Candidates and future employees are now seeking to integrate companies in which they will be considered and supported. Beyond the “traditional” choice criteria (salary, benefits, location, etc.), candidates give an importance to the values the company conveys (responsibility, corporate citizenship, equality, respect for the environment, etc.) as well as working conditions. Thus, since the first stages of their recruitment, and throughout their entire career in the company, employees want to live an interesting and motivating experience.
The candidate experience: the first impression is often the right one
The experience that a candidate will experience throughout his recruitment process until his integration will give him an image of the company, which he will consider in his decision.
The importance of the employer branding
The employer brand represents the identity of the company and conveys its values, culture or reputation from an HR perspective.
This employer brand, which must be developed from the inside and is visible from the outside, is important for the recruitment of new talents. Indeed, it must show all candidates the involvement of its employees, its development dynamics and its benefits to boost the attraction of the company.
To do this, be sure to develop your online networks like LinkedIn and Glassdoor where your employees will give their opinions, share news of the company and participate in the recruitment process. You can also show the authenticity of your company by sharing, via your external communication, the internal events of the company, the social initiatives of the employees, etc. It is also one of the first places where candidates come to learn about your company.
An efficient and modern recruitment process
After having attracted the attention of the talents, it is now necessary to offer them an innovative recruitment experience adapted to the image of your company you want to give.
If the career website is a “Must Have” for a company, there are several tools available to optimize the recruitment process. For example, a Chatbot who accompanies the candidate journey on your career website. He will be able to check the candidate’s CV, automatically propose him the most suitable job offers for his profile or answer his questions.
Video pre-interviews are also a good way to provide candidates with an unexpected experience, while improving your performance and HR results.
Monitoring applications through an optimized process allows you, internally, to cover the entire recruitment cycle. You will be able to follow the applications at each stage, study the best profiles, reduce the recruitment delays or share the profiles with the concerned managers. These features are accessible through an integrated tool in your HRIS with a positive impact on your productivity.
Despite the use of these tools, remember that the human contact always makes the difference: constructive exchanges, clear and responsive answers to questions, …
Onboarding, a step not to be skipped
Onboarding is the step of integrating a new candidate into a new company, team and position. This step is important for a new joiner, but also for his managers, colleagues and HR. It’s the first step of the integration and involvement of a new employee, the formalization with internal processes, the meeting of other employees and the discovery of the corporate culture.
The Onboarding phase can take several forms:
- Sharing of documents and booklets,
- Collaborative spaces online,
- Events for integration and meeting with the teams,
- Access to an online information center.
This process can be digitized and automated to provide a personalized experience for new talent while reducing the HR workload. An HRIS like SAP SuccessFactors offers the possibility to add an Onboarding module allowing the employee to find all the information during his integration phase.
You can suggest to the future colleague to virtually meet his colleagues, discuss and exchange with them, add content (videos, Mooc, tutorials, articles) to inform as much as possible and in a fun way your new joiner and especially develop the creation of social link.
This phase of Onboarding is the first step in the experience you offer to your talent as a new joiner. Now, it’s about maintaining a rich and interesting experience all along his life in your company.
Develop the employee experience
Career monitoring and development
After offering a convincing experience during the recruitment and onboarding process, the new employee will expect the same level of experience in developing his career internally.
The management of training and learning is an important aspect of career development: it develops the skills of an employee, to extend his scope of actions, to improve his performance, to motivate him and show the importance you give to him. For all these reasons, the employee will naturally develop involvement and recognition towards your company while improving his overall experience.
Training is also an important element for Millennials, who focus on personal development, skills and performance.
In addition, certain tools allow to follow the objectives and the performance of the employees, but also to manage the process of attribution of the bonuses, to manage the professional expenses or to store all their HR documents (contracts, salaries …) on a digital platform. All these solutions offer your employees a personalized, innovative and digital experience, taking into account their needs and expectations.
Consider employee opinions and feedback
To give your employees the experience they want, we must first look at their opinion and their feelings.
Your employees are the first concerned by the experience you want to offer them, so you must evaluate if their expectations are related to what you offer.
To do this, you can use anonymous internal surveys to be sent bi-annually, but also encourage your managers to collect the opinions of their teams throughout the year or during annual interviews. The internal collaborative platforms thus make it possible to collect data on employee engagement and job satisfaction.
Employee engagement: the absolute priority
An employee’s experience can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. In fact, engaged and fulfilled employees will be more interested in sharing their well-being at work around them. By working on employee engagement, HRDs act directly on the performance of the company.
Employee engagement is beneficial on several points:
- Better productivity and better performance,
- Increased talent retention,
- A professional well-being that shares and improves the employer brand,
- An improvement of the image of your company,
- An improvement in the trust of your customers (a company that takes care of its employees, is more likely to take care of its customers).
In conclusion, a faster development of your business and a positive corporate image.
Engagement can be developed through career training and coaching, international mobility, work atmosphere, flexibility and autonomy of employees.
As this article demonstrates, the main goal of an HR department is to make its employees ambassadors who take full part in the development of the company.
Today, Human Resources must invest in their employees through a rewarding experience. But they also have the mission to optimize this employee journey by improving the working conditions, the environment and the well-being of the employees, this is what we call the Smart Working.
