At home employees: how to help them reach their goals?

Want to help at home employees? First of all, we need to understand that working from home or working remotely continues to grow around the world, more than ever before because of the last two years of the pandemic. It has employers thinking about new operational processes, some of them for the first time. We can just say that businesses around the world are starting to conduct the biggest experiment in remote work of all times.

Not everyone can work from home, not every job can be done from home, so jobs within the health sector or manufacturing are just impossible to be made on remote mode. They have other rules. In the case of areas working indefinitely from home, employers know they have to give all the support to workers. 

 At home employees: how to help them reach their goals?

Define the work from home policy

Working from home policies attract and retain top workers. Encourage employees to have conversations and be social with digital messages. Create online channels for everyone to talk about what they do out of the Job. 

Some governments and countries suggest coworkers schedule virtual coffee breaks with each other to maintain social connections and promote mental well being. If you’re worried about productivity, keep in mind the time your employees spend chatting by the coffee machine or taking the occasional long lunch break. A happy employee tends to be a more productive employee. 

Encourage wellness and healthy habits

Well being of people and mental health is a must for forward thinking and processes in organizations. The support can be given in different forms: like offering guided meditation sessions, recommending fitness apps, ensuring the company health plan covers virtual therapy or helping employees in distress. 

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Maintain communication and be transparent 

When people work from home they can feel disconnected from the team sometimes, so effective communication is crucial and it is also important when workers are in the middle of transition to remote work. Follow these principles: be frequent, transparent, start dialogues, easy to navigate activities, and be consistent.

Work-life balance

This is one of the most obvious changes for company leaders the last years, because it has been an important period to focus on empathy and employee wellbeing. 

As part of this, managers have had to take on coaching roles and openly discuss workloads, interests of employees and mental health, aspirations, and other factors outside of their current role to form a closer connection with people.

Maintaining personal connections and introducing stress management and self-care practices have also become fundamental aspects in helping employees maintain a good work-life balance. While employee wellbeing has always been important, ensuring the team is healthy and motivated has become a day-to-day task for all organizations.

Midtown HR is the company behind a hundred happy companies. We´re focused on simple solutions for payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team. Let’s talk!

Why is it important to have a great Job description to attract top talent?

If you are trying to fill an open position in your company, one thing you need to pay attention to is the job description, because if it is effective it can make a huge difference when it comes to attracting high quality talent to your organization.

On the other hand, one of the easiest ways to get ahead of the competition is to start with an effective job description. By investing good time and effort into writing a strong description of the open position, you will enable your organization to accurately announce the opportunity and obtain the most qualified applicants.

Tips to create a great job description to attract top talent

1 | Details and general information in the job description

Consider adding an overview of the responsibilities, all the requirements of the position (including every detail like skills, education or special courses or certifications), and whether the position is full-time, part-time or seasonal, so the person will know the amount of hours per week or month.

You will also want to show your brand in a way that the candidate can learn a bit more about what you do. It would be good if you are creative developing that part, but don’t start with that. It is recommended to begin the posting with details about the job and then mention your company towards the end. 

Remember, it’s not all about you, it’s about how the person can help the company reach its fullest potential.

You can also read: What is company culture and why is it important?

2 | Have you ever included a salary range in a job offer?

Another recommendation is that companies should include a salary range in their initial job posting whenever possible. 

Quality candidates always look for opportunities that meet their salary needs. However, according to surveys, almost 70% of candidates said they never or only occasionally found job descriptions that included salary information. 

It could be something remarkable, you can stand out from other employers by adding the salary band to your job description to help attract the best fit candidates.

Conclusion

Writing and preparing a well thought out and successful job description for your open position is not something easy, but well worth it, no doubt about it, besides we know this is a good and effective strategy to advertise your company and one opportunity to market to potential future candidates.

Midtown HR is focused on simple solutions for payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team. 

5 ways to increase employee retention in your organizations

Do you want your employees to stick around? It’s clear your employees are a valuable investment for your company, and for the future of your organization as well, so something you need to know as a business owner is that employee retention is often harder than hiring them. Hiring the right people and keeping them for the longest time possible is essential for you to build a successful business.

According to recent statistics nearly 70% of organizations report that workers turnover has a negative financial impact due to the cost of recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement or new employee, and also the overtime work of current employees that’s required until the organization can fill the position. 

It’s been estimated that a lost employee can cost 6 to 9 months of that employee’s salary on average, so there’s a clear need for employee retention strategies.

5 ways to increase employee retention in your organizations

1 | Give positive feedback 

Employees need positive feedback to know how they are doing their tasks and also to improve their work, so constructive advice is something you should consider giving when it’s deserved for the workforce.

Positive feedback should be given frequently to motivate employees and to give them the determination they need to do their best. But constructive and corrective feedback is also important, particularly when there’s an urgent issue that needs to be nipped in the bud.

2 | Encourage creativity

A lot of companies say they value creativity, but they don’t necessarily have any initiatives or policies organized to support it. Google, for instance, has a 20% program in which their employees are given the opportunity to work on side projects that interest them.

3 | Good salary and benefits

This reason was followed by career advancement and after that we find new opportunities, better benefits, and the location. Is not always about the money, but according to a collection of recent surveys on employee retention, only 24% of employees say that financial stability motivates them to stay in a job. 

On the other hand, 56% of employees say that health care and insurance concerns keep them in their job. Benefits that are actually beneficial matter. Money matters. What you offer to your team in this area should be comparable to other businesses in your industry and country.

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4 | Give opportunities to grow

Employees consider listed professional growth opportunities as one of their highest drivers of engagement, at the same time employees leaving their jobs listed lack of growth opportunity as a reason for leaving. If your company has high retention it’s probably because you encourage career development opportunities.

5 | Make sure managers are not making good employees to leave

“People leave managers, not companies.” Management affects how engaged employees are, and how likely they are to stay at your company. Be mindful when you name managers, because when it’s done wrong nothing fixes that bad decision. 

Midtown HR is the company behind a hundred happy companies. We´re focused on simple solutions for payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team. Let’s talk!

4 advantages and disadvantages of hybrid workplace

Hybrid workplace is a huge change compared to the traditional work model we all know. It has a lot of variations and some companies might allow their people to work remotely and in their positions within the physical offices, using different schedules during the week. Other businesses might have employees working either full-time remote or full-time coming to the office.

In a few words we can say that the hybrid approach wants to provide the best balance of productive work and quality of life outside of the job, because it aims to reduce stress and commuting, and today it makes sense to a lot of people after everything we’ve been experiencing during the pandemic period, but there´s always questions, is this going to work for all of us?

4 advantages and disadvantages of hybrid workplace

Advantages

1 | Hybrid workplace is cheaper and prioritize work life balance

The hybrid work place is an economical place, in terms of maintaining really large offices or commuting everyday on public transit, organizations and employees can save thousands of dollars when it comes to that matter.

Companies offering a mixture of remote work and work at the office will have a big talent pool to work with, because they can hire people from all around the world. On the other hand, flexible work options allows people to spend more time with family and less time traveling or commuting, and in case of parents they can homeschool with their kids whenever they need it.

2 | People are not that expose to ills

Everyone is worried about their health and safety today more than ever, so options to work from home are very attractive, and if you have fewer collaborators in the workplace the chance of illness is lower, also the chance of infecting others. 

3 | Workers could be more productive

In a hybrid workplace model, people have more flexibility to get a task done when they’re most productive. For instance, some people are more efficient in the morning while others do better in the evening. They can also choose to work with different team members on-site or do their work from a remote location that is not home.

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Disadvantages

1 | The internet access and different areas

One of the main problems when we talk about a hybrid workplace is that not all of us have the luxury of quality internet access, designated comfy home workspaces, or a good place without distractions. On the other hand, it is not an alternative for people working in the front line when it comes to areas like hospitals, lawyers or factories.

2 | Workers have the potential to burn out

Overworking when having a hybrid workplace is one of the dangerous possibilities, because remote workers tend to work longer hours and they take shorter breaks.

What happens is that they worry because they are out of sight and they think sometimes their colleagues or bosses perceive them to be doing less than they should, so there’s a tendency to overwork and people stay late to compensate for that idea.

Midtown HR is focused on simple solutions for payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team, ¡Let’s talk!

Employee onboarding: 4 perks to help increase retention

Today everyone has more control over their careers than ever. In the process of employee onboarding people can decide whether to stay in the company or not based on different factors, among them we have the benefits and perks, so companies of different sizes have been changing their compensation plans to ensure employee retention.

First of all, we need to start differentiating benefits and perks, so you need to know that benefits are part of an employee’s salary, and perks are additional. For instance, free coffee and snacks, rewards for a particular task or everything that makes a place more enjoyable can be considered as perks.

Employee onboarding: some perks to help increase retention

Flexible work schedules 

We have left behind the traditional 9 to 5 hours schedule for work throughout the day, and one of the biggest changes among different companies and organizations has been this new shift to flexible work hours. 

You may have seen this kind of information in the Jobs descriptions and in the websites as well, and this´s been done to attract  job seekers. 

The possibility to work from home

Approximately one in five workers around the world are telecommuting according to different studies. This alternative enables employees to work at home occasionally, and it can be a great perk for keeping employees happy and engaged.

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Constant professional development

When it comes to attracting new talents a PEO can help you develop an onboarding program that makes people feel comfortable and quickly integrated into your team. 

Education and constant growth for old and new employees is really valuable, and can help increase retention as well, this is actually something that can be considered a great perk.

Parental perks

People and specifically parents want organizations to understand the unique challenges they face, so supporting working parents can bring positive benefits to companies. This understanding is shown to employees in the form of benefits and perks.

Health benefits for the family, colleague saving assistance, emergency day care can be considered as great perks for parents.

Experts say that It’s really important that employers have holistic plans that can be organized to help their employees get through these uncertain times. Business leaders know that just salary is not enough to attract and retain the best talent today, so consider these perks as options to leverage all the value that can be offered to your team.

MidtownHR’s suggestion is that combining good perks and benefits might be a great plus for your people. We´re focused on simple solutions for payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team, ¡Let’s talk!

Classify your employees: the difference between full time and part time

It’s normal for small and medium companies to struggle when it comes to hiring full time and part time employees. Truth is that some companies need more part time workers and others need more full time collaborators, sometimes a mix of both.

You need to know that commonly the number of hours worked per week and the schedule helps define if it’s about a full time or part time job. For instance, a part time worker in a mall may have a schedule of 10 hours one week and the next one 25 hours. 

Most of the time employers are able to make their own definitions, so we can understand if you haven’t found what you´re looking for related to this subject so far in your research. In this article we´ll help you out.

The concepts of full time and part time jobs

Definition of a full time job

The major employment law in the United States does not provide a definition 100% clear in this matter, so it depends on the needs of the company. Some companies may require people to work 32 or 40 hours per week. The exact amount of hours is particularly important because it determines how many hours are guaranteed on a weekly basis for the employee.

Definition of part time job

The name part time job defines itself, this type of work routine has fewer hours than full time. Part time employees are not guaranteed the same amount of hours or shifts each week. 

Employees for part time jobs have the option of selecting additional turns to cover for co-workers who can´t make it because of different reasons, and sometimes they can make extra hours during a particular time of the year. Part-time jobs typically require no more than 35 hours per week, and may be as few as 5-10 hours. 

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Main differences between full time and part time

Amount of hours considered for full time 

The answer is that The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has no exact definition for part-time or full-time employment, and the owners of the companies may determine their own definitions. 

However, according to the IRS, for purposes of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this is the right definition to use: for a calendar month a full-time employee is someone employed on average at least 30 hours of service per week, or 130 hours of service per month.

It’s important to make the right classification

If your management does it wrong it can cause unwanted penalties, like benefits related issues for the company. For instance, if an employer under the ACA does not offer benefits to a full-time employee because they hired the person as part time colaborator the company may face fees or other demanded payments for that kind of error.

MidtownHR can help your company with simple solutions, classifying your employees, also with payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team. MidtownHR is on a mission to create a world of optimistic entrepreneurs.

Onboarding Process and Compliance