The human resources industry is full of jargon. Sometimes it can feel like HR professionals are speaking a different language. If you're new to the HR field, or you're looking for a refresher on HR terminology, this guide is for you.
The HR industry is full of jargon. We hope you enjoyed this HR Glossary, which breaks down commonly used HR terms and phrases. It was created to help those seeking leadership and People roles in human resources, from students to executives, in order to better understand HR industry terminology.
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Looking for some good HRM eBooks to help you learn more about the topic? Look no further! Here are 235 great options from bookboon that are bite-sized for busy people leaders.
There are a lot of different aspects to human resources management (HRM), and it can be difficult to know where to start when trying to learn more about the topic. However, there are a few key resources that can help get you started on your journey to becoming an HR expert. One great way to learn more about HR is to read bite-sized eBooks on the subject. This way, you can learn about a specific topic without feeling overwhelmed by a long, dense book.
You can download and read books on just about anything on Human Resource Management and other subjects, at a nominal cost or at no cost, depending. There are a lot of different eBooks available on HR, so you can pick and choose which topics you want to focus on. Another great way to learn more about HR is to attend webinars, explore and earn HR certification, and discover top online HR courses.
Check out these top HRM eBooks and Audio Books that are bite-sized for busy people leaders like yourself below.
In a recent webinar with Orgnostic People Analytics software, Luka Babic goes through a few challenges, data points on the importance of HR data by McKinsey, and the entire employee life cycle and his team's model for it. He then goes on to provide his insights when we asked him about employee experience transformation.
In a distributed world, HR data can help to
Organizations need to build, measure, and learn to succeed. The lean startup model has good learnings around this for further reading.
Answer (edited): I completely agree actually the point that it is very similar to customer experience. Employee experience transformation does require a cultural change, or at least the culture underlying or the baseline that exists and this is something that was very mind-boggling to me generally in most of the companies. When you think about all the other functions in the organization from the very onset of a startup or company, sales is going to be data-driven. Marketing is going to be data-driven. Product is going to be data-driven. Engineering is going to be data-driven. So, they're all usually data-driven, and companies that have all these components at the top management level, that are benefits to that.
You have all the ingredients to make the soup; quite often HR just doesn't "cross the chasm" — and HR remains the only sort of feeling-driven function — and that isn't ideal because it is not being factored properly by the rest of the executive leadership team and to an extent the result of talent as well. And I think that that's the kind of a chasm — HR leadership needs to adopt this kind of mindset, that we need to build a data-driven function... because management is usually appreciating that kind of approach.
It's just about being being as mindful about what are the things that you should measure (HR metrics) and actually having a framework in mind (like OKRs) so that when you're coming in to share HR insights with management, it make sense, and it's not just a bunch of random numbers, or HR dashboards that you're that you're pushing around, which will not benefit your data-driven agenda.
But it's a great point. I think it's a great point that is very similar to the customer experience transformation and and that kind of mindset shift among the organization, specifically HR management in this case.
Luka Babic is the co-founder and CEO of the Orgnostic people analytics platform. Prior to founding Orgnostic, Luka was the Head of People Ops/CHRO and member of the Board at the tech unicorn Infobip. Before that, Luka worked as a researcher at Harvard, and he combines his industry knowledge and his deep connection with the academic community to tackle the challenge of making HR a truly data-driven, strategic function.
Image source & credits: Luka Babic / Orgnostic
Consider exploring top people analytics software like Orgnostic as your source of truth for HR data—which is a prerequisite for employee experience transformation.
Good news! There are many ways to measure the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Bad news: it’s not easy to find accurate, comprehensive metrics for calculating the overall effectiveness of your DEI program. That’s particularly true when you’re measuring outcomes related to change management and cultural transformation.
That’s likely to change over the next few years, as more companies make DEI initiatives a core part of their business strategy. In the meantime, here we’ll look at a few key metrics you can use to measure the effectiveness of your DEI program.
To determine the ROI of DEI initiatives, you need to measure both business outcomes and employee perceptions. Here are a few metrics to measure each. You can find more HR metrics here.
Measuring the impact of DEI initiatives is challenging, but not impossible.
Keeping track of data is important for understanding the diversity of your workforce, seeing how your DEI efforts are doing over time, and measuring how your organization's DEI status compares to others in your industry.
Fortunately, there are solutions for many of these problems. For example, you can improve the validity and reliability of diversity data by standardizing how you collect it.
Over time, all these efforts should result in accurate, consistent data that can be used to:
To do that, you’ll need to measure both business outcomes and employee perceptions.
When trying to build a case for DEI investment, you’ll run into several common objections. This is primarily because diversity initiatives cost money but don’t generate revenue, at least not in the immediate term.
Before you can generate revenue from your diversity initiatives, you need to first spend money on implementing and nurturing them. These initial costs are usually a hindrance to investment, but a good ROI story can help overcome resistance.
Use statistics from leading companies to state your case if you don't have your own first-party data to back up your initiative. For example, companies with above-average gender and racial/ethnic diversity in leadership roles are eight times more likely to be in the top 10% of organizations for financial performance (DDI, 2020).
Co-create your DEI initiative with your team and leadership
This will require you to operationalize a culture of authentic collaboration by building trust with leadership and your team, as well as using your HR data to determine important DEI metrics with your people analytics journey.
JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) - JEDI is an acronym for inclusivity in the workplace. It focuses on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, ensuring that everyone is treated fairly and comfortable, with no discrimination.
Often times, DEI programs make an attempt to address this, but not comprehensively.
The pandemic has forced organizations of all sizes to rapidly adapt their workplace policies and procedures to accommodate a remote-first workforce. For many people leaders, this has meant a crash course in HR best practices for managing a remote team. If you're looking for ways to continue developing your HR skillset, we've compiled a list of our top HR webinars for remote-first people leaders. From managing the performance of remote employees to developing an inclusive remote culture, these webinars will help you build the skills you need to thrive in a remote-first world.
These top HR webinars will help remote-first people leaders like yourself develop the skills you need.
One of the best ways to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices in remote work is to participate in these free HR webinars. These virtual events offer a great way to learn from experts and network with other professionals.
For even more, see the plethora of HR webinars on LinkedIn + BrightTalk. If you want paid HR webinars, explore SHRM webcasts here; learn more about HR certifications.
The business world has had human resources departments for as long as there have been humans who need resources. Employees need a centralized point of contact when they need help with a staffing issue, from everything to paychecks and benefits to vacation days and official complaints. Human resources covers it all. Truly, you get the right people in your human resources department, and it can mean real, tangible growth in your business.
Now, we have an added tool for human resources – analytics. Analytics have been around for decades. Sure, not as long as human resources, but we quickly learned in business that tracking our metrics and analyzing them has helped us grow in business in numerous ways. We track sales, we track marketing, why should we not also track our human resources?
HR metrics refers to the various key figures that help a business track their employees and measure how effective their human resources strategies are. When we think of HR metrics, we think of data like turnover, cost-per-hire, benefits participation rate, and other key factors that affect your recruitment, your engagement and retention, your time tracking, your employee value and performance, and your training and development.
Depending on the tools or HR software you employ, you could be measuring across the employee life cycle:
Attrition Rate
The attrition rate helps you understand the number of people leaving over a given period, across your company. This lets you know if you need to review current retention strategies, and where to focus your effort.
Average Commute
The average commute tells you how long it takes, on average, for your employees to get to work. This can help you make better choices about the location of your current offices, and to inform your growth and expansion strategies.
Average Number of Direct Reports
The average number of direct reports shows you how many employees the average manager at your company oversees. This is used to understand if your managers are being stretched, or have capacity for growing their team.
Average Performance Rating by Diversity
This helps you understand the performance of your diverse employees. This can be used to better focus learning and training initiatives, and to benchmark against larger trends.
Average Salary
The average salary helps you understand the compensation of your average employee. This is a quick way to check if your salaries are competitive within your industry, or if your company is meeting internal benchmarks on pay.
Average Tenure
This tells you the average amount of time an employee has been with your company. This can form part of your overall turnover statistics, and give you an at-a-glance picture of how long-term your average employee is.
Candidate Forecast
The candidate forecast helps you see how many applicants are needed to meet your current headcount goals. This gives you the knowledge you need to scale hiring efforts up or down, and to manage your budget for hiring more effectively.
Candidate Process Funnel
The candidate process funnel helps you understand how quickly and efficiently candidates move through the recruitment process. This gives you insight into your overall recruiting activities and recruiter effectiveness.
Compa Ratio
The compa ratio shows you where your employee’s compensation sits relative to the exact midpoint of compensation over the whole company. This lets you quickly see if an employee is potentially being under or overpaid.
Compensation Fairness
The compensation fairness metric helps you understand how your compensation is benchmarked against the broader market. With this, you can review your compensation strategies and policies with greater insight.
Compensation as a Percentage of Revenue
Viewing compensation as a percentage of revenue shows you how much of the revenue you generate is being spent on paying your employees. This can help you better plan your compensation packages and headcount.
Cost of Hire
This is the amount of money it takes to bring on a new employee. Knowing this, you can better focus your recruiting efforts – and push for meaningful retention strategies to lower the cost of recruitment overall.
Current Headcount
The current headcount shows you just how many employees are currently in your company. Use this snapshot to see if you’re growing or shrinking, and for working out your averages in a given moment of the company’s progress.
Diverse Hires
The diverse hires metric helps you understand the amount of diverse employees you’re bringing into the company. Use it to better inform your diversity policies, sourcing, and recruiting processes.
Diversity Candidate Process Funnel
The diversity candidate process funnel helps you see if diverse employees are being moved through the hiring cycle fairly. Use it to see if there are any potential areas of concern, or if there’s bias at play within the hiring cycle.
Dollars Required to Fix Pay Gap
Understand the monetary cost of creating equity in pay in your organization. This is useful for evaluating your current compensation policies, and setting goals for growth and compensation in the future.
Engagement Score
Employee Engagement Score is a metric that assesses how invested your employees are in contributing to your company's success. While various factors can affect this score, it is primarily influenced by emotions and relationships. The score is not determined by perks and events, such as pizza parties or book clubs, but by fostering connections and shared purpose among employees.
Forecast Attrition
The forecast attrition metric helps you understand the potential amount of attrition your company faces in the future – so you can plan your headcount accordingly.
Forecast Recruiter Needs
This shows the number of recruiters you need to achieve your headcount and growth goals, so you can gauge whether your current headcount plan is feasible.
Forecast Salary Based on Hiring Goals and Attrition
This metric helps you understand the salary you’ll need to offer new employees in order to be competitive in the market. It takes into account your current growth goals and the attrition rate at your company – now, and forecasted.
Glassdoor Rating
This can help you understand how candidates perceive the interview experience at your company. It can also shed light on the feelings of current and former employees. This can guide you towards potential areas of improvement.
High Performers Compa Ratio vs Others
See if your high performers are being paid above or below the midpoint. Use this to evaluate and allocate budget during promotion cycles. This can help meet retention goals and avoid attrition among high performers.
Hire Rates by Diversity
See the rate at which diverse employees are being hired, so you can benchmark against the broader market and internal policies.
Hiring Goal
Set a goal for hiring, and track your progress against this metric. See how far you have to go, how far you have come, and adjust your goal based on current needs.
Hiring Goals Completion Percentage
This is a quick way to understand how close you are to reaching your goal – so you know if you need to increase efforts, or stay the course.
Hiring Needs vs Attrition
This helps you see how many employees you need to hire, given your current attrition. This means you can focus your hiring efforts to meet your goal, to counterbalance the rate at which employees are leaving.
Involuntary Exits
This helps you understand the number of employees who are being processed out of your company. Use this metric to better understand whether your hiring practices need to be reviewed – or if employees don’t have adequate training.
Manager Net Promoter Score (NPS) of Current Employees
The manager NPS of current employees tells you how likely your current employees would be to recommend their manager. Use it to understand the performance and leadership qualities of managers in your company.
Manager Net Promoter Score (NPS) of Exited Employees
The manager NPS of exited employees tells you how likely your former employees would be to recommend their manager. This lets you see whether management was a factor in the employee exiting the organization.
Manager Training & Performance Correlation
See if there is any relationship between manager training and their performance. Use this to refine your training efforts and focus on key areas.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) of Current Employees
Understand how likely your current employees would be to recommend your company. Get to know if your current employees are happy to work at the company, or if further measures are required.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) of Exited Employees
The NPS of exited employees helps you understand how likely your exited employees would be to recommend your company so you know if people who leave your company have a favorable impression.
New Hire Retention Rate
Understand the rate of new hires that remain with your company over a certain period. You can use this to see if there are any concerns during your onboarding process, or during a new employee’s early months.
Number of Candidates Needed to Fill a Role
This tells you how many candidates you’ll typically need to source in order to fill a role. Use this metric to gauge whether your hiring pipeline is sufficient to meet your current capacity and headcount goals.
Number of Completed Courses Over Time
The number of completed courses over time helps you understand the amount of courses employees are completing so you can gauge engagement with your learning platform.
Number of Contractors
See how many contractors are currently employed at the company, so you can create more accurate headcount forecasts and better understand your workforce.
Number of Employees Above/Within/Below the Band
Seeing the number of employees within banded pay structures helps you understand the compensation windows for your company. See if your compensation strategies need to be reviewed.
Number of Onsites Conducted by Week
This tells you how many onsite interviews are being conducted each week, so you can understand how often candidates are being brought to a location, and how well your recruitment pipeline is flowing.
Number of Phone Screens Conducted By Week
This tells you how many candidates your recruiting team contacted and screened over the phone each week. This can help benchmark against your recruitment goals and spot potential bottlenecks in the recruitment pipeline.
Number of Rehires
How many former employees return to the organization. This can indicate whether your policies, benefits, and compensation are competitive in the market. This can also be used alongside other workplace satisfaction metrics.
Offer Acceptance
This helps you understand the rate at which candidates accept job offers. Use it to understand if there is a breakdown in the hiring process, or to prompt investigation of the competitiveness of your offers.
Onboarding Time Length
The time it takes for someone to get ramped up and ready to do productive work in your organization. This can help refine your onboarding processes and training, and set better workload capacity schedules.
Onboards this Week
See how many new hires there are in your organization this week. Use this metric to better allocate headcount for training and other processes related to onboarding.
Onsite to Offer Ratio
The onsite to offer ratio helps you understand how many onsite interviews are needed to send an offer. If the ratio is too high, assess if there is an inappropriate allocation of resources.
Open Jobs
The number of open jobs helps you better refine your headcount projections and gauge hiring efforts more effectively.
Open Manager vs Individual Contributor roles
This is the ratio between manager roles and individuals who do not manage others. This metric can help you understand whether your hiring challenges are more pronounced at a senior or management level.
PTO Utilization
This shows you the amount of paid time off employees take within a year, giving insight into how comfortable your teams are to request time off. It can also help you gauge and manage the impact of burnout within the workforce.
Pass-through Rates
See the flow of individuals moving through your hiring cycle, expressed as a rate. Passthrough rates can help you understand whether there are any specific areas of concern or roadblocks in your hiring cycle.
Pay Equity Gap
This complex analysis uses data from multiple streams to identify pay equity gaps in your organization.
Percent of Leader Roles that have Completed Learning Courses
This tells you the percentage of leaders who are actively pursuing self development in your organization. Use this metric to gauge the success of your learning efforts, and measure engagement in senior levels.
Percentage Women
See the percentage of employees that identify as a woman, relative to the size of the full-time workforce, in your company
Percentage of Individual Contributor vs Manager
See the distribution of management roles compared to individuals who do not manage others. That can show you if your organizational structure is top heavy.
Percentage of Learning Courses Completed
The percentage of learning courses completed helps you understand the percentage of employees have taken the required courses out of what was assigned.
Problematic Employee Transfers
This can help you understand whether you are transferring problematic employees rather than pursuing disciplinary action – and indicate if there are wider cultural issues that allow problematic behaviors to pass.
Promotions
The promotions metric helps you understand the career mobility in your company.
Promotions Rate by Diversity
Understand the rate at which different groups of people move upward within the company. Use this to benchmark, set, and meet your DEI goals.
Ratio of diversity in Senior Levels
See how many of your diverse employees are in leadership positions at your company. Use this metric to recognize imbalances within your company, and to better refine your promotion and hiring policies.
Recruiter Capacity
See how many candidates a recruiter is able to review per day, and how many jobs a recruiter can manage. Use this to allocate and budget recruitment resources more effectively.
Recruiter Efficiency Score
Answer questions like: are recruiters able to meet demand? Do I need contractors or agencies? Are my recruiters underperforming? Use it with other talent metrics related to recruiters: time to hire, hiring diversity, senior hires, and more.
Recruiter to Candidate Ratio
Helps you understand the number of candidates per recruiter, so you can see if your recruiters are overwhelmed and need additional resources.
Recruiter/Coordinator Activity
Shows the transactions completed by recruiters, and lets you see workload against engagement.
Tenure of Exited Employees
This helps you understand how long former employees stayed at your company on average.
Time to Fill
The amount of time it takes for a job to go from open to filled. This can give you insight into the effectiveness of recruiting practices within the organization.
Time to Hire
Time to hire helps you understand the amount of time it takes for a candidate to move through the recruitment process. It directly impacts the cost to hire, and is a reflection of recruiter performance.
Time to Start
Time to start tells you how long it takes for an employee to start employment after finishing the recruitment process. This can give insight into the efficiency of the onboarding process.
Top Companies/Industries Employees Exits
Gathered in the exit interview process, this helps you understand where employees are accepting new job offers. Use this knowledge to benchmark your current benefits, compensation, and policies against the top competition.
Top Reasons for Leaving
Use this knowledge from exit interviews to understand the key drivers of attrition in employees, so you can work to resolve and review current policies.
Top Withdrawal Reasons
If candidates with high ratings from top companies are rejecting offers, this data can shed light on their withdrawal reasons and help you make better offers in the future.
Total Compensation
See an accurate picture of an employee’s full compensation package. This metric combines their annual salary, bonuses, cost of benefits, and equity.
Total Hires YTD
Total hires in the year to date helps you understand how fast your company is growing, and gives insight into how many jobs are opening.
Total Terminations
The total terminations metric combines all employees leaving the company, regardless of the reason (involuntary or voluntary). Use this to gain insight into how to increase employee retention and improve hiring practices.
Transfers
Understand internal employee mobility between departments and locations. This can give you insight into the fit between an employee and the position they are hired into.
Voluntary Exits
This tells you the number of employees who willingly leave the company. Combine this with other metrics to see how to stay competitive within the market.
(Source: eqtble)
Next, what follows naturally are HR Analytics, which is also known as People Analytics.
Once employee data is collected, HR metrics are made explicit and important pieces of information are then are measured and evaluated using people analytics, also known as HR analytics. Through the HR analytics process, a specialized role such as a People Analytics Specialist or HR Analyst, or simply an HR manager/generalist may then analyze the metrics once data visualiztion is completed (e.g., in an Excel, PowerBI, or an automted HR dashboard solution).
You seek and gain insight from this evaluative analytics process, discovering how your workforce is performing, how well you are utilizing your human capital, and how well you are supporting critical business goals, such as:
When you apply all the data gained from your HR Metrics to these goals, you can accurately measure your progress and then adjust accordingly.
Applying a strategic HR analytics strategy to your business plan is a good idea because it helps make your organization more successful. It also has the potential to increase positive employee engagement and the overall employee experience, leading to a healthier workplace culture and happier employees by preventing burnout, which, as well known by now, is a key factor in reducing employee turnover. This is especially important to stay competitive as “The Great Resignation” rages, where we are seeing millions of people quit jobs and managers they don’t like during the pandemic.
People Analytics applies to all people that interact with your business, internally, and may even include part-time and seasonal workers, freelancers and gig contractors, who are not always recognized in HR. You can tell the difference easily, and while some will say the terms are not interchangeable, others argue that while there are subtle differences, they all give you similar feedback. Necessary feedback.
So how does analyzing all these metrics help your business grow?
First and foremost, HR analytics gives you deep insight into how your organization's workforce is performing.
HR leaders should think of what kinds of intervention and best practices the department has in place to keep your employees cared for and utilized to the best of their potential through an employee engagement strategy rollout. The goal when you have employees is to maximize on your human capital to its fullest extent, while maintaining a healthy workplace culture, with the right people in the right roles. For example, you should not have a highly talented salesman in the mailroom. Likewise, someone better suited to a non-customer interactive job should not be in sales. HR analytics mY help you identify these issues.
When you focus on HR analytics’ data-driven approach to your human capital, you can answer important questions like what the potential of each employee is, how many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Color) people work at your organization, how long you can expect your employees to stay, what is the average tenure at your organization, and who you can expect to improve, and even when.
Human resources are a source of a tremendous amount of data, and in this age of information, it is more imperative than ever that we start using that data to make better decisions.
HR analytics help businesses in recruitment and engagement. You will know if you need more female voices in a department or the perspective from more people of color. We now live in a world that is becoming increasingly diverse, and if our customers are diverse, then so too should be reflected in our businesses. That’s how we grow, by mirroring our audience, so we know how to speak to them directly. We learn to do that better with the tools we get from HR analytics.
With HR metrics and HR analytics, you have the potential to build a solid team, to recruit the right people, to retain your strong team members, and to let those who are ready to go, go. With an appropriate set of best practices and tools, your business grows from one that is hierarchical and lacking in communication to one where your HR department holds real value and acts as that central touchpoint for an effective and efficient team of people working hard toward mutual success.
All the cards are on the table, everyone is aiming toward their maximum potential, and everyone feels like a valued member of the team. A true partner.
That is the potential value of HR analytics.
Great. You’re sold on HR Analytics. Now, how do you get started? Chances are, you are already utilizing several data sources and HR technology systems in your HR department. Examples include:
Tons of HR data at your fingertips, and you are probably not even aware of just how much you can do with all of it. Most HR data just gets compiled and sits in a database, spreadsheet, and several HR systems. What you need is a visualization of your HR data, in the form of a digital dashboard. An HR analytics dashboard that integrates all your systems onto one and shows you what you did not even realize you needed to know. Is it worth investing in yet another system to have HR analytics at your fingertips within hours?
Continue reading about people analytics dashboard solutions
HR analytics and better HR data is worth the investment. Your ROI potential is massive when you can accurately capitalize on the strengths of your team members. Not to mention the time savings HR generalists and People Operations leaders will save–on average of over six hours a week–which really adds up over time. Be sure to bring these data points when you go to make the business case for a new solution to implement for your HR department and your organization's workforce.
Continue reading about people analytics dashboard solutions with examples and templates
HR dashboard software will allow you to view and share out real-time digital reports before important meetings that allow you to adjust to your human capital, without downloading or using software like Excel. Your business cannot help but grow when you know how to best analyze your data, and you should not be spending all your time wrangling data and working in spreadsheets.
If you’re ready to get all your data onto one dashboard at your fingertips, feel free to see our people analytics dasboard software guide for a comparison and a deeper dive into leading People Analyics dashboard solutions.
Business growth is never easy but it’s made easier when your people perform at their best.
And your people can only perform well if they have clarity on what they need to do to deliver results and drive impact. As a People person, it’s your job to give them that clarity—the good news is, you’re not in it alone!
Come along to a panel discussion where other People leaders will compare and contrast their approaches to building a high-performance culture. Learn from different perspectives and leave with the most relevant insights for your organization.
💡 By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of:
✅ You’re a People leader looking to make a tangible contribution to the success of your organization
✅ You want to support your people in delivering against business objectives
✅ You want to give your people clarity on how they can grow and improve in their roles
✅ The business you work for has ambitious goals that need to be met
Not working? Enter your email to access webinar here: https://app.livestorm.co/learnerbly/laying-the-foundations-for-your-people-to-perform-at-their-best
There's a big difference between the core functions of talent acquisition and people operations (usually just called “people ops”).
What is People Ops? People operations, also known as people operations or people management, is the direction of workforce and talent management at a company. People Ops is the stuff inside people operations: HR, talent acquisition, payroll, benefits, payroll, benefits, and compensation.
What is talent acquisition? Talent acquisition focuses on acquiring external candidates to fill jobs. This may be internal, or external such as with a recruiting agency partner.
As you can probably imagine, there is debate in the HR world about whether Talent Acquisition or People Ops should own the employee lifecycle. Each group has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to understand the difference between the two before making a decision.
Talent Acquisition is focused on finding and recruiting the best possible candidates for open positions. They're the ones responsible for creating job postings, sourcing candidates, and conducting interviews.
People Ops, on the other hand, is responsible for everything that happens after an employee is hired. They're in charge of onboarding, performance management, benefits, and payroll. People Ops are more focused on the process of onboarding, regular employee engagement, culture building, and retaining employees
So, which one is better? It really depends on your needs.
1. Talent Acquisition is focused on sourcing and hiring candidates, while People Ops is focused on onboarding and retaining employees.
2. Talent Acquisition is typically a function of the Human Resources department, while People Ops is typically a function of the Operations department.
3. Talent Acquisition is typically more transactional in nature, while People Ops is typically more strategic.
While Talent Acquisition is great if you’re looking to fill a position quickly, People Ops is better if you’re looking to retain an employee for the long run. After all, it’s much cheaper to retain an employee than it is to hire a new one
It’s a common misconception that People Ops and Talent Acquisition are at odds with one another, but they actually work best when they’re closely aligned across the employee lifecycle.
People Ops plays a much bigger role in employee satisfaction and retention than you might think. Companies that specialize in People Ops work to ensure that every employee is fully engaged People Ops plays a much bigger role in employee satisfaction and retention than you might think. After all, People Ops is about so much more than just onboarding.
These professionals are responsible for making sure every employee is fully engaged, meaning they’re happily working at their job, earning a satisfactory salary and receiving adequate benefits and workplace perks. People Ops plays a much bigger role in employee satisfaction and retention than you might think. These HR professionals are responsible for making sure every employee is fully engaged, meaning they’re happily working at their job, earning a satisfactory salary and receiving adequate benefits and workplace perks.
For most startups, putting a dedicated People Ops professional on board isn’t a possibility right away, so it’s up to the CEO or founders to fill that role. In fact, most startups don’t have a talent acquisition specialist either. Instead, they take on those duties in addition to their others. Because of this, and unlike Talent Acquisition, which is usually led by a specialist, CEOs and founders often take on talent acquisition duties themselves, adding them to their already-full workloads. This can cause a lot of stress and tension, especially when hiring is necessary quickly. Knowing exactly what you’re looking for and how to find it are critical components to building a talent acquisition isn’t a priority for you. While startups may think they need people with certain skills or qualifications, they often don’t know exactly what they’re looking for or how to find it. This leads to wasted time and misdirected energy.
It's important to point out that People Ops manages the internal employees of a company, including hiring, development, management, leadership, and culture.
The culture a company strives to create is critical to the future success of the organization. Later on, you’ll want to protect that culture from bigger companies looking to buy you or poach your employees. And it also contributes to inclusion and belonging, enabling a safe space for employees to share their ideas. Psychological safety is critical to achieve inclusion and belonging in the workplace.
You might be pondering about these questions below, like any good HR and People leader:
As it turns out, many HR professionals like yourself are asking these questions. And, unfortunately, most organizations are not aligned with their external or even internal talent acquisition/recruiting agency partners.
People operations should be heavily involved with candidate experience from first touch to final conversion to a candidate success and recruiting or talent acquisition team.
When hiring quickly, it’s important to get the people operations elements of your hiring process right the first time. Doing so takes experience and knowledge—and a lot of time. Getting things wrong not only means a longer recruiting process, but also could result in expensive hires that don’t work out and hurt your culture.
Quiet quitting is becoming more common after going viral on social media, but this is not a new phenomenon. For many workers, it is a response to a reminder of our mortality—an inevitable loss of faith in hustle culture and the corporate advancement ladder. Employees who feel undervalued for their contributions will establish boundaries and shift their focus toward other sources of validation and satisfaction. While this is understandable, organizations are facing growing concerns about the loss of productivity, turnover challenges, and business impact of employees withdrawing effort from their work.
How might we overcome the widespread disillusionment in their workforce and reignite motivation?
Join Culture Amp experts to explore the psychology of “quiet quitting,” and share exclusive insights on the transformation happening in the workplace.
Kenneth Matos
Director of People Scientist, Culture Amp (Learn more)
Roza Jankovic
Lead People Scientist, Culture Amp (Learn More)
This webinar took place on September 7, 2022, we hope you enjoy the recording from Culture AMP!
Organizational success is increasingly tied to a company's ability to utilize the talents of its workforce efficiently. A variety of factors can contribute to this, including the company's overall strategy, the composition of its workforce, and the effectiveness of its HR management practices. While there is no definitive way to measure talent efficiency, several indicators can provide insights into how well a company is leveraging the talents of its employees. These include measures of employee engagement and satisfaction, productivity, and turnover. By monitoring these indicators, companies can better understand their talent efficiency and take steps to improve it.
Over the past decade, several trends have emerged that have pushed organizations to be more efficient with their resources. These include the global economic crisis, the rapid advancement of technology, and increasing costs associated with healthcare. During this time, organizational efficiency has been increasingly tied to a company’s ability to leverage the talents of its workforce. In an era of global competition, technological change, and shorter product life cycles, organizational ‘efficiency’ has become a competitive advantage.
Several Harvard Business Review articles have provided insights into this question, all pointing to the importance of human capital and the effective management of human resources. In particular, the article ‘Build Your Company’s Agility’ points out core competencies necessary for an organization to remain efficient: imagination, discipline, and compassion. These three competencies can guide the strategic management of human resources and help companies achieve greater agility.
The article suggests that organizations should focus on developing the competence of compassion, which refers to the ability to create a supportive culture for employees. This enables greater employee engagement, which in turn drives greater productivity and lowers costs related to turnover. Compassion also enables the development of the other two necessary strategic human capital capabilities – discipline and imagination. Discipline is the ability to create structure and optimize processes, which enables greater agility through simplified operations and complex problem-solving. Compassion, discipline, and imagination enable human resources leaders to build an agile organization.
To further investigate how human resources leaders are implementing these principles in their day-to-day activities, we've compiled 8 tips from leading human resources (HR) professionals what they’re doing to create more organizational efficiency. Their answers provide real-world insights and action steps for how HR leaders can improve their agility as well.
A leader in the HR industry responded by explaining that they have established a culture where all of their employees are equally valued. This helps in creating greater efficiency by reducing office politics and eliminating favoritism. It also helps the employees, as they are not subjected to work that may be beyond their capabilities or unsafe. This leads to a sense of pride, creating enthusiasm among the employees and improving the company’s reputation.
“We focus on creating a positive culture where everyone is empowered to take the lead and act. This creates a high level of efficiency as everyone works together towards a common goal with a positive attitude,” said Prashant Malavi, Managing Director at Genpact India.
Many of the respondents agreed that technology could significantly improve efficiency. For example, AI can efficiently screen and filter candidates, while cloud computing can improve the functionality and accessibility of HR tools. An example of HR tools includes HR dashboard software to automate HR reporting.
“Using technology allows us to scale our processes and help millions of students, teachers, and schools across the globe. This could never be accomplished using paper and pen,” said Janice Johnson, Chief People Officer at Hotchalk.
An employee’s attitude can greatly enhance efficiency, even when the appropriate technology and tools are readily available. For example, when screening and filtering candidates is a priority, the ability to engage in meaningful conversations during the recruitment process is a must. This can only be accomplished with discipline. Similarly, when HR leaders focus on building talent with specific skills and capabilities, they must establish clear employee goals and define what success looks like.
“You need to have discipline in screening candidates. If you don’t, you will receive a lot of candidates who don’t fit the job or your company culture. This will then take time to filter them out,” said Guy Galor, CEO of Prophet.
“The most expensive resource in the world is waiting on the sidelines not being trained appropriately. Therefore, we teach students how to train themselves. We teach them life skills so they can develop their talents,” said Prashant Malavi from Genpact India’s Education and Development Foundation.
Charging fair fees will allow the company to sustain itself and ensure the product or service is available to as many people as possible. For example, when implementing HR tools, organizations must ensure they are not overpaying for functionality they don’t need.
“When choosing an HR software, make sure it is not a super-walled castle. Ensure there are professional services included or alternatively, ensure you can get affordable professional services,” said Janice Johnson.
Leading companies can be adaptable in the global marketplace because they have systems and processes that allow them to adapt to different cultures and regions. For example, when evaluating HR tech products, make sure the product is not US-centric and ensure it can adapt to different languages and countries
Many leading companies are multilingual and have employees from different countries and cultures. Therefore, they need a system that can function in different languages and regional complexities, said Rony Levi from Tractivo Israel.
Ensuring fair HR processes will help employees trust the organization and feel secure about the way problems are addressed. This also means avoiding arbitrary or unfair punishments when employees report misconduct. When employees see that HR practices are fair, they feel more trusting of the organization and are more likely to engage with the company further.
“Don’t try to do everything yourself. Get external help. Hire a head hunter— not somebody you know. When you do that, you’ll find that you have more time and you do a much better job,” said Ilan Moscovitz, founder of Amos & Co.
People are the most important asset to any company. But with the war for talent as fierce as ever, finding and hiring the best employees is becoming increasingly difficult. There are new tools like CO.CAREERS Good Jobs Board, which features a built-in Applicant Tracking System. Hiring managers can apply for free here.
Mental health is just as important as physical health, yet it is often overlooked in the workplace. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 1 in 5 American adults suffers from a mental illness. That means your organization will likely have employees dealing with mental health issues, whether they are open about it.
Not just that, but according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the CEOs Against Stigma I am signed on to, depression and anxiety also cost the global economy $1 trillion per year in lost productivity. Meanwhile, 8 in 10 workers with a mental health condition say shame and stigma prevent them from seeking treatment, and just 57% of employees with symptoms of major depression said they had received mental health treatment in the previous 12 months.
Even when diagnosed clinical mental illness is not present, workplace stress and the resulting burnout it causes can have a significant effect on the mental health of workers. This, in turn, becomes a burden that falls on the shoulders of the employer or organization to carry.
The issue of mental health and wellness is complex without a one-size-fits-all solution. But this is why organizations must construct a mental health strategy that’s both proactive and preventative and puts the needs of its workers front and center.
A mental health strategy is essential for two reasons. First, it shows that your company cares about its employees and their well-being. Empathetic leadership in this area can have a positive effect overall on workplace culture. When workers know they are valued and cared for, it raises morale.
Second, it can help reduce the stigma around mental health issues. As common as it is for adults to have trouble with mental health and stress, they often hesitate to seek help or treatment for fear of how those around them may perceive them. When a company includes mental health and stress reduction as an aspect of company culture, employees are more likely to seek the support they need.
There are many ways to build a mental health strategy for your company. But before implementing any new policies or systems, it can be helpful to assess the needs of employees first. An anonymous survey can be a valuable tool to determine where everyone stands regarding stress level, job satisfaction, and conflicts with others. This can also be a safe place for employees to state their preferences regarding communication, management styles, etc.
Knowing the specific needs of employees is a good starting point for determining which services or programs can be made available. Employees need to know that they have access to appropriate mental health services should they need them. Some examples can include, but are not limited to:
In addition to these services, employees should know that their support needs can be communicated simply, proactively, and without judgment. They should be confident that they will be accommodated whenever it is reasonably possible to do so. And information to access treatment should be readily available to everyone in the organization.
It should be the priority of every employer and manager to be intentional about making these services known and accessible to everyone and to create a workplace environment that values personal well-being and satisfaction. Employees should feel free to avail themselves of any resources they might need without fear of reproach from management or co-workers.
Consider services like Airapy Therapy Concierge—a personalized experience for finding a therapist within your employees' preferences, budget, or health insurance. Information for employers can be found here.
Another service to consider is Teledoc health for organizations—this offers easy access to high-quality mental health providers, with self-guided programs between sessions to build resiliency. More information about their mental health services here.
There are many more ways to start building a mental health strategy for your organization. If you’d like to learn more about how to go beyond employee wellness for a more holistic employee well-being strategy, register for free upcoming HR webinars for more ideas and information.
A new Workvivo study has shown that 98% of HR professionals have felt burned out at work in the past six months.
Carrying the weight of our own, as well as others', difficulties can be draining and cause us to get stuck in a negative mindset.
The 45 minute “Mindset Reset Bootcamp” with Debbie Pearmain took place on May 17th at 11:30 AM EST.
Be ready to take notes- this interactive virtual coaching session will leave you with a concrete action plan to revamp your mindset and achieve your goals! Debbie will guide you though strategies designed to help improve your resiliency, take action, and make those new habits stick.
Debbie Lang Pearmain, Principal @ One Stop HR:
Debbie has worked with CEOs and leadership teams for over 25 years at more than 250 companies. She has been facilitating organizational and leadership transformation projects with Accenture, Global Knowledge, One Stop HR and Morneau Shepell. Debbie is an excellent facilitator, coach and strategic thinker. She helps clients view problems as opportunities for growth and change and creates breakthrough strategies that help people and organizations achieve their full potential. Debbie has spent her career consulting and coaching clients at the personal, team, leader and organizational level. Her background in Social Work and Human Resource Management has given her a deep understanding of human behavior and makes her a culture expert. Her extensive training in Leadership Development and Emotional Intelligence assists clients in reaching new levels of engagement and performance.
