Four Critical Factors That Help In Developing An Effective Employer Branding Strategy

The growing competition between business organizations with respect to attracting and recruiting top-talent has made it mandatory for companies to focus on creating a strong employer brand. Organizations with a strong employer brand identity tend to naturally attract the best candidates suited for various available job positions. This is because such companies are perceived to fulfill the diverse professional needs and expectation of the deserving candidates in the most satisfactory manner. However, building a strong employer brand is not a task that can be accomplished overnight. Rather it needs to be done with proper planning and the right approach. Discussed below are four critical factors as identified by leading recruitment firms in India that organizations need to consider for developing an effective employer branding strategy.

Use Their Current Employees As Brand Advocates

In order to build a strong employer brand identity, organizations need to convince prospective candidates about their various positive aspects. The best people to handle this task are the current employees of the organization as these are people that the prospective candidates can easily relate to. Moreover, a majority of the existing workforce within each organization has extensive online reach through their numerous followers across various social media channels. This makes it easier for them to spread the word about their employer brand within the online community. Coming from someone, who is already working for the organization in question, such publicity is generally considered quite authentic and finds many buyers.

Develop And Implement Employee-Centric Policies

It is important for business organizations to first work towards ensuring greater employee engagement and satisfaction. For this, they need to develop and implement employee-centric policies that are aimed at fulfilling the needs and expectation of the members of the workforce in the best possible manner. Ensuring gender equality, health benefits, flexible timings, and other similar benefits can go a long way in improving employee satisfaction levels and ensuring high retention rates. According to the top recruitment firms in India, such employer branding initiatives help in enhancing the performance and efficiency of the current employees and making them willing participants of the employee advocacy campaigns.

Use Social Media To Create A Strong Online Presence

The phenomenal growth and popularity of social media have turned it into a valuable marketing tool. Business organizations should make use of this tool to create a strong online presence and establish their brand identity amongst prospective candidates. The various social media channels can be used to create a positive image of the company as a preferred employer. They can also be utilized for sharing information about the various benefits and growth opportunities that candidates joining the organization are likely to get.

Develop A Positive And Growth-Oriented Work Culture

The experts from retained executive search firms in India are of the opinion that developing a positive and growth-oriented work culture is the most critical aspect of creating an effective employer branding strategy. Most professionals today are eager to work in a friendly and engaging environment, where they feel valued. Hence, organizations providing such an environment do not have to make much effort to attract the best candidates or even to retain them for a long time.

5 Tips For Professionals Seeking An Effective And Healthy Work-Life Balance

Most professionals today lead an extremely hectic and stressful life resulting from the high level of competition and grueling work schedules they are expected to follow. For a short time, it was believed that the integration of technology in everyday business processes would make the life of professionals somewhat easier. However, even with the extensive use of the latest technology tools, most executives are still far from attaining work-life balance. This, according to leading organization development consultants in India, can eventually result in businesses losing valuable talent due to employee burnout. In addition, it may cause serious health and behavior issues for the professionals themselves. Discussed below are five tips that can help professionals avoid such situations by creating a healthy and effective work-life balance.

Schedule A No-Phone Time For Each Day

Mot professionals today possess a smartphone that enables them to easily access their email and work group chats at once. Over time, they gradually become habitual of checking their phones every few minutes for new emails and messages. This unknowingly adds to the stress of the professionals and makes them feel bound to answer even the most mundane emails and text almost immediately. Scheduling a no-phone time for a specific duration every day can help professionals to break this vicious habit and enjoy a little stress-free time at work.

Avoid Skipping Meals

Skipping meals is a common trait of professionals struggling to keep up with their excessive work-load. This trend is especially more prominent amongst professionals, who are constantly required to meet some deadline or the other. However, experts from companies offering people management consulting India are of the opinion that skipping meals regularly, affects the mental and physical well-being of individuals and reduces their performance and efficiency significantly. That is why it is advisable for even the busiest professionals to avoid skipping meals. In fact, they should develop the habit of taking regular breaks to freshen their minds and restore their energies.

Make Time For Family And Friends

Nothing acts as a better stress breaker for professionals than spending fun time with family and friends. Sadly, most people today are so wound up in their work, that spending time with family and friends seems like a distant dream. This can further add to their stress levels and make them feel detached and frustrated. Hence, it is essential for professionals to make time for their loved ones towards the end of each day. The best way to go about it is to start by small, i.e. by spending 15-30 minutes with their family every day. This time can then be gradually extended once the professionals learn to organize their time in a better manner.

Indulge In A Favorite Activity

One of the key aspects of developing a great work-life balance is for professionals to start participating in their favorite activity. This, according to experts from employee engagement consulting firms, provides professionals with a short yet relaxing getaway from their hectic schedules on a regular basis. Participating in their favorite activities makes them feel happy and also boosts their confidence in taking on various challenges. It also makes the mentally and physically fit and alert and emotionally rejuvenated.

Planning To Manufacture In India? This Is Why You Need A Manufacturing Consultant

The ‘lean manufacturing’ is a Japanese principle of manufacturing proposed by Taiichi Ohno of Toyota in the 1990s. Earlier it was introduced as a concept for the manufacturing industry but with time it has been applied well into many businesses. The objective lies in reducing wastage and maximizing value for customers.  The lean philosophy aims to reduce 7 types of waste i.e. overproduction, wasting time, resources, transportation, processing, inventory and motion.

Scenario In India

Lean manufacturing in India is still in the infancy stage and the Indian firms are far away from enjoying its complete benefits. The awareness level of Indian firms on lean manufacturing is very low. The concept is largely adopted but only by the big firms. One such example is Tata Motors which has created a success story by launching Nano implementing lean manufacturing. Lean philosophy helped to reduce the cost without compromising on size and comfort. Recently, many apparel firms have also opted for lean manufacturing to compete with European companies.

 

Small and Medium-Sized Firms (SMEs) in India are still mostly unaware of lean principle. The lean principles cannot be implemented as-it-is in every industry and therefore the Indian firms need to choose proper tools and techniques according to the work culture, infrastructure availability and working conditions of the specific industry. The competition is very tough and lean principles can prove very beneficial for the Indian manufacturing firms to compete globally. Manufacturing Consultants can help small businesses in India achieve this. It will help them to improve their product quality and reduce the costs along with speeding up the delivery.

One key concept used by Manufacturing Consultants is Job Evaluation.  The process is based on collection and study of information relevant to existing and new positions within an organization which makes it crucial to look Job Evaluation Consultants in India. This process entails several important considerations related to employee positions and managerial positions. Job evaluation is frequently carried out by means of personal interviews, questionnaires or observations and entails gathering of job-related information.

Lean manufacturing improves efficiency, reduces waste, and increases productivity. The benefits, therefore, are manifold. Lean Coaching Training Consultants are specialists in implementing lean manufacturing in businesses.Here are few benefits:

·         Increased product quality

·         Improved lead times

·         Employee satisfaction

·         Increased profits

·         Sustainability

India is home of a lot of scope in the Manufacturing sector. But the businesses here are unaware of the modern manufacturing techniques. Needless to say, it can be extremely fruitful for these businesses to capitalise on lean manufacturing as and when they can adapt it.

Cornerstone has passion to multiply client’s business by 10 times. Our methodology increases turnover, built in quality at optimised operational cost.We provide coaching and hand-holding of plant cross functional teams to follow Lean Manufacturing practices.Practical insightful methodology engages teams for sustainable continuous improvement culture. 

What Are The Top Issues Which Can Be Fixed By HR Strategy Consultants?

Each and every business organization faces a number of problems when it comes to running the business or consistent enforcement of certain policies across all the departments. During such scenarios, the organizations feel the need to take help from HR Strategy consultants.

To throw more light, let’s take a look at certain HR related issues and how the HR strategist can conveniently deal with them:

 

Retention

It is a myth that the prime task of the HR consultants in an organization is to source new talent in the company. Instead, the main activity involves retaining the existing talent in the organization. The employees are indeed the lifeblood of any organization who are responsible to make or break the business. This is the reason, it is the utmost responsibility of HR functionaries to protect the valuable asset which comes in the form of employees. As per the companies providing leadership consulting services, the employees are attracted to those companies which offers a fine mix of remuneration and a good company culture.

 

Recruitment

In order to cope up with the loss due to natural attrition and to complement the existing team, recruitment of new talent is one of the issues faced by HR consultants. Searching for the staff with the correct blend of skill set, personality and motivation is a cumbersome task. The HR Managers can take the help of strategy execution consulting firms in effectively processing the applications and CVs received for the job posting.

 

Productivity

When the productivity is low, the HR is required to know the reasons for low productivity and ensure to eliminate the same, so that the business can operate in an efficient manner. A Time and Motion study is required to be done to understand who works and how an employee works. This will give powerful insights on efficiency gains and will give directions to the improved productivity.

 

Training

In order to ensure employee development, training is seen as the best avenue. There are certain roles in an organization which demands specialization and certification, for those roles, HR initiatives should include paying for the fee of exam and keeping a track and ensuring that the employee completes that course. Even during in-house training, to ensure genuine participation by the employees, the HR consultants are required to record the attendance for the course and take an assessment of the skills developed.

Discipline

When it is about discipline, HR is one department, which can satisfactorily resolve the issues between employer and employees. They are required to keep a well maintained, accurate and updated record of the disciplinary issues, if any. This may include, minutes of meetings, letters exchanged between employer and employee and other follow-up activities. With an integrated HR approach, much of the disciplinary work can be simplified which helps in reduction of legwork at a later stage of time.

Payroll

Accurate and timely payment of salaries to all the staff members is one of the attributes of an effective and efficient organization. The HR manager is required to maintain the records related to salary, perks, bonuses and other benefits which are payable to an employee, however the payment of salaries is being done through payroll. In order to prevent pay problems, the HR managers should integrate their systems with that of the payroll supervisor.

How Do Executive Search Firms Make The Most Of Phone Interview?

These days, more than 100 job applicants come in the job listings for a particular job position. Some of the applicants seem to be qualified, but, some may not have the skills required, but have used the right keywords to make their resume reach the executive search firms.

Indeed, a face-to-face interview is what that is always preferred, but a phone interview can also lay a base for some valuable selection for the final hiring. Thus, it is often seen that recruiters make use of the phone interview for screening the potential candidates. The phone interviews help in focusing attention on only those candidates who are worthy of the time and the efforts involved in the hiring process.

We bring to you some of the strategies incorporated by the top executive search firms for making the most of the phone interview:

Duration Of The Interview

At the time of conducting the phone interview, the recruiters need to determine about the qualification of the candidates, their personalities, their driving factors and at the same time also find out whether the things mentioned in the resume are correct or not. The duration of the interview to a greater extent depends upon the expertise and experience, the candidate possesses. It can last for even 30 minutes, however, as per standard, a phone interview should at least stretch for 15 minutes.

Script

The phone interviews generally cannot be on the fly. The recruitment firms prepare key questions before starting the phone interview and the questions are kept consistent for all the applicants. However, the type of questions varies in accordance with the job position because the questions asked during the leadership hiring process cannot be the same as are asked during mass recruitment. However, the interviewer prefers not asking the stock questions, the answers for which can be easily researched and a prepared answer can be given by the candidate.

Comfort Level

The firms in the recruitment industry believe that if you can comfort out the candidate, you can dig in to get better and honest answers. Therefore, the conversation starters in the form of asking information about college, school or even general life are used instead of starting grilling the applicant from the beginning.

Succinct About Job Needs

The phone interview needs to be done for nearly 100 of candidates, thus wasting more time on one candidate can cost heavily to the recruiter. Hence, to save on the time, the applicant is made aware about the job requirements at the beginning in a direct and succinct manner and if found suitable, the interview continues, otherwise it stops there and then.

Document The Interview

The interview of the selected candidates is clearly documented by the executive recruiters in order to see if the answer still lines up, when such candidates are called in for a face-to-face interview.

Since, there is no face to face contact during the phone interview, the candidates cannot be judged on the basis of the visual clues and the entire pressure lies on asking the right questions and listen to the candidate’s answer with all the concentration in order to decide whether to further pursue the candidate or not. With the above tips the result of the phone interview can surely be maximized.