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How Australian organisations are stepping forward

28/05/2020/in Employer Branding, Healthcare, News, Not-for-profit /by Victoria McGlynn

The past few months have certainly been disruptive. After so much change, we wanted to share some positive news stories about how Australian organisations have been adjusting. Here’s what REDI.E, City of Nedlands and Employment Office are doing to adapt, adjust, look after their team members and invest in their long-term talent strategies.

Promoting employer branding and talent pooling

One of our clients, Regional Enterprise Development Institute (REDI.E), is an Indigenous owned and managed organisation delivering training and community services in the Murdi Paaki region (Western NSW) to Indigenous communities.

In light of the escalating COVID-19 crisis, REDI.E made the difficult decision to cease all program operations in March, for the safety and protection of the most vulnerable people in NSW.

CEO, Tracey Shillingsworth, said, “We had to take a proactive approach to protecting our communities and use better delivery methods to continue our most important services and support.”

Tracey Shillingsworth, CEO, REDI.E

The team has embraced virtual technology and alternative service delivery methods. Tracey has helped the organisation adapt by bringing the power of community to the forefront in an isolating environment. REDI.E called on age-old traditions and the collaborative endeavours of their esteemed Elders: talking, keeping communities informed and ensuring they receive valuable feedback.

With respect to their recruitment strategy, REDI.E is using this time to proactively build their talent pool and keep potential candidates warm and engaged through email marketing and social media.

“Talent pooling is very important to us because we have such a wide exposure of work opportunities in Western NSW. Talent pooling allows me and the senior executive team to communicate with the right people and not waste months advertising for roles. Our whole recruitment process has been significantly reduced. It’s fantastic for employers to know that there are candidates in your pipeline who are already familiar with and appreciate your brand and are interested to work with the community.”

REDI.E is continuing to promote and share their employer brand and Employee Value Proposition (EVP). They’re sharing honest stories about the challenges their team members and communities have faced with physical distancing restrictions and working from home. (A number of news sources have shared why organisation should promote employee stories now more than ever.)

“We’ve provided our team with a lot of flexibility. Our team is very skilled and we’ve been providing additional leadership, mentoring and support for them during this time.”

Embracing work-from-home and eLearning solutions

Aside from talent pooling, other organisations have used the past few months as an opportunity to invest internally in their team through digital learning solutions.

City of Nedlands was fortunate to implement their eLearning platform prior to lockdown going into place in March. They managed to make the work-from-home switch quite efficiently.

“We managed that change quite well by identifying everyone who could work from home, making the transition in three days!” said Shelley Mettam, Manager – Human Resources and Organisational Development. “We have a great IT department and we’re mostly working from the cloud.”

Shelley Mettam, Manager Human Resources & Organisational Development, City of Nedlands

“Now, we’re phasing back onsite work and we have some outdoor workers, but not everyone will return or work from the office at once. Our team has a good capacity to work from home and we’ve set them up with all the tools they need to work effectively.”

While their team members have been working hard, City of Nedlands has used this opportunity to offer training.

“We’ve started offering training to our management team and we have plans to expand this out. There is certain mandatory training, such as fraud, that everyone has to have. We plan to have a training library where people can self-select the topics they’re interested in learning about. We’re going to obtain feedback from managers about what kind of training they think their team would be interested in.”

Making the switch from in-person conferences, seminars and meetings to eLearning has helped them make cost savings.

“It’s certainly helped our budget; it’s a very cost-effective method of delivering training. Even as restrictions ease, we want to encourage our people to do online learning and webinars instead of meeting in large groups. We did some thought-awareness training and everyone found the system very easy to use.”

The Council is currently making arrangements to facilitate the transition back to the office.

“It’s an ongoing process and we’ll likely offer work-from-home options for our people into the future. We have a rotating roster of people coming in and out, and we’re taking a flexible approach to start times. We’re working with managers to determine who can work from home. It’s an opportunity for us to free up parking, reduce long commute times, and offer our people greater flexibility.”

Increasing engagement through corporate wellness initiatives

At Employment Office, we’ve experienced a number of changes too. While our team members were working from home, we’ve hosted fun virtual events outside of office hours, as well as only daily video conferencing to share good news stories and stay connected.

As we’ve returned to the office, we’ve establishing seating arrangements so everyone is at a safe and comfortable distance, increased cleaning initiatives, free parking, hand sanitising stations, and recommendations to wash hands, limit meeting areas and comply with physical distancing regulations.

We’ve also kicked off a new initiative to increase engagement through corporate wellness. Our home-grown charity Healthy Workplaces designed a new, free app, called Step Forward. The Step Forward app that’s keeping people across Australia and around the world active and engaged by encouraging them to reach 10 000 steps per day.

Get involved in Step Forward!

We’ve had a number of sponsors and participants from all around Australia. Participants can join the sponsored event weeks, and take as many steps as possible for the chance to win prizes.

“The second week of the Step Forward challenge was sponsored by my organisation,” said Susanne Mather, Executive Director for Employment Office. “I thought this is a sporting event that I can actually win! And that was very fun and exciting.”

Susie Mather, Executive Director, Employment Office

Interestingly, many people don’t reach the recommended minimum 10 000 steps per day.

“I was really surprised when everyone started on the Step Forward App that, not only was I not averaging 10 000 steps per day (which I thought I would have been!) but no one was. That was a big realisation for us all.”

Interestingly, our people have found that health initiatives like these have positive, unexpected flow-on benefits.

“During the week I averaged 32 000 steps per day, what I found was that it had a long-term residual effect on my fitness,” said Susanne. “Ever since then I’ve been stronger and fitter, which has been great!”

Feedback from our team members has been that they’ve loved participating in the weekly walking challenges.

“I really liked being able to see where everyone was at,” said our Shortlisting & Selection Team Leader Christie Pollock. “That gave me more motivation to keep walking (sometimes well into the night!). And although I felt like I needed a week to recover, I’m aiming to make 10 000 steps per day my new normal.”

Andrea Davey, CEO of Scout Talent Group, participating in Step Forward

During this period of re-adjustment, many organisations are using this time to adapt and invest in long-term initiatives for the future. Changes to the workplace will flow from these realignments, and those that prioritise physical and mental safety of their employees will succeed.

If you’re interested in exploring talent pooling, eLearning, or corporate wellness solutions, contact us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.

How talent pools improve your recruitment processes

18/03/2020/in Employer Branding, News /by Victoria McGlynn

Talent pools are a beneficial, proactive approach to talent acquisition. A talent pool is a database of candidate profiles interested in working for your organisation. They can be a limited group with a specific area of expertise, or a broad group capable of performing a variety of tasks.

There are a number of reasons talent pools are becoming more widespread in recruitment marketing strategy.

1. Reducing the cost of recruitment

While talent pools take time to build, if they’re built correctly they can greatly reduce your recruitment costs. Talent pools reduce or eliminate the need to need to advertise. A recent study found that recruitment costs could be reduced by up to 50% when using talent pools.

2. Reducing time to hire

Talent pools save you time, as you’ve already screened, selected and prequalified a group of candidates. Talent pools allow you to quickly fill a role with the right candidate, with minimal effort from hiring managers and less impact on your day-to-day business. Research has found that 50% of organisations using talent pools had reduced their time to hire.

3. Identify quality candidates for the future

Having a qualified talent pool helps you identify future potential candidates before you need a role filled. A high-quality talent pool is one where you are continually connecting with talent and updating them with relevant, engaging information, and continuing to grow it by bringing in new, diverse talent.

Whether you’re looking to speed up the recruitment process, reduce cost or identify skill sets, talent pooling is an excellent solution. At Employment Office, we have built our own talent pools and have seen positive results.

“Since we started treating recruitment as a sales process, we’ve been able to funnel talent into one database, our talent pool. As a result, we’ve reduced our recruitment time and costs while nurturing and developing relationships with candidates.” Tudor Marsden-Huggins, Employment Office Managing Director.

How to create your own talent pools

There are a number of different resources to use and factors to consider when developing your own talent pools. Here’s what you need to keep in mind.

Collect and manage candidate data: Plan how you will collect and manage candidate information. Will you use an Applicant Tracking System or manually collect data? Great recruitment software gives you the ability to segment talent pools based on skills and experience, and provides a platform to send communications with ease. When communicating with your talent pool, software gives you greater control and accuracy, and is often easier and more effective to use than data on spreadsheets.
Publish an “Expression of Interest” form: Having an expression of interest form on your careers site is a quick and simple way to capture candidate data, even if you don’t have any current vacancies. It allows both passive and active job seekers to express their interest in working for your organisation.
Post regular job advertisements: Posting regular, branded recruitment advertisements to stay front of mind for active candidates and will result in a steady stream of applications, who you can add to your talent pool and keep in touch with personalised recruitment marketing content.
Utilise social media: Social media adds another touch point with potential candidates and enables you to grow your talent pools. Interact with potential employees through social media channels, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Share your expression of interest form and recruitment advertisements to continue to grow your talent pools.
Implement Google Adwords campaigns: Google Ads don’t just work for regular marketing. It’s great for recruitment marketing too and increasing brand awareness.

Decide how to segment your talent pools, based on your recruitment needs and the resources you have available. You might like to create a large talent pool of all candidates who have applied for role with your organisation (who do not currently work in your organisation) to send general recruitment marketing content to. Alternatively, you might like to create smaller talent pools based on skills, experience or location. You can also establish exclusions, so candidates who were ineligible for your roles, or duplicate profiles, are not included.

Designing a content strategy and communication plan

To get the most from your talent pool, determine how often you want to communicate with candidates.

Depending on your organisation’s needs and if you have the resources and skills in place, you can design a more sophisticated, advanced communication strategy. An engaging content marketing plan keeps potential candidates warm, well-informed and excited about the prospect of working for your organisation.

Create communication templates: Having branded communication templates in place ensures you’re keeping your communication with candidates consistent and on-brand. For example, you may like to design templates for sharing a job vacancy, or sharing a piece of interesting content.
Conduct an employer branding project: Establishing your Employee Value Value Propositions (EVPs) makes it easier to design content that promotes your core messaging and connect with your ideal candidates.
Consider your upcoming recruitment needs: Understanding the roles you need to fill will help you design content in line with the type of talent you need to attract. For example, if you regularly recruit people to join your customer service team, you can incorporate employee profile stories that showcase a “day in the life” of these roles.
Assign a dedicated content manager: Sending relevant, timely communication takes dedicated work and planning. Regular communication with your talent pool can easily fall off the radar without a dedicated content manager. Assign someone the responsibility of designing your content marketing plan, making updates to your talent pool, and managing any responses you receive from candidates. Do you have a dedicated content specialist or someone in your marketing team with the capacity and skills to execute this strategy? If not, consider outsourcing this responsibility to an external specialist to work with you and support your strategy.

Create a structured process for reviewing applications and communicating with candidates who have submitted an expression of interest form. Set clear expectations from the start; being part of your talent community does not guarantee people a role in your organisation, but is a way to keep in touch and stay up to date with new opportunities.

Talent pools are a proactive recruitment initiative that will help you find great candidates in a shorter time frame, without spending big bucks. You’ll develop better relationships with potential candidates and be able to fill positions as they become available, instead of scrambling to find candidates. Although they take some time to build and develop, the long-term payoff can be priceless.

At Employment Office, we have experienced Recruitment Marketing Specialists and advanced talent pooling software to help you design an effective strategy. Find out more about our talent pooling solution here.

Do you need support building talent pools and designing an engaging content marketing strategy? Schedule a discussion with our Recruitment Advertising Specialists here, call us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.