This November marked the launch of Cohorts, a freelance network of HR professionals whose aim is to elevate the standards of people management. At the core of our mission lies a firm belief in the transformative power of employee experience. It’s more than a philosophy; it’s the strategy for retention and establishing yourself as an employer of choice. Our commitment extends to advocating for remote work and flexibility, aligning with modern workforce expectations. Our experience confirms that this approach not only works but thrives.

In-Depth Seminar Insights

Our recent seminars delved into topics we’re passionate about. Here’s a brief overview, with future posts to explore each theme in depth:

Hiring:

Our approach redefines the candidate experience, acknowledging that it starts at the very first interaction. A key takeaway is the lasting impact of initial perceptions. Candidates’ first experiences, especially if negative, can deter future applications and fuel online discussions.

To refine this journey, here are some things you can do:

• Apply to your own company. See what information is shared with you. How long does it take to get answers? It’s useful to regularly check out the candidate experience of your company yourself to understand what could be improved.
• Make sure all the stakeholders in the hiring process are trained for it. Structured hiring reduces bias and helps to avoid awkward situations where people interviewing the candidates come up with their own unique approaches.
• Ask feedback from candidates about their experience. We usually do so with clients and employees, so why not with candidates?

 

Employer Branding:

With less people entering the job market than leaving, having a strong employer brand to stand out from other companies is becoming a strategic part of the business. To make it sustainable, you need more than one person leading the initiative. This is where the employer brand ambassadors come in. And you can empower them from day one.

Here are a few ways to do that:

• Start from onboarding – create a landing page with all the necessary information for a newcomer to start sharing their experience at your company. Include various materials such as banners and post templates for LinkedIn and some instructions on how to put together their branding messages. Employer Branding is a part of Employee Experience as well!
• Keep it simple. Employer branding is a sum of small tasks – encourage your ambassadors to start with them. Like showing off their company swag, posting about their favorite books or podcasts or interacting with social media posts.

An authentic employer brand helps you attract the right candidates on the job market and employer brand ambassadors are the best way to achieve that authenticity.

 

Retention:

We’ve observed that personalization is the key to retention and a positive employee experience. Compensation is crucial, but so is crafting an experience that resonates with individual needs and aspirations. So how can we make the workplace more personal?

Here are a few ways to do that:

• Address the level of flexibility you can offer – are you allowing people to work remotely? Can they choose their own working hours? Are you open to different types of employment (part-time, temporary, freelance). Many people have experienced great flexibility during 2020-2021 and wish to continue with that.
• Transparency is a great opportunity to show that the company believes in their practices enough to talk about it publicly. Pay transparency is coming and with it an opportunity to share and explain the principles behind your compensation approach and how you set salaries. With that you can give out messages to employees explaining how they can impact these decisions (with their performance, for example).
• As we bring together employees with more diverse backgrounds it’s also useful to know that cultures do differ a lot and it impacts the way people work. Being more aware of people’s cultural differences allows you to manage them and their expectations better. We recently created a workshop around this specific topic (link).

 

Leadership Development:

Our seminars highlighted the evolving nature of leadership in today’s dynamic work environment. We stress the importance of agile leadership, capable of navigating unforeseen challenges. True leadership transcends a title; it’s about authentic relationships, emotional intelligence, and continuous learning.

Here are some key trends we see in the leadership development area:

• Agile leadership – the skill of adapting to changing circumstances. Creating detailed, long-term plans is great but often they get revisited and changed along the way. With agile leaders we expect them to provide the team with a vision and goals that empower the team to get through the challenges.
• Leadership is a relationship – and relationships have to be authentic to be meaningful. A role does not make someone a leader. Being a leader requires a set of skills often not taught at universities – people skills – that help leaders navigate successfully through people management. Empathy can be a skill that is learned, not a trait you are born with.
• Learning as leaders – traditional training methods often don’t work with managers whose schedules are filled with multiple urgent tasks. So we recommend companies try new approaches to learning, like bite-sized, personalized learning, collaborative learning (experience clubs, mentoring, group co-vision).

 

Our seminars only begin to cover the breadth of our initiatives in reshaping the employee experience. Stay tuned for more in-depth discussions on each topic. Follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates and insights. If you find our philosophy aligns with your values, we invite you to reach out at hello@cohorts.work. Let’s co-create thriving teams!