Manager Hr Advice – Page 3 – HR ADVICE CENTRE

What You Should Do Before Your Staff Members Go On Vacation

When a member of your team goes away for a few days, who will handle that person’s job duties? It is important to identify which pieces of their jobs need to be covered when your staff members take leave for any reason. Choose other employees on your team who can best cover certain parts of their coworkers’ jobs and have them train on those early on. Always have a back-up person for the pertinent processes in your office in case someone needs to take some time away.

Another important question to ask is whether or not your team member can complete parts of his or her job before leaving the office for a vacation. If there is a project you know will come up while that person is away, ask them to put in a little extra time and hard work before going away. This will ensure important reports, projects, or any other time-sensitive parts of their jobs will be performed before employees take time off. It will also likely make their first days back in the office a little easier because they’re not playing as much catch-up.

Finally, how can you mitigate the amount of vacation time an employee will need to spend being plugged in? With important projects out of the way beforehand and other employees available to fill in for vacationing team members, it all seems done, right? Not quite. It’s important to also consider questions from other colleagues and outside entities directed toward your vacationing staff member. Always make sure your employees set their out-of-office emails and voicemails to direct inquiring parties to the next available person.

While these steps for preparing for your staff member vacations seem like no-brainers, it takes careful strategy from you as a manager, as well as well-defined expectations from your team. Talk with them individually about their commitments and other skills to find out what they can help with while their coworkers take time away. Explain that their extra dedication will ensure more relaxation when they also take vacations from work. Have them document their job duties and general tips for coworkers who may fill in for them.

With a well-designed leave preparation plan, your employees can take much-needed vacation time while still providing the support you need for your team. They will also be willing to put in the extra time and effort leading up to their days off when they understand that this will allow them more freedom to turn off their phones and spend quality relaxing time away from the office.

4 Things Your Employees Need Most From You

Figuring out what your people want can feel like an intricate puzzle, especially when different employees require different things. Here are four things most employees need to be successful:

Role clarity. Tell your employees what their roles are, what you want them to achieve, and what the rules are for getting there.
Autonomy. People want something interesting to work on and they want to be trusted to do it well.
Accountability. Holding people accountable is not just about being fair. It also sends a message about what is and what isn’t acceptable. This is critical for employees who are trying to figure out how to succeed.
Praise. Everyone wants to be recognized when they’ve done something right. You can motivate employees by highlighting their strengths and not harping on their weaknesses.

Tips for Leading Change

Change is a constant in today’s organizations. Leaders need to be adaptive, flexible, and innovative.

However, trying to be “better at leading change” can be an overwhelming vague challenge. Instead of taking on a leadership style full force, start with small experiments: Try out a new way of delegating; test different approaches to communicating your vision and expectations; experiment with new ways of giving feedback. Reflect on what works and what doesn’t. These small steps are manageable, and what you learn from these experiments will help you shape your leadership skills, while modeling how change happens.

How to Hire the Best Temporary Staff

When you need temporary workers you want to hire the best temporary staff available: Those with the right skills, drive, and attitude who will add value to your bottom line. As more organizations move towards a model of treating human resources – including temporary resources – as an asset rather than an expense, the competition for the best workers is increasing. Through the right temp agency, you can access the help you need to find, screen, and hire the best temporary staff for your organization.

Hire the Best Temp Staff: It Starts with Your Temp Agency

Every organization is different, including yours. Every temp agency is also different; some agencies may specialize in very narrow industry niches, while others are broad and established enough to specialize in several industries. As a hiring manger, it can be difficult to determine which type of agency is the right one to use to hire the best temp staff for your particular industry. There are, however, several advantages to choosing an agency with specialties in several areas:

A multi-specialty temp agency is more likely to be able to meet your current demands as well as future demands
A multi-specialty temp agency is likely to have a greater number of qualified temporary workers in its databases
A multi-specialty temp agency has deeper resources in the staffing industry to help you hire the best temp staff whenever and wherever need arises

These factors can save you from hiring temps through multiple channels, which can escalate into a confusing, and costly, endeavor when your organization is working on a tight schedule, detracting from your ability to focus on the drive to hire the best temp staff. A multi-specialty temp agency can also save you time through streamlined candidate screening, since an agency accustomed to working in multiple areas will already be familiar with best practices in hiring wherever your need may be.

Hire the Best Temp Staff: Thorough Screening Ensures Quality Candidates

All too many organizations shorten the candidate screening process when hiring temp staff. Although the temporary nature of these assignments makes it tempting to try to save expenses through reduced screening, organizations that follow this practice are usually putting themselves at a disadvantage. Several benefits of temp staffing, including the ability to move to permanent hiring based on a temp’s performance, are diminished or erased when screening is skipped.

Especially for longer assignments, your organization needs to know the skills and attributes of those on temporary payroll. Experienced temp agencies make it easy for you to screen candidates for quality by putting a range of technological and more traditional screening tools at your disposal, ensuring that you hire the best temp staff possible. Make sure that your agency screens its candidates before recommending them for your open assignments, and perform your own secondary screening whenever possible.

Hire the Best Temp Staff: Adopt a Long Term View

Temp agencies are of enormous benefit when your organization needs workers at the last minute for assignments of short duration. Still, last minute changes and rushed temporary hiring can be taxing and reduce your chances of recruiting top quality candidates. What if you could project when and where such help was likely to be needed and plan accordingly? An established temp agency will have the experience needed to partner with your organization to create a long term hiring plan that addresses your needs for temp staff and can make the best temp staff on its roster available to you during your rush times through such prior planning.

The competition to hire the best temp staff is not expected to slow anytime soon. Make sure that your organization is prepared and in a position to hire the best available candidates by working with your temp agency to address your organization’s temporary hiring needs. With a comprehensive temporary hiring strategy you can add value to your organization while saving costs, a winning approach.