WorkReply Relaunch - November 2015

This blog post is dedicated to our relaunch.  As you have noticed, certain areas of our website have changed, while others have not. Our website has, and will continue, to steadily unveil changes to our website. 

We are redesigning our brand and the services offered, completely making sure to optimize effectiveness and efficiency. We sincerely apologize for the rather abrupt discontinued on-taking of new clients, as well as the gradual decrease in services and resources made available to current/long time clients. With this relaunch, we are committed to focusing, 100%, on our delivery of effective, efficient, quality service. 

We look forward to rediscovering you, who you are and what you need. We are here to help, in various phases of your career. 

WorkReply Relaunch - November 2015

With this relaunch, our focus continues to be on you, our clients. We will continue to roll out a website with a clean uncluttered design. You will find our blog more useful than ever before with an increase in blog posts.  

Our Services Available To Careerists:

STARTING  NOVEMBER

• Client Account Management (w/ Employment Specialist)
• Reports from Employment Specialist concerning your career/industry
• Frequent Calls w/ Employment Specialist concerning your career
• Top Level Account Oversight (high level oversight of your Employment Specialist, making sure your career goals/needs are being met, according to both your and our standards) 
• Weekly Career Centered Webinars
• More Informative Material Made Available To You
• Blog Posts
• White Papers
• Infographics
• E Books

WITH MORE TO COME IN THE FOLLOWING MONTHS... THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING OF #WorkReplyChanges2015. 

Overall, we strive to make a plethora of choice, services and resources available to you, and your career. Our new WorkReply strives to share knowledge and expertise utilizing technology in the most effective, efficient ways possible. We now offer a simple and user-friendly experience for our clients.  We will continue to feature new types of rich content and trends, inspired by our own experiences. 

We make it easier for careerists everywhere to find and utilize the career resources and services they need. We hope you enjoy exploring the new WorkReply. Let us know what you think about our new design and services. 

5 Ways to keep your staff motivated?

Use your manners

When people feel appreciated, they are happier, more productive workers. Saying "hello" to employees when you get to work as well as saying "please" and "thank you" are easy things to do but carry a lot of weight when it comes to making people feel valued.

When people of upper management or owners come in, employees can feel anxious or slighted if not greeted properly or even at all.  Approachability of management is a huge must for employees. It humanizes and endears them.

Give credit when it's due.

Considering the hours your employees spend at work--often more than what they get with family--it's essential to tell them when they've excelled on a project or gone above and beyond the call of duty.

Encourage having fun on the job.

Work doesn't have to be a four-letter. Holding employee events that have nothing to do with work, but rather are geared solely on letting off steam, having fun and building team camaraderie.

Communicate clearly, consistently, and often.

Communication is integral to any relationship, including those at work. Ideally, your employees will be crystal clear about what you expect from them and receive frequent feedback regarding how they're doing in meeting goals, not to mention understand and buy into the company's vision.

Offer fantastic benefits.

You can't underestimate how important benefits are to employee’s contentment and retention, whether its health insurance, paid parking, free lunches, generous vacation policies, or a great 401(k) plan. Go overboard giving employees all those things and much more. Offer perks such as subsidized housekeeping, free haircuts, legal advice, travel assistance, and dry cleaning

WorkReply Re-Launch

We have been updating our website for some time now, which we hope will improve your experience of it. You will be able to access http://workreply.com again on September 1. The return of our site is only the beginning, with more to come over the rest of the year, and beyond. On September 1, you will see a new homepage, top level service access sites/pages (for employers, job seekers, careerists, partners and more) and a many other changes.

What are we doing and why?

Your feedback and our research have given us a strong steer about how we could improve your experience with our site, our services, with us. We have had consistent messages that you found our website difficult to navigate; that some of you are not really sure what to do on the site; and that it doesn’t work well on mobile devices.

You will notice the following changes:

• New design
• A more user-friendly interface
• Simpler and more clearer understanding of what to do, and how to do it (whatever it may be), on our site

What happens On September 1?

We will be rolling out these improvements with the re-launch of our website, and rolling out new sections of our site and new programs and services.

How can I get involved?

We need your involvement to make this work. Our changes are driven by your feedback, and our solutions must be tested by you before they are released. If you would like to get involved in testing or one of our research sessions, please click here.

Want To Reduce Turnover?

What is your problem? You should continuously be asking this question. If you don't know what your problems are, your company will continue to struggle with higher than acceptable turnover. To adequately and appropriately answer the question, you must recognize that the question isn't really about you, it's about your employees. How are you influencing your employees abilities to get their work done in as effective and efficient a manner possible?

The ball might be in your court now, you may have what seems like an endless supply of qualified applicants ready to take over when an employee leaves; but this will not always be. The time is now, to prepare for change. Failure to focus on turnover reduction will significantly impact the viability of your organization.

Your employees are individuals. There is more to them than meets the eye. Are you digging beneath the surface? Be a gold digger. Gold does not sit on the surface, you must dig for it. If you're confused at how to dig, simply ask for the shovel. Ask. The fact alone that you are interested in them, as an individual, will entice them to make digging easier for you. Also, remember that while your needs are of high concern and priority, they are not your sole, and often even most important, concern and/or priority.

Start with an Employee Satisfaction Survey... Here's One For You. 

Risk Analysis & Hiring

Everything you do, hiring included, involves some form of risk. To effectively and efficiently deal with the risks associated with hiring, your job, when hiring, should entail identifying, preparing for and managing risk. Adequate risk analysis, when hiring, will ensure that you limit potential disruption to current operations and keep things as cost-effective as humanly possible.

So how do you identify, prepare for and manage risk effectively when hiring?

Let's Start With The Basics. 

Just what is risk analysis?

In its simplest form, risk analysis is an analysis that helps you properly identify, prepare for and manage problems. Specifically, what you are analyzing is the probability of something going wrong and the negative effects of occurrence.

The Steps.

When hiring, in the event that you decide (wisely) to perform a risk analysis, these are the suggest steps:

1. Identify The Risk.
   
   Identify existing and possible risks associated with the on-boarding of a new staff member. Risks you should seek to identify are:
   
   - Human Risks: Risks associated with the illness, death, injury or loss of the new hire or those that would directly impact them and/or their work.
   - Operational Risks: Risks associates with business operations.
   - Reputational Risks: Risks associated with a reduction in external and internal consumer confidence.
   - Procedural Risks: Risks associated with internal systems, fraud and accountability.
   - Functional Specific Risks: Risks associated with position specific duties and tasks.
   - Financial Risks: Risks associated with business profitability, market share, market fluctuations and available capital.
   - Technological Risks: Risks associated with technology.
   
   The list above is a great place to start when completing a risk analysis when hiring. Try as best you can, without bias or too much optimism, to look for vulnerabilities in the potential hire. If you work with others in the hiring process, ask them to do the same.
   
2. Prepare For The Risk. 
   
   Once you're aware of the possible risks associated with a new hire, you need be aware of what the likelihood of those risks being an issue are and the possible effects. The best way to prepare for a possible risk, is to assign a value to it, a literal value. How do you accomplish this?
   
   A simple formula.
   
   Probability X Cost = Value
   Example:
   
    WorkReply is considering hiring Sue. When a risk analysis was performed, one of the risks identified was a functional specific risks. The initial phase of the analysis suggested that given her previous occupational experience and the lack of direct relation to the position we are considering her for, there is a functional specific risk. Sue has never performed some of the specific duties and tasks related to the position. 
   
   To determine the probability, we need to ask ourselves 'how likely is the effect of risk to be a problem'. We decide that the likelihood of the effect of the risk being a problem is moderate, because although she has not had any direct experience, all her pre-employment testing indicates that she is more than capable of learning, in a timely manner, the position specific tasks and duties. Probability is on a scale of 1% to 99%. Probability, when preparing for a possible risk, can never be 0% or 100%. If the probability is 0%, that means the risk will certainly never be an issue. Therefor, it is not even a probable risk. If the probability is 100%, that means the risk will certainly be an issue because it will occur, guaranteed. No if's, and's or but's. It is guaranteed to happen. In this instance, you would be analyzing results, not risks. The lower the number assigned to the risk, the less likely it is to happen. The higher the number assigned to the risk, the more likely it is to happen.
   
   We decide to assign the moderate probably of 40% to Sue.
   
   To determine the cost of the functional specific risk, we need to figure out the cost of the risk. Training for the position specific tasks and duties in question would require 10 hours of training. You could determine the cost 1 of 2 ways. If the position is a direct revenue generating position, generating say $300 per day and she works 8 hours per day, she generates $37.50/hour in revenue (with her salary already in consideration), multiply that by the 10 hours of required training and you arrive at a cost of $375. If the position is not a direct revenue generating position and Sue would make $15/hour, multiply that by the 10 hours of required training and you arrive at a cost of $150.
   
   For the sake of the example, Sue's position is not a direct revenue generating position and  we figure the cost to be $150.
   
   To determine the value of the identified functional specific risk, we multiply the probability by the cost.
   
   0.40 (Probability) X $150 (Cost) = $60 (Value)
   You prepare for the risk by asking yourself the REAL question.
   
   What is the REAL question?
   
   Let's go back to the example, Sue.
   
   In Sue's case, the REAL question we need to ask, when preparing for the risk associated with hiring Sue is NOT if she qualified for the job based on her direct previous experience.
   
   The REAL question we need to ask, when preparing for the risk associated with hiring Sue IS....
   
   
   Can we afford the risk of $60 to hire Sue and make operations more effective and efficient? 
   
   
3. Manage The Risk. 
   
   Once you have identified and adequately prepared for the risks associated with hiring someone, you need to make sure you are prepared to manage the risks. It is important to consider the costs of managing risks, in whatever way you manage them, because if it is not cost-effective, it is not justified. When it comes to managing the risks of hiring, you have 3 options:
   
   - Use your existing resources.
   - Accept (and seek to minimize) the risk.
   - Invest in and acquire new resources.
   
   Conducting a proper risk analysis when hiring may require a little more work on your part, but it will be cost-effective in the long and short term. Also, a proper analysis should aid in the accuracy of your employee reviews, clearly showing you what progress is, or is not, being made. 

The Killer Employee

There's an employee who can kill your organisation in such a sophisticated manner, that you won't see it coming or even know it has happened - until it's too late. Yes, one person can SERIOUSLY do a lot of destruction. Because of this fact, it should alarm you to know that more than 65% of your clients/customers will stop doing business with you because of a single interaction, with a single employee.


The killer employee.


The killer employee can do real damage. So what are you going to do when they strike?

Will your organisation have an executive apologize?

Will you just mail out a check?

How much with the PR campaign to repair the damage cost your organisation?

What are you going to do?

What can you do?

Know your employees. Know what they do. Know what they think about what they do. There are also things to be done before they become an employee:

• Define your customer service expectations during the on-boarding process. 
• Include your customer service standards in the job descriptions for positions you are looking to fill. 
• Create an internally distributed document/booklet, that is constantly updated and reviewed, solely dedicated to the customer service standards of your company. 

Avoid the killer employee. 

Shoes To Fill

Some positions are so complex, require so much skill and expertise that you wonder which is harder, the job, or finding the right person for the job. While talent may surround you, qualified talent, for the job you need completed, is most likely in short supply. So what are you to do? How are you to meet the needs of your organisation, with this void?

Start by recognizing that talent, qualified, quality talent, is out there.

You can't continue to look for a size 22 shoe in a regular department store shoe department. It's time  for you to head to the specialty store. The shoes you need to fill, are simply too big, too special, for a regular shoe department.

If you want to continue to walk around with shoes that are too small and deal with the embarrassment, you most certainly have that option. However, if you wish to get shoes that fit, you need the best. Get to the specialty store!

Like specialty shoes, specialty talent is something that everyone wants. Ask anyone who shops at a specialty shoe store and they'll tell you that things can get nasty once you're there. There aren't too many size 22 shoes in town to begin with, but if you find the only pair, at the only store in town, are you going to just let someone walk away with the shoes? That same mind frame is necessary when looking at your specialty talent. Everyone wants them. They are are far and few between. You must be prepared to compete for the talent you require.

Things can get nasty. Be Prepared.

Contact WorkReply Today.