Blog

The pandemic changed the fundamental way we work. Recently, many companies have been considering how they could make remote work and hybrid work more effective. This has led to the concept of "hoteling." What does this mean, and is it right for your business? Here are some things to consider.  

Overhead Costs for Work Spaces  

Hoteling your office allows you to downsize both space and money. You won't need a dedicated desk for every employee as people come in and out of the office at different times. You can create a more open approach, like a coworking space model. Desks or offices are available on a first-come basis. Reducing the size of your workspace means you can eliminate many of its overhead costs.  

Encourage Networking and Social Engagements 

One of the things employees say they miss most about the office is the ability to network and socialize. It was a big part of our culture before, and work-from-home became more isolating. But hoteling means different people will be in the office at various times, which avoids the insular cliques that could make environments toxic. Your employees will create professional relationships with those around them, not just the people they work with most often.  

Plan for Busy Days 

There are potential cons to hoteling. Increased demand on busy work days will be the biggest challenge. For the most part, your flexible spaces won't need specific allocation, but on days when everyone comes in, such as busy days or company celebrations, you'll want to have someone in charge of ensuring everyone has a place to work.  

Make the Return Easier  

Office reintegration may be difficult for some of your employees. While many may have missed an office's social interaction, others found work-from-home more productive and may bristle at the thought of giving that up. With a hybrid approach, you can give everyone what they want. Hotelling means when a few people come into the office, you won't have entire departments still sitting empty, and the people working may feel more comfortable than if they were working in a ghost town.  

Competition for Office Resources 

There is also the concern about competition for resources. When hoteling, you need to make sure that everyone has access to the resources they need when they need them. Your new office will be a single-business coworking space rather than house dedicated departments and offices. Every employee on the premise needs access to management and the tools to do an adequate job. They shouldn't have to jump through hoops to access what should be available to everyone.  

If you're looking to hire new people this year, let itec group lend a hand! 

Do you work to live or live to work? You've probably heard people say these phrases to you, but what do they mean? You might cross the line from career fulfillment to career burnout if you live to work. On the other hand, if you work to live, you may miss out on true career satisfaction. So how do you strike a balance in your career? Here are some ideas to think about.

Disengagement

Disengagement from the meaning of work leads to the assumption that work is only for the paycheck. Yes, we need money to thrive in our economy, but humans aren't motivated by money alone. Meaning is just as essential, and when we remove any purpose beyond the monetary value from any action we take, we tend to go through the motions.

Overload and Burnout

But pushing ourselves at work can also lead to negative consequences. Maybe we do love our jobs, but when we make our careers our only priority, we are likely to suffer from overload and, eventually, complete burnout.

The Drive for Perfectionism

Some people are driven by the need to be perfect. That means pushing career goals to the limit. And while striving to be the best at something is a worthwhile goal, sometimes it happens at the cost of everything else. Perfection can sometimes be a mask for other concerns and feelings.

Finding a Balance

There is a happy medium between working to live and living to work. Finding that sweet spot where you can earn the money you need to maintain your lifestyle without working so hard that you find yourself in a state of burnout. Seeking an employer who values work/life balance and recognizes employees as complete people with lives both in and out of the office.

Looking for a new job? Check out the open opportunities with itec group!

Are you having trouble filling your open career opportunities? Various factors, including the fallout of COVID-19 and The Great Resignation, lead to more open positions than qualified candidates. But that doesn't mean you can't attract great talent to your doorstep with the right incentives. Now is the time to consider a sign-on incentive to inspire and attract candidates to apply for your open roles. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Sign On Bonus

Many companies are embracing sign-on bonuses for new hires in any position, not just new hires in executive roles. The idea is to incentivize accepting a job during a challenging hiring season. Talent may consider leaving current positions for new opportunities when the offer includes a generous bonus.

Tuition Repayment

For many people, the cost of their student loans can be crippling. Companies can help the process by offering tuition repayment programs that help employees pay down their debt faster. This will become increasingly important as student loan forbearance is made necessary as the pandemic ends.

Expanded PTO Options

Time off has always been a selling point for employees. And as everyone refocuses on their work/life balance in the wake of COVID-19, a solid PTO plan is increasingly more critical. Expanded PTO programs will give employees more career satisfaction and the ability to return to work refreshed after being away from the office.

Flexible Scheduling

Another critical perk for employees today is the ability to create more flexible schedules. Working different hours or from home is helping many employees accept and stay in jobs. Flexible schedules can assist with commute and child drop-off issues that often arise for employees juggling work and personal lives.

Access to Training and Development

Another significant incentive to encourage talent to accept your job is access to training and development. One of the main reasons employees leave jobs is because they feel like they've topped out and cannot advance or learn any more in their careers with an organization. Provide pathways for continued learning and advancement.

If you're struggling to find the talent you need, get in touch with itec group! 

It's no secret that there's a war on talent. The Great Resignation led to an employee-driven job market, so the competition between employers is high. While there are talented job seekers out there, reaching them before other companies will be critical. Finding qualified candidates can be challenging, and bringing them through the hiring process can be even more difficult. Let's share the pros and cons of decreasing your hiring requirements to increase your time to hire.

Make the Application Process Simple

Companies often think that making applicants jump through more hoops weeds out the less qualified candidates. However, the opposite is true. When you complicate your application, the top candidates will abandon the process. Ensure that your online application is simple for submitting resumes and essential information.

Determine Hiring Procedures to Eliminate

There may be other ways to cut out extensive steps for the hiring process. Some companies are concerned about eliminating measures such as drug screens or background checks. However, only using these screening tools for jobs that require them can help you cut back on the extensive process for other employees.

Reduce the Number of Interviews

It doesn't take long for candidates to get frustrated with interview after interview. It might start with a phone screen. Then they might meet with a recruiter or HR representative. Then they'll meet with the manager or supervisory. Then they might meet with the team, C-level executives, or a panel interview. Once someone has five interviews, they've started to lose interest. Reduce the number of interviews to keep qualified candidates engaged.

Ease Your Hiring Requirements

Another trend today in light of The Great Resignation is to reconsider some more strict hiring requirements. In a world where transferable skills are as valuable as experience, reducing dependence on college education, years of exact experience, and more can help you find great candidates with all the right potential.

Ready to hire? Get in touch with itec group today!

May is Mental Health Awareness month. It's more important than ever to check on your employees and determine the best ways to support them. Burnout rates are higher than ever, and it's easy to fall into a rut. It's crucial that you understand what you can do as an employer to provide options and solutions to your team. Let's take a closer look.

The Rise of Employee Burnout

The pandemic didn't specifically cause employee burnout, but it did exacerbate it. Employees have felt the push of work/life balance and integration for a long time, but few companies have focused on real employee-based solutions. We're seeing this become a significant issue for many professionals.

The Great Resignation

The rise of burnout led directly to what's known as The Great Resignation. In the latter half of 2021, over 4 million employees quit each month. Middle career, management, and technology professionals led the way, with more women than men quitting. Healthcare and service industry workers have also been affected.

Access to Mental Health Counseling

To help employees avoid burnout and have a healthier experience at work, employers need to readjust how they provide resources to employees. One significant benefit that companies can easily offer is access to mental health counseling. This can be through health insurance or by providing subscriptions to online counseling portals.

Mental Health Days

Taking time off to recharge is also critical for improved mental health. Rather than rationing paid time off or creating arbitrary categories, allow your employees to take time off for any reason without any justification.

Flexible Work Options

Work-from-home has become the new normal over the last several years. While many companies worried it would affect productivity, we're finding that it's been an enormous benefit for many professionals. Offering remote work, hybrid schedules or flexible hours can all help someone better manage their days.

One on One Feedback

It's also vital that your management team maintains good communication with every employee. Regular check-ins help with determining the status of work-related projects. It can also allow managers to assess how their employees feel and what kind of additional support they might need.

If you need to hire or expand your team, get in touch with itec group!

The last few years have not been easy on anyone. With the COVID-19 pandemic still running rampant worldwide, your team may be feeling more stressed and anxious than usual. While anxiety is common and even expected in some cases, stress levels are directly rising due to the challenging circumstances we have in our lives right now. Leadership is about helping your employees achieve at the highest levels. Here are some tips to help you lead your team through a crisis.

Show Support

As management, the most important thing you can do is demonstrate that you support your employees during this crisis. This means reaching out directly to check on them. You don't have to know exactly what to say, but they need to know that you're there for them. Let them know they can come to you if they have questions or concerns. And provide them with outside resources they can turn to when they need other kinds of support.

Reinforce Shared Values

When we're dealing with collective trauma, one of the best things people can feel is a sense of belonging. You can reinforce that by emphasizing your company's shared values. This is also an opportunity to call out toxic behaviors that won't be tolerated, so everyone knows they're safe and supported.

Personalize Communications

For many people, remote work removed the human element to communications, and we're increasingly relying on text or chats. But it can sometimes be hard to detect tone or understand subtext. Make sure that you're still making an effort to talk one-on-one with your team to understand their communication style.

Practice Self-Care 

The phrase "lead by example" is essential, especially in times of crisis. Right now, that means paying particular attention to your own needs to safety and wellness. When you practice self-care and demonstrate to your team that balance is essential, you'll give them the extra push to make an effort to focus on their wellbeing.

Appraise the Situation

As with any crisis, you'll want to assess the situation continually. When are things critical in need of immediate triage versus when they need to be shifted to maintenance mode? The problem with the current crisis is that we move back and forth regularly, and it's hard to maintain a sense of normalcy. Take time to reassess to know how to respond.

Need to hire this year?

Get in touch with itec group today!

Just like that, 2021 is coming to an end. As we look back on the year, we can take note of some of the biggest trends in advanced manufacturing and the impact those changes have had on the industry. Before we turn the page on the calendar to 2022, let’s review some of the most significant changes we’ve seen since the start of the year.

The Impact of Digitization on Talent 

Over the last two years, companies have begun digitizing at a faster rate. While the use of more technology in the manufacturing space was already increasing, the pandemic made it more critical as the demand for digitized services increased. Companies embracing technology have plans for increased hiring to lessen the skills gap making employees with the right blend of technical and manufacturing skills in high demand.

Hybrid Work Between People and AI

Work-from-home became very popular due to necessity over the last year, but that has impacted manufacturing a little differently than it has other industries. With a need for in-house employees, not everyone could work remotely. But it did create a broader use of enhanced technology, such as AI, to streamline the work that needed to be done in-house to create a safer environment. Machine intelligence and human employees are now partnering to solve complex manufacturing problems.

Major Struggles with Cyber Security

With increased reliance on technology, companies are also at risk of cyberattacks. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in the U.S. in early 2021 showed how hackers could quickly gain access to internal systems and create chaos that impacted an entire portion of the southeast United States. Cyber security has to go hand in hand with increased digitization in manufacturing environments to ensure that products, processes, and profits are not at risk.

Renewed Interest in Green Manufacturing

It’s also no surprise that green manufacturing is still very much on the table. Along with the pandemic, environmental concerns have become a significant issue for many people across Canada and worldwide. Every aspect of a community, from employers to employees and even the residents, have a vested interest in safe and effective environmental protections that will decrease negative impacts on the ecosystem and increase socially responsible sustainability. More green manufacturing also means more exciting job opportunities within the community.

Do you need to hire advanced manufacturing Talent?

Start your search with itec group Recruitment Solutions. Our Talent is Finding Yours.

Though many people may wish to work from home, not everyone’s job is something they’re able to do from the comfort of their home office. As companies refine their hybrid work policy, consider how this will impact those who have no choice but to work on-site. Here are a few ways to address internal equity issues in your hybrid workplace, along with a few examples.

Ensuring Fairness

A need for fairness is just a part of the human experience. So, when one group of employees sees another treated differently, it can be frustrating. Leadership needs to make fairness a priority. One of the ways to do that is to fully communicate how resources will be divided between on site and remote employees. Even though they fully understand different jobs have different requirements, those who perceive inequity will begin to disengage.

Reduce Perceptions of an Inner Circle

Companies also have to be careful not to treat in-house employees differently than WFH employees. They will feel isolated, like they aren’t part of the inner group. That means you need to work hard to ensure that communication is effective across all channels to include those who aren’t in the office. Using the right communication tools will be an excellent start to creating more equity in a hybrid workforce.

Build Trust

Trust may be the most crucial aspect of having a successful hybrid work arrangement. Be open, build goodwill, keep in touch, addressing issues as needed, and managing expectations and outcomes. You can create a balance of trust if you can let the WFH people know they are part of the culture and engage the in-house staff with perks besides flexible schedules.

Types of Work

It’s also good for you to address the types of work that can be done at home versus in the office and adjust accordingly. Some office roles function better with in-person collaboration, while other tasks can be done easily at the home office. Production work can’t be completed at home, but other roles can. Create clear job descriptions to show your reason behind the classification of positions.

Do you need to know more about hiring top talent?

Contact itec group Recruitment Solutions. Our Talent is Finding Yours.

After over a year of working remotely, many workers have grown to enjoy the freedom and flexibility that work from home has to offer. But, there are many upsides to working from the office, too. If you are weighing your options of continuing to work remotely or returning to the workplace, there are some things you might want to consider. Here are several reasons you may want to go back.

More Opportunities for Social Interaction

If you’ve been feeling isolated over the last several months, getting back to work might be what you need right now. Even though you may have nothing more than a professional relationship with your coworkers, you will have an opportunity to engage in conversations and other types of social interactions that may have been missing.

More Support for Your Job

Remote workers sometimes feel like they don’t get the support they need. When they ask for help on a project from home, they have to wait for someone to reply. In the office, that request for help can be acted upon immediately. You’ll notice the natural give and take within your workplace when people are together.

More Collaborative Environment

Similarly, the office workplace fosters more collaboration. You can bounce ideas off of each other to brainstorm or figure out solutions to sticky situations. Collaboration is a big part of the office environment, and even with tools and chats available for remote workers, it’s not the same thing when you work from home.

Better Networking Opportunities

You’ll also have more opportunities for networking in the workplace. Whether it’s with other supervisors or outside resources, it isn’t easy to do much networking at home. You never know when an opportunity may become available, you just have to be there to receive it.

If you’ve been unemployed or your current job remains remote, but you want to get back to an office, now is the perfect time to look for a new job!

Are you ready to go back to an office and look for your next opportunity?

Contact itec group Recruitment Solutions, where our vision and purpose are to deliver our candidates the ultimate employment experience.

COVID-19 changed the world as we once knew it in every aspect of our lives. It’s still changing things in public, homes, and at work. Now is a great time to consider taking a second look at your employee handbook to evaluate your policies to make your post-COVID workplace safe and healthy for all of your employees. Here are just a few things to consider.

Remote Work Policy

For many businesses, work from home became business as usual. But when things changed so quickly in 2020, companies didn’t always take the time to establish work-from-home policies. Now is the perfect time to do that. These policies should include accessing remote tools, the hours expected, and requirements for the home office.

Moving Regions

Some people over the last year looked at it as a way to move to a new location while still keeping their jobs. That’s becoming common across Canada, but it’s okay for companies to make policies regarding workers who live in other provinces. Check with your legal counsel to ensure you’re remaining compliant with national and local laws.

Personal Technology Etiquette

Whether your employees are working from home or in the workplace, you should update your technology etiquette requirements. For example, if you provide a laptop to a remote employee, you can make conditions that they don’t use that laptop for social media or personal communications. You can also require this in-house as well.

In-Office Visit Policy

Currently, we are still concerned about the transmission of COVID-19 and its variants. That means you may want to include an in-office visit policy for any time a remote worker returns to the office on a temporary basis. Some options include vaccine requirements, mask mandates, or COVID testing before coming back to the office.

Are you considering changes to your employee handbook post-COVID?

Contact itec group Recruitment Solutions, where our vision and purpose are to deliver our clients the ultimate recruitment experience.