by Jennifer Hart Yim | Jan 26, 2017 | Blog, Strategy, Talent
The “Right to Disconnect” is combating round-the-clock email culture, but can better work/life balance help boost employees’ productivity?
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
Here’s a new frontier in work-life balance: For the past several years, work-life balance has been one of the biggest topics in employer and HR circles. Companies are recognizing the productivity benefits of flex time, childcare assistance, on-site stress workshops, and other initiatives designed to make employees happier. They’re also using work-life balance to help attract and retain the best candidates. Read any (good) modern job description, and you’ll see lots of language from companies recognizing the importance of having a life outside of work.
But anyone who’s worked at a few different companies knows that every company has a different track record in terms of actually implementing work-life balance initiatives, and not just paying lip-service to them.
The Right to Disconnect
So here’s an interesting solution from abroad: As of January 1, a new law in France affords workers the “Right to Disconnect” from their emails after hours. In France, a country long-associated with the development of rights, companies with more than 50 employees must now negotiate a new protocol with employees to make sure that their work obligations — like email — don’t carry over to after-work hours.
Europe has long been characterized in North America as laissez-faire when it comes to working hours, mandating more weeks of vacation than Canada (where 3 weeks is the standard) and the U.S. (which typically affords a stingy 2 weeks of vacation). There’s always been a stronger cultural attachment to leisure hours in Europe, where 35-hour workweeks are common, so it isn’t surprising that such a law comes from France.
It’s also not surprising that the idea of completely banning after-work emails has been ridiculed in North America, where many employees work long hours, take lunch at their desks, and answer emails around the clock to prove their value. But outlets like Time magazine have reported on how round-the-clock email culture has taken over France as well, which is part of what’s led to these guidelines.
Work/life balance = productivity?
The idea behind a “right to disconnect” is to restore some of the ever-blurrier boundary between work and life brought about by smartphones with email access. But the idea isn’t just to give workers a break — it’s that if you make sure people can turn off their phones when they leave the office, they’ll likely be more effective in the morning. In other words, a stronger boundary between work and life improves not only life, but work as well.
One interesting piece of Time’s reporting is that checking emails after hours isn’t always company mandated. It’s something that we all often know first-hand: In many cases, checking emails after hours is something we often bring upon ourselves — either out of a desire to get ahead, to be seen as busy and highly responsive, or, let’s admit it, out of boredom. But email begets email, and when everyone’s replying on an email chain after hours, suddenly you come into the office and you’re swamped. Time reports on how companies themselves are tackling the issue of after-work emails. Some companies are building time restrictions into their email clients. Others are formally discouraging using “reply all” to limit the number of unnecessary emails. Others are outright telling their employees not to email after hours.
So does the tendency to email around the clock begin with us, or our employers?
It’s a tough question. For our part, our policy as recruiters is that we should be responding to emails after work hours only for highly time-sensitive issues. We recognize the importance of downtime, even if it’s hard to mandate.
But what do you think? It’s unlikely that a law like this would catch on in the U.S., but is our after-hours emailing obsession making workplaces more productive, or is an always-on mentality leading to burnout and distraction?
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by Fronetics | Dec 21, 2016 | Blog, Diversity, Leadership, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
Women hold just 15% of all executive officer positions within Fortune 500 companies, yet research consistently shows that when women are in positions of leadership, companies perform better. In the supply chain industry, just 5% of top-level supply chain positions within Fortune 500 companies are held by women.
As a woman working within the supply chain industry, I believe that it is important to discuss the lack of gender diversity and point to research highlighting why the industry needs to increase the number of women in all positions, including the C-suite. It is just as important to highlight the incredible women who already are working within the industry.
In 2015 I interviewed Cathy Morris, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Arrow Electronics, and Mickey North Rizza, vice president of strategic services at BravoSolution. Morris was twice named one of the “Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology,” and North Rizza was named a “Top Female Supply Chain Executive.” Both Morris and North Rizza shared how they got started in the industry, and the steps they have taken to get to where they are today.
In 2016 I interviewed Kendrea Durr-Smith, director of global trade compliance at Arrow Electronics, Kelli Saunders, President of Morai Logistics, Hailey McKeefry, editor and chief at EBN, and Barbara Jorgensen, co-founder and managing editor, EPS News. I also invited Tania Seary, founder of Procurious, to share what is happening at her company, and Jennifer Cortez, director of marketing and communications at Transplace, to discuss the role of quality content within the industry.
Here are the most-read women in the supply chain posts of 2016.
It was a “fluke” that Kelli Saunders found the supply chain industry. More than 30 years later, Saunders is president of Morai Logistics Inc., an Authorized Agent of Mode Transportation. Read more.
When Arrow Electronics came across Kendrea Durr-Smith, senior leader of export control audits, training, and communications at Honeywell Aerospace, on LinkedIn, the company was impressed with what she had accomplished in her nine years there. Now Arrow’s Director of Global Trade Compliance for the last four years, Durr-Smith has led a group that is both unique and diverse, and has helped to shepherd in significant changes. Read more.
Data shows that gender equality has improved in recent decades, such as the 15% increase of women working full time in the workforce since 1979. But there is still much progress to be made. As a recent UN Working Group mission to the US to explore discrimination against women found: “In the US, women fall behind international standards as regards [to] their public and political representation, their economic and social rights, and their health and safety protections.” Read more.
Women within the supply chain industry are doing incredible things. Here are some of their stories. Read more.
While there remains a gender gap in the supply chain industry, progress has been made. McKeefry is a clear example of progress. Her internship at EBN in 1990 was a “minority internship,” and today, 26 years later, she holds a leadership position within the company. Read more.
Barbara Jorgensen has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist, working for leading electronics industry publications such as Electronic Business, Electronic Buyers’ News, and EDN. She is the co-founder and managing editor of EPS News. Read more.
This is a guest post written by Tania Seary, founder of Procurious, the world’s first online social network for supply chain and procurement professionals. Seary shares how she has built Procurious. Read more.
This is a guest post by Jennifer Cortez, Director, Marketing Communications, Transplace. Cortez discusses how Transplace, a North American non-asset-based provider offering manufacturers, retailers, chemical and consumer packaged goods companies the optimal blend of logistics technology and transportation management services, has used content marketing and she offers up 3 tips for creating valuable and compelling content. Read more.
by Fronetics | Dec 20, 2016 | Blog, Leadership, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
The 10 most popular talent posts of 2016.
The start of a new year generally brings with it a host of resolutions. For individuals finding and landing a new job, or advancing in their current job are common resolutions. For companies, identifying talent, hiring, and retaining great talent are typical goals for the new year.
We’ve assembled our top 10 talent posts of 2016. We hope these posts help you and/or your company overcome challenges, and your achieve goals.
A veteran recruiter explains where the supply chain talent shortage is headed and how companies can overcome the challenges. Read more.
This guest post by Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement, asks the question: If there is a Supply Chain talent deficit, why are so many people in the field having trouble finding work? Read more.
The global supply chain is continuously evolving, offering new opportunities as demands shift and new technologies are born. But how do you evolve with it? We offer 5 things you can do to advance your logistics or supply chain career. Read more.
LinkedIn offers immeasurable opportunity for recruiting premium talent. But how do you begin weeding through the network’s more-than-433-million candidates? Here are some techniques — both free and fee-based — on using LinkedIn to find professionals who match your company’s open positions. Read more.
Networking can do more than help you find your next job opportunity; it can make you smarter, happier, and more financially stable. Read more.
Building a stronger relationship between academia and the supply chain industry is one way to solve the growing talent gap. If your company is looking to hire, consider strengthening your rapport with schools that offer supply chain programs or specialties. Read more.
If your job has left you to feeling stuck in a rut, try these steps to improve your professional life. Read more.
Your business is growing, and it is time to hire. That means facing the challenge and overcoming the fact that there is a dearth of supply chain talent. Growth is very common right now, as job titles evolve and shift due to the rapid changes in supply chain management and new technological requirements. So more talent is in demand as many businesses try to remain competitive. Seek out candidates with these skills and experiences when hiring new supply chain talent. Read more.
This guest post by SCM Talent Group, a national supply chain recruiting and executive search firm, discusses a new webinar series centered around the talent aspects of the supply chain discipline. The purpose of this series is to provide low-cost, high-impact solutions and advice that employers, hiring managers, and HR partners can implement in efforts to improve their abilities in attracting, hiring, and retaining top supply chain talent. Read more.
Family businesses can be a source of pride and fulfillment. But, often, they are rife with unprecedented turmoil. Working for a family business presents unique challenges that require special tactics to keep things professional (and to keep the peace). Read more.
by Jennifer Hart Yim | Dec 12, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Talent
Posting open positions to job boards don’t work for job seekers, and they create more busy work for employers. So why do companies still use them?
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
Every year, recruitment technology evolves. Skype comes along and offers an approximation of in-depth, in-person job interviews. New Applicant Tracking systems make the job application process more humane or, depending on your luck, more arduous, albeit efficient for hiring managers. New social media sourcing techniques allow recruiters to tap into networks of people they couldn’t find before. New websites and hiring tools emerge, claiming to be “talent networks” and insisting — when advertising themselves to recruiters — that they “aren’t job boards.”
For good reason. Whether you’re a recruiter, or a candidate looking for your next opportunity, or a company looking to hire, job boards don’t get you the best results.
In our opinion, it’s time to ditch them once and for all.
Job boards don’t work for job seekers
If you speak with a frustrated job seeker, you’ll inevitably hear that they’ve applied to dozens of jobs and never heard anything back. This is a symptom of the culture of job boards more than hiring managers’ indifference to any single applicant. The fact is, if you apply using a job board, your resume is going into a black hole among hundreds of other resumes. If anyone reads your resume at all, it’s likely a junior HR person doing the initial culling who doesn’t necessarily understand the nature of the job. A junior HR person who has 400 other resumes to review. A junior HR person who might get distracted by a phone notification, or a daydream, or a co-worker telling them there are cookies in the break room, and not even pay attention to your carefully crafted resume because there are just so many more to get through. Tons of jobs end up on job boards because the company wants to show that they’re reviewing outside applicants, even if they know they’re hiring internally. Beyond that, tons of jobs never even make it to job boards in the first place.
It’s easy to criticize job boards for being an impersonal way to assess hires. The thing is, that would be okay if job boards worked. But for most job seekers, they don’t.
So why do companies use them?
Don’t be part of the problem
A big part of it is the convenience: Job boards let companies adopt a “set it and forget it” mentality. It lets them post a job description, sit back and wait for the candidates to roll in. Easier than sourcing candidates, looking for referrals, working with external partners, right? Except that you’ve created a a ton of busywork for your team, and now they have to scan through tons of irrelevant resumes. You have to respond to those applications (and let’s be honest, many companies don’t) or risk taking a hit to your company’s reputation. You can ignore the irrelevant applications and contribute to the black hole mentality, making finding a job seem even less personable than it already is. Then you’re part of the problem, and what HR department wants to be part of the problem?
No one does. The paradox is that the easier job boards become to use, the less relevant the applications become. Once you can apply for a job with a single click (like on LinkedIn’s job postings), you can easily apply to hundreds of jobs that you have no business applying for. The mismatched resumes proliferate, and so does the busywork.
Thinking of hiring in terms of opportunity cost
One of the most difficult things to assess in business is the opportunity cost of decisions. Perhaps the biggest opportunity cost of using job boards is that you completely ignore the passive candidate market — people who aren’t looking for jobs, but would be open to a move. Any HR department or hiring manager worth their salt will source passive candidates in addition to using job boards. But if you rely on job boards entirely, you’re passing up what are the best candidates around.
For these and other reasons, we decided to stop using job boards a few years ago and haven’t looked back. As recruiters in a high-demand industry, we needed to focus on our own network and passive talent, and we think companies and candidates should do the same thing.
While it’s certainly still possible to find a job using job boards, or to find a great candidate using job boards, it’s one of the more inefficient ways of connecting people with jobs — short of attaching a resume to a camel and hoping said camel makes it all the way across the Sahara Desert to an employer. So it’s time to ask — is it possible to do better?
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by Fronetics | Dec 5, 2016 | Blog, Supply Chain, Talent
Compare your company culture to the attributes of the four Hogwarts houses to determine where you belong.
Company culture is an integral part of who a business is. It affects the product, the kind of talent it attracts, and, ultimately, its business performance.
Company culture can also tell you which Hogwarts house you belong in.
Or, so say the folks at Venngage, a free infographic, template, and design tool. Venngage’s editors sorted their 54 favorite tech companies into the four houses that make up the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, of Harry Potter fame.
Companies like Twitter and Google fell into Gryffindor, Harry Potter’s house, for their best-in-class ambitions and risk-taking ways. On the other hand, the editors assigned Apple and LinkedIn into Slytherin, the house of dark lord Voldemort, because they are tactic-driven and resourceful.
Which Hogwarts house would your company belong in?
Venngage came up with attributes of each of the four Hogwarts houses that could also reflect company culture. Here are the descriptions for each house:
Gryffindor
Companies with a Gryffindor culture want to be the best in their niche (and maybe even the industry as a whole) and aren’t afraid to take risks to get there. Generally, they are the most likely to use competitive incentives, like sales targets, to drive productivity. Companies with a Gryffindor culture pride risk taking, determination and competitiveness in their team members.
Hufflepuff
An environment of community, collaboration and working towards shared goals is at the base of companies with a Hufflepuff culture. That’s why nonprofits and companies targeting education often align with this house. Companies with a Hufflepuff culture pride trustworthiness, loyalty and a strong work ethic in their team members.
Ravenclaw
Companies with a Ravenclaw culture put a lot of thought into every aspect of their business. They pride themselves on creating the best product and on refining that product through rigorous testing. Companies with a Ravenclaw culture pride creativity, innovation and thought leadership in their team members.
Slytherin
Companies in Slytherin are resourceful and tactic-drive and are always looking for new and better ways to achieve their goals. They may see the value in more traditional hierarchical structures, with a more rigid chain of command. But that doesn’t mean people in a Slytherin company culture don’t take care of their own — they simply regard experience as an important factor of authority. Companies with a Slytherin culture pride ambition and cunning in their team members.
I compared our company mission and values here at Fronetics, and I believe that we’d fall into Ravenclaw house. We are driven by data; we constantly evaluate our clients’ strategies for effectiveness; and creativity and thought leadership are our bread and butter.
What house does your company fall in?
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Nov 29, 2016 | Blog, Talent
The stigma around boomerang employees is disappearing, and that’s good for companies open to rehiring talent that previously left.
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
Here’s another one of the myriad ways that the world of work is changing: more than ever, people are returning to companies they’ve left in the past. Just as the stigma against changing jobs and careers has been vanishing in recent years, new data shows that companies are less likely to say “you’re dead to me” when an employee leaves, and more willing to rehire them if they want to return.
Time was, you’d leave a job and never look back. Now it appears that more and more employees are considering returning to companies they’ve left for a myriad of reasons — and companies, rather than taking a previous departure personally, are more and more likely to rehire them.
A changing workforce
We liked a recent article by Brendan Browne, LinkedIn’s VP of Talent Acquisition, about this dynamic, which is something that we’ve seen in some of our recent recruitment efforts. Browne offers some interesting stats about these so-called “boomerang employees” that say a lot about changing attitudes towards workplace loyalty:
- While companies used to hold a stigma against people who left their organizations only to want to later return, 76 percent of HR managers are now open to “boomerang employees” returning to previously held positions, or a different position at the same company.
- Employees, too, are becoming more likely to boomerang. Half of millennials would consider returning to a former employer, as compared with about a third of gen Xers and baby boomers, suggesting that the generation emerging into the workforce has a different attitude about “boomeranging” back into an old employer than previous generations.
The changing concept of “loyalty” in business
The hallmark of a successful, stable working life used to be staying at one company for your entire career. It’s possible that the stigma against rehiring past employees is a holdover of that mentality. What it comes down to is a changing attitude towards the concept of “loyalty” in business.
More companies are recognizing that many people leave jobs not because they’re completely unsatisfied, but because they have ambitions, dreams, and responsibilities elsewhere. Maybe they want to launch a start-up. Maybe they need to take time to care for a sick relative. Maybe their spouse got a new job and they moved to another city. Maybe they want to get experience in another industry, or a different market. Maybe a new opportunity has opened up within the company that they’ve always had their eye on.
Companies are realizing that employees aren’t always boomeranging because they’ve “failed,” and that those employees don’t necessarily see it as a step backward.
The benefits of boomerang employees
In short, companies shouldn’t take it personally when employees leave — especially if those employees have made the effort to avoid burning bridges — and they should think about the benefits of bringing them back if and when they want to return.
- For one, a “boomerang employee” will come in with a solid understanding of the company’s culture.
- Because you’ve shown a willingness to let them pursue other opportunities, and they’ve chosen to return, they’ll be a very loyal advocate for your company’s employer brand.
- They’re a known quantity. You’ll be able to save on training costs and the time it takes to get a brand-new employee situated, which means they’ll contribute to the bottom line sooner than a conventional hire.
- A boomerang employee might also be able to bring new experiences, new skills, and even new customer contacts to bear on the job — broadening the company’s horizons while also offering these other benefits.
It’s important to note that companies should put these “boomerang employees” through the same rigorous hiring process they’d apply to a new hire. You want to make sure that they’re still effective contributors, and you want them to be able to offer a compelling reason for returning. But if they can pass this test, they can be some of the best employees around. If they made an effort to maintain the relationship when leaving, there’s no reason to hold sour grapes when they want to return.
French journalist Alphonse Karr once said, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” And we don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone applying that maxim to their careers!
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