Work From Home vs. In-Office: How It Affects Your Business

Battalia Winston — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 18:33:23 +0000

When stay-at-home orders ended, businesses had to face a new dilemma. Should they require employees who have been working from home to come back to the office?

Before making firm decisions, executives should look at productivity and retention data of work-from-home vs. in-office employees. How it affects your business may have you considering new ways of managing your team.

Surprising Productivity

Opponents of the work-from-home movement argued that it would negatively affect productivity. They were wrong, in fact, remote workers’ productivity increased.

Remote workers also worked longer hours, largely because they now devote more time toward work that used to go toward commuting to their jobs.

Cost Savings

Reduced square footage will cost less and provide a cascade of related savings. Lower utility bills, reduced expenditures for office supplies (including coffee and snacks), and even savings on cleaning services may result from having a large percentage of your workforce clocking in at home.

Recruiting, Retention, and Burnout

Offering fully remote work allows an employer to recruit the best talent nationally or even globally. While there may be issues with synching meetings and team projects due to different time zones, the remote option makes it possible to recruit, hire, and train employees from far-flung locations. This expands the candidate pool and allows employers to seek workers with top skill sets, regardless of their location.

Remote workers put in longer hours than in-office workers and hey get more work done in less time. . While this boosts productivity, it can lead to burnout. Therefore, employers should take action if employees submit work late at night.

In order to reduce burn out and increase retention, employers should ensure that employees take advantage of paid time off and add new mental health benefits.

New Executive Skills

Recognizing how remote vs. in-office work affects your business has forward-thinking organizations seeking executives with the skills to recruit, retain, and manage a remote workforce. The New York Times recently reported the emergence of creative executive job titles to describe leaders who can manage a remote workforce, noting that LinkedIn experienced a 304 percent increase in titles referring to “hybrid work” since the pandemic began.

These radical changes in work environments provide little data on the skill sets necessary to evaluate executives when filling remote positions. Choosing an executive search firm that can dig deep to find candidates with the skills and profile needed to lead your organization and its vital operational areas to success is extremely important. Battalia Winston’s research and industry knowledge can do that for you. Let us partner with you to identify executive talent that will drive success in a remote and hybrid work world.

The post Work From Home vs. In-Office: How It Affects Your Business appeared first on Battalia Winston – Executive Recruiting Firm | Executive Search.

Overcoming the "Talent Shortage" With Analytics

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 00:40:55 +0000

by Gilbert Carrara, MD
Despite an enormous pool of unemployed talent looking for work, some of the best and largest companies in the United States (and even worldwide) are consistently unable to find high-quality talent. Why? Across industries, executives and HR leaders are realizing that they are often poorly evaluating employees, leading to undervaluing or mis-valuing their teams.
The tendency to misjudge employees’ value may originate in outdated hiring and performance evaluation methods. A mountain of scholarly literature shows that the intuitive way companies now judge professional potential is rife with snap judgments and hidden biases, rooted in our upbringing or in deep neurological connections that doubtless served us well on the savanna but would seem to have less bearing on the world of work.
A survey by Corporate Executive Board, a research firm in Virginia, showed that 74% of the 500 hiring managers surveyed reported that their most recent hire had a personality “similar to their own.” Another study from Northwestern University that analyzed the recruiting, interviewing and evaluation practices of professionals from elite investment banks, consultancies and law firms concluded that among the most important factors driving their hiring recommendations were shared leisure interests.
More and more organizations are beginning to see how damaging these unscientific methods of evaluation can be for company performance, and big data and analytics providers have responded by developing new solutions specifically designed for talent assessment. For example, Knack, a company funded by Israeli entrepreneur Guy Halfteck, designs tests that examine specific cognitive skills that employer’s desire by drawing on the latest cutting edge behavioral and scientific research. These skills range from pattern recognition to emotional intelligence, risk appetite and adaptability to changing situations.
Google’s understanding of the promise of analytics for talent assessment is probably better than anybody else’s, and the company has been changing its hiring and management practices as a result of its ongoing analyses. For example, Google no longer uses brainteasers in their interviews, because they do not correlate with job success; GPA is not considered for anyone more than two years out of school, for the same reason—the list goes on. But for all of Google’s technological enthusiasm, these same practices are still deeply human. A real, live person looks at every résumé the company receives. Hiring decisions are made by committee and are based in no small part on opinions formed during structured interviews.
While tried-and-true methods of evaluating candidates for the necessary personality traits and culture fit shouldn’t be completely abandoned, HR executives and CEO’s around the globe need to start injecting analytics into their hiring processes and performance management programs. Corporate leaders should be making sure that they are developing and rewarding employee skills and valuing employees who are there to help achieve their organizations’ business goals. By adapting analytics and new methods of assessment, leaders will build higher performing teams with decreased employee turnover and increased employee engagement.