Hiring in a Workforce Recovering From COVID
The Covid-19 pandemic has presented several challenges, especially to businesses and companies that require a large workforce. Fortunately, the introduction of the virus’s vaccine has shed some light on hope on humanity, and the world is beginning to get back on its feet. As businesses and companies resume their duties, the major burden lies on the human resource team, especially when it comes to hiring in a covid recovering world. What are the procedures to be followed? What precautions must be taken? How do they identify the right candidates? All these questions are quite confusing, but this article tries to answer them in detail. The following are some things that HR managers need to understand to make the process of hiring in a covid recovering world as smooth as possible.
Pace the Onboarding Process
New employees need as much time as possible to familiarize themselves with what the company does. Considering the many regulations stipulated by the World Health Organization (WHO) to reduce the spread of Covid-19, these employees will most likely receive virtual onboarding help. It would be beneficial to do things that will speed up the setting up of their remote offices and ensuring their tech runs without any issues. Setting up weekly face-to-face meetings with the management is a sure way of giving the new employees enough accurate information.
Additionally, you can opt for chat platforms, such as Skype, Slack, and Google Chat, and implementing phone calls. Some employers are going a step further to provide VR tours of their physical offices to help the new employees connect with the business. You can also use Zoom or Google Hangouts to conduct themed social events, virtual happy hours, and professional development opportunities to enhance the relationship between your employees. Such events positively impact employee retention, promote teamwork, and grow the employee’s skill set.
Familiarize Yourself with Concern on Social Distancing
During this pandemic season, one of the concerns that new employees may have, especially during the interview, is how close they sit to each other. However, it is recommendable to focus on making them feel they are in a safe and comfortable new environment within their first weeks at work. Moreover, the interview and onboarding processes must also be conducted along those lines. The best way to make the hiring and onboarding process feel safe and comfortable is by conducting them virtually. Some of the best platforms you can use for online hiring and onboarding include Go to Meeting, Zoom, and Jackrabbit.
However, to use such platforms, you will be required to procure internet for businesses. Authorities such as World Health Organization (WHO) have set clear rules about minimizing physical interactions to curb the Corona virus’s spread. If the new employee must report to a physical location, you are advised to pick one that promotes social distancing and minimizes physical contact.
Communication via phone calls, emails, faxes, and instant messages are a few ways to achieve minimal physical interactions in your company or business. Additionally, you must also be concerned about the indoor air quality, implying that your commercial premise should be effectively ventilated.
Practice Equity When Hiring
Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, equity was among the most discussed topics when hiring new employees. Other topics included diversity and inclusion. The support and concern you show to marginalized communities as an employer have a significant impact. The first rule to remember is that people are going through stressful and challenging times. Therefore, it would be fair to be empathetic, transparent, and flexible when recruiting, hiring, and onboarding procedures.
You need to focus on creating the most comfortable and convenient for your employees by including them in the policies and procedures. Additionally, you should have some arrangements to address the employee’s concerns about the virus. For instance, you could allow parents to shift their working hours to take care of their children or creating a home office that allows your employees to work remotely.
Which Different Skills Do you Need in Your Company?
The covid-19 pandemic has forced a significant number of people to adapt to working from home. Therefore, hiring managers should consider which additional skills will be beneficial to their organizations. If you are hiring in a covid recovering world and looking for people who will be working from home, you must ensure they possess the skills that make working from home a success.
The thumb rule here is not everyone is skilled enough to work remotely. As a hiring manager, you are advised to base your questions on several factors. Such factors include the candidate’s self-motivation, resourcefulness, skill level, and how autonomous they are. The candidate should answer these questions appropriately, both verbally and in written communication.
Communication is Key
When offering recruiting services, you must ensure the candidates have a nice experience of your company. Your marketing and communications teams should come up with clear hiring communications to help enhance the candidate’s experience of your organization. You can also decide to include crisis communications in your messaging as a way of communicating the impact that Covid-19 has had on job seekers and your company.
The candidate’s experience is also enhanced by ensuring you follow up on them even if they did not land a job in your company. Be clear on when the interviewees will get a reply from you. Sometimes you might get a candidate whom you think highly of, but you cannot give them a job in your organization. In such instances, you may refer them to another company or share freelancing opportunities with them. Your company’s website should also communicate clearly to the candidate how you operate during this global pandemic. You can achieve this by improving your FAQs section and explaining how one can benefit by working in your organization.
Develop New Interview Practices
Getting clear information at the right time helps prospective applicants to decide whether they are fit for the announced vacancy. You can portray such information on your website appropriately by procuring a digital signage solution. This is a great way to save time for both the hiring manager and the candidates. Provide precise information about how your company has stayed afloat when it comes to hiring in a covid recovering world. Put yourself in the shoes of a job seeker amidst a global pandemic and develop ways of helping them.
Try to remodel your interviewing process and make it more accessible. Some of the best ways to achieve that include sharing some interview questions in advance and giving details on how your company has overcome different challenges during these hard pandemic times. Experts advise you to use behavioral questions in your interview. Such questions will help you gather more details about how to fit the candidate is to work remotely and how best they adapt to difficult times.
You can ask the interviewee how they deal with certain issues, balance work with life when working remotely, how they deal to solve a fall in productivity, what they can do to win government awarded contracts, among other queries.
Develop Opportunities for Social Interactions
WHO directed people to avoid physical gatherings in a bid to curb the spread of Coronavirus. Limitations for such social interactions should push you to develop ways in which your employees can interact virtually. As a company, you are responsible for encouraging your teams to develop creative ways of staying in touch with each other every day. Such ways could include online fitness, book, movie clubs, weekly stand-up meetings, and remote happy hours.
The main purpose of such connections is to give the new hires a sense of belonging, more so for those working remotely. The need for socialization is immense, even for employees working off-site. This is most especially important when it comes to informing new employees about the company’s culture. The existing and new employees get a chance to be comfortable with each other through virtual meetings and social activities conducted via different platforms, such as Zoom.
Recruiting New Employees during the Covid-19 Outbreak
The process of recruiting is different from how it was before this pandemic started. Hiring managers are switching to video chats instead of traditional face-to-face interviews and conversations. The future of the process of hiring in a covid recovering world is unknown. Therefore, employers need to strategize until face-to-face meetings are allowed adequately. The strategies explained below will help you recruit, hire, and onboard new employees effectively.
Spread the Word That You Are Hiring
After the pandemic came and most companies shut down their operations, most of the job seekers assumed there were no companies left that were hiring in a covid recovering world. Therefore, you must invest in getting the word out that you need new employees, may it be accountants, procurement officers, commercial builders, or any other vacancy. There are different ways to do this. You can post about the job openings on your website, advertise the vacancies on social media, or get your current employees to pass the word around using their social media.
Have a Detailed Recruitment Procedure
Remote hiring in a covid recovering world has some challenges that are not present in in-person hiring. However, recruitment services providers offer assistance. As a hiring manager, you owe the company and potential employees a recruitment procedure that will work. Virtual recruiting means you use video calls to conduct interviews. Once you have a list of the candidates to be interviewed, you are required to send a video call invitation with all the required information. Such details could include the time and date of the call and who will call whom. Additionally, share the video call’s link and explain whether the position is permanently or temporarily remote.
Be Realistic
The offer you give for the available position must not change, even though times are tough for companies and businesses globally. There should be no modifications or reservations on the offer you present to the candidates while hiring in a covid recovering world. Be clear about any anticipated changes that might occur after the pandemic. Explain further any benefits that the employees will enjoy while working for you, for instance, getting doctors for adults services or getting a cover from an insurance agency.
Focus on Skills for Working Remotely
It is unclear when people will go back to in-office working. Therefore, as a representative of your company, it would be best to look for skills that make remote working possible. Probably the pandemic will be gone after some time, and companies will resume working from the office. Therefore, recruiting employees with remote working skills now will guarantee a smooth transition once it’s time for them to get to the office. Additionally, that will significantly reduce the learning curve and increase their productivity. You can even opt to make some of the jobs you are advertising completely remote so that you get an individual with the preferred skills. However, some jobs, such as building installation, cannot be done remotely.
Check the Existing Candidate Pool
During this pandemic, you might get an application from an individual who has applied for a job in your organization some time back. That is what is referred to as the candidate pool. Shifting your focus on this category of applicants can help you avoid an active recruiting campaign. Using this approach will allow your company the time and space to recruit new employees who willfully embrace new initiatives once the pandemic is over and businesses have resumed back to normal.
Customer or product development needs are the main reasons why some companies are proceeding with their hiring procedures while hiring in a covid recovering world. However, talent acquisition and onboarding processes have become a challenge for many employers as they struggle to adhere to the set regulations to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Their main concern is what they should do during these processes to ensure that prospective and new employees have a safe and comfortable environment.
This article has dived deeply into this matter, and you can get a clear picture of what to do to make the recruiting, hiring, and onboarding procedures as smooth as possible. Another issue that arises is that some employers do not understand how to deal with the recruiting process’s transformations. This process has undergone some significant changes, especially after the Coronavirus pandemic hit the world. Therefore, the article also covers the steps and strategies to implement to ensure the effective recruiting, hiring, and onboarding process. Follow the steps keenly, and your recruiting process for hiring in a covid recovering world will be a walk in the park.