Bi-Weekly Roundup: 5/18 - 6/1

Between personalized job descriptions, the importance of lunch breaks, and the Philadelphia Starbucks training session costing the company... hundreds? All that and more in this week's Bi-Weekly Roundup!

Personalized job descriptions are the next step.

Today, everything around us is personalized - playlists, TV, cars. So why is personalization ignored when it comes time to hire? In many organizations, the recruitment process is structured and formal. This prevents new hires from growing and exceeding where they excel. They often end up stuck in predefined roles. Job personalization that is fitting to employees rather than fitting employees to the jobs is a great way to maximize engagement. Creating new jobs around individuals is necessary and can mostly be applied to three different types of personas: the altruistic, the big thinkers, and the creatives. However, each persona will require a different approach.

Find out what each approach entails here.

Onboarding can make or break a good employee experience.

Onboarding has evolved from a quick tour and paperwork. It’s become a longer process that now has a focus on cultural alignment and employee acclimation - that’s why getting it right matters. Though an employee’s first impression may come from their interview, the lasting impression comes from how they are integrated into the organization. Many high-tech tools have been introduced in recent years and promise to make onboarding as efficient as possible, but personality and performance still require a human touch. That’s why the challenge of “getting it right” is still a present obstacle for HR departments.

To get a refresher of all things onboarding check out these five blogs listed here.

Should you take a lunch break? The answer is yes.

Often times, hardworking employees might skip lunch to complete a project. While that immediate benefit would get the project done, it could affect the productivity of that individual in the future. Even if employees work through lunch, it’s only time until the burnout sets in. In contrast, 90 percent of employees who take lunch breaks regularly are found to be more productive. How can managers break the habit of skipping lunch? By encouraging employees to take lunch breaks and redesigning company culture, managers can eliminate the stigma that “breaks are for slackers” and increase their team’s productivity.

Do you feel like your manager would think less of you for taking a lunch break? You’re not alone.

Read more about the numbers here.

Employees yearn to be empowered with self-service.

A recent Paychex survey found that 73 percent of full-time U.S. workers expect their employer to provide a higher level of self-service, which allows them to complete HR-related tasks like changing an address, checking a time-off balance and requesting time off, viewing a paystub, or even adjusting a 401(k) balance. The survey also found that about half of employers with less than 500 employees do not currently offer these services. A shift from being tech-enabled to being tech-dependant has caused employees to be increasingly independent. This shift is good news for HR leaders because it can free up their time to focus on strategic priorities like employee engagement and retaining talent.

Does your organization already have these self-service HR tools in place?

You can read more about the survey here.

How much will Starbucks’ racial-bias training cost the company?

The decision to close the stores was made in April after a Starbucks manager called police on two men sitting in a Philadelphia Starbucks because they hadn’t purchased anything.They were later released because there was no basis for criminal charge, and Starbucks put together a training initiative that was provided across the country “designed to address implicit bias, promote conscious inclusion, prevent discrimination, and ensure everyone inside a Starbucks store feels safe and welcome.” So how much will this incident of racial-bias cost them? Not much actually. The average sales of a U.S. Starbucks location is around $4,400 a day. Since they are closing only for the afternoon when sales are normally slow, they could lose about $650 to $850 at each location. That's roughly $7 million across all 8,000 company owned stores in the U.S. and only a small part out of the company’s estimated $24.4 billion forecast in total revenue for 2018.

If this half day of training is costing Starbucks nearly nothing, imagine how much they could have saved by including this training in their onboarding process before the incident.

To find out more about the incident and Starbucks response, click here.

Interested to read more? Here's a throwback to a Bi-Weekly from the beginning of the year!