Your C-level executives typically head up your strategic workforce planning efforts. However, they are not the only stakeholders who are involved in this annual process.

Departmental leaders, people managers, DEI directors, and human resources team members who run learning and development programs and other talent management initiatives also have a seat at the table during planning sessions in which leaders prepare for the future.

“Organizations can access the shared real-time insights they need to simplify complex challenges, respond to change in the moment, make the best strategic moves for the workforce, and share a mission that supports strategic growth” KPMG and Workday wrote in a joint white paper.

Mapping out the exact number of people your business needs to hire to make the desired level of progress with your overall business strategy may sound daunting.

The reality is this strategic human resources management exercise can be executed efficiently when all key decision makers meet to discuss future business needs together and make intelligent, data-backed decisions as a team instead of separately.

What the modern strategic workforce planning process entails for enterprises

The common strategic workforce planning model used by enterprises features two stages C-suites and other business stakeholders must complete together. Here is what this process typically involves.

1) Factoring in long-term goals and market conditions

Your workforce planning committee must factor your business goals into your hiring strategy.

Consider your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. What are your strengths and areas for improvement with diversity hiring? What initiatives can positively impact your work environment and further position your enterprise as one that cares about meaningful DEI progress?

Revenue targets, your product roadmap, recent business performance, and insights from your company’s board and investors also inform your future workforce planning.

However, external factors must also be accounted for when determining your headcount needs.

Two of these outside factors include the:

• Level of workforce supply and demand. Are there many active job seekers applying for your open roles? How responsive are passive candidates to your messaging regarding open roles? Understanding whether it’s a candidate-centric market or one that favors employers will impact your recruitment marketing and outreach approach in the year ahead.
• State of the economy and labor market. What kind of competition do you face for top talent? Are macroeconomic conditions strengthening, worsening, or stagnant? Knowing how many other employers are looking to hire qualified candidates and whether the overall economic environment is forecasted to improve soon also affects which and how many requisitions your C-suite approves and your talent team budget.

Whether external factors are viewed positively or negatively by your business leaders, just remember having to account for these elements is nothing new for enterprise employers.

“Today’s recruiting challenges are the same as those previously associated with competition during times of strong economic growth,” WorkTech Founder and Principal Analyst George LaRocque noted in the 2023 Employ Recruiter Nation Report.

2) Identifying gaps and needs in terms of talent company-wide

Once internal and external factors are considered, hiring decision makers discuss the exact types and total number of roles they need or prefer to have filled in the coming year.

This requires a skills gap analysis of their existing workforce to determine which roles, teams, and locations merit the most immediate recruiting attention from talent acquisition.

It also means seeing if there are people with the right skills already in-house who can fill roles.

Yet, recent Josh Bersin Company research found just 24% of all hires made by surveyed employers in 2023 were internal. That is 16 percentage points lower than the 2020 figure.

To address skills gaps and fill key roles quickly, your company must diversify its recruiting approach. That said, your enterprise leaders must be careful not to sign off on reassignments of existing employees elsewhere in the organization just because a manager recommended the change.

To combat talent shortages, many executives at large-scale companies are also turning to non-traditional prospects who may not have the conventional background and education as employees with college degrees and certifications when planning their workforce needs.

“With more employees charting nonlinear career paths and organizations having trouble meeting their talent needs through traditional sourcing methods, now is the time to act,” Gartner HR practice leaders recently wrote for Harvard Business Review.

Using enterprise recruiting software to execute on your strategic workforce planning

Let’s fast-forward. Your key business stakeholders have met. Your company’s strategic workforce planning framework is done. Your hiring blueprint is ready to share with your talent team.

Now, it’s on your talent acquisition specialists and hiring managers to translate this hiring strategy into specific recruiting activities that will help your business hire the right people.

With Jobvite’s TA technology that seamlessly integrates with popular human capital management systems like UKG Pro and ADP Workforce Now, your hiring team can effectively merge candidate and employee data to make data-backed decisions across your recruiting process that can help you:

Research potential internal mobility candidates

“Talent is critical to every organization,” McKinsey workforce experts recently wrote. “Investment — through development, hiring, and empowerment/inclusion — is the lynchpin to executing strategic priorities and giving an organization the best chance to thrive in an uncertain future.”

The Employ Recruiter Nation Report found 16% of recruiters are stressed out by the lack of organizational focus on internal mobility. To rectify this, 36% of HR decision makers said they will include career mobility programs in their business plans moving forward.

Using Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite, your sourcers can more easily identify internal candidates. You can also store information and data tied to external job seekers, while building dedicated profiles for existing employees.

These can be profiles you already have for employees because your talent team helped hire them in the first place, or ones you create in Jobvite, based on their interest in open roles.

Connect with passive talent via targeted outreach

Sourcing passive candidates will also be essential to your talent acquisition success.

The key to piquing their interest in job openings at your business is to deliver personalized candidate engagement messaging that compels them to reach out to learn more.

“Passive talent may not have a particularly interesting reason to stay at their existing job, but they’ll need a compelling reason to leave,” RecruitGyan Founder and CEO Neha Naik wrote for Forbes. “The key is to tailor your outreach to resonate with their unique motivations and career ambitions.”

Jobvite’s enterprise-grade recruitment software offers out-of-the-box nurturing capabilities that can help you more effectively connect with passive prospects. Our ATS allows you to create automated campaigns that send bespoke emails and texts to individuals and groups of candidates so you can scale your outreach while maintaining a personal touch.

Enhance your recruiting through ongoing analysis

Lighthouse Research & Advisory Chief Research Officer Ben Eubanks recently told SHRM how human resources and talent acquisition leaders “are in front of a brighter spotlight than ever before and they need to know what’s going on” with their talent attraction and retention efforts.

That is where hiring analytics comes in.

Jobvite provides TA teams rich analytics and reporting capabilities that help them dive deep into their data to unearth insights into the past hiring performance. They can see dashboards that reveal:

• The total number of applicants and passive candidates in their system
• How many diverse candidates they have engaged, advanced, and hired
• Which sources produce the highest quality and quantity of candidates
• The stages where engaged candidates exit their funnel most often
• What interview process bottlenecks exist and lead to candidate drop-offs
• How long their full-cycle recruiting process typically takes by role and team

Connecting Jobvite’s hiring technology with HCM software offers even richer insights for your hiring team and HR leaders. This direct sync can reveal quality-of-hire data for employees who were sourced by your recruiters and used to inform candidate sourcing and engagement changes.

With integrated candidate and workforce analytics, you have rich insights that can help you make progress with strategic goals and adjust your hiring plan as needed.

Learn how Jobvite’s enterprise recruitment technology can help you attract, engage, and convert top talent at scale. Schedule a demo of our Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite today.

The post Strategic Workforce Planning: Expert Advice for Enterprises first appeared on Jobvite.

As the current year comes to a close, talent acquisition and recruitment teams are planning their strategies for the next 12 months. During this time, hiring teams and HR leaders have to tackle many tasks, including:

• Resolving issues with their recruiting and hiring processes
• Revisiting brand messaging and language in job descriptions
• Revamping their approach to building a diverse workforce
• Reconsidering what the ideal candidate profile looks like
• Reassessing their sourcing and recruitment marketing efforts

Creating a concrete action plan to improve your recruiting process and hiring results is a big, end-of-year priority. But, it’s just as vital for your business to stay on top of the latest talent acquisition trends that will impact your recruitment approach in the year ahead.

Here are five talent acquisition trends you and your leaders should know for 2024.

1) Heightened focus on data-driven recruiting and hiring strategies

• Embracing real-time analytics will empower hiring teams to work smarter and faster.

Today’s top HR leaders ensure their recruiters and hiring managers embrace a data-driven approach with technology that enables them to execute results-focused recruiting strategies.

The Employ 2023 Recruiter Nation Report found more HR decision-makers intend to follow suit in 2024. Roughly one-quarter (24%) of HR leaders will invest in analytics and reporting for their hiring teams to help them act on data tied to their recruiting speed and efficiency.

Real-time data that shows candidate status and reveals progress on core recruiting metrics, including time to fill, sourcing effectiveness, and offer acceptance, provides hiring teams with actionable insights they can use to improve their work.

Aptitude Research Founder Madeline Laurano recently noted employers must “harness the power of data and insights to chart the right course forward” for their hiring strategies.

Bottom line: Employers that don’t develop data-driven recruiting strategies in 2024 will struggle with hiring top talent, compared to companies that take advantage of analytics.

2) Optimized approach to candidate engagement and conversion

• Building relationships with candidates will be a competitive differentiator for employers.

Whether you’re emailing active job seekers who recently applied for open roles or messaging passive candidates through cold outreach on LinkedIn, you must communicate with these potential hires in a personalized manner to provide a stellar candidate experience.

In 2024, hiring teams will evaluate their talent engagement tactics and overall candidate relationship management strategy to ensure they interact with job seekers in a human way.

The Employ Recruiter Nation Report found 32% of talent teams will also adopt new candidate engagement scoring frameworks that use artificial intelligence. This is intended to help them better learn which nurture messaging resonates with job seekers.

Emailing and texting candidates to update them on their status within the hiring process is essential. Leading recruiting platforms offer automation capabilities that enable hiring teams to put most of these manual tasks on auto-pilot.

Through templated emails, recruiters can personalize messages to each job seeker in their pipeline.

It is up to human resources leaders, however, to ensure their teams are empowered to use purpose-built recruitment software, investing in technology that addresses their hiring complexity and eliminates inefficiencies tied to manual recruiting tasks.

Just remember: The best candidate engagement strategies balance creativity and persistence. Test and optimize your approach regularly using analytics to continually improve key nurture-related metrics, like the open and reply rates for your emails and text messages.

3) Greater emphasis on internal mobility and employee retention

• Businesses that prioritize career mobility will better retain top talent in the coming year.

The Recruiter Nation Report found 39% of employers will focus heavily on internal mobility in 2024.

This finding shows HR decision-makers recognize that, in a highly competitive job market, it is difficult to hire highly qualified candidates, so they must focus on retaining their existing employees.

Look for more organizations to offer career pathing for employees to prevent them from leaving the company and allow them to move into roles that challenge them and provide new learning opportunities.

This approach not only helps retain employees long term, but also alleviates the pressure on hiring teams. “Businesses need new skills at a rate faster than I’ve ever seen before, which means they need to help their employees evolve via upskilling and internal mobility,” LinkedIn VP of Talent Jennifer Shappley said in the company’s latest Global Talent Trends report.

Whether it’s providing stipends for certifications, offering mentorship programs or conducting career development training, leaders must offer employees the chance to grow their skill sets and realize their career paths within the organization to boost retention.

While sourcing external talent through job boards, social media, and other channels will remain critical to the success of any talent acquisition strategy, prioritizing internal mobility must become a major focus area in 2024.

4) Increased reliance on engagement programs to improve company culture

• Human resources will develop more dedicated employee engagement initiatives.

Many companies shifted to a hybrid workforce or entirely remote-work model in recent years. During this transition, many business leaders have evaluated the level of employee engagement for in-office and remote employees.

In 2024, creating a strong culture will be less about making the office a fun environment and more about ensuring employees — whether remote, hybrid, or in-office — feel seen and heard by colleagues and managers, know the value of their work to the business, and are set up to succeed.

To improve their diversity hiring, the Employ Recruiter Nation Report found employers plan to:

• Showcase their DEI commitment on their career site (44%)
• Write more inclusive job descriptions for job postings (38%)
• Use more diverse interview panels in their hiring efforts (27%)

Along with other recruiting and hiring process changes, these efforts by HR decision-makers and their hiring teams are intended better attract and hire more individuals from underrepresented groups and build a diverse workforce and culture in 2024 and beyond.

5) More efforts to improve employee well-being and work-life balance

• Employee wellness will be a big focus for organizations in 2024, driven by HR leaders.

Workforce burnout and fatigue are prevalent within companies of all sizes today.

To make matters worse, employee well-being was a top area business leaders struggled with most amid the pandemic. In 2024, this must be addressed head-on to improve recruitment and retention.

Recruiters have become especially weary. The Employ Recruiter Nation Report found 23% of talent specialists experienced high levels of burnout and concerns over their mental health in 2023.

It’s no surprise a focus on mental health and wellness — and being flexible to employees’ needs regarding well-being — is now vital for all companies to thrive today.

“Encourage open communication, active listening, and a non-judgmental atmosphere where employees feel comfortable sharing their concerns, both personal and professional [in 2024],” HR expert Kara Dennison wrote for Forbes. “When employees have psychological safety within work relationships, it can reduce psychological distress and enhance attitude toward work.”

Schedule a Jobvite demo today. Our team will explain how our advanced, yet easy-to-use enterprise recruitment software can help you hire smarter and faster in 2024 and beyond.

The post 5 Talent Acquisition Trends That Will Define 2024 first appeared on Jobvite.

Closely monitoring hiring trends is a shared task for C-level executives, including human resources and talent acquisition leaders, as well as hiring managers and recruiters.

Regularly analyzing labor market data and tracking TA and workplace changes made by other employers helps hiring stakeholders develop and refine annual workforce plans, revamp their hiring processes, and prepare their recruiters to fill future roles more effectively.

Here, you will find hiring trends and recruiting insights that can help inform your company’s talent planning strategy for 2024, as you gear up your recruiting function for next year.

5 hiring trends to know in 2024

Gartner noted human resources leaders will empower their employees in 2024 by:

• Offering leadership and management training
• Upgrading their organizational culture
• Implementing new change management processes
• Making internal mobility a bigger priority

To improve their approach to talent acquisition, CHROs are also closely tracking these five hiring trends and factoring them into their companies’ headcount planning for the year ahead.

1) Artificial intelligence will play a bigger role in recruiting and hiring

Driving better recruiting and hiring outcomes with AI was a top priority for employers in 2023.

Moving forward, companies will explore even more AI use cases to automate administrative tasks, more quickly review resumes, and better engage job applicants and passive candidates.

Recruiters and hiring managers will use advanced AI recruiting technology to more quickly review resumes, mitigate hiring bias, and engage job applicants and passive candidates.

“Allowing AI to do the behind-the-scenes work frees recruiters to focus on the relationship-driven aspects of the hiring process to ensure the match is suitable for both the candidate and the company,” talent acquisition expert Jack Kelly recently wrote for Forbes.

Many enterprises continue to invest in applicant tracking systems (ATS) to streamline their hiring process and complement their talent acquisition teams’ recruitment marketing, employer branding, candidate sourcing, and pipeline management.

Expect more of these large-scale businesses to look for powerful, yet intuitive recruiting software that offers artificial intelligence capabilities as well in 2024.

While adoption is increasingly important for enterprises, Employ CEO Pete Lamson cautioned executives will need to put guardrails in place around their use of AI for recruiting.

“As technology advances … new [AI recruiting] use cases may arise,” Pete wrote for Forbes. “Leaders should implement a regular review of best practices to ensure that they are keeping up with …new safeguards that software developers integrate into their products.”

2) Improving productivity will be a primary focus for talent teams

Investing in AI is just one way talent leaders plan to boost recruiters’ performance in 2024. Many TA leaders also intended to use data more often to elevate their teams’ output.

The Employ 2023 Recruiter Nation Report found 24% of employers will invest more in reporting and analytics technology to enhance their data-driven recruiting and hiring processes.

“For talent acquisition professionals, getting a handle on their [recruiting and hiring] analytics, creating visibility, and shining a light on the most vital aspects of their performance is critically important,” Employ’s Data-Driven Recruiting Handbook stated.

Look for more enterprises to use analytics to improve key recruitment metrics, including their:

• Sourcing and nurturing effectiveness
• Application completion rates
• Hiring manager and candidate satisfaction
• Structured interviewing speed
• Recruiting quality and efficiency
• Talent pipeline and hiring diversity

Addressing these facets of their full-cycle recruiting will help TA teams fill job openings with high-quality job seekers more effectively. Just as important, it will also increase their hiring productivity and better contribute to business growth goals.

3) Leaders will adjust talent planning amid ongoing job market shifts

The labor market has experienced a lot of volatility in recent years:

• Employers adapted to a candidate-centric market during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The hiring landscape shifted again in 2022. Some of those individuals who quit during The Great Resignation began looking for work again.
• In 2023, some sectors saw frequent layoffs, which provided employers who continued to hire with more qualified candidates to consider.

More market changes are likely to come in 2024. It remains to be seen who these changes will favor — employers or candidates — or whether companies will restart their hiring initiatives.

TalentLab VP of Talent Operations Sarah Doughty told SHRM that recruiters must ensure clear communication with hiring managers as new requisitions open in 2024.

“Just as the hiring manager will be able to provide helpful feedback on the job scope, the recruiter is there to provide equally useful feedback about the market,” said Sarah.

Communicating daily regarding open roles will help both parties ease back into hiring processes they may not have executed consistently together in some time.

4) Employers will adjust work models to better attract candidates

Recruiters pull a lot of levers to get qualified candidates into the recruiting funnel, including writing inclusive job descriptions, posting job ads to proven sourcing channels, and proactively reaching out to individuals with relevant skills and backgrounds.

And yet, this isn’t enough to convince some job seekers to apply and passive candidates to agree to join a screening call. A common reason these candidates don’t convert is the lack of flexible work options for employees offered by the employers in question.

More employers will carry out RTO plans in 2024. However, others will assess whether the move is right for their organizations, based on candidate feedback data that reveals job seekers’ sentiment about in-office, work-from-home, and hybrid work models.

“There’s a growing divide,” Gartner Jamie Kohn Senior Research Director recently explained to SHRM. “As companies have shifted their policies around RTO and shifted productivity expectations, we’re seeing employees feeling less loyal to remain.”

5) DEI will remain critical to culture and retention improvements

Some companies appear willing to scale back on diversity, equity, and inclusion and employee experience initiatives in 2024. Many employers, though, remain committed to making further progress with their DEI programs, including those tied to hiring.

The return on investment from this DEI focus can pay big dividends with hiring.

That figure rises to 63% for Millennial candidates and 77% for Gen Z prospects.

Coordinated DEI programs don’t just positively impact recruiting. Boston University School of Public Health Associate Professor Monica Wang noted it also bolster employee retention.

“Thinking about recruitment and retention and the overall health of an organization, creating inclusive and equitable work environments can actually facilitate success in those outcomes,” said Monica.

Given this, and the fact 50% of HR decision-makers intend to spend more on DEI technology to drive related programs, according to the Employ Recruiter Nation Report, expect more employers to reconsider slashing their DEI budgets and, instead, double down on initiatives.

Accelerate your enterprise recruiting process and scale your hiring strategy with the Jobvite Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite. Schedule a demo of our TA technology today.

The post Hiring Trends That Will Impact Your TA Approach in 2024 first appeared on Jobvite.

Many enterprises calculate employee turnover in the same way. Typically, it is the number of employees who left divided by the average number of employees, multiplied by 100.

However, not every large-scale organization uses the same strategies to reduce their annual turnover rate, boost workforce retention, and replace high-performing employees who left their business.

The key to lowering your employee turnover rate is twofold:

1. Your human resources team must dig into its HR data set to learn why previous employees resigned and uncover which roles, teams, and locations see the highest and lowest voluntary attrition.
2. These insights must then be shared with your C-suite and managers across the business who have seen employees leave at a high rate to address likely causes of turnover.

Regardless of the exact reasons behind your company’s turnover rate, your HR and talent teams must use turnover-related analytics to make data-backed changes to your talent planning strategy.

Only when your leadership knows the average number of employees who exit your organization over a given period and which roles and teams are impacted can they work with your people managers and HR leaders to find and train new employees who can help drive the business forward.

The impact of high employee turnover on enterprises

The main reason your company should prevent employee turnover is simple.

“Retaining current employees typically costs significantly less than recruiting and training new employees and can be accomplished by building a workplace that aligns with workers’ preferences,” HR expert Corey Berkey recently shared with StrategicCHRO360.

Gallup found one in two professionals are willing to walk away from their current jobs and employers today. The reasons vary. Some cited weak pay and benefits. Others said poor managers and culture.

Failing to enact changes workers want means large-scale companies are likely to see their employee turnover rate continually rise and workforce productivity and satisfaction decline.

“Although employees are slightly less likely to leave their jobs now than during the Great Resignation, there is and will continue to be an increase in demands from employees,” Payscale CPO Lexi Clarke recently shared with HR Executive. “And employers must directly address and understand what they can do to meet those requests in order to retain their workforce.”

Corey noted executive leaders shouldn’t automatically backfill positions caused by voluntary attrition. That’s because there could more pressing hiring needs elsewhere in the business.

“Stop and evaluate your organization in its current state and ask yourself if a replacement in the same position is the solution,” Corey wrote for Forbes. “Should you hold off and reduce expenses elsewhere? Should you repurpose dollars to hire a role that will have a greater impact? Should you up-level? Down-level? Taking the time to be reflective at each headcount change event is critical.”

How leading companies reduce employee turnover

There are many problems that can arise when attrition swells and retention dwindles. But, there are two key initiatives your enterprise can undertake to lower high turnover rates today and prevent your talent team from having to find lots of qualified candidates to replace employees who left.

1) Closely analyze and act on employee experience insights

Examining your people analytics in your human capital management software can help your HR team and business leaders determine why your employee turnover rate is high. Here are some of the common reasons workers resign today that could help your organization reduce turnover:

• Low levels of employee engagement. Identifying employees who don’t partake in company events and team gatherings or simply don’t connect proactively communicate and collaborate with colleagues can help you discover who may be checked out and likely to quit soon.
• An unwelcoming work environment. “A safe and inclusive work environment is vital for fundamental employee well-being,” HR expert Cara Brennan Allamano wrote for Forbes. If data shows your workplace environment contributes to high turnover, changes are needed.
• An un-inclusive company culture. Do some workers feel like outsiders at your organization, based on recent engagement survey results? Then you likely have culture issues that need to be rectified to ensure all employees have a voice and a sense of belonging at your business.
• Little or no progress with DEI efforts. Programs focused on hiring more individuals from underrepresented groups and ensuring equal pay for equal work impact your workforce’s views on the business — and whether employees want to remain at your company long term.
• Poor work-life balance/high burnout. Stress levels are at an all-time high for many workers — even those in talent acquisition, the 2023 Employ Recruiter Nation Report found. Find ways to make work less burdensome and more enjoyable, and retention will rise.
• Limited training program access. Learning and development empowers employees to work their way into more meaningful and often higher-paying roles. Learn if your job mobility programs are helping workers level-up internally. If they aren’t, your staff may not stick around.
• Unhelpful feedback from managers. Just as your TA team needs a structured interview approach to evaluate candidates effectively, your people managers need a structured feedback approach to help employees grow professionally. See if managers’ feedback is constructive and supports workers in their efforts to advance their careers within the organization.

This last focal point plays a pivotal role in helping enterprises drive down employee turnover.

“Ultimately, creating space for open and honest communication with employees will improve their experience and satisfaction at work, ideally preventing them from leaving your organization,” Progyny Sr. VP of People Cassandra Pratt recently shared with SHRM. “Managers who demonstrate genuine care and investment are more likely to have employees who do the same.”

2) Examine your hiring team’s recruiting insights and overall approach

Your HR analytics aids with workforce assessment. Meanwhile, your talent acquisition data is another valuable resource that can provide insights into the causes of your high employee turnover.

Jobvite offers built-in recruitment analytics that enables all hiring stakeholders — not just TA leaders and specialists, but also hiring managers and operations managers — to quickly and easily evaluate data tied to their daily recruiting activities.

Syncing Jobvite with UKG, ADP, and other human resources information systems helps talent teams easily transfer data for new hires stored in Jobvite’s recruitment software directly to the HRIS.

This ability for HR to efficiently track employees’ productivity means they can create custom reports for their executive team, people managers, and talent leaders that feature quality-of-hire data.

These reports can shed light on how much value both employees who remain at and left your business provide. From here, you can pinpoint patterns that can be shared with other hiring decision-makers.

Here is what these reports often tell enterprise leaders at a high level:

• Workers who quit and were deemed highly productive likely left your organization due to circumstances separate from their daily work.
• Employees who resigned and were labeled as not very productive likely left your business because they weren’t strong fits for the roles in question. 

Those who fall into the first bucket were worth hiring, given their expertise helped them contribute to their team and overall business goals. Exit-interview data for these folks can be used to learn what fixes at your company could have changed their mind and made them stay. 

As for employees with low quality-of-hire scores, you can cross-reference these former staff members with your TA team’s profiles for them to learn how they were added to their talent pool (applied or sourced) and revisit their answers during each interview. These insights can ultimately inform changes to how recruiters and hiring managers evaluate potential hires.

Here are some questions you can ask your recruiters, including sourcers, that can help your organization determine your work’s possible impact on employee turnover:

• Do job descriptions feature inclusive language and clearly relay expectations of eventual hires?
• Are postings published and promoted in places where your ICP typically looks for new work?
• What kinds of questions do sourcers ask in pre-screening questionnaires and/or screen calls?
• Are interviews highly structured with standard questions, or are they looser in format?
• Does each interview panelist take thorough notes during interviews with potential candidates?
• Is candidate feedback compiled and discussed shortly after each interview is conducted?
• Do hiring managers ensure candidates who advance in the funnel match role-based needs?

It is through this quantitative and qualitative analysis of your recruiting tactics and techniques with purpose-built recruitment technology that can lead to greater retention and lower turnover.

Using recruitment software to address high employee turnover and adjust your talent planning

Just remember that, as you regularly review your employee turnover and recruiting data, it’s vital to ensure you have a robust candidate pool ready to engage for roles you need to backfill.

“Having that bench of talent ready to come in and take your open positions can help you reduce your time to fill while also strengthening your employer brand,” Corey shared with Zenefits.

That’s where a purpose-built, enterprise talent acquisition solution can help your business.

Discover the power of Jobvite’s enterprise applicant tracking software today. Check out our product tour video or schedule a custom demo with our team today for more information.

The post Factoring Employee Turnover in Your Talent Planning first appeared on Jobvite.

It’s obviously no secret the tight labor market continues to impact organizations in the United States and internationally. The Great Resignation is in the rearview mirror. However, the job market in North America and many other places worldwide hasn’t yet returned to pre-pandemic conditions.

Sure, there are far more employed workers than unemployed workers in several job sectors today — meaning the labor force participation rate remains fairly stout. (Particularly in the U.S.)

However, the Federal Reserve’s raising of interest rates has led many organizations — from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies — to hold off on filling job openings (and even pull them from their career sites and job boards) until lingering economic uncertainty clears up.

As Red Branch Media Founder and CEO Maren Hogan and Employ SVP People & Talent Corey Berkey shared on our recent webinar, C-suites and TA/HR leaders should simply continue to keep a close eye on industry trends — specifically, data that reveals how other employers are navigating this period of disruption so they can get ideas and inspiration for their own recruiting and hiring efforts.

Recruiters “feeling the pinch” — and burning out — in the ongoing tight labor market

As we enter 2024, labor demand is high (and growing), while labor supply varies from one industry to the next. Early retirements continue to hit executive teams at large-scale businesses. And the unemployment rate in the U.S. remains near lows seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In short, there are a lot of mixed signals in the continually tight labor market and economy.

“There’s now this added stress of not only ‘I’ve got a lot of reqs, my skills are in demand, and my business needs me to be able to perform,’ but also that performance pressure gets accelerated in the world we’re living in today because … there’s less people to manage those reqs,” said Corey.

Layer on top of that what recruiting professionals are seeing in the tight labor market today (high employee turnover rates, worker displacement due to ever-changing business dynamics and needs), and there’s clearly a palpable volatility inside the recruiting space, Corey added.

“All that really compounds that stress [for talent acquisition teams],” according to Corey.

Increasing salary bands one way employers better compete for talent in tight labor market

On top of dealing with mounting pressure, Corey relayed how recruiters also have to deal with budgetary constraints decided on by their leadership as it relates to both their talent team budget (i.e., getting the tech tools and recruitment marketing dollars they need to succeed) and the salary levels they’re able to offer candidates of interest toward the end of each hiring cycle.

“[Budget cuts] play out across the entire business,” said Corey. “But, TA feels that burden, because they’re trying to negotiate to these accepted offers. They’re trying to drive the business forward. But, they’re trying to do with less and less resources and less salary dollars.”

Despite getting seemingly not-as-competitive salary bands for many open roles, some recruiters are working more closely with their C-suites to secure more money to offer top candidates.

“Candidates are kind of used to getting what they want,” said Maren. “They got a good, solid 18 months there [of having a candidate-centric market]. And now, they’re kind of not backing down from some of those needs, desires, and demands.” This, in turn, makes it much harder for recruiting orgs to fill vacant roles with high-quality candidates at all, let alone in a timely and efficient manner.

To prevent their recruiters from having to be the “intermediaries” regarding salary discussions with prospective hires, Maren said it’s vital for C-suites to ask themselves how they can “strike a balance between sort of rigid corporate budgets and the salary expectations of candidates.”

“Strategic leaning” toward RPOs growing rapidly, as employers combat labor market tightness

Aside from discussing the emotional impact the tight labor market has had on recruiters personally and professionally, Corey and Maren touched on what employers at large are doing to compete for talent and ensure they keep their talent pools filled with many relevant, qualified candidates.

One way a number of companies are doing this? Turning to recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) service providers that can tackle numerous talent acquisition tasks and address niche hiring needs businesses’ in-house recruiting orgs simply don’t have the time or expertise to tackle.

Investment in RPOs is “a recognition that TA has matured into a distinct specialty, and orgs are harvesting specialized fields from external providers” to fill key roles, said Maren.

There are certainly other ways in which employers are coping with the tight labor market and ensuring they can realize their desired level of headcount growth, our research found. For instance:

• 42% of businesses are optimizing their recruiting processes to accelerate hiring
• 34% are using AI tools to augment their day-to-day talent acquisition tasks
• 30% are onboarding more advanced and scalable TA tech — like ATS software

The combination of these hiring strategy adjustments and factoring in the distinct needs of their own businesses is what will set talent teams up for success in 2024 and beyond, per Corey.

“Leaders across the globe are going to get handed a req list on January 1 and say, ‘Hey, the budgets approved — go get ’em,” said Corey. “And we’ve got to make sure that we’re able to be scalable with hiring and leverage all these [recruiting] modes as we navigate the labor market.”

Discover how our enterprise applicant tracking system can help you execute and optimize your talent acquisition strategy and enhance your hiring efforts amid tight market conditions.

The post Evolving Your Hiring Approach in a Tight Labor Market first appeared on Jobvite.

Your enterprise’s overarching business strategy has a lot of moving parts that require close coordination among executives and departmental leaders to plan, execute, and optimize.

The same should go for your organization’s talent strategy:

Of course, it’s never as simple as “We need X role filled by Y date — now, go source some candidates.” The top talent strategies are far more nuanced and sophisticated then that — and will certainly need to be for employers of all kinds to succeed in 2024 and beyond.

The future of talent acquisition — specifically, how companies can develop strategic plans to engage and retain high-performing team members who contribute to critical business goals and growth — was the topic of a recent webinar Employ conducted with HR.com featuring a trio of TA experts.

The talent strategy blueprint for the years ahead: What your execs and talent leaders should know

Planning your talent management strategy for 2024 (and perhaps even the years and ahead)?

Here’s what advice NXTTHing RPO Founder Terry Terhark, Employ Chief Customer Officer Chris Stewart, and Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ) Program Director, Talent Management & Development Christopher Wolff, SHRM-SCP had to offer C-suites in our webinar.

Using labor market data as a reference point for workforce planning

“Having spent close to 30 years in recruiting, I can say this is the most awkward labor market that I’ve ever seen, historically,” said Terry. “Interest rates have continued to go up in 2023, but job postings have stayed relatively high.”

The effect of these conditions? A marked rise in hiring for front-line workers, but uneven employment figures for most other industries, per Terry.

While many employers turn to BLS data and related analyst reports to glean insights into the state of the jobs market and economy at large, only leading employers use this info to inform their own internal workforce planning efforts and talent strategies.

“If there are lots of recruiter openings, that means that we have a very vibrant and robust environment,” said Terry. “And, to the extent those openings come down, that indicates more pressure on the labor markets” and, in turn, a down hiring period for many companies.

All in all, Terry explained the candidate market that’s persisted since the middle of the global pandemic remains in place today and likely will in 2024 and possibly beyond.

With that in mind, it’s vital for employers to remember they’re competing with many other employers in and outside their industry — and should ensure their talent strategy reflects that (e.g., strong employer branding and candidate sourcing and engagement processes) to win and retain talent.

Using leading tech for hiring, onboarding, and developing employees

“By and large, most enterprise and medium-sized companies currently use an ATS,” said Chris.

And with nearly two-thirds of HR decision-makers planning to spend more on TA tech in the years ahead, per Employ research, those without applicant tracking systems are likely to rectify that.

Considering these facets of TA when researching and demoing prospective recruiting tech solutions is “really important to attracting and facilitating that engagement with a candidate and making sure they have the most positive experience possible,” Chris added.

Ultimately, with the right tech — that is, a centralized, intuitive, and advanced ATS deliberately developed for enterprises that integrates with other recruitment tools — large-scale companies can implement more sustainable and scalable recruiting programs.

It’s not just recruiters who benefit from an ATS, Chris noted. For instance, HR can use it to kick off onboarding in a seamless fashion (i.e., by connecting the ATS with their HRIS/HCM software).

Moreover, they can liaise with people managers and use “blended” TA-HR data from the two sets of systems to build learning and development programs that provide existing employees with new skills set and develop and retain them. (Something recruiters undoubtedly want to see, given the considerably effort they put in with hiring managers in their evaluation and selection processes.)

Empowering your hiring team with a leading ATS and RPO services

A highly specific example of an enterprise with a variety of unique hiring needs was provided by Christopher, who noted how PANYNJ needs to hire for many roles year-round.

“Recruitment is really interesting here because we hire all sorts of job functions,” said Christopher. “Everything from skilled trades and customer service, to emergency response and engineers, to architects, project managers, finance professionals, marketing, IT, [and] police officers.”

All while keeping candidate experience and hiring speed, efficiency, and quality top of mind.

“Moving to a best-in-class applicant tracking system, Jobvite, [enabled us] to be able to more seamlessly move our candidates through the process,” said Christopher. This smoother recruitment process ensured job seekers “have a modern and intuitive experience with us,” he added.

“As we matured and evolved our talent acquisition function, we not only leverage [Jobvite], but also [hiring] services … in partnership with NXTThing RPO really served as an extension of our in-house recruiting resources,” per Christopher.

Refining your TA tech stack and talent management processes

As Chris noted, investing in a leading applicant tracking system like Jobvite is an important first step to establishing a highly effective talent strategy that helps both HR and TA perform at a high level.

But, not utilizing your ATS to its full potential and integrating other important tools and systems to the ATS will only lead to lingering inefficiencies for talent teams — and their companies potentially losing out on top talent, due to poor application (no pun intended) of the recruiting platform.

“I frequently talk to customers about finding a solution that really fits 80% of their needs and figuring out what are those two or three [parts of their recruiting and hiring] that require a point solution or add-ons,” said Chris. “Even in today’s general TA tech stack and ecosystem, you talk about openness, integrations, all of those things. There’s still a lot of complexity to that.”

That’s why recruiters, operations personnel, and hiring managers need to regularly relay their tech needs: to ensure they have the requisite tools to further augment their respective roles in their org’s recruiting process and continue to transform their distinct talent strategy for the better.

Learn how Jobvite helps enterprise employers elevate their talent strategy effectiveness and scale their hiring efforts. Take the tour of our applicant tracking system today.

The post Reimagining Your Talent Strategy in 2024 and Beyond first appeared on Jobvite.

A comprehensive and integrated talent management strategy is critical for the success of any organization. Particularly for C-suite executives at enterprises who need to collaborate with one another regularly to discuss both sides of talent management:

1. Talent acquisition: Attracting qualified candidates through savvy recruitment marketing and passive sourcing, and turning the best-fit prospects into new employees
2. Workforce empowerment: Ensuring high performance for all staff members by aligning their KPIs with business goals, and working to develop (and retain) said employees

In short, the effectiveness of your talent management strategy has long-term implications for your bottom line, employee productivity, and overall growth. The challenge for business leaders such as yourself is to strike the perfect balance in terms of resource allocation. That is, you need to:

• Set your entire TA team up for success to make sure they’re able to consistently add premier prospects to their talent pool, advance those individuals through their recruitment funnel, and help hiring managers decide which ones deserve job offers
• Enable managers and human resources to help new hires hit the ground running from day one, regularly engage employees to ensure they have everything they need to thrive, and monitor their contributions to organizational performance over time

It’s clear talent management includes a lot of moving parts.

That said, your C-suite can establish a strong talent management system that addresses both sides of the talent coin, so to speak, by keeping your TA and HR leaders in the loop regarding workforce planning efforts (and changes) and providing them with world-class tech that helps them hire high-quality talent at scale and ensure all employees help the org realize the desired business outcomes.

What a strong talent management strategy looks like

What’s needed to build and sustain a well-oiled talent management machine today is straightforward:

• On the human resources side, HR “must partner with executive leaders to manage future talent risks while addressing workflow risks,” according to Gartner.
• On the talent acquisition side, TA must “be an ambassador for the company who shows others why they would want to be part of the team” and use “effective recruiting strategies [that] … help [them] find the right people,” Forbes contributor Kimberlee Leonard recently wrote.
• On the people managers side, team leaders must “expand career development beyond those employees who are considered ‘high potential,'” per MIT Sloan Management Review contributors George Westerman and Tony Gigliotti.
• And on the executive leadership side, C-suites must enable all three aforementioned stakeholders to succeed with these respective tasks on their plates and achieve OKRs assigned to them to ensure a steady stream of strong talent “enters the door” and is empowered to excel in their respective roles.

Before your enterprise can realize this vision, you first need to implement a holistic, sound, well-coordinated talent management strategy. Once you do, you can realize substantial benefits, including:

Increased employee engagement and satisfaction

When employees know they’re valued and have opportunities to learn and grow within the company, they’re more likely to be engaged and satisfied with their work. Plain and simple.

The key is ensuring you regularly address issues with and constantly improve your company culture — an oft-forgotten element (and a critical one at that) of successful talent management strategies.

“Company culture is often a leading driver in whether an employee feels like they’re a good fit with the business or if they choose to look for employment elsewhere,” human resources expert Jordan Nottrodt recently wrote for HRMorning. “Offering competitive wages is not enough.”

Improved workforce efficiency and communication

A major advantage of establishing linkages between your TA and HR systems (more on that shortly) is your newfound ability to centralize processes and streamline communication channels.

This, in turn, enables human resources generalists, people managers, and (you guessed it) executives such as yourself to coordinate and collaborate more effectively.

Increased efficiency as it relates to syncing insights tied to prospective hires and current staff members can lead to better decision-making (e.g., TA using quality-of-hire data to inform sourcing improvements). Moreover, it can help shorten hiring cycles and contribute to smoother onboarding experiences — both of which positively impact employee satisfaction and time to productivity.

Better employee retention rates across each team

A well-executed talent management strategy reduces turnover rates by creating a strong employee value proposition (EVP). When employees understand the long-term professional and personal benefits of staying with the company, they’re less likely to look for opportunities elsewhere.

“Is [your company’s purpose] the reason potential employees are interested in getting to know your organization?,” Prescient Strategists Managing Partner Dr. Curtis Odom wrote for Forbes. “Does it energize your current employees? Are you doing your best to encourage curiosity and a willingness to go the extra mile? If the answer [to these] is no, redefining your purpose is a necessity.”

Ensuring only the “right” talent is engaged and hired

One of the most critical aspects of a robust talent management strategy is attracting high-quality candidates who are well-suited for job openings and deemed likely culture-adds to the business.

These long-term initiatives around career mobility and learning programs are essential in attracting top-tier talent who would be more inclined to remain with the company for a longer tenure.

By providing opportunities for continuous learning and skills upgrades, your company can boost its resilience and ensure long-term success. Meanwhile, your workers are able to reskill and upskill — something many likely have long desired and that will set you apart from other employers.

The key components of a modern — and successful — talent management strategy

To realize the above benefits of a talent management approach, your must ensure your org has:

A highly scalable and repeatable talent acquisition approach

Aside from well-defined processes and routinely optimized recruiting tactics and techniques, your TA teams also needs an advanced applicant tracking system (ATS) built specifically for enterprises to streamline the end-to-end hiring process and build a strong candidate pipeline.

Only with such a recruitment platform in place can all your talent specialists see real-time statuses of all active opportunities, understand what actions are needed to advance these individuals in their funnels, and make data-backed decisions using actionable, always-up-to-date candidate insights.

A concerted focus on ongoing employee development

As noted, key element of a successful talent management strategy is a perpetual workforce training program. Your e-staff must invest in learning and development initiatives to enhance organizational capabilities and institutional knowledge, bridge critical skill gaps, and support professional growth.

“Access to … comprehensive skills data can help leaders make much better strategic decisions about talent management,” RedThread Research Cofounder and Principal Analyst Dani Johnson told SHRM.

A dedicated strategy around performance management

A strong performance management process helps gauge employee performance and provide timely feedback, fostering open communication channels and driving continuous improvement.

Only when this is executed can you and other business leaders and managers capably discern strengths and areas for improvement in terms of your existing human capital.

Refining your talent management processes

At the end of the day, to fully reap the benefits of talent management, your must integrate your talent acquisition and HR systems to realize more structured processes, enhance cross-functional comms, and improve data-driven decision-making.

Here’s how an integrated approach can be implemented:

Ensure strong collaboration among executive, HR, and TA teams

Enhancing communication across the org is a ceaseless endeavor. Nevertheless, your C-suite must be the ones to drive an ongoing dialogue with TA and HR teams to ensure they’re aligned on key goals, challenges, and needs so they can plan their recruiting and evaluation efforts accordingly.

Regular meetings and data-sharing can promote transparency and encourage collaboration.

Connect key human resources and talent acquisition tech

With a best-in-class enterprise ATS at the center of your TA tech stack, you can then connect said system into your HCM and HRIS for seamless data transfer and real-time synchronization.

That means recruiters can access data tied to performance reviews and quality of hire, which can tell them which employees who were once passive prospects they sourced turned into low- and high-performing employees. In turn, these insights can help them adjust their sourcing approach.

Develop a competency framework for each business role

And finally, implement a uniform set of metrics to assess employees’ skills, knowledge, and abilities across teams. This type of framework can serve as a foundation for performance evaluations, training programs, and succession planning, fostering consistency and cohesion across HR and TA.

Learn how you can improve one half of your talent management efforts — attracting, engaging, and hiring qualified candidates at scale — with our ATS. Book a demo today.

The post Building an Enterprise Talent Management Strategy: A Guide first appeared on Jobvite.

Part 3 of the Employment Law Thought Leadership Series by Employ

By Jason A. Geller, Regional Managing Partner, Nathan K. Low, J.D., Partner, and Kevin L. Quan, Associate, Fisher & Phillips LLP

The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content, and materials provided here are for general informational purposes only.

Overtime calculation and pay can create significant wage and hour issues for every employer. Classifying eligible employees as exempt from overtime requirements is one of the most effective ways to avoid this wage and hour headache.

The “salary basis” test is just one of the important requirements that employers must satisfy in order for an employee to be properly classified as an exempt employee. Failure to comply with the “salary basis” test will leave employers vulnerable to potential lawsuits, including, but not limited to, claims for misclassification and failure to pay overtime.

Background

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employers are required to pay their employees a minimum wage and overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week, unless the employee is exempt from these requirements. 

One exemption under the FLSA is for employees who meet the salary basis test, which means they are paid a predetermined and fixed salary that is not subject to reduction based on variations in the quality or quantity of work performed.

The salary threshold for the exemption is currently $684 per week, or $35,568 per year. See 29 CFR §§ 541.100, 541.601(b)(1). Keep in mind, the salary threshold may vary depending on more onerous state and local laws.

The FLSA regulations also exempt workers known as highly compensated employees (HCEs). To qualify as a HCE, an employee must earn at least $107,432 annually and meet a relaxed version of the duties test (i.e., “[T]he employee customarily and regularly performs any one or more of the exempt duties or responsibilities of an executive, administrative[,] or professional employee”).  See 29 CFR § 541.601(a)(1).

On February 22, 2023, the United States Supreme Court decided Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt, a case that clarifies the definition of the “salary basis” test under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), particularly for highly compensated employees paid on a daily basis. 

The Court held that a “daily rate worker” was not exempt from the FLSA’s overtime guarantees notwithstanding his purported status as a “highly compensated employee,” because the employee’s compensation did not satisfy the “salary basis test,” which required compensation at a predetermined amount per week (or less frequently) regardless of the number of hours the employee actually worked during the pay period. 

History of Helix

The plaintiff in Helix worked as a tool-pusher on an offshore oil rig from 2014 to 2017. He was paid between $936 and $1,341 per day, no matter how many hours he worked in a given day. He received this day rate for every day he worked, which amounted to an annual salary in excess of $200,000. 

The plaintiff filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Texas, alleging he was misclassified as exempt and was therefore entitled to overtime. The district court disagreed with the plaintiff, holding that because he received at least $936 in any week that he performed work for his employer — i.e., more than the $684 per week required to meet the minimum requirement for the salary basis test — he was properly classified as exempt.

The plaintiff appealed this ruling to the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit agreed with the plaintiff, reasoning that the salary basis test requires an employee to be paid the same amount of salary on a weekly basis or less frequently, irrespective of the days worked in the particular workweek. 

Because the plaintiff’s pay varied by the number of days he worked in a workweek, the Fifth Circuit concluded it did not meet the regulatory definition of a “salary” for purposes of the white-collar exemptions under the FLSA. The employer appealed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to the United States Supreme Court.

The United States Supreme Court’s Decision

The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the HCE exemption applied to employees who were paid on a daily basis.

The Court held that a worker who is not compensated on a salary basis cannot qualify for the FLSA’s white-collar exemptions, when the employee’s paycheck is based solely on a daily rate, meaning the employee receives a certain amount if the employee works one day in a week, twice as much for two days, three times as much for three, and so on.  

In reaching its conclusion, the Supreme Court pointed to the text and structure of the FLSA’s regulations, and observed that nothing in the regulatory description of a salary applies to a daily rate worker, who by definition is paid for each day they work and no others.  In short, according to the Court, a day rate is not the same as a salary for purposes of the FLSA.

The Court further advised that an employer could come into compliance with the salary basis requirement in two ways.

• First, it could add to the plaintiff’s per-day rate a weekly guarantee that satisfies certain regulatory conditions, which include that the guaranteed amount meets at least the minimum weekly required amount paid on a salary basis, regardless of the number of hours, days, or shifts worked and that a reasonable relationship exist between the guaranteed amount and the amount actually earned. 

• Alternatively, the employer could convert the plaintiff’s compensation to a straight weekly salary for the time he spent on the rig.

What this means for employers

Although Hewitt was compensated well over $200,000 annually (thus meeting the minimum weekly requirement for the highly compensated employee exemption), he was not paid on a salary basis because a “true salary — a steady stream of pay” cannot vary much and is an amount that the employee may rely on “week after week.”  Specifically, the fluctuation in Hewitt’s pay indicated that he was not truly compensated on a salary basis.

Going forward, employers should be careful paying on a day-rate basis those employees they claim to be exempt, and, if they do, work to ensure that the overall compensation arrangement is in compliance with the salary basis requirement as articulated by the Supreme Court in Helix.

Considerations and steps moving forward

The decision highlights the importance for employers to comply with the strict requirements under the FLSA to ensure employees are properly classified as exempt employees. There are four important steps for employers to consider:

The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content, and materials provided here are for general informational purposes only.

About the Authors

Jason A. Geller

Jason A. Geller is the managing partner in the Fisher & Phillips LLP San Francisco office. Jason represents employers in all facets of employment law matters.

He has extensive experience defending employers in litigation involving claims under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) and California wage and hour laws.

Jason has defended employers against class and individual wage and hour claims, including claims for alleged misclassification of exempt and independent contractor status, and failure to pay overtime and provide meal periods and rest breaks. He also frequently defends employers in whistleblowing and retaliation claims, including claims under the California Whistleblower Act, the False Claims Act and various provisions of the California Labor Code.

His clients are involved in a variety of industries, including insurance, assisted living, independent living facilities, construction, manufacturing, engineering, architecture, education, hospitality, professional services, agriculture, technology, retail and restaurant industries. Between 2015 and 2018, Jason was included in Northern California Super Lawyers.

Nathan K. Low, J.D.

Nathan K. Low, J.D., is a partner in the Fisher & Phillips LLP San Francisco office. He represents employers in all areas of labor and employment law. His practice focuses on defending employers in wage and hour class and collective actions, PAGA claims, single-plaintiff claims, and retaliation and wrongful termination claims.

Nathan has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America, Ones to Watch (2021 – 2023) and Super Lawyers Rising Starts (2020 – 2022). He is a Member of the Orange County Asian American Bar Association (OCAABA).

While in law school, Nathan was a judicial extern for the Honorable David O. Carter of the United States District Court, Central District of California and the Honorable Gregory Keosian of the California Superior Court. Nathan was an officer and member of UCLA’s Moot Court Honors Program and competed throughout the country.

He was also an editor for the Los Angeles Public Interest Law Journal. He received his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from the University of California, Berkeley.

Kevin L. Quan

Kevin L. Quan is an associate in the Fisher & Phillips LLP San Francisco office, where he represents employers in all areas of employment litigation.

His practice focuses on defending employers in a wide range of issues including claims for discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, failure to provide reasonable accommodation, leave law violations, wage and hour class and collective actions, unfair competition, and tort and contract-based disputes.

In addition to his litigation practice, Kevin also counsels employers on a variety of workplace matters including risk assessment and litigation avoidance, policy development and compliance, employee handbooks, training and employment contracts.

During law school, Kevin served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Edward M. Chen of the United States District Court, Northern District of California and for the Honorable A. James Robertson II of the California Superior Court. He served as the Executive Managing Editor of the UC Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly.

The post Overtime Pay Compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act first appeared on Jobvite.

In today’s fiercely competitive business climate, enterprise companies are constantly seeking fresh strategies to outpace rivals and carve out their distinctive edge. Building a diverse workforce is rarely considered one of these strategies.

But, insights from leading large-scale orgs suggests it should be:

• Citi’s 2023 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report detailed how the company’s focus on diversity hiring led to a 10% increase in their overall business performance score.​
• The 2023 Global Social Impact Report from Starbucks noted how the coffee chain’s commitment to diversity and inclusion helped them expand their reach to over 80 markets worldwide​.
• And a McKinsey study found that enterprises in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability.

Diversity, though often seen mainly (or solely) through the lens of social responsibility or compliance, is increasingly being recognized as a powerful competitive differentiator for businesses small and large.

With the world becoming increasingly interconnected, a diverse workplace is no longer just a nice-to-have. It’s now essential for any org that wants to thrive — and continually attract and retain top talent.

Building a diverse workforce: The right thing for enterprises — but also the smart thing

“There is broad agreement that diverse and inclusive workplaces are a good thing,” business experts Gena Cox and David Lancefield recently wrote for Harvard Business Review.

Your enterprise, like countless others in the past decade, has undoubtedly embraced diversity and inclusion — not for the sake of appearances, but to hire a wide range of diverse individuals with numerous distinct life experiences and areas of expertise who can become valuable contributors.

Identifying, engaging, and employing people of different genders, races, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, and physical abilities is certainly a joint effort by your C-suite, HR staff, and TA team.

That said, it’s clear it’s worthwhile, given it can help your business:

• Attract top talent by showing you provide equal opportunities to all employees
• Reduce employee turnover by consistently improving your work environment
• Ensure an inclusive workforce that includes all employees in the company culture
• Build a strong level of trust, due to leadership’s commitment to achieving DEI goals

Per Great Place to Work Culture Coaching Lead Matt Bush, DEI is “more than policies, programs, or headcounts.” Truly inclusive and equitable employers “outpace their competitors by respecting the unique needs, perspectives and potential of all their team members,” Matt added. “As a result, diverse and inclusive workplaces earn deeper trust and more commitment from their employees.”

To get on your way to constructing a more diverse workforce, it’s just a matter of auditing your TA people, processes, and tech — with a big focus on the latter focus area — to set your recruiters up for success with contacting, connecting with, and converting diverse candidates.

Realizing a more diverse workforce with an advanced applicant tracking system

Nearly seven in 10 talent acquisition pros said diversity hiring is a top priority for their companies in 2023 and will be for the foreseeable future, a recent Employ Quarterly Insights Report found.

The one big need to accelerate their DEI recruiting? An advanced applicant tracking system.

Notably, ones that can help your large-scale org become a more diverse company by transforming how your recruiters and hiring team members source, nurture, interview, and evaluate diverse talent.

These include:

• Bias mitigation: Jobvite helps mitigate both conscious and unconscious bias in recruiting. This, in turn, leads to more objective decision-making in the hiring process. Consider our Bias Blocker functionality. It automatically hides PII that could lead to bias from a candidate’s resume before it is reviewed by the hiring manager. Something job seekers certainly want to see from potential employers.
• Inclusive employer branding: Jobvite also enables brands to develop highly inclusive messaging for their career site pages, job descriptions, and nurture campaigns (via email, text, and social media). This messaging helps them promotes the diversity and inclusivity of their orgs to active and passive candidates.
• DEI analysis: Jobvite offers tools to track and report on the effectiveness of DEI hiring initiatives too. This allows orgs to identify the best sources for diverse talent, see the significance of DEI content, and monitor the progression of diverse applicants through the TA process​.

Look no further for evidence of a successful DEI recruiting and hiring approach executed with the aid of our advanced applicant tracking system than Jobvite customer ACCO Brands.

The multinational manufacturing company with nearly 7,000 employees in more than 20 countries across the globe has made a concerted effort to build a diverse workforce in recent years:

• Proving to job seekers and existing employees alike that the company is a big DEI advocate and wants to form a truly diverse workforce is a primary objective for ACCO.
• By sharing insights into its DEI initiatives in its recruitment marketing collateral and website pages, including its career site and job postings — channels its can optimize with help from Jobvite — ACCO has been able to prove its commitment to DEI. This, in turn, helps the business engage diverse talent for open roles and teams across its business.
• ACCO’s recruiters consistently connect with passive candidates from a variety of different backgrounds who have the requisite skill sets and experience desired by hiring managers for openings on their team.

While Jobvite helps with the attraction of diverse talent, ACCO’s diversity “task force,” which has a dozen-plus members, works hard to execute and iterate on ongoing DEI initiatives and involve new and veteran employees alike in said programs. Something that aids with its retention efforts.

Chat with our team to learn how our Talent Acquisition Suite can help you build a more diverse workforce and achieve your org’s distinct DEI and growth goals.

The post Why a Diverse Workforce Is a Competitive Differentiator first appeared on Jobvite.

By Nathan K. Low, J.D., Partner, Fisher & Phillips LLP

The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content, and materials provided here are for general informational purposes only.

Given the current state of economic uncertainty, some employers have considered or turned to a reduction-in-force (RIF) or mass layoffs. During such tumultuous times, it is important that employers carry out any RIF with documented care and precision in order to avoid potential legal pitfalls. 

Preparation is key, as there are many issues that can be triggered if a RIF is implemented haphazardly. An employer should carefully walk through the following steps and considerations.  

Step One: Identify Desired Objectives and Consider Whether Alternative Cost-Saving Measures Exist

Before moving forward with a RIF, it is important to understand and consider other cost-saving alternatives.

For example, an employer may consider a hiring freeze in specific work units or departments or instituting some form of a pre-layoff promotion and transfer freeze. Other temporary cost-saving measures include implementing a temporary furlough, temporarily reducing employees’ hours, or temporarily reducing employees’ pay. However, even these temporary cost saving measures come with their own compliance challenges and risks.

Step Two: Make Initial Logistical Decisions

Once an employer determines that there is no other course of action, the employer should establish a decision-making team to take charge of the RIF process.

Ideally, the team should include a representative from each stakeholder area (e.g., human resources, legal, upper management, key supervisors in affected work units, etc.) and closely coordinate with the employer’s workplace legal counsel.

This team should then make initial decisions about the planned actions and execution, including:

• The necessary scope of the RIF (how many positions to reduce or re-organize)
• Whether voluntary separations will be solicited from current employees
• The operational budget to implement the RIF (legal fees, severance payouts, unemployment insurance)
• The timing of the layoffs and notification to employees

As detailed in the next steps, proper timing is crucial. There are many federal and state-specific laws that place onerous requirements on employers engaging in a RIF.

Step Three: Create a Selection Process for Layoffs

The most scrutinized part of any RIF is the selection process and criteria used to determine which employees will be let go. Some common criteria include:

Employers often use a combination of the above criteria. The key is to develop thoughtful, objective selection criteria that are thoroughly reviewed and vetted by all decision-makers, ideally with the assistance of legal counsel. 

Likewise, skillset or merit-based criteria can create potential liability where an employee’s objective performance is difficult to quantify or compare with other similarly situated employees. This is where objective documentation, such as annual performance reviews, play a significant role.

Before finalizing the list of employees based on objective criteria, an employer should run a statistical discrimination analysis of the selected employees to determine if the numbers suggest discrimination based on any protected category (e.g. gender, race, age, etc.).

If the statistical analysis reveals potential imbalances, then the employer should explore the variances that create the discrepancy and ensure that the non-discriminatory reasons for the statistical variance are documented and well-established. Finally, if the workforce is unionized, then an employer must also examine all bargaining obligations under the operative collective bargaining agreement.

Step Four: Understand the Various Intersecting Laws

A RIF is subject to various federal, state, and local laws, such as the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act and state-specific “mini-WARN” laws. At least 19 states currently have more onerous layoff requirements that employers must adhere to in addition to federal WARN. 

Indeed, state-specific “mini-WARN” laws, such as in states like California, may require advance notice and disclosures to selected employees even where federal WARN may not apply. All these laws will impact the employer’s timing, decision-making, and notification responsibilities to the selected workforce.

Under federal WARN, each selected employee is entitled to a full 60 days’ notice, including part-time employees, employees on temporary layoffs or leave who have a reasonable expectation of recall, and regular full-time employees. Importantly, although part-time employees are not counted to calculate whether federal WARN notice is triggered, part-time employees are entitled to notice.

WARN notices to selected employees must be specific, and the information provided in the notice must be based on the best information available to the employer at the time the notice is provided. This information includes:

• Whether the planned action is expected to be permanent or temporary
• If a plant is being closed, the notice must include a statement to that effect
• The expected date the plant closing or mass layoff will commence, as well as the date that the affected employee will suffer an employment loss (or set forth a 14-day window during which the employee will suffer an employment loss)
• An indication as to whether or not bumping rights exist
• The name and telephone number of a company official who can be reached for further information

Notice to individual employees must be written in clear and specific language that is easily understood by all employees. Along with the above, an employer may decide to include information regarding available dislocated worker assistance or other post-layoff benefits. If the action is temporary, it may be useful to inform employees of the estimated duration.

An employer must deliver the WARN notice so that the selected employees will receive the written notice at least 60 days before being laid off (e.g., first class mail, personal delivery with optional signed receipt). Providing only verbal notice is not enough. While notices should be as accurate as possible, minor errors in the notice or errors that are due to an unforeseeable change in circumstances usually do not violate WARN.

Employers may also face civil penalties of up to $500 per day. However, the amount of liability may be reduced by any wages or benefits paid to employees during the period of violation, and by any “voluntary and unconditional payment” by the employer to the employee that is not required by any legal obligation.

Step Five: Consider Whether Severance Agreements Are Appropriate

In some situations, an employer may decide to provide severance payments to selected employees in exchange for a general release of claims and liability in the form of severance agreements. Severance pay is a payout that goes above and beyond what is owed to an employee for work performed or as final wages owed to that employee.

There are a number of individualized factors that an employer should consider prior to issuing and obtaining signed severance agreements, including but not limited to, focusing on vacation and other PTO benefits earned, retirement/severance overlap, unemployment benefits, state-specific release requirements, and the Older Worker Benefits Protection Act (OWBPA) for those age 40 or older.

Under the OWBPA, if an employer seeks to obtain a release of age discrimination claims from an employee 40 years or older, the employee must be given a minimum period of 45 days to consider the agreement in addition to other disclosure requirements that the employer must provide. All of these issues must be considered and reviewed by an employer prior to drafting and issuing severance payments in exchange for severance agreements.

Step Six: Effective Communication

One of the most difficult parts of a RIF is communicating the news to selected employees as well as the entire workforce.

An employer may also consider whether public announcements are necessary to the local community and general public. How to deliver the message varies on a case-by-case basis, but it is important for leadership and the decision-making team to spend time weighing all the options to determine best practice.

Conclusion

Reduction-in-force is a difficult and emotional process for both employers and employees. In the employment law context, it is important to go through the arduous decision-making process, as detailed above, to better situate the company to defend against the fallout of potential legal claims. Ultimately, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

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The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content, and materials provided here are for general informational purposes only.

About the Author

Nathan Low, J.D., is a partner in the Fisher & Phillips LLP San Francisco office. He represents employers in all areas of labor and employment law. His practice focuses on defending employers in wage and hour class and collective actions, PAGA claims, single-plaintiff claims, and retaliation and wrongful termination claims.

Nathan has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America, Ones to Watch (2021 – 2023) and Super Lawyers Rising Starts (2020 – 2022). He is a Member of the Orange County Asian American Bar Association (OCAABA).

While in law school, Nathan was a judicial extern for the Honorable David O. Carter of the United States District Court, Central District of California and the Honorable Gregory Keosian of the California Superior Court. Nathan was an officer and member of UCLA’s Moot Court Honors Program and competed throughout the country. 

He was also an editor for the Los Angeles Public Interest Law Journal. He received his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from the University of California, Berkeley.

The post Reduction-in-Force and Mass Layoffs: Six Steps for Considering Legal Requirements and Strategies When Making the Tough Decisions first appeared on Jobvite.