Principled Positions: What Start-Ups Reveal About Values-Based Jobs

There was a time when you could offer promising job candidates high salaries, corner offices and other materialistic perks and be guaranteed that they’d join your company. These days, many young professionals look for a corporate culture that rewards personal and workplace values over monetary gains.

Millennials generally want to make positive contributions to society and feel like their work is important to the world, not just to a corporation’s bottom line. Moreover, many yearn to be creative, avoiding rigid hierarchies in favor of environments where everyone can offer ideas.

The Influence of Start-Ups

Start-up companies frequently embrace such beliefs. It’s little wonder, then, that so many recent graduates flock to these establishments. Start-ups commonly give new employees major responsibilities and the authority to control funds.

Many of these businesses are starting to offer incentives that will attract talent in their job descriptions. For example, employers will offer paid time off for their employees to volunteer for their favorite charity. Or employers will give an in-kind contribution when employees donate to a cause.

The Strength of WBEs

Every day, women launch more than 1,000 businesses in the United States. Between 1997 and 2015, the total number of such companies went up 74 percent. As a result, about 46 percent of private American companies are now either half, mostly or completely owned by women.

What accounts for the staggering success of women’s business enterprises (WBEs)? Female executives tend to be excellent managers: confident, savvy and extremely knowledgeable about their industries. At the same time, they frequently assist one another, and sometimes they even help out their competitors.

In addition, women are often supremely efficient, knowing just how much time to give to various tasks. Perhaps they possess a special intuition because they’re used to juggling a great many responsibilities in their professional and personal lives.

Since many female business owners pursue bold goals while maintaining their integrity, they especially appeal to millennials.

Values in Your Office

No matter what business you’re in, your company can attract those who crave workplace values. Consider your job opening advertisements: In those ads, stress your overall mission and the specific ways your firm improves people’s lives.

To the greatest extent possible, give your employees decision-making power. Also, encourage staff members of all ages and experience levels to collaborate with one another, and always be transparent in terms of the corporate strategies you pursue. By making these moves, you might do more than entice millennials. You might find yourself falling in love with your work all over again.

Contact Madison Approach Staffing today for help with attracting talent and making your next great hire!

Compensation Challenges in a Multi-Generational Workplace

A multi-generational office can be enriching for all team members, but it also presents unique challenges to effective management. Beyond matching compensation levels to experience and responsibilities, employers also now have to take into account the different compensation preferences of up to five generations. When it comes to attracting and retaining a talented team, employers need to consider compensation factors that go beyond the paycheck.

Younger generations are less likely to build a life-long career at one company, and so they value career development and personal growth.

When identifying incentives for millennial workers, employers can consider funding their LinkedIn accounts, relaxing the office dress code, or sponsoring happy hours where younger employees can connect with more experienced staff.

Recent research has shown that Generation X’s priorities lie in managing their work-life balance, and many will consider sacrificing higher pay for jobs that are less demanding of their time. For Generation X, paid time off is a significant incentive. Meanwhile, Baby Boomers are generally less interested in social incentives, and will be more focused on benefits and matches in retirement plans or pension programs. While experienced-based compensation is expected, additional incentives can help retain employees across all generations.

Contact Madison Approach Staffing today to discuss how our Direct Hire, Temp to Hire, Temp Staffing, Training, Payroll Transfers and Benefits Administration services can benefit your business.

 

Madison Approach’s 80/20 Rule for Smarter Hiring Decisions

As the job market continues to tighten up, finding qualified and flexible new hires is more important than ever. Making hiring decisions can be stressful, especially as you try to weigh a candidate’s interpersonal qualities alongside his or her experience. Madison Approach encourages following the 80/20 rule when evaluating potential employees. Instead of looking for the perfect candidate who fulfills one hundred percent of your expectations, consider past experience and future potential. With the right management, a candidate who fulfills 80% of your most valued skills can be trained on-site to succeed in the field.

Tapping Your Employee Network’s Professional Network

Social media has proven to be the new wave of connections, however many companies discourage their employees from checking their Twitter and LinkedIn on company time. Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, authors of ‘The Alliance,” propose a new kind of networked intelligence that might just have managers and business owners embracing social media as a new path to increasing company knowledge.

By choosing to incorporate technology and online interaction, instead of fighting it, both managers and employees can expand their network, make important connections for the company and increase their awareness of new trends and people in the know.

Reid Hoffman’s presentation, “Network Intelligence: Your Company Can’t Thrive Without It,” hits the major points of the book.

“Information and insight from people you know that can give you a competitive advantage.”

In short, Hoffman describes the alliance as a situation where no one loses. The company gains knowledge and the employee gains experience in networking and expands their professional network. The company has access to double; sometimes triple, the amount of information, as it would if individuals only limited themselves to resources in their own company. The example Hoffman uses of a company that practices the alliance method is HubSpot. HubSpot celebrates the number of Twittter followers or LinkedIn connections an employee has. In using this method, “Hubspot attracts two times the number of candidates for job opportunities it posts on LinkedIn.” HubSpot owner and Founder, Dharmesh Shah, says, “My one regret is that we didn’t put the Learning Meals policy in place from the start at HubSpot.” The Learning Meals program provides the opportunity for employees to dine with individuals in their field on company time and money, providing that employees bring back information and share the new knowledge with the rest of the company. Some of the most valuable information is shared via person-to-person contact. Google is informative, but it doesn’t hold all of the knowledge on a subject that an individual does.

“When it comes to knowledge in a highly networked era, who you know is often more valuable than what you‘ve read.”

Just because the information you’re looking for doesn’t show up on the first five pages of Google, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Interacting with knowledgeable professionals in your field usually leads to more answers, because it can be tailored directly to your needs. Networking is something that is highly valued in general and Hoffman points out that networking goes far beyond just the individual. Encouraging your employees to work for you, and themselves, is becoming a new way of thinking. It helps upper level management problem solve quickly and efficiently, allows employees to help grow the company and more importantly, themselves. Gaining network intelligence through an alliance is a necessity for companies to stay competitive. Also, it serves as a means of growth for employees, which could lead to individuals staying longer in a company in the future.

How do you tap into your employees’ resources to grow your business? We’d love to hear about how you empower your employees, utilize their connections and think up new ways to solve your business challenges.