News Spotlight

Well-being programs are making a comeback. Companies are promoting time off days to promote employee well-being, such as a “me day” or “recharge days” (New York Post).

Government workers enter the job market. There’s been a spike in applications from current and former government workers, which will further increase the competition for jobs (Marketplace).

Gen Z seeks mini-retirements. Young professionals choose to take extended career breaks and fund them with their savings, opting for this experience earlier in life instead of waiting for retirement (New York Times).

Stat of the Week

A new study finds that 75% of workers reported mood drops, citing current events, crime, and finances as their leading worries.

HR leaders should prioritize employee mental health and emotional well-being as essential components of workforce strategy. HR teams should proactively offer mental health resources, such as access to counseling services, stress management programs, and financial wellness tools. Also, HR should foster a culture of empathy, open communication, and psychological safety, along with flexible work policies, that can help employees feel supported during uncertain times, improving morale, engagement, and retention.

Deep Dive Article

The Balancing Act Between Talent Acquisition and Employee Experience

HR executives are struggling to find the right people to hire, and most anticipate that this challenge will persist or worsen. To overcome this, companies need better ways to find candidates, a stronger reputation as an employer, and a smoother hiring process to attract and keep top talent. However, simply hiring isn't enough; creating a positive experience and keeping current employees engaged is seen as a major opportunity for HR this year, as it impacts how productive people are, whether they stay, and even the company's image. Despite some HR leaders believing they have more power now, focusing too much on cutting costs could negatively affect employee well-being, making it harder to retain staff and attract new hires.

Therefore, HR must carefully balance business needs with maintaining a good relationship with employees to succeed in hiring and overall business performance. In today’s article, I speak with Heidi Barnett, the President of Talent Acquisition Solutions at isolved, who explains the balancing act between talent acquisition and employee experience.

isolved just released a new study, and they found that 69% of HR decision-makers expect recruitment to be just as difficult or harder in 2024. What are the biggest challenges organizations face in talent acquisition today?

Heidi Barnett: There are so many, and I think it's diverse. Within the study, and what I'm hearing from a lot of our clients, is that they don't have enough quality candidates. You also hear that people in tech are seeing an overabundance of candidates. You have almost competing challenges and problems here, but I think that the core of it is quality. Many people don't have enough candidates, or they have too many candidates that aren't quite right. The tight labor market is becoming more difficult for our HR professionals and our talent professionals to be able to weed through to find those that are ready to work and are going to be a good fit.

Alongside that, there is a lot more pressure on these HR teams. I think post-COVID, HR departments haven't recovered the way that a lot of other teams have, and so they tend to be smaller than they have in the past, with the same or more pressure that's on them to find faster and even more efficient hiring processes. They're under the gun constantly to be able to produce these candidates for their hiring managers, and then having to wade through even more unqualified or not having enough candidates is putting a lot of pressure on them.

Remote work, or hybrid work, is also making it more challenging to recruit; the statistic I saw is that it's 30% easier for companies to hire if they have the word remote or hybrid within their role. If they have on-site, it makes it even more difficult for them. It's hard to point out one thing, but there are quite a few challenges that our recruiters are facing today.

Employee experience is ranked as the top HR opportunity this year. What are the most impactful ways companies can improve EX to boost retention and engagement?

Heidi Barnett: I was able to do a panel with some business leaders and HRBPs here, and one of the things we talked about that was a heavy topic for them is well-being, mental health, work-life balance, financial wellness even, is just really looking at the holistic picture around well-being for your employees. This can be a check-the-box moment for a lot of HR departments, where we have the ability for them to call a counselor. But the ones that are truly doing this well and are helping to improve the employee experience are the ones that are wrapping their arms around their employees and finding ways to support them in their mental health, work-life balance, and a lot of those different pieces.

Another piece that I've seen that's been successful is how companies personalize their learning and career development opportunities going forward. Something incredible at isolved is we have a mentorship program where someone that's maybe a little bit junior gets paired up with executives or other leaders within the company that have a chance to set them on the right course, to teach them the things that they know, to help them to be successful within the company, and then also outside of that.

Other cultural pieces are important here as well, and finding a culture that is inclusive, that's transparent, that is feedback-driven, that also can really help. Gen Z wants to know where they stand, how they feel, and to really feel involved with the company, and make sure that you're providing that feedback transparently. It can help with the overall employee experience; it can help boost that retention and drive more engagement overall.

Then, of course, you can use AI tools and HR insights in the backend to address those pain points. We're seeing a lot of companies run surveys and then take that survey data and utilize it against the employee base will give you a different picture and give you some ideas around how to improve and to continue to boost that retention. You want employees to be happy because no one wants an employee kicking around who is just unhappy and is causing problems overall.

What role does leadership play in shaping a positive employee experience, and how can executives align EX strategies with business objectives?

Heidi Barnett: Executives can talk about these things and work through their employees to drive the experience overall and help them to be able to contribute wholeheartedly. A happy employee makes happy customers, happy customers buy from you, they continue to renew, and they continue to stay. Investing and wrapping your arms around the employee in a lot of these different ways can really help to benefit them, and it eventually will drive and affect the business overall.

What advice do you have for HR leaders trying to balance business priorities with creating a strong, people-first culture?

Some of the metrics here are turnover rates and engagement scores. A lot of these metrics can help us understand how people are contributing to the business overall, to give us some more ROI around the programs that we're running to help improve the employee experience. There are some other things, like aligning HR strategies with the company objectives, and showing employee experience as a competitive advantage. When we can attach that to recruiting, a lot of times it will make a big difference. Then, you need to balance some of the financial discipline with the commitment to the people-centric policies. It takes an investment for us to be able to run some of these programs. We make sure that we’re able to invest, but then show on the backend the ROI; both of those things are important for us to be able to serve the employee while also serving the business.

Watch the full interview where Heidi answers the following questions:

• What steps should HR teams take to ensure a seamless and engaging candidate journey?
• How can HR teams strike the right balance between leveraging technology and maintaining a human touch?
• Looking ahead, what trends do you foresee shaping the future of talent acquisition and employee experience in the next 3 to 5 years?

And be sure to check out isolved’s Fifth-Annual HR Leaders Report.

Thanks for reading — be sure to join the conversation on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts on this topic!

Quote of the Week

“Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once.”
​Drew Houston