Category: Insight

Workplaces of the post-Covid Future Must Take Responsibility for Employee Health and Wellbeing

July 3, 2020

by Jonathan Ransom, co-founder of Square Mile Farms

Pre-COVID, employers were already beginning to evolve their workplaces, modeling them after the big tech employers. Of course, large campuses with swimming pools and yoga studios isn’t possible for most businesses, but offering some sort of entertainment has become fairly commonplace, especially in trendy cities like London.

Shared offices transformed almost overnight to provide things like free beer on tap, putting greens, and massage services. The competition for the most attractive office is, however, really a competition to attract and retain top talent.

During the coronavirus lockdown, the focus shifted to employee health and wellbeing. This wasn’t purely altruistic, however. Sickness and low moods significantly impact productivity which, during lockdown with reduced staff, can be incredibly costly to businesses.

After the coronavirus crisis has passed, employers will have a tougher competition for talent and will need to do more work to entice them back into the office. After all, they’ve just had several months working from home, where beer taps and putting greens were replaced with all the comforts and luxuries of home…and with no commute!

To compete with the home office, new wellbeing teams that have been established to help employees stay safe and healthy during lockdown will be tasked with modernizing the workplace post-lockdown, with health and wellbeing of staff becoming a key company priority.

Research shows that this is a good investment with workplace health initiatives bringing returns of between 2x and 34x, highlighting the financial benefits of a happy, healthy workforce.

Working from home has also demonstrated the importance of the workplace as a collaborative space where colleagues can work together on projects, bounce ideas around and engage on a more personal level with one another. I expect that working from home will have a bigger role in improving the work-life balance, but there is no replacement for a physical workplace.

Offices will, then, become polarised between two extremes: the boring functional office used for meetings and the exciting collaborative space used for creative work.

As Jonathon Gibson, Director and Head of Sustainability at Avison Young, nicely summarises:

“It will polarise between ultra-efficient low cost and soulless spaces, driven by cost per head, which are there purely as a function for when people absolutely need to meet up.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the high quality, experiential office, designed to be a space people want to come to and spend time in, that will help attract the best talent. People will be coming to the office for an experience, to have ideas and be creative.

If you’re operating in the middle ground you’re in danger of being left behind or paying for something that’s never used. So, for this reason, the right companies will make the investment.”

Promising new workplace health and wellness initiatives

Workplace perks have been around for years and have only increased during the lockdown. Perkbox, for example, offers employees discounts at a range of retailers as well as monthly rewards and freebies. Yet, these solutions do nothing to entice people back into the office.
New health and wellbeing ideas need to focus on using the physical space effectively, creating highly-visible and impactful solutions, and have a practical purpose rather than simply entertaining staff.

Here are some of the most exciting new ideas:

Fostering a connection with nature

Love of life ‒ or “biophilia” ‒ is an observed and documented phenomenon where people feel less anxious, less stressed, more productive and focused, and have better mental stamina. Activities like walking through a park or playing with a dog can elicit biophilia, even just getting some fresh air can help.

When it comes to the workplace, environments that incorporate natural elements report a 15% increase in employee wellbeing, according to a Human Spaces report. Unfortunately, 47% of employees report working in an environment with no natural light while 58% have no natural greenery in their workplace.

While these are depressing statistics, it shows the scale of the opportunity to reinvigorate and reimagine the workplace. My company, Square Mile Farms, is seeking to address this huge gap by designing and installing attractive vertical farms into workplaces. The benefits of this approach are that vertical farms are highly-visible, provide lush green spaces, improve air quality, and provide employees with a source of fresh food. Imagine being able to source your lunchtime salad from fresh plants around the office!

Encouraging healthier choices

Simply providing fresh food or gym memberships isn’t enough to keep employees healthy and happy. If they don’t have the time to visit the gym or prepare their food, these initiatives are token gestures that shift responsibility back to employees.

Instead, employers need to actively encourage and enable healthier choices. Breakfast rolls on a Friday may be the popular choice but also offering a fruit basket the rest of the week enables staff to eat healthier.

One thing employees seem very keen on is office sports and extracurricular activities. In a survey conducted by Perkbox, employees valued office sports and extracurricular activities over things like unlimited holidays and free lunches. So, instead of simply providing free gym memberships, consider how you could incorporate sports and exercise into an office activity.

Some businesses, for example, have been using TV.FIT memberships to run intra-office exercise competitions, such as a virtual triathlon or an office Olympics, rather than simply providing memberships to staff to use in their own time. This has helped keep employees connected and collaborating despite the physical distance.

At Square Mile Farms, we provide employee engagement sessions so that they can learn more about their food supply and how to grow plants. Not only is this education valued in its own right, but it also enables staff to make healthier choices of their own. Teamwork and collaboration are then needed to plan meals and care for the plants, fostering a dramatic culture shift.

For workplaces to continue to serve businesses and employees, they need to evolve. Boring, utilitarian workplaces with no green spaces or office activities will fail to attract or retain talent. Bright, green spaces with a host of sporting and extracurricular activities, however, will develop creativity and collaboration between employees, producing the best work with high employee satisfaction and little illness. And that sounds like a future worth working towards!

Taking the Driving Seat in a Candidate Driven Market

November 12, 2019

Have you ever had a gut feeling that a candidate is not as good as you – and your client – think they are?

As a recruiter, naturally eager to fill that position, especially if it’s a particularly challenging one that you have spent a lot of time and effort on already, how much time do you give to this feeling? How much do you allow yourself to consider its potential implications?

Your candidate has performed well at interview, demonstrating that they have the skills and experience to do the job, that they will fit well culturally within the organisation/team, and that this is the job they want. Essentially, they have done everything right to put themselves in strong consideration for the position.

But something is somehow off.

You look back on their behaviour during the recruitment process itself. Not during the interviews, but the in-between bits.

The email communications you have had with them weren’t quite as well presented or as timely as you would expect from the “perfect candidate”. Then there was that time they asked for a last-minute rescheduling of the second interview. Then there was a change in demands during the process – more flexible hours, a change in salary expectations, etc. And, looking back, it took you longer than it should have done to reach them when you were setting up the interviews, getting feedback, and doing follow-ups. Etc etc. (I’m sure this is starting to sound, at least in part, familiar.)

So, suddenly you are questioning whether your candidate – who had convinced you, and your client, that this was their perfect job and they were the perfect candidate for it – is actually the person who showed up at interview.

I would suggest that you should give serious recognition to those questions in your head, and here’s why.

Candidate behaviour during the recruitment process can tell you a lot more than you might give it credit for. If you think about it, the kinds of tasks, actions and behaviours that the candidate engages in through the process – those things already mentioned above – are the kinds of things that they will be doing or using in any job they end up in. So if they can’t get the “simple” stuff right now, what’s to say they will get it right if they end up in your client’s role, no matter how well they have performed at interview? In a way, the whole recruitment process itself is like the best kind of generic competency-based interview one could conjure, testing core skills and behaviours like written communication (accuracy/clarity and effectiveness thereof); verbal communication (ditto); following instructions; doing what you say you will do, and when; integrity and transparency; and an all-round “straight-forwardness” in attitude and manner that, in my opinion, every great candidate possesses.

My advice is, Listen to your gut. If something feels off, test it. You can do this either by direct questioning (if you have a decent relationship with your candidate and feel confident enough to do so), or by asking them to do something additional for you as part of the process – whatever seems most relevant to the doubts you have about them.

And think about sharing your thoughts with your client – you should have the kind of relationship with them that makes this possible (and not too uncomfortable). If your spidey senses have kicked in before the end of the interview process perhaps you could work with your client to add an additional element into the next interview that will get to the heart of your suspicions?

Just because we all live in a highly competitive, candidate-driven recruitment market that often requires us to make quick decisions, it does not mean that we should allow the candidate to drive the recruitment process in its entirety. Keep something back to make sure you, and your client, are still making solid judgements. No matter how much you want the “perfect candidate” to be just that, don’t be afraid of admitting that they might not be.

In the end no one wins if the perfect candidate turns out to be the wrong employee.

The Digital Transformation of HR/Recruitment & A Changing Labour Market

February 28, 2019

I have put together a series of recent articles that address the challenges and opportunities that the “new” digital age present to the talent procurement process, in specific relation to the hugely candidate-driven market we find ourselves operating in today. I hope you find them useful:

https://www.sumtotalsystems.com/blog/2018/05/mobdigital-transformation-future-recruitment-2/

https://theundercoverrecruiter.com/ai-benefit-your-business/

https://www.sumtotalsystems.com/blog/2019/01/how-hr-technology-is-reshaping-the-hiring-process-for-job-candidates/

https://www.sumtotalsystems.com/blog/2019/01/5-hiring-trends-hr-must-consider-in-this-tight-labor-market/

https://blog.recruitee.com/job-application-process/

And finally, whilst this is a US-focused piece, there are still some great takeaways here:

https://theundercoverrecruiter.com/state-of-the-labor-market/

Why Should I Read Your CV?

February 1, 2019

When preparing your CV how much time do you spend thinking about the person who might end up reading it? How much time do you spend considering who you want that person to be and whether they will in fact bother to read it?

As a recruiter I currently spend anywhere between 50% and 75% of my time resourcing for the “perfect” candidate. Most of that time is allocated for pre-screening candidates who look suitable on paper since this is the stage that leads to being able to present qualified candidates to the end employer. And so, when sifting through the CVs that I have received, I need to be as efficient as possible so as to maximise the time spent on that critical next stage.

What this means in practice is that I reject (in other words delete) any CV that does not demonstrate what I feel is the minimum standard required for that candidate to be considered a serious jobseeker who is worthy of more than a cursory skim-read.

As an independent local recruiter whose success relies completely on the trust that I have built up with my clients I cannot afford to take risks with the candidates I present. They become a reflection of my business. That is not to say that I do not consider candidates who may not have all of the skills and experience that I am looking for – on the contrary, having strong relationships with my clients allows me to convince them to sometimes overlook one or more of those prerequisites on the basis that the candidate makes up for it via their work ethic, approach, attitude, character, etc. But if you can’t even spell your last job title correctly do you really expect me to become your ambassador and risk my professional reputation for you?

Furthermore, going back to my earlier comment about being time-efficient, it doesn’t just come down to a minimum standard of CV. Things like your geographic location and salary expectation need to be in the general ballpark of those specified on the job you are applying for. If you are taking the scattergun approach to your job search – emailing your CV  to any and all jobs that you see posted that day – you risk alienating any recruiter that receives your application. And persistent offending means a high chance that, no matter how relevant your skills might be to another role that they are recruiting for, you have already been “deleted”.

And so to my Minimum Standard for a CV that will at least be read. The following list is not exhaustive, and it is certainly only one person’s opinion, but it might be helpful the next time you are thinking about putting your resume together:

  • Spelling: correct spelling shows that a bare minimum of attention to detail has been paid. Use a spellchecker if necessary – that alone shows that you care about what you’re doing.
  • Language: make sure that your language is clear and concise, well-constructed and grammatically correct. Even where much of your CV will be written in bullet-point format you still need to demonstrate a basic awareness of sentence structure and ultimately make sure you are communicating your message in the best way possible.
  • Contact Details: I know it will probably sound unbelievable but I have seen so many CVs without any way of contacting the candidate. As well as this being, well, rather counter-productive given the purpose of one’s CV, it also shows further lack of attention to detail.
  • Formatting: use simple and clear formatting that means when a recruiter removes your contact details they don’t also have to start redoing your entire CV. When it comes to Font choose something contemporary like Calibri or Arial rather than Times Roman which can appear a little outdated. Finally, if you want to present your CV in pdf form you should also include a copy in Word so that your recruiter can make the aforementioned edits.
  • Arrangement: my preference is as follows –
    • Name & Contact Details
    • Profile: a summary of your core skills/experience (focusing on those skills that you particularly want to utilise in your next role) and what kind of role you are looking for/most suited for. Also talk about your “softer” skills to show what you are like as an employee – e.g. team player, energetic, focused, entrepreneurial – again focusing on those attributes that you want your next employer to notice and, more importantly, need!
    • Employment History: current/most recent first and including month and year for each job.
    • Education
    • Other Skills/Qualifications: if having other skills – e.g. languages, IT – is relevant to your job search include them here.
    • Interests: only include things that you genuinely enjoy doing outside of work and, even better, things that enhance your overall desirability as a candidate – e.g. marathon runner (shows stamina and commitment), charity fundraiser/volunteer. Avoid anything that is too personal.

In conclusion it comes down to this: if you put very little thought into how you present yourself on paper and how relevant your application is to the job you have applied for, why should I as a busy recruiter put any time or consideration into helping you find ANY job, let alone the one you have applied for?