The Everything HR Kit

A Complete Guide to Attracting, Retaining, and Motivating High-Performance Employees

John Putzier, David W. Baker

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2010
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814416105
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

With The Everything HR Kit, whether you are a newcomer or a veteran, you can set up a stellar HR department from scratch. Packed with ready-to-go checklists, sample brochures, job descriptions, customizable forms, interview questions, performance review templates, and more, this one-stop book puts tons of best practices at your fingertips—all instantly accessible and easy to implement. The book gets right to the heart of HR, and the heart of any successful business—your people. It avoids the theory, jargon, and over-analysis to bring you the core strategies and essential knowledge you need to bring quality people on board, for good, such as reputation, recruitment, selection, on-boarding, employee relations, and performance management. You'll learn how to: • Create a powerful recruitment brochure that lures great people • Set up "bird dog" bonuses to make everyone in your circle of influence a recruiter all the time • Ask probing questions that pinpoint a candidate's communication style, problem-solving style, stress behaviors, and coaching style • Steer clear of illegal or problematic interview questions, and adhere to crucial labor laws • Match the right people to the right jobs using proven instruments like the Role Behavior Analysis combined with the Personal Profile System • Design a benefits package that works best for your organization and its people • Prepare an "out-of-the-box" employee handbook that instills values and makes a great first impression—plus much more

PART 1

PREEMPLOYMENT/RECRUITMENT

Recruiting used to be ...

Now it’s . . .

CHAPTER 1

Preliminary Tools

WHY WORK HERE?

Most successful organizations can tell a prospective customer why that customer should buy from them, that is, their “Why Buy Here?” statement. Some call this a “UVP,” or unique value proposition. This is what converts a product from a commodity (I can buy the same car anywhere from anybody at the same price) to a value-added, emotion-filled experience (I want to buy it from you). This is what creates both brand and company loyalty.

What most organizations fail to do, however, is to identify and define their “Why Work Here?” statement, which is what ultimately contributes the most to “Why Buy Here?”. (See Figure I-1, “The Cycle of Satisfaction.”)

Every shoe store has shoes. Every fast-food joint has burgers. Every airline has airplanes. It’s the people who sell those shoes, who serve those burgers, and who work on those planes that create the unique experience, or UVP.

So, without the best and the brightest employees, performing at their peak, we are merely order takers offering a commodity, and we are dependent on luck rather than on a loyal, lucrative customer base. That’s why we end up giving our products and services away, instead of selling value and improving our margins.

Recruitment is sales. Recruitment is PR. Every time you interview someone, you are sending a message about your organization, whether you hire that person or not. Why not make that message work for you?

The first step in accomplishing this is to have a well-defined “Why Work Here?” statement that rolls off the tongue of anyone in the organization who is asked. It’s your mantra. Here is how you can go about developing such a statement.

1. Survey your long-term employees (if you have any). Ask them the primary reason that they have been loyal to your organization. Ask them, “What’s the best thing about working here?” (It may be a family atmosphere, great working conditions, recognition, fun, flexibility, and so on.)

2. Document your history, culture, values, and any other characteristics that make your organization different from, better than, or unique compared to your competition.

3. Conduct a brainstorming session with your leadership team to refine this information into a one- to two-sentence summation that anyone would be able to understand, and that would impress anyone who heard it. Try to boil it down to no more than three or four key concepts; otherwise, the intended message gets watered down.

Having worked with many organizations on this activity, we can tell you that it doesn’t take months to accomplish this. Usually, if you ask enough people to define why someone would want to work for your company, you will start to see common themes and threads. That’s exactly what you want to have happen, because then you know that the information you are getting is valid and pervasive.

For example, when we worked with a large chain of family restaurants, we surveyed the management team at its annual conference. In less than an hour, there were two things that came up over and over:

1. “Your opinion matters here.”

2. “We have fun!”

Obviously that’s not a lot of words, but it is certainly a great foundation on which to build. You can get quotes from employees, customers, and others to reinforce these key values and principles, which brings us to the next step in the Total HR process: the recruitment brochure. You will see some great “Why Work Here?” statements in the sample brochures in Figure 1-1 and on the CD.

THE RECRUITMENT BROCHURE

Once you have your “Why Work Here?” statement, you are ready to expand it to a recruitment brochure. Generally, these don’t need to be anything more than a nice color trifold (and web page). But what goes into one?

Not that you need all of this, but here are some examples of what works well in a recruitment brochure:

“Why Work Here?” statement

Bird-dog referral bonus policy

Employee photos and testimonials

Key benefits

Awards and accolades

Pictures of your facility

Web site address—directions to application form

E-mail address for more information

Map with directions to facility

Name and phone number of primary contact for employment

Equal opportunity statement

Since few, if any, organizations excel at this, you will be miles ahead of the competition if you have such a brochure. Figure 1-1 is an example of a very effective recruitment brochure. No matter what industry you are in, the principles are the same.

Notice that in Figure 1-1, the brochure from TrenchSafety and Supply, the company has fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Making the Case
• PART 1. PREEMPLOYMENT/RECRUITMENT
• PART 2. POSTEMPLOYMENT
• PART 3. LEADERSHIP AND ACTION PLANNING: TURNING INTENTIONS INTO ACTIONS
• Conclusion
• Index
• About the Authors