Tag: HR

Hr Policy Development Is Perfect For Running Organisation Smoothly

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All companies have their HR policy development. These policies are very significant for because help in overriding all facets of employment within the orgamnisation. The company has to draft policy to deal with the issues like drug policy, workplace violence, records management, hiring, firing, disciplinary procedures, and many others.

In order to run the company, they plan HR strategies and policies, which are drafted according to law of the land where company where it is situated. The writer or drafters of structural review of HR policy and enterprises agreement they must write or draft some of the policies or strategies from global point of view but they must not forget local perspective must be considered while drafting and writing HR reporting.

These policies set effective guidelines for every facet of involvements within the organization which must match with the organizational vision and culture. These drafted policies need to review at regular interval of time in order to maintain alignment with basic laws of governing employment and to accommodate organizational changes.

In the recent years, HR organisation across the globe have become tech-savvy and HR staff is now free from irritating of repetitive and dull administrative to give more emphasis on human resource development programs which objective is to increase employee productivity, performance and retention. Now the most of the companies have increased the value of the most important assets that is employees. They have increased their skills, activities, and incentives with business objectives and strategies as well.
Some of the most important factors are competency, career development, recruitment, performance management and succession planning, which are very important for every organisation. Additionally, the right software, clean data and accurate execution are main responsible factors for success which are commonly often ignored. But one must always remember that these effective elements require the complete knowledge that changing technology alone will achieve little. Change management always begins delivering its value but is only possible when it is supported by and integrated with other components of the infrastructure, which are part of an explicit HR strategy.

The main function of change management programs is to allow organisation to assess and check the maximum use of updates and changes take place in software, operating systems or application platforms in the computer and networking systems of the organisation. Whatever changes taken place, it must be approved within an hour before they can be implemented. The management program is used for handling a robotic request to change (RFC) that prevent the IT department or management team from handling the issues case-by-case basis.

The HR strategy is to align the objective of HR to the goals or strategy of the organisation like recruitment, retention and termination are a small part of it. While developing or drafting HR strategies two main questions must be answered. First is to define that want kind of people require for managing and running business in order to meet the goal of organisation and other is what type of program should be designed, drafted and executed to attract, develop and retain the employee for competing effectively and successfully.

For answering these four important questions, four key features of organization must be remembered, which are flowing:

1)Culture: the beliefs, values, norms and managing style of the organization
2)Organization: the structure, job roles and reporting lines of the organization
3)Workforce: the skill levels, staff latent and management potential
4)Human resources systems: the people focused mechanisms which deliver the strategy – employee selection, communications, training, rewards, career development, etc.

Employee Background Screening -2

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Founded in 1993, Onicra has been a leader in the field of corporate consultancy and human resource services. Onicra has been dedicated to providing a viable commercial identity and human-resource related expertise to companies, commercial corporations and commercial institutions. At Onicra, the human resource services and consultations utilize powerful and accurate statistical tools to facilitate accurate analytical and inferential data, thus correctly rating and assessing potential for commercial growth and performance. To this date, some of Indias biggest and most respected companies like Mahindra & Mahindra, Volkswagen, HDFC Bank and Genpact form an illustrious resume of Onicras clientele.

Among its numerous consequential industry-oriented services, Onicra offers the services of Employee background screening. These are in the nature of extensive pre employment checks initiated by Onicra for a particular employee to assess his/her potential for growth, commercial aptitude and efficiency. Onicra goes through extensive personalized individual data, records, achievement statements, certificates and appraisals for each candidate to generate a unique rating, which is extremely accurate by industry standards. Onicra has developed its own system of ratings, using powerful analytical and statistical tools like the PRTS (Performance Rating and Tracking System), enabling an almost spot-on assessment of the potential and the job-worthiness of an employee.

The pre employment screening process facilitated by Onicra assists companies and commercial corporations identify and cultivate the best, most talented and efficient personnel as their workforce. To do this, Onicra maintains an extensive database that tracks and keeps tally of even the minutest relevant details of an employee that could affect or influence his professional career. By setting high standards for quality for the pre employment verification process, Onicra eliminates the possibilities of having wrong people at the wrong jobs, or possibilities of employee incompetence, ineligibility and incompatibility. The vast benefits of the extremely essential employee background screening processes directly accrue to the HR departments, who become free to direct their resources to training and honing employees.

The employee background screening procedures instituted and implemented by Onicra helps to maintain a level of trust between the employer and the employee. These protect companies against fraudulent employees, identity theft and dangers possibly arising from misrepresentation of vital information. The employment screening service offered by Onicra involves extensive checks and verification procedures on employees personal, social and academic background, legal reports and records and also records for substance abuse (if any). References and appraisals are also gathered and collated from previous employers, acquaintances, family members and colleagues.

The Employee Background Screening services offered by Onicra incorporate extensive verification procedures as stated below. Education Checks (verification of academic and professional qualifications) are used to determine the academic validity of a C.V to determine the eligibility of a potential employee. Pre employment checks are carried out to screen employment details pertaining to previously held designations, employment tenure, emoluments etc. Often, this acts as a reflective index of the employees temperament, aptitude and capability. Onicra also checks the applicants criminal records (if any) with law enforcement authorities and existing criminal records databases. A meticulous verification procedure is also done about the candidate with the person enlisted as his/her reference.

Onicra also implements rigorous checks for possible representations and corruption of data in the applicants C.V, substance and drug abuse records (if any) and checks for criminal litigations. Onicra ascertains the applicants identity as well, through checks for PAN Cards, driving licenses, licenses, Passports and other vital documentation. The verification process is implemented to be a perpetual, continuous process, accommodating possibilities for changes of results over courses of time. Thus, Onicra revolutionized background checks in India by appropriating a series of checks that are best suited locally.

Reasons Hiring Managers Fear Pre-employment Tests

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Like many fears, the FEAR that hiring managers have about using pre-employment tests is nothing more than False Experiences Appearing Real. In this column I respond to the top 10 fears I consistently hear from HR managers, executives and business owners. A few of the fears are real. Some are merely exaggerations. And others – they are simply not true. Beginning with number 10:

10. We don’t have a budget for testing. Fortunately the ROI on pre-employment tests is many-fold when you consider the cost of a bad hire, estimated to be 1 to 2 times annual salary for lower-wage employees and upwards of 10 times annual salary for managers, professionals and executive. In low-wage, high turnover industries like hospitality, studies indicate it costs roughly 300 to 700 times an hourly worker’s rate each time you have to fire and replace them when you take the effect of a bad hire on a guest’s first experience. Ranging in costs from as little as $25 for screening tools to several hundred for job fit assessments, the cost of the pre-employment tests will be a fraction of the cost spent on trying to save a bad hire. Pre-employment tests are an investment in productivity and innovation, not an HR line item.

9. I read my report and don’t agree with what it says about me. Face validity is very important. That means when you read the report it describes your to a “t.” But face validity isn’t a very good predictor of job fit. If it was every candidate who says he’d be a great fit would become your next super-performer. Tools like DISC and Myers-Briggs have very strong face validity but other psychometric tools that are normed against the population and used for job fit and potential are more sophisticated. Selection tests measure innate personality traits, or your core personality. With experience and training, you may have learned new skills that cover up potential shortcomings. That’s why it is very important to use both the pre-employment test and interview to discover the natural fit, learned fit, and potential for growth. If you don’t agree with a result, just ask your consultant for an interpretation. I can count on one hand how many times a candidate or employee doesn’t agree after they understand how to use the results properly.

8. We’re just a small business. We’re not sure why many managers feel they shouldn’t have the same tools at their fingertips as large companies. Online technology has leveled the playing field. Now small business owners as well as mid-managers have the same tools as senior level executives at Fortune 50 companies. And the best news is that technology has lowered the cost to a level affordable to any size business in any industry.

7. We don’t have the time to get certified. Online hiring assessments make this an easy one to overcome. Certifications and training are not required for most programs. Our reports are written so that even the most inexperienced manager can understand the results. And to make the report even more manager-friendly, all our pre-employment tests come with personalized behavior interview question guides based on responses given by the candidates. We can’t make it any easier. (Of course, for any managers wanting to become more skilled at reading the reports, we are always happy to oblige – and many managers take us up on the offer!)

6. It takes too long to get the results. This is the easiest fear to overcome. Results can be real-time. We can set up a client account at no cost to the business, many times at no charge. Reports can then be accessed in real time. In other words, as soon as a candidate hits the submit button, a manager can log into the system and retrieve the report. Unlike many of our competitors who require a 2 or 3 day (or more) delay in receiving results and then even longer to speak with a consultant, we are available when you need us the most. In today’s job market, when you have the good candidate waiting for a job offer, you can ill afford any delays.

5. We don’t want to upset the candidates. Our clients gave us the answer to this fear. “If a candidate balks at completing our hiring process and this is the time when he is supposed to be on his best behavior, what will happen the first time we ask him to do something he doesn’t think is part of his job?” It’s important to look at the assessment as equal to the interview and background checks. That’s how the EEOC looks at pre-employment testing. Resumes, application, interviews and even general observations are all on equal footing. If a candidate refused to submit his resume or give permission to check references, you certainly wouldn’t forego these steps. The pre-employment test is just another part of the employee selection process. So what more can I add except that when a candidate refuses to complete an assessment, it won’t cost you a dime for the assessment but think about the thousands of dollars and hours of aggravation you’ll save if you had hired him!

4. We heard candidates can fake the tests. Again, this fear is real – and true. Just like during the interview, people are more and more skilled at playing a role that can’t be delivered after they are hired. The advantage of our pre-employment tests is that each assessment has a “fake-ability” scale. Questions embedded in the assessments help managers assess how reliable the information is and if the candidate attempted to manipulate his responses. Unless you are a highly skilled interviewer, gut instinct is the only tool you have to determine if a candidate is the real thing.

3. We spoke with our attorney and he said stay away from testing. Another variation of this fear is: I heard that companies have gotten sued because a test was used. It is true that organizations that have used tests have been sued. But it’s also true that more businesses have been sued because they didn’t. Every hiring decision carries a risk. But you need to know the facts. The EEOC in 2007 heard 77,000 discrimination complaints. Of those 77,000 only 304 involved assessments. And of those 304 the decisions that ruled in favor of the employee were related to the improper use of the assessment, not the validity of the assessment itself. As long as the test is valid, reliable, non-discriminatory AND job-related, the use of pre-employment tests is a best practice that meets EEOC guidelines. If your attorney can’t substantiate why he/she believes pre-employment tests should be avoided with anything more than it’s his/her opinion, get a second opinion. We will be happy to refer you to employment law attorneys who support the use of employee testing as a best practice and view the decision to use testing as good business practice.

2. We can’t afford to turn away good candidates. The time is long-gone when you can afford to hire employees who can barely fog a mirror. For the same reason you wouldn’t accept an order from a vendor with the wrong parts, why would you hire an employee that doesn’t have the right skills or fit in your culture? But the big benefit for using assessments is that organizations actually expand their talent pool. Yes, you read that correctly. You can expand, not shrink, your talent pool with assessments. How is that possible? For the very same reason that managers make hiring mistakes based on the interview alone, they also miss high-potential candidates because they might interview poorly but have all the skills and attitude you need, if not more. Pre-employment tests can help find the diamonds in the rough. You can ill-afford to turn away a gifted employee when he presents. And let’s have a drum roll please. The number one reason why managers fear pre-employment tests is:

1. We don’t have the time to test candidates. It’s true. It does take time to test candidates (but not as much as you think). The irrefutable data however confirms the time it takes to test a candidate is a drop in the bucket compared to the time you will spend training, counseling and eventually terminating the wrong hire. With online hiring assessments, most of the time invested in the process is candidate time. All a manager needs to do is send out the instructions to the candidate and process the report. That’s it. And for businesses too short-staffed to manage even the administration of these functions, we can do all the “grunt” work. All we need is a name and email – and voila! The next time you hear from us you’ll have the candidate’s completed report sitting in your inbox. The time saved using online hiring assessments will be much better used recruiting for hard-to-fill positions and retaining the employees you have.

Copyright (c) 2009 Success Performance Solutions

Review Of Kenexa, Supercandidate, Brainbench & Articulate

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It is a known fact that any useful HR department or employment agency have tools to test a persons skill set. This could be a practical skill, technical skill or behavioral skill. However, has time changes, a flexible HR department or employment selection agency, will need to move forward with more powerful technologies that help them further in their area of expertise, candidate selection! In the early 90s online filtering was not really appreciable and the technologies employed were generally a database full of resumes from which to select people for possible interview.

Late in the 90s LMS (Learning Management Systems) broke like wildfire and many corporate firms started to see the logic in a organized approach to employee training, recruitment and retention.

As the 90s went by and the Internet started to reach a larger audience, many of the firms being reviewed were formed to try and offer solutions to firms from an outsourced net solution. These firms continue to improve products with technology and these firms reviewed are no different. However here is our review of their current state of play and how you could benefit from reading the review and finding which one suits your corporate or small business environment.

We reviewed several factors that are to our opinion ( Having worked both in HR and employment in large industries), very important in choosing the best tool for you.

The factors were:

Price.

Ease of use

Features against uses

Integration to your own platform

Server based storage, result notification and record filtering

Some of these features are easily comparable while others have variations that make it more difficult to quantitatively give you a clear result. When this happens, explanations will be around the similarities or differences from a customers hiring and practical perspective.

PRICE

As price is an important factor we discuss it here. Obviously people tend to gauge this first before feature looking at what is under the hood.

A cost comparison was created based on what might typically happen with a job post on the internet ( where 99% of firms now actually post jobs). Please note we stated one job post. Obviously you will need to multiply that by the number of jobs you target each month to get a realistic estimate of your actual costs.

So for the one job, what was done, was the actual cost of running similar test platforms over a period of a month using the minimum of 50 tests. This would be a fair representation of just one job placement that a HR or employment firm with approximately 50 possible applicants. Again this may be very conservative to the number of people who reply to your job posts but let us use it for reference sake.

Testing Firm Cost

Kenexa Proveit $1250 for 50 tests

Supercandidate $29.99 for unlimited tests

Brainbench $2500 for 50 tests

Articulate $499

Comparing these price factors, we see that Kenexas Proveit is the most expensive while Supercandidate is the least expensive by over 97%. This could make a major difference to who can afford the services. Overall Supercandidate is significantly less then any of the others reviewed. We will go into further detail about features shortly to see if that has relevance to pricing.

Ease of Use

When looking at ease of use, we took into consideration:

The GUI (Graphic User Interface)

Learning curve time.

In looking at the GUI we found that only Supercandidate had a built in video tutorial which allowed for step by step learning. The other three did not have this so the learning curve increased. With Proveit and Brainbench, we found that the dashboard was often confusing with many features leading to places that left us confused. This definitely could do with a training session which is offered by the firm at an additional cost.

Articulate was the hardest of all to understand as you needed to have experienced Adobe Flash style products before to easily work with the interface. Our opinion is, that someone without that knowledge would have to spend about 2 days to learn this product.

Features against Uses

This is a very important factor as it determines exactly how the products will benefit you in the real world. Having worked with HR and recruitment, we understand that there are many products out there with so many features to impress. However like many software products, you only really use certain features which work productively for you.

Proveit, Brainbench and Supercandidate offer the most number of useful features, such as premade test banks of Relevant tests, easy reporting features essential to fast decision making. Provit and Brainbench offered some more tests but we found that many were not relevant to the majority of users. Supercandidate offered direct access to create own questions which technically meant that you could add, remove and integrate your own questions in. This is ideal for customizing any job spec. This made this product more relevant for practical use as by integrating your own questions, you could keep up to date with any skill you choose making its test making limitless.

Articulate and Supercandidate offer the most media integration, allowing for video, sound and various media files such as image files, pdf documents(Supercandidate). These you can add directly to the questions. As the age of video integration is here with large bandwidth being the norm ( as seen by the likes of popular sites e.g. YouTube), it offers greater accuracy in job areas that require in-depth skills knowledge, these two products really shine above the others here. Of the two, we think that Supercandidate approach of browse click integration, rather then add to interface using a menu and several steps offered by Articulate, makes it the preferred choice for the majority of users, who look for ease of use and fast integration.

Provit, and Articulate offer the most question types, e.g. multiple choice, true false, checkbox. Now this initially seems an obvious reason for choice. However consider this, 85% of firms and institutions use the standard multiple choice format above all else, so it is likely that you can easily get by asking questions in that format and be well respected in your questioning techniques. If you compare price, the amount you pay is significant for these other question types even though the majority of tests will not need them. Besides tools like Supercandidate offer other options to create those question types using its strong media integration features.

For example, if you use the integrated media types such as a word doc, or jpeg, you can literally add whatever question feature you want. For example you ask a question that requires several answers (typical of a checkbox answer), you could open up your MS word doc and type in the different variations upload that to the question to offer a question that asks them to choose which set of options is best similarly you could have created a image file to do this.

Integration to your own customer facing platform

Kenexas Proveit, Articulate and Brainbench do not allow you to host the tests directly from your site. For example you will still have to send your clients to their site for the test e.g. provit2/acme (say if your name was acme). Not very professional for branding purposes.

Supercandidate does offer the testing platform to be integrated to the clients own site with a small charge associated. So if you are Acme company , it integrates straight to your site e.g. acme/testarea

This consideration is needed for those who want to keep applicants on their own site rather then going to another companys website. It also portrays the firm as a bigger firm due to the cost associated with such technologies which only the largest of firms can afford.

Server based storage, result notification and record filtering of results

All the products reviewed offered some sort of storage based setup. However not all storage are the same. While Supercandidate, Proveit and Brainbench offer tests based on their limits:

Supercandidate unlimited assessments including premade assessments Provit 900 assessments Brainbench 600 assessments

Articulate allows up to a maximum of 100 assessments.

With respect to result notification all firms offer instant notification of results to the administrator. On this review only Supercandidate, automated a serialized certificate to the test taker if they passed.

The record filtering is key to many who want to administer tests as it is the reason for the tests to see how someone performed in tangible ways.

All products offer filters. Proveit and Benchmark offer many unnecessary filters, where single tasks are broken down into several report formats. Supercandidate offers by group, by individual test results, with simple point and click methods.

All products offer CSV export features of the data on the online reporting point. Supercandidate and Proveit allow full data transfer to even email accounts.

A key reporting feature we believe is important for the HR person is based around reducing time. All of the products help HR and employment agencies reduce time by using tests to eliminate unqualified candidates. However, only Supercandidate takes into consideration that a live person does not always sit at their desk and has other things to do. For this they offer Cell Phone notification, which actually rings your cell when the best candidate is matched. You just head back to your desk and then call them up.

This is a very practical approach to free you from your desk and get on with other client calls, visits etc

Conclusion

Well our review looked at what we believe is key areas based on our 15 years working with HR, recruitment and the I.T industry related to the area of candidate selection. These 4 tools can definitely give you a step up in making sure you reduce time spent from tracking a candidate to placing one to a firm job.

Proveit and Brainbench seem to offer too little for those who want value for their money while utilizing a filter that will meet much of their needs. They have some fancy assessments but neither allows you to create your own tests or add to theirs. Any customization costs you even more if actually allowed.

Important features such as video and sound will play a more dominant role in tomorrows candididate selection as bandwidth increases and some features that were impossible outside face to face interviews, are now available to us via these elements. Both Supercandidate and Articulate allow these features.

Supercandidates cost of at least 90% less then all others, understanding of the need for quick learning, forward thinking features such as video in questions or cell phone notification on the go make this a really worthwhile product.

There is very little compromise with Supercandidate for those who want a effective filter to reach 95% of applicant testing. For this reason, we recommend the newer, more robust technology offered by Supercandidate Inc for the majority of users thinking of adding prescreening, or selection technology to their recruitment process. Also if you currently are using other forms, its time for an upgrade, especially when you are likely to heavily reduce your downtime and current spend.

Benefits Of Hiring A 3rd Party Background Check Company

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Pre-employment background checks are more than just a way of avoiding bad hires; they’re also corporations’ best bet for beating negligence court cases. This article reviews why more and more corporations are hiring third party employee background check companies, rather than conducting background checks in-house. Read on to discover the benefits corporations enjoy by outsourcing their employment background checks.

1. Increased applicant privacy.

If an internal employee does your employee background checks, workplace drama can ensue. New hires will be less likely to trust their co-workers charged with employment background screening duties. Third party background checks go a long way in preventing mistrust and gossip. Moreover, they show applicants and employees that you are dedicated to even-handed, fair treatment.

2. Less chance for expensive mistakes.

Did you know that some states require employees to provide applicants with a copy of their employment background screening, even if it’s not specifically requested? Or that it’s illegal to base a hiring decision on court cases that did not result in convictions? Your company could be sued if you fail to follow the letter of the law as far as employee background checks are concerned. Yet few HR managers have the time or legal expertise to avoid all potential background check lawsuits. For this reason, increasing numbers of companies are outsourcing their employment background screening to vendors who have spent decades focused on these issues. Doing so typically results in fewer costly hiring mistakes.

3. Legal protection.

Beyond preventing legal mistakes, outsourcing background screening also grants companies exemption from lawsuits. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) promises legal immunity for companies that choose to outsource their employment background checks. In other words, your company can avoid lawsuits citing hiring negligence, privacy invasion, and defamation if you outsource your background procedures.

Still, it’s notable that the FCRA still requires companies to notify candidates if they are investigating credit history. Therefore, it’s smart to ask your employee background screening vendor whether they offer forms for applicant notification.

4. Decreased costs.

It would likely take a full-time employee months to research how to legally, respectfully, thoroughly carry out employment background checks. Then, it might take them another few months to locate the investigative resources needed to methodically do employment background screening.

In contrast, third-party, professional background check companies have already developed the understanding and resources needed to effectively run employment background checks, so they can typically deliver the same (or improved) results at a lower cost.

5. More meticulous background checks.

Because professional background check companies specialize in labor investigations, they usually have excellent sources for examining individuals’ history. Having spent hundreds of hours perfecting their screening approach, professional background check companies can typically deliver more thorough investigations than can be achieved in-house.

6. Improved service.

Because they are investigative experts, background check companies offer extra features for their clients, such as adverse action letters. The law states that if you choose not to hire someone based on characteristics such as credit history, you must inform his or her in writing about your decision. An adverse action letter fulfills this duty. Many employment background vendors offer complimentary adverse action letters as part of their employee screening service, saving you time.

There are many reasons for outsourcing your employee background screening process, from lowered costs to improved legal immunity.