4 Things You Should Never Forget When Onboarding

The most nerve-wracking part of recruitment is probably the waiting.

When your applicant says yes to the job offer, it’s a cause for celebration, but you don’t get to relax just yet! It’s also your responsibility to ensure a smooth transition for your hire, who should go from bumbling newbie to savvy employee in a matter of months.

Beginnings are important. To give you a sense of how much onboarding matters, employees make up their mind about staying in your company or leaving after six months into the job.

Good onboarding translates to less turnovers, which are: 1.) expensive; and 2.) demanding on you because you have to scout for a new hire for the same position yet again.

Let’s keep it short and simple with the following four fundamentals of onboarding:

Onboarding starts even before you secure your hire

Don’t be secretive about your company. If you don’t have a “Careers” section yet on your website, get started on it already and put detailed descriptions of job openings.

Heck, make sure that your website is informative enough so that anyone looking through it has a good grasp of what your company is all about.

This ties in with employer branding. Get your company’s message out there properly, and the right pool of applicants will naturally gravitate towards you.

Knowledge is power: cliche, but true

Fill your new hire in on everything that he should know. Explain his role and responsibilities, get ahold of his expectations, answer all questions–and try to do this before he even steps into the office.

Information that he should know goes beyond job details: get talkative about company etiquette, benefits, logistical details about the office.

Paperwork is another necessary evil, but you can avoid a ho-hum first day by taking care of it early on.

A thoughtful gesture would be crafting a welcome kit, which can include an onboarding guide, or you can simply email company videos and FAQs. Likewise, as the first day approaches, ease anxiety by checking up on your applicant and brief him.

The other half of the equation is relationships

Knowledge is one half, and the other is coworker relationships. Just as onboarding should be a good learning experience for your new hire, it should also be about breaking the ice and including her into the community.

Make a company announcement that there’ll be a new hire so nobody gets surprised to see a stranger walking around. When the new hire does arrive, introduce her to everyone and arrange a lunch out–treat it like a welcome party!

Bonus points if you come up with a buddy or mentoring system that gets the new hire to bond with her team while meeting people from other departments.

Accept that it’s for the long haul and ask for feedback

Onboarding is a long-term process. It doesn’t stop after the second week–the adjustment period is more like three to six months.

Establish that you value open communication and you won’t condemn him to a scathing glare if he points out that some aspects of your onboarding can be improved. A new employee has a fresh perspective, and may be able to notice things that you don’t.

Check on him regularly and ask how he’s adapting. Being a good listener, despite being difficult to master, is a must for HR. Take action based on new employees’ feedback, and if it can’t be changed, be honest to them about it.  

Conclusion

You know your onboarding is working when your new hires rave about it to their friends (and you’ll definitely notice how they feel about it when you ask them directly). An excellent onboarding process makes employees more motivated and committed, and it also does wonders for your employer branding.   

 

The post 4 Things You Should Never Forget When Onboarding appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/4-things-you-should-never-forget-when-onboarding/

This is Where Good Startup Ideas Come From

Going the entrepreneurial route and launching your own startup is exciting–and undoubtedly risky. Even for traditional ventures such as franchises and family businesses, the failure rate within the first few years is 85%. The odds get even higher when you move into the disruptive world of startups, clocking in at around 90% or more.

It’s a long journey from concocting an idea with your friends to having a successful, independent business with thousands of customers. So many things could go wrong: a fallout with your co-founder, weak marketing, a product that isn’t delivered quickly enough, lack of funding.

But the most frustrating, arguably, would be having an ineffective idea in the first place–and only realizing that once you’ve invested so much into it already.

The key to finding a good startup idea

What makes for a good startup idea, then? Ironically, you don’t get to it by grabbing a notebook and getting as creative as possible, thinking of all the cool products that you can come up with.

With this approach, you’ll almost always end up with tons of interesting ideas such as an app that recommends gifts or a bot that can compose music. It’s great to pursue these as passion projects that might eventually morph into something more, but they aren’t necessarily convertible into business prospects.

Counterintuitive as it is, the way to brainstorm is backwards. A startup idea, really, is a solution–and solutions are reactions to problems.

Name any high-value startup, and you’ll find that it addresses a problem. Spotify solves the problem of music piracy and finding songs in the first place; Github solves the problem of putting together code from different developers. Both have become almost indispensable, with billions of people relying on them–take them down, and there will be protests.  

So you’re better off hunting for a problem to solve, then letting your idea germinate around that.

The problem should be a major pain point not just for yourself, but also for other people. This guarantees that when you do put your product or service out there, people will care, because it can potentially make their lives better.

How to look for problems

For the beginning stage of your startup, then, you need especially good observation skills. Keep a record of problems you experience throughout the day, but also notice whenever people complain. Checking on pain points as experienced by others is very important.

Make sure to listen carefully, and don’t assume. For example, people might be complaining about long commutes, but instead of shortening their commute, a better approach could be improving the commuting experience itself.

Going beyond words, try to observe their behavior, too. By noticing that kids grip their toothbrush differently, IDEO thought of adding squishy handles–an innovation then that has held until now.

Another way of sniffing out a problem is focusing on existing solutions–and fixing their flaws, as Daniel Kempe points out. You won’t get a shortage here because there are millions of products out there.

Polaroid cameras still have fans today, thanks to its old-world charm and the convenience of having a photo printed right away. A downside, though, is that you only have a single physical copy of the photo–what if you could have it saved digitally in a memory card too?

Make sure you care, too

By focusing on a problem rather than an idea, there’s more room for your startup to pivot. Given that you can only know if your idea works once you test it out there, you have to be open to tweaking it and maybe even revamping it to another solution altogether.

Finally, caring about the problem is a must. If you’ll be going through sleepless nights, sacrificing your social life, and giving it your all no matter what obstacles crop up, then it might as well be something that you’re passionate about solving.

You can’t beat the odds without grit–and that grit comes from the strong conviction that what your startup has to offer can make an impact and transform people’s lives.   

 

The post This is Where Good Startup Ideas Come From appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/this-is-where-good-startup-ideas-come-from/

How to Calculate Overtime Pay in the Philippines

The standard workday schedule tends to be a variation of 9 to 6, with around an hour in the middle reserved for lunchbreak. This is in accordance with our Labor Code, which states that the maximum number of hours that we can work in one day is eight hours. Going beyond that would be considered overtime, while rendering less–say, if you’re thirty minutes late for your shift–is called undertime.

When you’re employed in the private sector, how much salary you receive is tied strictly to the number of hours you’ve worked. Doing overtime or undertime will cause a deviation from your usual salary. Contrary to what you’d expect, calculating it isn’t as simple as multiplying your number of extra hours by a fixed rate.

If you’re working extra hours, there are two possible situations:

1. You’re showing up for work on a rest day or a holiday; or
2. It’s a regular day, but you’re already well beyond eight hours

Calculating Pay on Rest Days and Holidays

The main question you have to ask is: what kind of non-working day is this? Is it a rest day, a regular holiday, or a special non-working day? Take note that it can fall into more than one category: it can be both a rest day and a regular holiday, for example.

Weekends–Saturday and Sunday–are usually allotted as rest days. Employees are required by law to have at least one day (a full 24 hours) off every week.

Regular holidays, such as Labor Day and Independence Day, tend to have fixed dates and are present year after year. On the other hand, special non-working days (like Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve) are more changeable and are under the discretion of the government. Working on a regular holiday, you’ll notice, results in a higher rate than on a special non-working day.

If you need reference, we’ve already prepared a full list of official holidays and special non-working days in the Philippines. Check out this blog post for the 2017 calendar, and this one for 2018.

Here’s a table of the rates for rest days and holidays, assuming you won’t be working for more than eight hours:

Day	Rate
Rest Day	130%
Special Non-Working Day	130%
Special Non-Working Day and Rest Day	150%
Regular Holiday	200%
Regular Holiday and Rest Day	260%

Calculating Overtime Pay

If you’re working for more than eight hours, then that’s considered overtime, whether or not it’s a regular day or a rest day.

Whether your regular shift is at night matters, too: working anytime from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM would fall under a night shift. This qualifies for Night Shift Differential (NSD), where you get an additional 10%.

Here’s a table of the overtime rates:  

	Non-Night Shift	Night Shift
Normal Day	125%	137.5%
Rest Day	169%	185.9%
Special Non-Working Day	169%	185.9%
Special Non-Working Day and Rest Day	195%	214.5%
Regular Holiday	260%	286%
Regular Holiday and Rest Day	338%	371.8%

As for how we calculated the overtime rates in the table above:

• Normal Work Day: 125% of your hourly rate
• Rest day, special non-working day, regular holiday, and all combinations: 130% of your hourly rate on these days (based on the first table)
• Night shift: 110% of your overtime hourly rate

Sample Calculations

Say that you’re earning P100 per hour.

1.) If you’re planning to put in two hours overtime on a regular day, just multiply your hourly wage by the rate to get your overtime pay per hour:

P100 x 125% = P125 per hour

2.) If you choose to work on a rest day, your hourly wage for the first eight hours will be:

P100 x 130% = P130 per hour

But once you’re on your ninth hour, your hourly wage goes up to:

P100 x 169% = P169 per hour

3.) Finally, if you overtime on a regular night shift:

P100 x 137.5% = P137.5 per hour

But if that night shift also happens to be a rest day:

P100 x 185.9% = P185.9 per hour

Quite complex, isn’t it? And this is just one portion of payroll calculation! Imagine doing this for hundreds of employees in your company every month. Making an error is completely human, what with all the numbers, but then a single error can cost your company a lot of money and result in dissatisfied employees.

This is why it helps so much to automate your payroll processing using technology. With Sprout Payroll, processing time gets reduced to 90%, and you can be sure that your employees always get paid the right amount. To see firsthand how it works, go here.    

The post How to Calculate Overtime Pay in the Philippines appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/how-to-calculate-overtime-pay/

3 Common Unconscious Biases When Hiring

For a more effective recruitment process, get to know your own cognitive biases.

We aren’t as objective as we think we are. Everyone naturally views the world from a unique perspective, colored by beliefs, emotions, and past experiences.

Cognitive biases refer to logical errors in our thinking. For example, when we’re in a group, we tend to believe what the majority agree with and doubt our own opinion. Naturally, these can lead to wrong decision-making–and it’s difficult for us to catch our biases because they happen at a subconscious level.

Being aware of these biases, though, can save you from picking wrong hires, which costs your company a significant amount of money in the long run. Recruitment is especially prone to bias, after all. There’s no standardized way to do it, and so much of the result depends on face-to-face communication and first impressions.

Here are three common biases that you should be wary of when recruiting:

1. Hiring based on similarity

Fast fact: we’re drawn to people who are similar to us. If you doubt this, just look around at who you hang out with. This is perfectly okay when we’re expanding our circle of friends or picking out a partner, but not when hiring. What makes this dangerous is that similarity here can extend to all sorts of traits–not only personality, but also appearance, place of origin, even favorite ice cream flavor.

Hitting it off with a job candidate (“oh, that’s also my favorite movie!”) leaves you with a positive impression, even if the person isn’t ideal for the job. This might eclipse someone who’s a great fit but who has less chemistry with you.

Repeatedly hiring people who are similar to you reduces the diversity in your company, which is a definite disadvantage. Worst-case scenario? Groupthink.

2. Confirmation bias

Recruiters have to make judgments about job candidates after a few encounters at most. One pitfall here is stereotyping: coming to an immediate conclusion about candidates based on their appearance, gender, race, or even school. This can be generalized into noticing a one-dimensional characteristic and letting that take over your entire assessment.

You might find out right away that a candidate comes from a popular graduate school. For the rest of the interview, instead of being neutral, you look for evidence that she’s good at what she does. This goes straight into confirmation bias–trying to fit things into your rigid interpretation.

It’s a very easy bias to fall into since we do it a lot in our everyday lives–whenever we make sweeping statements about people.

3. Context

The tiniest details can skew our decision-making: lack of sleep, how hungry we are, the temperature of the room. Context affects everything.

Even something as negligible as your posture–whether you’re leaning right or left–can influence how you think. Doing an interview when you’re in a bad mood or when your stomach is growling might make you inclined to view the candidate more negatively.

It’s also worth taking note of the recency bias, which states that you remember recent experience more easily. When you have a queue of five back-to-back interviews, unless you take notes and ask structured questions, the last interviewee would likely be the most memorable for you. Similarly, a candidate might be doing well in general, but if she performs badly at the end of the interview, that’s what will stick with you.

Conclusion

Cognitive biases are pretty much impossible to eliminate since we’re human, after all. We can never be completely dispassionate. However, we can minimize bias with enough self-awareness.

Structured interviews are a useful tool for guaranteeing a recruitment process that’s as impartial as possible. Interviewees would ideally pose similar questions to each candidate while making sure to tweak them so it doesn’t get predictable.

For more well-informed recruitment decisions, you can also take advantage of software tools such as Sprout Recruit, which we’ll be launching soon. It features an applicant tracking system that’s tailor-fitted to the Philippines, along with analytics that give you a 360-degree perspective on the interview process. Stay tuned here for updates!

The post 3 Common Unconscious Biases When Hiring appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/3-common-unconscious-biases-hiring/

When Should You Take Advantage of Outsourcing?

The BPO industry in the Philippines is going strong, with a workforce amounting to at least 1.3 million. By 2018, it’s likely that outsourcing will become our country’s greatest source of revenue, overtaking even the remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

Clients include both local and international companies. More and more businesses worldwide are turning to outsourcing, and it isn’t confined by geography anymore. Offshoring is taking off–it has become common for, say, a US company to delegate some of its processes to a BPO in the Philippines.

You might be wondering if it’s time to take advantage of outsourcing yourself. Refusing to outsource may compromise the competitiveness and agility of your company–do you want to bog down your in-house staff with tasks that can be handed over, anyway? On the other hand, outsource too much, and you risk leaving your data all over the place and diluting your company’s branding.

Choose what to outsource

Outsourcing can be useful for any company–even startups–as long as you’re strategic about what you outsource. First off, think about what you’re offering, what your ultimate product is.

If you own an Italian restaurant, then your customers value your food the most. They’re going to complain if the taste of their pasta suddenly changes. Because food is at the heart of your restaurant, then you shouldn’t outsource it. Rather, hire your chefs and train them to create pasta that’s uniquely yours.

Your restaurant laundry, though, is a completely different matter. Customers will hardly notice if you hand over your rags and uniforms to a laundry service rather than washing them in-house (assuming, of course, that they’re clean either way).

You can say the same about your taxes and payroll. All of these are essential to running your restaurant, but your customers won’t care about how exactly you do them. It’s generally safe, then, to outsource them.

Consider if it’s only short-term

Another guideline is to ask: is this only short-term or cyclical? If none of your in-house staff can do it conveniently, then you can outsource.

Take, for example, a software company that needs an official video. It has a small team of designers, but none of the designers have experience with videography. Outsourcing the video would be more practical, compared to having them learn it when it’s only a one-time thing.

And no need to fret about lack of skill when you take it outside–there are plenty of BPO companies, freelancers, and digital agencies out there with top-notch services.

Invest your resources wisely 

The greatest benefit of outsourcing strategically is that your resources are freed up. With the increased manpower, you get more done in less time, and your in-house staff can hone in on their tasks.

When considering whether to outsource or go the DIY route and hire your own employee, do a cost-benefit analysis. Having a new employee means you’ll be paying more than that employee’s salary every month–add benefits, insurance, and taxes to that. You might also need additional space, which translates to increased rent. If the value that the employee will potentially contribute exceeds the costs, then go ahead; if not, it might be better to outsource.

Around one in seven businesses in the Philippines is already turning to outsourcing. Do it smart, and you’ll be making a wise investment towards a leaner, more efficient company. 

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Sprout Solutions is an HR (human resources) and payroll software company in the Philippines that powers HR for companies like Rappler, Xurpas, Shakey’s, and Century Pacific.

Click here to see the testimonials of our happy customers.

The post When Should You Take Advantage of Outsourcing? appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/when-should-you-take-advantage-outsourcing/

How to Stay Productive in 8+ Hours of Work

Eight hours is a lot of time. In eight hours, you can watch at least six episodes of your favorite TV series, read two paperback books, cook more than ten dishes, or sleep enough for the next day.

Why is it, then, that we seem to accomplish so little in the eight hours of a typical workday?

Research says that we’re usually only productive for three out of these eight hours. Endless distractions abound–checking email, social media notifications, unnecessary meetings, multitasking when it actually slows us down.

But don’t beat yourself up for not being able to work for several hours straight. The human brain was never designed to hyperfocus for too long. As well-intentioned as you are, try pushing yourself to do something throughout the day, without a break, and you’ll eventually find your attention drifting, fatigue setting in.

Work hard, but play hard too

The key to being productive is to cooperate with–and not fight against–how our brain functions: by working in sprints. This follows the “work hard, play hard” philosophy. When you’re working, you’re really working–it’s a complete commitment to the task, without giving in to distractions. You know you’re doing it right when you get into a state of flow, where everything else fades away and you lose track of time.

But we’re not encouraging you to be workaholics here. Likewise, when you rest, you have to step away from the computer and do something that’s completely unrelated to your task. Scrolling through your feed doesn’t count as resting. What does is chatting with your coworkers, doodling, or meditating.

Better yet, take a walk outside. Sitting down the entire day takes its toll on our health, and you’d be surprised by how much stretching or even just pacing around the room can freshen you up.

“But I don’t want to seem like I’m slacking off!”

If taking a break makes you feel guilty, consider how unproductive you’ll be without. When you’re focused for hours, your brain consumes a lot of glucose and oxygen, leaving you tired–and pretty much running on empty gas–if you don’t replenish.

Ever got an idea while showering? Relaxing or daydreaming also gives your brain the space to process ideas or and come up with new insights, which is why several artists swear on taking idle walks for creative inspiration.

Two popular productivity systems

To make sure that your breaktime doesn’t get out of hand and you’re not procrastinating when you’re supposed to be working, you can try timing yourself. There are two popular productivity systems for this. Feel free to experiment with what works for you, or even create your own:

Pomodoro method

For shorter bursts, try the Pomodoro method–and yes, “pomodoro” is Italian for tomato, because the guy who started it used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer.

Achieving one pomodoro means you work for 25 minutes, then take a break for five minutes. After four pomodoros, you can reward yourself with a longer break, around 30 mins.

Online timer: https://tomato-timer.com/

The 52-17 formula

What’s good about the Pomodoro method is it decomposes tasks into easier chunks. 25 minutes doesn’t seem so intimidating. But some people can find this annoying–at 25 minutes, they’re already in the flow, and would want to continue longer.

An alternative is the 52-17 ratio, where you work for 52 minutes and rest for 17 minutes. It may seem arbitrary, but it’s been shown to increase productivity.

Online timer: http://www.fokasutime.com/

You can tweak the numbers to your personal work rhythm by playing around with various ratios and checking how that affects your productivity. On the other hand, if you’d rather go free-flow and ditch the timer, just keep in mind that all of these systems ultimately boil down to working with purpose and recharging with frequent breaks. Hold to that, and you should be fine.

To up your company’s productivity, delegate repetitive tasks to technology. Our modern HR software can do timekeeping and payroll processing automatically. Book a free demo now to find out more!

The post How to Stay Productive in 8+ Hours of Work appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/how-to-stay-productive-in-8-hours-of-work/

Beyond Millennials: Are You Ready for Generation Z?

And just when you thought handling millennials was complicated–in a few years, Generation Z will be streaming into the workplace, and there’s a reason why they’re deemed a separate group altogether from their infamous millennial cousins.

Gen Z, the post-millennials

The exact range of birth years are fuzzy, but Gen Z roughly refers to anyone born on 1996 to 2010. This would put the oldest of them at 21 years old, meaning that you won’t find a lot of them at your office yet. In contrast, millennials (born 1977-1995) already dominate the workforce and are pretty much driving the change in work structure, clamoring for more flexibility and creativity.

What sets apart one generation from the other is that Gen Z are the true digital natives. Sure, millennials are tech-savvy. They’re active on five social media sites, get antsy when their phone’s not around, and are cool with having endless open tabs on their laptop.

But they only picked up this familiarity later on. CDs, cassette tapes, and Game Boys were likely major features of their childhood–no high-tech smartphones yet. The internet only became popular during the 2000s, after all, and millennials locally were tinkering with Friendster before Facebook even came around.

Gen Z has the interesting situation of never having known the world before it became hyperconnected. For them, social media and wi-fi have always been there, and this puts them several steps ahead of millennials.

The biggest influence on this generation, growing up, is arguably technology. Contrast this with other generations such as Baby Boomers (1946-1964), whose coming of age took place in a prosperous post-war economy, or Traditionalists (1922-1945), who had to go through the Second World War.

Taking a closer look at Gen Z

A disclaimer, though, before we look at Gen Z further: we’re only talking about generational trends here. There are no hard and fast rules that apply to everyone. As much as we’re shaped by environment, we’re so much more than our culture–in other words, people may or may not fit the descriptions of their generation.

Can consume content quickly

Gen Z’s digital native status has led to them being called “millennials on steroids.” They consume information a lot faster than millennials, giving them a potentially shorter attention span.

It also makes them expert curators. They can identify within seconds whether or not a piece of content is worth going through; if it is, they give it their wholehearted concentration. Another flipside is they’re comfortable with extreme multitasking, switching from one activity to another without batting an eyelid.

Aware of personal branding

Being adept at social media grants more than validation and popularity: learn its intricacies, and you’ve pretty much taken a crash course in modern marketing. Gen Z has a very intuitive understanding of personal branding. To score likes consistently, you have to be aware of your image–and then tweak this depending on the platform. This requires a certain restraint and care with what you post.

Surprisingly, Gen Z is more private, flocking to Snapchat when millennials were drawn to Facebook and Twitter. With Snapchat, your content can never be too incriminating–it vanishes right away.

Prioritize stability and independence

This cautious streak doesn’t contradict Gen Z’s entrepreneurial flair. Despite being young, they often take on part-time jobs, work freelance, or even launch their own ventures–not because of the thrill or the risk, but because they want to build a secure future for themselves early on. Unlike millennials, who are prone to job-hopping, Gen Z seems to prioritize stability and are more conservative.

They’re used to figuring things out on their own, with Google at their fingertips, and they were bombarded early on by the media with what’s happening around the globe. Out of all the other generations, they have a lot in common with Traditionalists, who were similarly risk-averse and pragmatic.

Gen Z may not have a strong presence yet in the workforce, but the spotlight’s shifting to them, and it’s better to be aware of what’s coming rather than be shocked when it’s there. Millennials still have a long career ahead of them–with Gen Z stepping up too, the future of work should be exciting.

Interested in more news about HR in the Philippines? Join our community of HR Innovators! We regularly exchange ideas and share events, from talks on handling millennials to panel discussions about HR tech.   

 

The post Beyond Millennials: Are You Ready for Generation Z? appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/beyond-millennials-ready-for-generation-z/

A Must-Have Checklist for Successful Hiring

To be a recruiter, you have to wear many hats. You need the savviness of a marketer for getting that job post out there, the patience and sharp judgment of a psychologist for conducting interviews, and the persuasion skills of a negotiator for sealing the deal.

With so many variables to take care of, it’s helpful to be systematic. Here’s a basic checklist that you can go through for each candidate when hiring:

Do they have the skills necessary for the job?

This is pretty much the most obvious criteria and the bare minimum that should be fulfilled. While you can gather information right away from the candidate’s track record, it’s more thorough to give a test during the application process. The test will most likely come from the department with the open position, but it’s still a must for you to know the position well; you can also use the job description as a guide during the interview.

What does their past performance show?

Results speak for themselves. There’s a difference between saying someone’s highly motivated and having concrete proof for it–say, a project that increased revenue. Take a big-picture view of the candidate’s background, taking into account her previous roles, what her company was like, the trajectory of her career. If she operated before in a similar position and work environment, then it’s likely that she’ll be able to handle the job well.

Do they fit into the company culture?

Recruitment isn’t just about measuring competency–you’re not evaluating a machine, you’re dealing with a human being. Personality and values come into play because employees who aren’t happy with your company are likely to underperform and quit. Give a clear explanation of your company culture, and clarify the candidate’s expectations, especially if he’s coming from a very different place (e.g. from startup to corporate, or vice-versa).

How passionate are they about the job?

A red flag is when your candidate doesn’t have any questions. An even bigger red flag is being clueless about what exactly your company does–given that most companies have websites now, it’s not that hard to do a bit of research! Look out for other signs of apathy or disinterest. Lack of excitement even before they’ve started the job is very telling. It’s likely that such a candidate isn’t very committed to your company–you might want to look elsewhere.

Do they have emotional intelligence?

You checked for the hard skills first; now it’s time to hone in on the candidate’s soft skills. These are a lot harder to gauge, but they’re nonetheless important–a technically gifted hire wouldn’t accomplish much if he couldn’t work well with other people. A standard tactic is to use behavior-based questions (“Tell me about the last time you had a major conflict at work”) or situation-based questions (“What if…”). Interacting with the candidate face-to-face gives you a chance to assess how he communicates, based on what he says and his body language.

Are they honest and ethical?

Out of everything in this list, integrity is probably the last to be considered, if at all. Consider, though, how an unethical employee can deal a lot of damage to a company, from tarnishing its reputation to costing it millions of pesos. You can do your own background check by following up on your candidate’s references. During the job interview, try to ask open-ended questions and get into the details, looking out for possible inconsistencies. Finally, when you do decide to hire, ask for an NBI clearance, to be safe.

We say that this is a basic checklist because you can still add so much more to this, depending on what you’re hiring for. But it does covers the essentials–ideally, the candidate you choose should be able to tick off all the items.

Pair this with our upcoming product, Sprout Recruit, and you get a much better chance of finding the right person. Sprout Recruit streamlines the hiring process by posting on top job websites for you and then collating all of the results in one place. It’s definitely less effort on your part, plus you get to pick from a wider, qualified pool of candidates. We’re excited to share it with you, so watch out for more updates on our blog!

The post A Must-Have Checklist for Successful Hiring appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/must-have-checklist-for-successful-hiring/

4 Reasons Why Every Company Needs a North Star

Starting a business takes an incredible amount of grit and determination. Even when you’ve got it running, the challenges never end. You’re bound to encounter all sorts of obstacles, change your strategy several times, think on your feet–you’re forced to go through turbulent growth, in other words, to survive.

It’s easy to get swept up in the chaos, which is why you need one thing that’ll stay constant no matter what. That’s where your company’s mission statement comes in: what is the ultimate purpose of your company? More than a product description or number-based metrics, it should express the value that your service or product offers to your customers.

As ambitious as they are, mission statements are usually concise and easy to remember:

• Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
• Tech in Asia: “To serve and build Asia’s tech communities.”
• Eatigo: “To connect empty tables with empty stomachs.”
• Spud Buds: “To uplift the lives of our local potato growers in Benguet one spud at a time.”

What does your company stand for? 

Think of it as your company’s north star. Historically–back when we didn’t have GPS and navigating by compass could be unreliable–travellers and sailors made sure that they knew how to find the north star in the sky. Unlike a magnetic compass, the north star has a fixed location and always points to true north. As long as you can see it, you’ll never get lost.

The north star was so important for navigation that it was found in many cultures and traditions, carrying different names such as Polaris, Kynosoura, and even Pivot of the Planets. Although we don’t need it as much today, it’s taken on a new significance as a metaphor. We can have our personal north star–what we really want out of life–but it’s also helpful for companies.

It provides an unwavering sense of direction

As a business scales, tasks multiply exponentially. Changes happen at an alarming rate. No matter how hawk-eyed you fancy yourself to be, you can never keep track of everything, from major management decisions to the smallest details.

Having a north star helps keep the big picture in mind. When mapping out your strategy, your north star shows you the direction you need to keep going in, and this builds momentum over time.

It acts as a yardstick for progress

Metrics are a good way to objectively assess how well you’re doing. The tricky part is choosing which metrics to track: if you’re a social media manager, do you evaluate your number of posts, how many people reacted per post, or the clickthrough rate?

The higher-level you go, the more difficult it gets to handpick metrics. If it’s the entire company that you’re looking at, your north star hints at what your metrics should be; progress means moving closer to it.  

It keeps you going through hard times

There will be low periods when it seems like everything’s going wrong and you’re wondering why you even thought of doing this in the first place. Your north star can give you that extra burst of motivation when you need it the most.

This isn’t just a feel-good platitude. Major companies such as LEGO and Starbucks were on the brink of disaster, but they were saved when they pivoted back to their original mission and values.  

It builds a unified company culture

The north star gives a crucial context to what every single member of the company does.  Rather than viewing their responsibilities as isolated tasks, employees become aware of how their work contributes to the overall mission. Fixing a bug, say, might seem trivial compared to developing a major feature of an app, but it actually holds a lot of weight when you think about the end goal. Interviews and orientations are a good way to introduce employees to the mission statement–you can even ask them to know it by heart.

 

Businesses with clearly defined mission and vision statements informing their strategy do better than businesses without. Crafting your company’s north star may take a great deal of care, but it’s worth it.

Our mission at Sprout–as you can see at the bottom of our website–is to transform HR in emerging markets. If you’re looking to optimize your HR and payroll processes so you can focus better on your own mission, let’s talk at info@sprout.ph.  

The post 4 Reasons Why Every Company Needs a North Star appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/4-reasons-why-every-company-needs-a-north-star/

Work-Life Balance is Dead. Go for Work-Life Integration Instead

Work-life balance sounds great: work stays in the office, and your personal life happens beyond. Hours are divided cleanly between them, the scale never tipping too much to one side, so it never gets overwhelming.

But it’s inaccurate–impossible, even.

The wrong assumption of work-life balance

While it’s necessary to leave a lot of time for recharging (death from overwork would be nasty), work-life balance makes the wrong assumption that we can compartmentalize ourselves so absolutely, as if work and life were two separate worlds that would never intersect.

How we act might be different, sure, but at the end of the day, they still blur into each other. We treat our friends out because we got a promotion; we’re distracted during a meeting because of a breakup the night before.

On top of that, technology ensures that we’re accessible all the time. Social media platforms, online chats, emails, video calls, and other means of instant communication have changed the very landscape of work.

People can collaborate regardless of distance, and this has given rise to freelancing and telecommuting–and, in turn, more flexible working arrangements. Locally, Senate Bill No. 1363, which allows telecommuting, was approved this year in support of work-from-home programs.

A mindset shift to work-life integration

Instead of work-life balance, it’d be more timely to go for work-life integration. This means bringing your entire self to work and acknowledging that your work is part of who you are. Your hobbies and passions, your strengths, ultimately inform what you do.

Steve Jobs, for example, was extremely interested in calligraphy, and this allowed him to craft the Apple products that we know now.

This also extends to coworkers. Since we’re around them a lot–at least 40 hours, in a traditional job–work-life integration implies that we’re allowed to get to know them better rather than keeping it merely transactional.

More than a higher salary, more than extra free time, human beings value relationships. For one, 40% of startups have founders that were friends even before. Consider the statistics that having a friend that you see regularly might give you the same happiness as getting a significant increase (around $100,000 more) in your yearly salary.

Apply this to your workplace, and you get happier, more productive employees–research even says that people with a best friend at work are seven times more engaged than those without.

Happier employees: good news for your company

Overall, work-life integration benefits both employees and the company itself. Clinical psychologist Maria Sirois adds that it results in more fulfilled employees.

It’s also important to remember, though, that there’s no hard and fast way of implementing work-life integration, as it varies from person to person. What’s consistent is a respect for autonomy and each individual’s natural working style.

With the rapid advances of technology showing no signs of stopping and millennials flooding into the workplace–plus Filipinos’ desire to spend quality time with family and loved ones–work-life integration is here to stay.  

The post Work-Life Balance is Dead. Go for Work-Life Integration Instead appeared first on Sprout.

source https://sprout.ph/blog/work-life-balance-is-dead-go-for-work-life-integration-instead/