self-promote, your comments need to be relevant to the conversation.  Bringing up your latest success while your boss is talking about his favorite TV show will not earn you any points.  Bide your time until the conversation switches gears.  Research has shown that once a topic has been raised, a subsequent boast is not viewed as inappropriate – because it’s in context.
2. Wait for the right moment.   Believe it or not, it is okay to steer a conversation toward a topic relevant to your accomplishment.  However, changing topics doesn’t give you license to just blurt out what you’ve done.  Be patient and wait until your conversation partner asks a question that gives you the opening you need.
3. Be a tortoise, not a hare.  Self-promotion is about building a long-term reputation for yourself; establishing trust and respect in your workplace (or the marketplace).  So get in it for the long-haul by making self-promotion a habit.  Set daily goals for doing something small – sharing an idea, reaching out to someone, showing up at an event – and measurable results will follow in time.
4. Promote your ideas.  Beyond talking up accomplishments, you should also spread your ideas, concepts and vision.  By promoting your ideas (as opposed to just your deeds) you will give co-workers and superiors something to support – without being “turned off” or threatened by your success.
5. Know yourself.  Are you like most people, who err on the side of caution and don’t talk themselves up enough?  Or are you the type who tends to talk easily about yourself and your accomplishments?  If you’re unsure, ask a trusted friend into which end of the spectrum you fall.  The art of successful self-promotion depends upon having the self-knowledge to realize when to toot your own horn, and when to let your actions speak for themselves.

Let ABR Employment Services help you put your best foot forward.  When you come in for an interview, our experienced staffing specialists will learn about your skills, interests, experience and needs – then show you where your strengths lie.  We can help you master the art of self-promotion and find the perfect employment opportunity.  Just give us a call.