Boost Your Hire Quality with Employee Referrals

Asking your employees to recommend members of their network for job openings is an effective hiring method. Each employee who refers a candidate who becomes a new hire and remains for a set time typically receives an incentive.

An employee referral typically fits with your organization better than a non-referred candidate. As a result, employee referrals boost your hire quality.

Discover how employee referrals boost your hire quality.

Employee Referrals Have High Conversion Rates

A candidate with no connection to your company must undergo extensive screenings and interviews to determine their qualifications and fit with company culture. In contrast, an employee referral has a personal connection with your workforce. Therefore, the employee can provide extensive details about the referral’s background, qualifications, and fit with company culture. As a result, employee referrals typically receive more job offers for roles that non-referred candidates apply for.

Employee Referrals Decrease the Time to Hire

Hiring a non-referred candidate takes longer than hiring an employee referral. For instance, a non-referred candidate must undergo resume screening, extensive interviews, and background checks before potentially receiving a job offer.

In contrast, an employee referral has an employee advocate. Therefore, the employee can attest to the referral’s knowledge, skills, and experience. Also, because most people spend time with others who have similar personalities, the referral is likely to fit with your company’s culture. As a result, the referral typically needs a short interview process before potentially receiving a job offer.

Employee Referrals Strengthen Attraction and Retention Rates

An employee referral tends to remain with your company longer than a non-referred employee. For instance, an employee referral already knows a member of your workforce. Having personal ties to an organization encourages the employee to remain long-term.

Conversely, employees who lack personal ties from Day 1 can struggle to adapt to their new role and the culture. Therefore, if the employee does not form work relationships for guidance and support, they likely will not remain loyal to your company.

Employee referrals typically have higher job satisfaction than non-referred employees. For instance, an employee referral likely received accurate information about the company structure, culture, job duties and responsibilities, expectations, and other relevant details. As a result, the referral should understand what to expect and remain for several years.

In contrast, a non-referred employee might have received inaccurate information or misinterpreted the information. Therefore, the employee’s experience might not match their expectations. As a result, the employee likely will look for a new job within a short time.

Would You Like Help Boosting the Quality of Your Hires?

Employee referrals have high conversion rates, decrease your time to hire, and typically remain long-term. As a result, you save time and money on hiring, onboarding, and training.

Similar to employee referrals, Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with accounting and finance candidates to boost the quality of your hires. Connect with us to find out more today.

Using the Five Cs Framework for Onboarding Success

Using the Five Cs framework increases onboarding success. These steps include compliance, clarification, culture, connection, and checkbacks.

A well-designed onboarding process helps a new hire adjust to their role and the company’s culture. Effective onboarding elevates employee engagement, productivity, and performance. These factors strengthen job satisfaction, employee morale, and attraction and retention rates.

Importance of Employee Onboarding

Your onboarding process introduces new hires to their roles and the company’s culture. These steps help new employees become familiar with the people, tools, and resources they will work with.

The onboarding process helps a new hire feel valued and engaged from the first day. For instance, the process introduces a new employee to their colleagues, coworkers, job duties, and responsibilities. These activities help new hires assimilate with their team and the culture.

A new hire who feels welcome and engaged from Day 1 is likely to remain with your organization long-term. As a result, an effective onboarding process saves significant time and money on hiring and training employees.

Understanding the Five Cs Framework for Onboarding

  1. Compliance involves educating a new hire on company policies and procedures. This process includes a formal orientation involving employment paperwork, departmental procedures, safety regulations, and confidentiality agreements.
  2. Clarification involves specifying a new hire’s job duties, responsibilities, and performance expectations. This process includes describing the role within the organization and introducing team members, the reporting manager, and role-related goals.
  3. Culture refers to the company’s mission, vision, and values and how they are carried out. For instance, an HR professional might provide each new hire with an employee handbook with information on the company’s history and policies. Also, HR could provide training on diversity, equity, and inclusion so the new hire feels welcome and safe in the workplace.
  4. Connection helps a new hire build relationships with their manager and teammates. Creating a sense of belonging enhances engagement, collaboration, and loyalty to your company.
  5. Checkback includes meeting with a new hire, their manager, and other relevant stakeholders to ask and answer questions and receive constructive feedback on the onboarding process. These activities uncover whether the process is delivering the intended results. Then, you can make relevant adjustments for increased success.

Would You Like Help Enhancing Your Onboarding Process?

Following the Five Cs framework of compliance, clarification, culture, connection, and checkbacks increases onboarding success. For instance, an effective onboarding process helps a new hire feel valued and engaged from the first day. A new hire who feels welcome and engaged from Day 1 is likely to remain with your organization long-term. As a result, you save significant time and money on hiring and training employees.

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with guidance and support to enhance your employee onboarding process. Reach out to us to learn more today.

How Human Skills Are Reshaping Hiring Priorities

Human skills are reshaping hiring priorities. Many companies are transitioning from competency-based hiring to skills-based hiring for more effective results.

Adopting a skills-based approach to hiring lets companies capitalize on the potential of their workforce and external candidate pools for greater operational efficiencies. This approach provides opportunities for nontraditional employees to work for the organizations and helps optimize team and organizational performance.

Adopting a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring

Most CEOs say there is a global skills shortage but not a people shortage. As a result, many companies are switching from a competency-based model to a skills-based approach to hiring.

Implementing a skills-based approach to hiring lets an organization capitalize on the potential of its workforce and external candidate pools to support operational efficiencies. This approach is significantly more effective than a competency-based hiring model.

Breaking Down Skills-Based Hiring

Skills-based hiring breaks down job duties, responsibilities, and tasks into a set of skills and capabilities. Then, HR professionals use AI-based technology to match skills to roles, training sessions, and opportunities. These activities expand external talent pools and increase organizational capacity through hiring.

Differences Between Skills-Based Hiring and Competency-Based Hiring

Traditional competency models rely on static skills databases, disconnected systems, and inefficient interfaces. Therefore, companies manually make hiring decisions based on anecdotes and assumptions. As a result, leaders typically focus on candidate education and work experience to make hiring decisions. These factors leave out current and potential employees with untapped potential.

In contrast, a skills-based model relies on data and insights to make hiring decisions. As a result, current and potential employees increase their career opportunities, and companies elevate their operational capacity.

For instance, candidates without access to colleges and universities might complete technical boot camps or certification programs. If these candidates apply to companies with a competency-based hiring model, they likely will be removed from the application process because they do not have college degrees. Conversely, if these candidates apply to companies with a skills-based hiring model, they can be accurately and equitably matched to roles based on their capabilities. Therefore, hiring based on skills opens doors for nontraditional employees and eliminates barriers to entry.

Business Case for a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring

Using a skills-based hiring model provides employees with personalized career plans and information about required skill development for learning and growth. This model also shows managers which skills their teams lack. Then, managers can determine whether to provide relevant training to upskill or reskill their employees or to hire external talent.

Would You Like Help with Skills-Based Hiring?

Adopting a skills-based approach to hiring lets you capitalize on the potential of your workforce and external candidate pools to support operational efficiencies. This approach opens doors for nontraditional employees and eliminates barriers to entry.

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with skilled accounting and finance candidates to help you reach your company goals. Contact us to learn more today.

Strategies for Sustaining Business Growth in a Hiring Slowdown

Sustaining business growth in a hiring slowdown can be challenging. Helping your company move forward often requires adding additional members to your team.

Fortunately, you can take steps to sustain business growth during a slowdown in hiring. These suggestions can help.

Choose among these strategies to sustain business growth in a hiring slowdown.

Focus on Long-Term Stability

Show company leaders that employee growth is essential for long-term stability. Employees need ongoing opportunities for training to increase the value they provide your organization.

Without these opportunities for career growth, many employees will seek jobs elsewhere. The effects on your team and organization would be especially detrimental during a hiring slowdown.

Demonstrate the Return on Investment of Employee Development

Show company leaders that investing in employee development helps increase profits. For instance, software tools that impact your human resources, accounting and finance, marketing, and operations departments offer cost-effective upskilling methods to benefit your workforce.

Upskilling increases your employees’ ability to secure other positions within your organization. The results include:

  • Better engagement
  • Greater productivity
  • Increased performance
  • Higher employee morale
  • Stronger attraction and retention rates
  • Lower hiring, onboarding, and training costs

Strengthen Company Culture

Emphasize camaraderie and connection in your training programs. Build company culture and loyalty while you support employee learning and development.

For instance, offer in-person and remote Lunch and Learns. Employees can enjoy a meal together, engage in professional development, and learn from each other. These activities support relationship-building, collaboration, and cohesion.

Emphasize Employee Recognition

Managers should point out specific employee contributions, results, and impact on the company. These activities show that employees are valued and respected members of the organization. As a result, employees are likely to continuously improve their performance to add more value to the company.

Would You Like Help with Hiring After the Slowdown?

Strategies for sustaining business growth during a hiring slowdown include focusing on long-term stability, demonstrating the ROI of employee development, strengthening company culture, and emphasizing employee recognition. Prioritizing these activities helps maintain your company’s competitive edge without adding to your workforce.

If you would like help with hiring accounting and finance professionals after the slowdown, get in touch with Casey Accounting and Finance Resources. We can provide you with qualified candidates to help reach your business goals.

Compassionate Employee Termination: A Manager’s Guide

Employee termination is not an easy task. However, the process is necessary to maintain the health of the company.

Understanding compassionate employee termination can help managers navigate this difficult conversation. Following these guidelines can help maintain professionalism and respect during the discussion.

Use this manager’s guide to help make the process a bit easier.

Prepare for the Conversation

Review the employee’s performance and behavior. Include documented incidents, issues, conversations, warnings, and performance reviews that contributed to the termination. Examples include poor performance or violation of company policies.

Understand your company’s policies and procedures for employee termination. Also, plan how you will handle the logistics of the employee’s departure.

Consider the impact of the employee’s termination on the rest of your team and the organization. Include how quickly the employee should be replaced to maintain business operations.

Communicate the Employee’s Termination

Clearly and directly communicate with the employee about their termination. Focus on avoiding confusion or misunderstanding:

  • Clarify the reason for the employee’s termination.
  • Provide specific examples of the employee’s behavior or performance that contributed to your decision.
  • Remain professional, respectful, and compassionate throughout the conversation.
  • Be mindful that how you navigate the discussion can impact team morale.

Listen to the Employee

Encourage the terminated employee to share their thoughts and feelings about the situation. Focus on understanding their point of view. These actions help alleviate tension and emotions and maintain respect and dignity during the conversation.

Understand that the employee might react with anger when they receive the news of their termination. They might argue or disagree with your decision. Remember to handle these reactions with professionalism, compassion, and respect.

Offer Resources and Support

Share with the terminated employee resources and support to help them transition to their next steps. This process might include:

  • Providing information about unemployment benefits
  • Offering to write a letter of recommendation
  • Connecting the terminated employee with job search resources

Follow Up

Ensure the company takes the necessary steps to move forward after the employee’s termination. Examples include:

  • Updating the terminated employee’s payroll and benefits information.
  • Ensuring other paperwork is completed.
  • Notifying others that the employee no longer is with the organization.

Do You Need to Replace a Terminated Employee?

Compassionate employee termination involves preparing for the conversation, communicating the termination, listening to the employee, and offering resources and support. Following up to ensure the termination process is properly completed helps your team and organization move forward.

If you need to replace an accounting and finance professional, contact Casey Accounting and Finance Resources. We can match you with qualified candidates who fit your goals and needs.

CSR’s Ripple Effect on Branding and Recruitment

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has a ripple effect on a company’s branding and recruitment efforts. This management concept describes how an organization contributes to the well-being of communities and society through environmental and social measures.

CSR is a strategic method to enhance employer brand and help attract and retain top talent. Organizations that prioritize CSR stand out from the competition and appeal to new generations of employees. The results include a more attractive business reputation, stronger relationships with stakeholders, and a more sustainable and equitable future.

Why You Shouldn’t Neglect CSR

Core CSR Responsibilities

The three main CSR responsibilities help a company positively impact the environment and society. These responsibilities include:

  1. Adopting ethical business practices to ensure transparency, fairness, and integrity in business operations. Adhering to legal regulations, respecting human rights, and avoiding exploitative or harmful practices.
  2. Actively working toward environmental sustainability. Implementing eco-friendly practices, conserving resources, and minimizing pollution to reduce the company’s ecological footprint. Embracing renewable energy, reducing waste, and supporting conservation efforts.
  3. Engaging in philanthropic activities to give back to the community. Supporting social causes, educational initiatives, healthcare programs, or other projects that benefit society.

Categories of CSR

CSR typically falls into four categories:

  1. Ethical labor practices: Treating employees fairly and ethically.
  2. Environmental efforts: Taking steps to reduce a company’s carbon footprint.
  3. Philanthropy: Donating money, products, or services to nonprofit organizations.
  4. Volunteerism: Employees donate their time to local causes and community events.

Examples of CSR

CSR can take forms such as:

Importance of CSR

Many companies prioritize CSR for different reasons:

  • Improved brand: Many stakeholders look for socially conscious organizations to work for or conduct business with.
  • Stronger employee attraction and retention: Millennials and Gen Z are among the employees who want jobs with companies that emphasize people, planet, and revenue.
  • Investor appeal: Demonstrating a developed CSR program and initiatives helps attract and retain investors.

CSR for Branding and Recruitment

Employer branding is the perception of a company as a place to work. This branding reflects the organization’s culture and employee experience.

Strong employer branding helps differentiate the company from its competitors. Showing why the organization stands out helps recruit and retain qualified candidates. The results include:

  • Higher employee engagement
  • More productivity
  • Increased performance
  • Greater job satisfaction
  • More team cohesion
  • Better collaboration
  • Elevated employee morale
  • Greater innovation
  • Lower recruitment, onboarding, and training costs
  • Stronger bottom line
  • Bigger competitive advantage

Need Help to Recruit and Retain Accounting and Finance Employees?

CSR has a ripple effect on employer branding and employee recruitment and retention. Companies that contribute to the well-being of communities and society through environmental and social measures are more attractive to employees, customers, and other stakeholders than companies that do not engage in these activities. As a result, businesses that prioritize CSR typically have strong employer brands and high employee recruitment and retention rates.

Partner with Casey Accounting and Finance Resources for help with recruiting and retaining accounting and finance employees. Find out more today.

How to Utilize Automation to Better Your Hiring Process

The implementation of automation helps streamline your hiring process. The benefits include:

  • Time savings: You can automate tasks such as sharing job postings, sourcing candidates, scheduling interviews, and generating job offer letters. These actions free up time to build candidate relationships, conduct interviews, and fulfill other core activities.
  • Reduced biases: Automation in your screening process focuses on a candidate’s credentials rather than ethnicity, gender, age, and other personal identifiers. This process helps reduce unconscious biases that can influence hiring decisions.
  • Shorter time to hire: Automation of repetitive tasks helps speed up your hiring process. Filling jobs with the right candidates in less time helps save time and money.
  • Better candidate experience: Maintaining communication throughout your hiring process encourages candidate engagement. This process increases the odds of hiring the best candidates and receiving positive employer reviews.

As a result, you should start implementing automation in your hiring process today.

Discover how to utilize automation to better your hiring process.

Share Job Postings

You can use automation to share job postings with both the public and your employees. Letting your employees know which openings you are hiring for encourages them to provide referrals.

Employee referrals typically fit the job requirements and blend with your culture. As a result, you can fast-track referrals through your hiring process.

The sooner you begin onboarding and training employee referrals, the quicker they can begin producing. Even better, referrals are likely to remain long-term because they already know employees within your organization.

Streamline Your Resume Screening Process

A chatbot can evaluate resumes based on the criteria you set. Then, the bot can post on your chat platform the resumes of qualified candidates and mark them in your applicant tracking system (ATS) the rejected resumes. This process significantly reduces the time needed to screen resumes.

Schedule Interviews

Automation of the interview scheduling process lets qualified candidates decide when to meet for job interviews. The interviews get scheduled both in your ATS and on your scheduling platform.

The chatbot sends the interviewers and candidates reminders of the dates and times of the interviews. The bot also sends interviewers a link to each candidate’s profile in your ATS to prepare for the interview.

Sharing the interviewers’ availability lets candidates schedule or reschedule the times that work best for everyone. This process simplifies the ability to coordinate interviewer and candidate schedules.

Support Candidate Evaluations

Evaluating candidates soon after interviews helps provide performance feedback:

  • When a candidate moves to the interview stage in your ATS, a channel on your communication platform is created for the interviewers.
  • After the discussion, the interviewers receive a scorecard to fill out.
  • The responses populate the candidate’s ATS profile.
  • An HR chatbot schedules an interviewer videoconference to share thoughts on the candidate and determine the next step.

Deliver Job Offer Letters

Sending job offer letters soon after making hiring decisions increases the odds of candidate acceptance. Then, you can add the best candidates to your team.

The following process can create a job offer letter:

  • When a candidate in your ATS moves to the offer stage, a chatbot shares the offer details with the appropriate stakeholders through your communication platform.
  • The stakeholders approve or reject the candidate.
  • Approved job offer details are included in a letter created on your electronic signature platform.
  • A chatbot shares the job offer letter with the stakeholders to review and approve or reject it.
  • An approved letter is sent to the candidate through your electronic signature platform.
  • The signed letter is uploaded to your ATS.
  • The candidate’s status changes to hired.

Would You Like Help to Hire Accounting and Finance Professionals?

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with qualified accounting and finance professionals to benefit your team. Contact us to learn more today.

Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Are So Vital in Your Organization!

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are vital in your organization. These initiatives help create a positive workplace focused on innovation and growth:

  • Prioritization of diversity shows investment in employees at all levels regardless of their culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, abilities, and other personal characteristics.
  • Creating equitable opportunities for advancement demonstrates dedication to every employee’s career development.
  • Providing an inclusive work environment helps employees feel welcome, valued, and respected for their contributions and results.

Emphasizing DEI in your organization increases employee engagement, performance, and productivity. The results include elevated job satisfaction, employee morale, and attraction and retention rates. These factors help strengthen your bottom line.

Discover why DEI is so Vital in your Organization.

More Attractive Company Culture

Emphasizing DEI helps create a company culture that attracts and retains employees:

  • Diversity means employees of all backgrounds are welcome, valued, and respected within your company.
  • Equity means employees at all levels have access to the unique resources and support they need to advance within your organization.
  • Inclusion means every employee has access to the benefits and support needed to help them feel like valued, respected members of your organization.

Greater Problem-Solving

Prioritizing DEI throughout your organization encourages employees to share their unique ideas and perspectives. This diverse information helps develop and implement creative solutions to complex problems. The results include elevated innovation and a stronger competitive advantage.

Elevated Employee Retention

Employees want to work for organizations that honor and reward diversity, actively help them reach their career goals, and provide effective resources and support to help them feel welcome and respected. Therefore, prioritization of DEI encourages employees to take pride in their work and remain long-term. The results include lower hiring, onboarding, and training costs.

Clearer Customer Understanding

Hiring diverse employees helps clarify what your targeted customers are looking for in the products and services they purchase. Gaining additional insight into your customer base helps fill their needs and increase sales.

Stronger Customer Base

Customers who see themselves represented in your diverse workforce are likely to do business with your organization. For instance, hiring diverse employees provides a sense of authenticity and support for customers of all backgrounds. Also, providing a voice for diverse customers’ concerns helps build better customer relationships and strengthen the bottom line.

Would You Like Help to Increase DEI in Your Accounting and Finance Team?

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with diverse accounting and finance professionals to help increase DEI in your team. Contact us to learn more today.

Four Tips for Managing a Hybrid Work Model

Managing a hybrid work model can be challenging. Because every organization has different needs, their approaches to managing hybrid employees differ.

Having guidelines for managing a hybrid work model lets leaders know what to expect and suggested steps to take. These ideas can help.

Choose among these four tips for managing a hybrid work model.

1. Emphasize Outcomes Rather Than Output

Define success in terms of seeing specific changes within your organization and stakeholder behavior rather than how your work is proceeding. Focusing on outcomes rather than output helps your team reach the desired change with the smallest amount of initial and ongoing work.

Emphasizing outcomes rather than outputs provides many results:

  • Your definition of success is more meaningful. For instance, if you prioritize increasing your team’s number of new and renewing clients, you can tie your team’s efforts to something valuable for your organization and customers.
  • You are encouraged to learn through feedback. For instance, you can establish a metric you want to attain, decide which action should drive the desired results, take the action, and measure the results.
  • You gain flexibility. Focusing on outcomes means your main definition of scope is reaching the target value of your outcome-based metric. Therefore, you must act within the budget and timeframe to reach the intended outcome.

2. Be Deliberate About Team Interactions

A hybrid work model requires purposeful interactions between leaders and their teams when working remotely. More frequent interactions help build stronger work relationships.

For instance, leaders should allow remote employees time between virtual meetings for casual conversations as they would have if working at the office. Also, leaders should have check-in times throughout the day to monitor the well-being of their remote employees and offer support when needed.

3. Strategize Teamwork

Leaders should evaluate which tasks and projects require individual work and which require teamwork. For instance, projects with standardized metrics and routine tasks are typically suited for individual work. Conversely, creative tasks typically require team interaction.

4.  Prioritize Autonomy and Alignment

Managing a hybrid work model requires leaders to encourage autonomy and alignment within their teams. These leaders also must support their teams’ diverse ideas, thoughts, and viewpoints to improve the organization.

For instance, employees at all levels should be involved in making decisions that align with the culture. Encouraging open communication throughout the decision-making process supports innovation and company growth.

Do You Need to Add to Your Hybrid Accounting and Finance Team?

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with experienced accounting and finance professionals to help your hybrid team reach company goals. Find out more today.

How You Can Make the Most of Employee Performance Reviews

Making the most of employee performance reviews can be challenging. Many companies do not have an effective process to provide constructive feedback in a structured manner to improve employee performance.

The purpose of performance reviews is to create an accurate, actionable evaluation of an employee’s performance and develop their skills in line with their job duties and responsibilities. The goal is to identify areas in which employees can improve, practice their skills, and develop into high performers.

Fortunately, you can follow these best practices to help streamline the process of planning and conducting employee performance reviews. Following these recommendations provides structure to have these important conversations.

Follow these steps to make the most of employee performance reviews.

Clarify the Employee Performance Standards

Let employees know well in advance the standards and expectations for their performance reviews. Then, they can understand what they working toward and can perform accordingly.

Clarifying which employee activities are most important helps show the impact of on-the-job behaviors. Demonstrating the causal relationships helps show which behaviors led to positive outcomes and which behaviors led to bad outcomes. Then, employees can focus on the relevant behaviors to reach the desired outcomes.

Describe Specific Observations of Employee Performance

Share specific, descriptive feedback about the employee’s strengths and weaknesses and concrete suggestions to improve their performance. Include examples of behaviors that led to positive outcomes during the review period.

Support Open Discussion About the Employee’s Performance

Encourage the employee to respond to your feedback. They can provide additional insight into why they behaved a certain way or how they can improve in specific areas.

Perhaps the employee requires training and coaching to develop certain skills and improve their performance. Or, the employee might need additional incentives to increase motivation.

Develop an Employee Performance Improvement Plan

Discuss specific steps the employee can take to improve their performance. Include relevant resources, deadlines for improvement, and measurements of success. Then, schedule a time to follow up.

Follow Up on the Employee Performance Improvement Plan

Meet with the employee at the scheduled time to review their performance improvement plan. Evaluate whether the employee reached their key performance indicators (KPIs) for successful change.

If the employee reached their KPIs, discuss the improved performance and provide a relevant reward. Conversely, if the employee did not reach their KPIs, talk about the behaviors you observed and how they impacted performance. Uncover the causes of the underlying issues and how you can help resolve them. Create another performance improvement plan with a timeline to follow up.

Do You Need to Add Accounting and Finance Employees to Your Team?

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide you with accounting and finance professionals to help improve your team’s performance. Find out more today.