Combating Roadblocks To New Technologies

In my last post, I discussed how technology, specifically the iPad, is finding its way into hospitals and other healthcare settings nationwide – and in some cases, even becoming company sponsored.  But along with the adoption and implementation of high tech devices and programs, often comes the problem of how to ensure staff members fully understand how to navigate and utilize the new technology to its fullest.  Several factors often emerge as common roadblocks to an employee fully embracing new technologies.

Employees have a negative attitude towards the change.
Trainings given by an enthusiast of the technology may help shape a positive attitude toward the change. Someone who fully backs the product will be excited to teach others how to use it.  They will be able to answer any questions about how to perform required job duties faster and easier with the new technologies.

Inundate employees with positive communication surrounding the new technology.  Require senior management, top level managers and immediate supervisors to lead by example and utilize the technology to its fullest capabilities, eliminating the outdated technology and SOP that everyone was accustomed to.  Optimism spreads! This will convert your Negative Nancys to Gung-ho Gracys.

People are good at different things – some people just flat out don’t have the knack for technology.  
The solution to this is fairly obvious – hire a professional to enter your organization and present a well-organized and formal training to your employees for the new technology that you have adopted.  This will give your staff a chance to learn all the ins and outs by a true expert and fanatic of the new technology.

However, formal trainings are not always feasible in large organizations.  In that case, develop an incentive program to reward employees who make efforts to teach themselves the new technology or seek out training during off-hours. Rewards may be anything from tuition to be used toward more self-education to movie tickets.

Your organization may have shot its wad on the new technology and there just aren’t enough funds to spend on formal training.  
If funds aren’t available for professional trainings, there are alternatives.  Identify staffers who have a knack for grasping new technologies – either naturally or are driven to teach themselves.  It may be the nurse who blogs or the tech who tweets.  More than likely, these individuals will catch on quickly and will be excited to get their hands on the new technology.  Once these techies teach themselves how to fully navigate the new technology, allow them to lead training sessions for their peers and superiors.  Be sure to publicly praise and recognize these employees for fully embracing the technology and for their extra efforts in educating their co-workers.

You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.
Older employees may use their age as an excuse that they can’t learn new technologies.  The hard part may be convincing them that they are in fact perfectly capable of learning new things.  Hopefully, your organization has implemented a mentoring program; aging employees are paired with a younger co-worker to impart their wisdom and show them the ropes.  Use this program to also reverse mentor – require younger employees who are most likely comfortable with technology to educate their mentors on the new technology your organization has adopted.

Regardless of the roadblocks in your organization’s way to a fully engaged staff, creating a culture of knowledge-sharing will help.  Encourage employees to teach themselves and others while communicating with each other what they’ve learned.

Filed under: communications, healthcare, retention, technology

New Year’s Resolutions for Employee Retention

‘Tis the season for resolutions.  And I hereby promise to drop five pounds (for good this time), go vegan (for good this time) and read more books (fiction – I have enough non-fiction in my life).  But shouldn’t we also make resolutions for our professional lives?  With predictions of the job market taking a turn for the better in 2010, resolutions for employee retention should be top of mind for Human Resources representatives.  In order to prevent your current employees from jumping ship when the job market heals, resolve to strengthen your retention efforts this year.

I present to you my suggested employee retention resolutions for 2010:

Boost Morale

It’s easier for employees to be content with their current employer if the working environment is desirable.  Workers will more than likely thrive in an environment that provides a warm and friendly atmosphere, teamwork and co-workers that generally enjoy the work that they do.  Bottom line, staff members are more likely to leave if there’s a poor morale.  One of the biggest factors influencing morale is career pathing.  Make sure your staff members have clearly defined milestones they must accomplish to advance within your organization.  Pro-actively boost morale by treating employees fairly, delegating workloads appropriately, adequately staffing your organization and compensating your employees with what they rightly deserve.  It’s also imperative to lead by example.  Ensure the leaders throughout your organization are actively doing their best work, motivating their employees and cultivating a culture of positivity.  Speak to employees that are highly engaged to reveal what makes them excited about their roles.  Tout these reasons internally to actively promote the positive aspects of working for your company.  Because misery loves company, pessimistic employees can spread their negative attitudes throughout an organization.  Don’t let a Negative Nancy dictate the morale within your organization.  Speak to Negative Nancy and find out why she’s miserable.  Often times, these employees are more vocal about their concerns and are the most candid in revealing retention issues that are more widespread throughout your organization than you are aware.  If their concerns can be validated, make appropriate adjustments that will in turn boost morale across your organization.  But be wary; sometimes the squeakiest wheel doesn’t need more oil. It could just be a bad fit.

Improve Communication

Employees need to be heard.  Advise immediate supervisors to meet regularly with their reports to find out what they like most about their position, what they would like to change and what suggestions they have for the company overall.  These meetings will allow the immediate supervisor to gauge the employee’s engagement level and correct any performance issues before their annual review.  By communicating regularly with employees, supervisors are better able to assess which employees are vulnerable to leaving and potentially alleviate any areas of concern before the employee resigns.  Just as employees need to be heard, they also need to hear from immediate supervisors and senior management.  When changes are being implemented within your organization, communicate clearly and frequently to workers what the changes mean and what they can expect for the future.  Furthermore, get senior managers out from behind their office doors.  No one wants to work for a hermit.  Employees want to be able to approach senior management if need be.  Allow and encourage workers to have candid conversations with senior management.  Senior managers should be honest and open with their vision for the company, new developments within the organization and competitive strategies.  Effective methods to increasing senior management visibility include staff-wide meetings; small, town hall meetings and social events where executives are in attendance.

Recognize And Thank Employees

What do all employees desire from their employer?  In the words of Aretha, R-E-S-P-E-C-T!  You’ll find out what it means to your employees if they aren’t being recognized for going above and beyond.  Plainly, they’ll leave and seek recognition from your competitor.  Many workers have absorbed additional responsibilities resulting from staff reductions.  Don’t let these contributions go unnoticed; personally thank employees for their hard work.  Then, let other employees know how much you appreciate and recognize a job well done by publically praising your stellar staff members.  If budget allows, reward over-achievers with cash bonuses, gift cards, a premier parking spot or other prizes.  Foster a culture of team members recognizing other team members.  Even encouraging staff members to send glowing emails of appreciation to an employee’s supervisor will improve recognition efforts.

2010 is not the year to sit idly by while your staff grows more discouraged.  By implementing these vital retention strategies, your organization will surely suffer from fewer turnovers than those competitors disrespecting their employees and work environment.

Filed under: communications, retention

Cell Your Jobs

Hospitals across the nation are beginning to embrace mobile technology and implement mobile systems of communication within their organizations. One such hospital rolled out an iPhone platform for its’ nurses this summer.  The mobile technology allowed for critical care alarms to be sent to nurses and enabled these employees to make voice calls and send and receive text messages.  Hospital executives say using iPhones as a medium of communication resulted in nurses’ ability to respond to patients faster and reduced the number of overhead pages by 78%.

While it’s certainly beneficial that mobile technology provides opportunities for improved operations, it’s also vital to realize these efforts provide a unique opportunity to enhance recruitment efforts.  If your healthcare organization has adopted new media technologies, it’s imperative to include these initiatives while selling and promoting your vacancies to job candidates.

Tout your organization’s use of technology.  Healthcare employees desire to work for innovative organizations that deploy best in class technology.  Candidates are dissuaded from organizations with outdated equipment and lack of materials.  It’s also important to healthcare employees that they be employed by organizations on the cusp of research and development, providing them with opportunities for training and enhancing their skills.  Your organization’s use of mobile technology demonstrates it is not afraid to try new things and advance.

Promote your organization’s stellar internal communication.  Hospitals utilizing mobile technology receive the added benefit of an increase in and improvement in communication.  For example, nurses equipped with iPhones and Blackberries are provided two-way communication abilities with their co-workers as opposed to one-way communication inherent to pagers. Studies estimate that nurses spend 10 % to 25% of their time tracking down their co-workers. Mobile technology and social media increases the efficiency of communication with co-workers, patients and patients’ families.  This enables nurses and healthcare employees to spend more time doing what they enjoy most, attending to patients.  Because deploying mobile technology platforms may lessen a nurse’s workload, the number of nurses needed to adequately staff a floor may be decreased, possibly cushioning the blow of the nursing shortage and allowing room in the budget for a potential salary bump for employees.

Sell your organization’s superb patient care.  Mobile technology certainly can improve the manner in which patients are cared for.  Not only do mobile initiatives allow nurses more time for attending, they also ensure the reduction of overhead pages, resulting in a quieter environment for patients to heal.  Many smart phone applications exist that are able to house a patient’s medical history, track their progress, their medication dosage, etc.  The applications help to improve a nurse’s performance and accuracy.  Nurses and healthcare employees want to work for organizations providing superior patient care – that’s most likely why they chose healthcare in the first place.

Use mobile technology to communicate and interact with candidates.  It’s important to realize that a vast majority of candidates are accessing the internet via their smart phone are receptive to advertising.  According to Neilson, 28% of the mobile web audience is between 25 and 34 years old while 38% are between 35 and 54 years old. A Pew study found that 32% of all Americans have accessed the internet via their cell phone.  Minorities lead mobile technology adoption with the majority of wireless internet users being African American. Because most people carry their cell phone with them at all times, you’re most likely to reach them in a timely manner.  Candidates may receive your messages even when they are “unavailable”; while they’re in a meeting, traveling, after business hours, etc. Furthermore, the recall rate of ads appearing on iPhones is 41% and 33% for other mobile devices and a third of those recalling the mobile ad will respond to it. Because more and more candidates are adopting mobile technologies every day, it’s imperative to include these initiatives in your recruitment strategy.

Filed under: communications, healthcare, recruitment, retention, Social Media

Combing Blogs to Find Star Candidates

One could argue that the end goal of a recruiter is to hire a star employee for their vacant positions.  The search for star employees involves a solid recruitment strategy with an increasing emphasis on leveraging social media to source and engage candidates possessing star potential for extremely specialized, niche positions and thought leadership vacancies.  Online groups, internet consumers’ ability to produce content and the increasing transparency of communications will forever change the way recruiters interact with job candidates, the “employee-scape” and how employers communicate. 

Any person with a digital device can become a producer of content for the internet.  More and more professionals are defining themselves online with a personal blog relating to their industry, reflected by the increasing number of blog domains appearing on submitted resumes.  Therefore, it is essential recruiters and hiring managers become proficient in determining a blogger’s relevancy.

Bloggers can prove themselves a candidate with star potential via their published content.  A relevant blogger will:

• Publish timely industry news and demonstrate knowledge of industry trends.
• Share their industry expertise through individual thought. A relevant blogger will never parrot what’s already been said.  If they do, they’ll provide a differing perspective.
• Extrapolate and analyze other timely articles while disseminating the information with a new angle.
• Their posts will contain opinion, often backed by research.  These posts are usually divisive and spur conversation among readers.

That said, many relevant bloggers do possess star employee potential. They’re passionate about their industry and are keenly aware of industry trends, most likely, it’s not just a job to them.  You may be able to glean insight to their work ethic; often times, bloggers work well into the night to publish their thoughts, reflected by a timestamp on their posts.  Bloggers are able to learn and accept new ideas from others and are comfortable generating and presenting their own unique ideas.  They often have a network of similarly relevant industry professionals to bounce their new ideas off of.  Relevant bloggers are skilled in articulating these ideas and industry trends, often resulting in them becoming recognized personalities within your organization, able to interface with clients and speak publically about your company.  Similarly, they are easily converted to internal brand evangelists.  Depending on how reputable the blogger is in the blogosphere, they can add instant credibility to your organization. 

The “employee-scape” is evolving as more and more professionals engage in social media. When a candidate engages in social media surrounding their career, in essence they are developing their own personal brand. Every tweet, blog post and LinkedIn status contributes to how they are perceived by their peers within their industry.  A seasoned recruiter knows that a star hire is more than the most educated applicant.  Once they become employed, they must remain engaged for an extended tenure.  Recruiters must hone in on a candidate’s personal brand to determine if they are a best fit for your corporate culture.

While recruiters have taken steps to attract active candidates, it is also wise for them to turn to the blogosphere to fish for candidates who aren’t actively seeking employment.  The sharing of thoughts on the web results in groups of people producing and consuming similar content.  By nature, groups are often smarter than their most intelligent member.  Collective wisdom is greater than the knowledge of any one single individual.   Relevant bloggers often flock to online blogging communities because of the instant network they provide.  These online communities are a great place to start when making efforts to source a blogger. 

The formation of online groups provides an opportunity to enhance your brand as an employer.  Contribute to these online groups, forums and discussion boards to earn respect as a thought leader in your industry.  As a result, job candidates will perceive a job opening at your organization as an opportunity for career advancement.  An increasing number of organizations are beginning to blog, tweet and create social media profiles.  These social media engagements result in increased transparency, providing job seekers insight about how the organization is run and what it is like to be their employee.  With the ever-evolving digital revolution, employers should strive to incorporate social media initiatives into branding, recruitment and retention efforts.

Filed under: communications, Social Media

Facebook – The Social Media Monster

Last night, I was mindlessly perusing Facebook.  And then… I saw it. Two of my sorority sisters tagged each other in their Facebook statuses.  I immediately thought, “That’s it.  We’ve created a monster. A Social Media Monster.”  Why a monster?  It’s not because tagging others is an earth shattering feat.  It’s because in addition to being the number one social media network and being cashflow positive, Facebook now includes the same functionality that Twitter was once unique in providing. It has become an immediate and direct competitive threat to the microblogging site.

In addition to tagging people, users are also able to tag events, groups and Facebook Pages.  Reading between the lines, this means that Facebook users can comment on your brand (positively or negatively) and tag it!

Of course, this is not a new concept.  Twitter users have been able to comment and @mention brands almost since the inception of the site.  In fact, recent research claims 20% of tweets mention brands.  However, it’s a much bigger deal now that Facebook contains this functionality.  First of all, Facebook carries a much bigger network than Twitter.  Tagged statuses on Facebook will be more widely read than those on Twitter.  And, ever since Twitter unlinked @replies, damage done to brands with negative tweets was somewhat minimalized.  Comparatively, all tagged statuses on Facebook will be public to everyone in that user’s network.  Currently, there is no aggregated view of all @mentions a person or brand receives on Facebook.  But, I bet that update is just around the corner.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times.  It’s imperative to monitor the conversation surrounding your brand taking place within social media networks.  And we’ll also repeat that social media is a wonderful opportunity to engage with users and protect your brand.  Ensure that there are brand evangelists (internal and external) spreading your brand’s overarching message.  Become a producer of content and actively engage with social media users to be sure that potential job candidates hear your message – from you.  Don’t let the only content job candidates find via social media be crafted by former disgruntled employees.

Some believe Facebook’s @mentions could be the end of Twitter.  However, I believe true fans will remain loyal to the microblogging site and those that haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet probably weren’t ever going to.  Besides, Twitter recently updated its’ Terms of Service to include the usage of ads.  Now that there’s a revenue model in the works, I believe Twitter will prove resilient. Tweeps don’t seem to be intimidated either.  Facebook hasn’t been a trending topic all day!

Filed under: Branding, communications, Social Media

Teaching An Employee To Fish – Self-Education 101

Most employees want to enhance their skills and stay abreast of industry trends and new developments.  If they don’t, get rid of them – they’ll never be top performers.

Companies can leverage employee training programs as a retention strategy to help prevent employees from leaving for another career opportunity.  When employers invest in employee training, they prove their staff can engage in professional development within their organization and that management cares enough to groom their employees for promotions.

However, not all companies can afford an in-depth employee training program right now.  One free alternative is to foster a Culture Of Learning within your organization.  This tactic will not convey the same level of dedication to employee career pathing, but will lead to increased engagement because employees will still be enhancing their skills.

The end goal in fostering a Culture Of Learning is for employees to be able to enhance their knowledge-base via self-education.  As the cliché goes, “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”  The same principle applies for fostering a culture of learning.  Employees will never learn how to teach themselves if they are always spoon-fed information.  In addition, it takes resources to prepare information for the spoon-feeding!

Arm your employees with the knowledge of how and where to go to glean information to teach themselves.  As everyone knows, I’m a huge proponent of reading blogs.  Instruct your staff to call upon their googling powers to discover relevant blogs relating to your industry – no doubt there will be several!   Peruse their blogrolls to discover other industry blogs.  Take note of frequent commenters, as they may also contribute to a blog of their own.

Once you have gathered plenty of blogs with relevant industry content, I recommend enlisting the help of an RSS Reader to help you cull and manage the vast amount of information.  My preferred reader is Google Reader because it is user-friendly and free.  Keep track of important posts with the help of a social bookmarking site; I personally use delicious.  You can discover other bookmarkers with similar interests and subscribe to a feed of their bookmarks within your RSS Reader.  Within many RSS Readers you can also share a relevant post with others utilizing the same reader.  Which brings me to the Culture Of Sharing….

A Culture of Learning is best culminated in conjunction with a Culture of Sharing.  I firmly believe it’s imperative to share your knowledge and absorb knowledge from others to be a well-rounded and informed employee.  Schedule regular meetings with knowledge-sharing on the agenda.  Be sure to include all levels of staff; entry level employees are just as capable of learning new industry ideas as senior managers.  The first meeting may entail demonstrating to employees how to tap into information to teach themselves.  However, every meeting thereafter should be run as a round-table discussion of what they’ve recently discovered about their business sector.  Promote the Culture of Sharing by encouraging employees to share interesting posts via their social bookmarking site or within their RSS Readers.  Create an internal wiki, allowing every employee editing rights to create new pages containing information they deem important or thought-provoking enough to share with the entire company.

Developing a strong Culture of Learning puts you on the cusp of industry tends without continuous training.  And a Culture of Sharing allows your employees to be agile, adapting to industry changes and discovering new strategies more quickly.  Fostering a Culture of Learning and Sharing will result in a more engaged and informed staff, two factors in extending tenure within an organization.

Filed under: communications, retention