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More and more, companies around the globe are investing heavily in social media heads and resources to respond to people talking about their brands on platforms including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Users on these platforms demand an almost immediate response, and it’s your job to engage with users, answer questions and keep them interested. But which networks should you pay attention to? And where do you even start?

Just as you spend time responding to employees on these platforms, it’s equally as important to build Glassdoor into your social media strategy. In just 10 minutes a day, you can start responding to reviews, post Company Updates and build brand ambassadors.

For answers to all of these questions and more, download How to Monitor Social Media in 10 Minutes a Day, a timely new eBook from our friends and marketing experts at HubSpot. You can also read on to get tips on how to streamline your social media process on Glassdoor specifically. Here are a few ways you can get involved on Glassdoor in under 10 minutes a day:

1. Build brand ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are crucial to your success, and here’s why. Studies show employees are your most trusted and valuable assets in giving job seekers an inside look at your company, it’s culture and what it’s like to work there. In fact, employees are 3x more credible than the CEO when talking about working conditions.

To build brand ambassadors of your own, it’s as easy as standing up for a few minutes in a company huddle or sending a quick email encouraging employees to leave their honest positive and negative feedback on Glassdoor. In this email, you can also encourage them to post about your company on any social media sites they’re comfortable with, noting what they love about coming to work every day.

2. Respond to reviews

Take five seconds and think back to the last time you checked your company reviews on Glassdoor. If it was within the last week, yay! If you can’t remember, that’s not good. Glassdoor isn’t just a place for employees (both former and current) to leave their thoughts -- it’s also a place for you, the employer, to build trust with job seekers and respond to employee thoughts, concerns and admiration.

Additionally, 94 percent of job seekers are likely to apply to a job if an employer actively manages its employer brand (including responding to reviews). Take five minutes in a team meeting to bring up the subject of responding to reviews and decide who at your company is going to own this and how often they should respond.

3. Post Company Updates

Job seekers are able to follow your profile on Glassdoor, and typically that means one thing: they want to work for you! So don’t just leave them hanging. You can post status updates on Glassdoor called Company Updates that will allow you to engage this audience with regular news from your organisation. This is a great way to promote your employer brand and any initiatives coming up. Make it a goal to post a few Company Updates a day, week or month!

Then, download HubSpot’s eBook,How to Monitor Social Media in 10 Minutes a Day, to learn more about how to work Glassdoor into your daily social media strategy.

The post How to Monitor Social Media in 10 Minutes a Day appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Work wins are usually measured by their ability to foster collaboration, beat goals, close deals, exceed standards, crush numbers, gain allies, and command respect. But once a year—usually on 1 April—work wins are measured in the ability to foster secrecy, serve up surprise, invoke laughter, and maybe even inspire some sweet revenge. This year, 1 April is a Saturday, so we say: celebrate on Friday, 31 March. Unsuspecting colleagues will be that much more likely to be surprised, so set your calendar reminder now!

Whether your team is coming together to engineer a large-scale gag or pull off a simple trick or two, that exercise in camaraderie will serve to boost morale, build teamwork, and provide some much-needed comedic relief.

There are a tonne of ideas for workplace April Fools’ pranks all over the internet, but we’ve compiled a curated list—if you will—for connoisseurs. These 7 fresh tricks hit the sweet spot of being creative yet still easy-to-pull off. After all, the stapler-in-jelly routine is so last year—and it’s far too much work to encase an entire workstation in plastic, foil or wrapping paper.

1.) Laugh-till-you-cry over spilled milk…

Credit: Instructables

2.) Hey, everyone! Doughnuts in the kitchen – dig in!

Credit: athriftymom.com

3.) Work fridge is watching you! Hands off my almond milk…

Credit: Reddit

4.) Sit down like you mean it! The next iteration of “leaning in”?

Credit: Reddit

5.) Who wouldn’t want to attend THIS meeting?!

Credit: Imgur

6.) Finally a winning reason for hoarding supply-room Post-its!

Credit: Reddit

7.) So awkward when you really have to go…

Credit: Buzzfeed

Did we miss any favourites? Please weigh in on your best office April Fool’s day antics!

The post 7 Perfect April Fool's Day Office Pranks appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

The post Wise Up to Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

This year’sGlassdoor Employer Branding Summit, Sept. 25, 2015 in San Francisco, California, is going to be a full day ofemployer branding,employee engagementandcandidate experiencebest practices fromtrueexperts who live and breathe this stuff.

Need a little more convincing? Here are five reasons why you should live stream this year’s #GDSummit right from your desktop, tablet, or mobile device:

1. We’ve got the biggest names in branding. Kicking off the day will be Spencer Rascoff, CEO ofZillow. He’s got a 99% approval rating on Glassdoor and plans to share Zillow’s employer branding and talent acquisition best practices. You won’t want to miss Spencer!

The rest of the speaker lineup includes employer branding gurus like Stacy Zapar, Celinda Appelby (Oracle), Jennifer Newbill (Dell),Richard Mosley (Universum),and JT O’Donnell, industry analysts Josh Bersin, William Tincup, and Madeline Laurano, and other leaders fromSalesforce,Edelman,Enterprise Holdings,Glassdoor,and Intacct Corporation.

2. We don’t “do” boring. The Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit is your chance to enjoy action-packed 30 minute sessions from highly engaged speakers who are the best at what they do. Frankly, who wouldn’t want employer branding insights from superstars at Zillow, Dell and Salesforce?

3. You’ll gain actionable tips you can implement right away. Your time is precious, so we don’t want to waste it. Register to watch theEmployer Branding Summitfor access to speaker decks, and video sessions after the event, with plenty of opportunities take notes and even screenshot actionable to-do lists while you the event live.

We plan to cover a lot of ground quickly in each session so you won’t find yourself watching the clock, waiting for each session to end. Whether you’re tuning in from office or home, this will likely be the most productive day you’ve spent in a long time.

4. You can pop in and out of the live stream throughout the day.We have the entire Summit agenda on our registration page –check it out! Feel free to either set up camp and watch the entire day (which we highly recommend!) or note the top speakers you’d like to hear from in your calendar.

5. You’ll get access to instant replays (and more!).All live stream registrants will receive online videos of all sessions directly following the event, so you can refer back and leverage these insights for months to come! Feel free to also share the sessions with teammates and spread the knowledge to the rest of your company. Encourage them to register for the event at www.gdsummit.com.

Be sure to register to live stream this year’s Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit to save your spot!

Note:Can't attend live due to the time difference? No problem! Be sure to still register to receive the recordings in your inbox following the event.

The post 5 Reasons Why You Should Live Stream #GDSummit appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

As I was browsing through my LinkedIn feed this morning, I found this quote and couldn’t agree with it more:

“Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left.”

This excerpt is taken from Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. If you haven’t seen Simon’s Ted Talk, you should watch it here. Simon’s main point is simple: people who work for successful companies talk about the why, rather than the how or what. It’s great to have candidates choose to work for you, but do you know why they do?

What we do here at Glassdoor

The Glassdoor mission is similarly unassuming: to help people find jobs and companies they love. While this answers the “what”, as a company, we also talk a lot about the “why” – we hire motivated people that believe in what they’re doing in order to help people find jobs and companies they love. The easiest way to motivate your employees is to start early, in the hiring process – hire people who are already motivated, and inspire them with your company’s mission and the role they play to help your company reach new heights.

Ready to get started motivating your own employees?

First, ask yourself and your team a few questions:

• Why do people want to work for your company? Take a look at your Glassdoor profile to see what people love and what keeps them coming into work every day.
• Why are you personally working for your company?
• What would attract top talent to your organization over a competitor?
• What are you doing to build your employer brand and inspire potential candidates?

Get started motivating employees

Understanding your company’s “why” is the first step to hiring motivated employees and inspiring them in their careers. If you can answer all of these questions, then you are in a good place – you work for a company that believes in its mission and hires motivated people.

Recently, our CEO Robert Hohman starred in a Glassdoor mission video with the sole purpose of explaining what we do here, what makes Glassdoor unique and why employees love coming to work every day. If you’re looking to inspire your own employees and hire motivated individuals, consider creating your own mission video. Here are a few questions that video should help answer for job seekers and your current employees:

• What is your company’s mission?
• What’s your company’s story?
• How do you help people or make their lives easier?
• What makes your company different?
• What makes your employees happy? Why do they love coming to work?
• What do your executives have to say about your organization?

Our best practices

Our answers are simple: we started Glassdoor in 2007 with the mission to help people everywhere find a job and a company they love. Our founders noted the world had Yelp to find great restaurants and TripAdvisor to skim hotel reviews, but people were making one of the most important decisions of their entire life – where to go to work – with almost no information.

There was plenty of information online about what jobs were available, but there was almost nothing about the culture of a company, or how much they paid, or how their interview process worked. So we asked ourselves: “How can we distill and assemble all that information in a constructive and fair way?” And, we knew that by finding a way, we could remove some of the opaqueness in the hiring transaction, helping people make better decisions about where to go to work.

Why people love Glassdoor

Looking through our own Glassdoor profile, here’s what our employees (both past and present) have to say about why they love working here:

As an employer, it’s your job to hone in on the why – why your company is great and why people are happy to come to work every day. Build campaigns (social campaigns, blog posts, etc.) around this employee sentiment to take your brand to the next level. And, you can use the insights available with a Glassdoor Free Employer Account to hone in on the “why” and motivate your employees.

The post Using Motivation and Employer Brand to Retain Employees appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Thank you to the thousands of employers who joined us for our first ever live Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit. If you couldn’t be there in person, don’t worry! I’ve got you covered – here are my top takeaways about employer branding from the day’s event.

To give you a preview of the live event – we had paparazzi in full effect with our very own green carpet and music blasting as you walked in. Guests mingled as they helped themselves to coffee and a morning snack and then quickly grabbed a seat and we were live streaming by 8:55am PT.

So in case you tuned in and out to each session, here are my top takeaways from each!

Robert Hohman from Glassdoor – Welcome Intro

Glassdoor’s very own CEO Robert Hohman took the stage to kick things off and intro us into the big bright world that is employer branding today. According to CEB Research, employers suffer a 50% deficit from a bad brand. And branding is not just for the rich and famous. If you aren’t a recognised brand name, you need to focus on your brand even more. We haven’t met a company yet that doesn’t have a unique value – the key is to find out what that is and tell that story!

Lars Schmidt from Amplify Talent – Keynote Presentation

Has anyone else anticipated the “ubering” and “tinderising” of recruiting? According to SHRM sources – 50% of the labour market will be Gen Y by next year. This is a social generation. And social media is NOT a strategy; it’s a tool. Smart organisations are using social to give looks inside their organisations and building communities of engaged audiences. Social media levels the playing field – you don’t have to have to have a huge budget to be social. Oftentimes, in recruitment, we tend to be too rigid and not forward thinking. Just remember that talent draws talent and continuous training is always encouraged.

Josh Bersin from Bersin by Deloitte – Simply Irresistible: Are You?

Did you know that only 8% of employers have an active programme to help them deal with all the noise we are exposed to daily? This is why you’ll see work/life balance as a common theme – people are overwhelmed! People don’t leave due to bad managers anymore; they leave if a job isn’t designed well. Studies show that employees on smaller teams have more fun and are more engaged. So be clear and transparent about goals and don’t under-staff jobs! 60% of those employed are now raising families. Life is complicated enough without work being complicated, too.

Pro Tip: Recognition goes a long way! Good brands also factor in diversity and provide employees with clear paths for growth.

Bryan Chaney from IBM – 3 Secrets to Employer Brand Storytelling

Bryan kicked off his session with some 5-hour energy and literally had people standing up in their seats! Coming in hot, his session was about how to figure out what you want to say when you craft your employer brand and what you don’t. In today’s recruitment market, information is out there whether you want it to be or not. The key is to know what your audience identifies with and realise that you are going have to think like them as you develop and refine your employer brand story. A good place to start is to look at your career site to see where the traffic is coming from. See where candidates are getting their information and use those specific channels to tell your story. Then figure out how to drive people to that information, and not just your career page! A multi-channel strategy is critical to your success.

Jennifer Tharp from AT&T – Content Is King, Distribution is Queen: Content Marketing for Recruitment

Your audience is anywhere that they see a job description. When looking at AT&T’s candidate traffic, Glassdoor’s traffic was more than double all other social properties combined. The same content isn’t going to matter to every person coming to research your company. Context is how you put it all together.

What do you do with the new way candidates consume information? Distribution! One example is a campaign that AT&T did around veteran spouses. Now when you Google “military jobs,” AT&T jobs will come up before jobs at the actual navy. Getting a message out there that doesn’t exist will draw more people into your brand. Target your message to the right audience. Employer branding is not just fluff. Apply a business strategy behind it to make sure that your work pays off. Distribution affects the overall strategy.

Pro Tip: Resist the urge to just link to the “About Us” section of your website. Add things that put real context to the jobs and opportunities that you are creating. Then automate with hashtags and other items – there are easy ways to do this without someone having to do this constantly. AT&T has one person auditing content …. “One”! Align the right content with the right audience – it’s the recipe for success!

Will Staney from Glassdoor – Announced the 2014 Talent Warriors Winnners!

We sifted through 500 nominations and whittled the list down to the top 10 recruiters of the year, or “Talent Warriors” as we like to call them. Check out the winners here!

Arie Ball & Anthony Scarpino from Sodexo – If Seuss Was Alive in Two Thousand and Five

The Seuss was not created by “I” because I cannot tell a lie. The same applies to your brand! Sodexo has a poet on their team, and they get together to help have conversations between hiring managers and candidates. Make your employer brand story fun and engaging and different to stand out from the pack! It’s not what content works best; it’s how you present it! This showed through and through during their presentation at the summit.

Jen Powell from Deloitte – Infinite Possibilities, Limited Budget: Optimising Your Branding Resources

With so many suggestions, how do you know what to say yes to? Like any consumer company studying why consumers are buying products, Deloitte studied what candidates like when applying to work for them. Of 3,000 candidate responses, they came up with 30 persona categories to target with their brand. Firstly from the survey, they learned that candidates are happy to share what they think! This validated some strategies that Deloitte already knew were affective, and also uncovered a few surprises. One key theme found was that employees really are your brand. What employees are saying about you is what candidates will think of you, so building brand ambassadors is critical to your success. One of the biggest surprises from the survey, was that when asking where candidates went to research companies, they answered that they were NOT going to Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Instead, it’s key as you develop your employer brand to know what sources candidates are researching when they decide to apply to your business.

Stacy Zapar from Zappos – Getting Your Brand Out of the Box (2:00-2:30pm PT)

People want to peek inside the company to see if they relate to the people and if they really want to work there. You want to shine the light on what’s already there. One way to do this is to pick a hashtag and encourage employees to share their story. They will see other employees do it and share organically! Check out our #100HappyDaysAtWork campaign as this could be a great place to start.

Shannon Smedsted from CEB – Using Video to Share Your Company’s Story and Attract Talent

Craft “the fit” into your story. While at Geico, their employer brand video was the 4^th most viewed on YouTube. It’s a great and affordable way to get your message out there. Choose talent wisely for your videos and listen to feedback. Getting feedback from recruiters on what candidates say will help you tailor and drive your company’s message home. Lastly, have fun! That culture will come through on your video.

Alison Hadden from Glassdoor – Well My Employer Brand Sucks. Now What?

Jeff Bezos, the CEO at Amazon says that: “Your brand is what people say about you when you aren’t in the room.” Candidates experience buyer’s remorse when the company message is determined by the stakeholders or HR department at a company and not the employees. If you’re doing a good job of differentiating yourself with your employer brand, it will show up in your applicant quality and accepted offers. Be sure you are measuring in these two areas to ensure ongoing success!

The post Top Takeaways From Our Employer Branding Summit appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

The following blog post was updated on October 9, 2014.

Looking to post a job online quickly without having to deal with the hassle of talking with a salesperson or the commitment of a contract? Posting your jobs instantly online with a credit card for 30 or 60 days might be the best place to start. To help, we’ve gathered a breakdown of the most popular job posting sites and the cost of posting a job right now.

Some refer to this online recruitment model as “post and pray” since it’s not a pay-for-performance advertising solution. But single job listings posted on a site for a set period of time for a flat fee – regardless of where the job shows up, how many interested candidates click, or what kind of results are delivered as measured by data like applicants or clicks – can be a great way to get your open position online quickly and effectively.

If you’re used to paying an external recruiter upwards of £20K per hire, it may seem like a no-brainer to spend a couple hundredpoundsto post a job online. Recognise, however, that with over 40,000 job boards online that come and go on a daily basis – there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure your investment is well spent.

No one’s interested in sifting through hundreds or thousands of CVs if none of them even warrant a phone screen. Quality candidates are what you’re looking for, so it’s important you’re advertising in the right place. Evaluate the demographics of the job seekers on the site you’re advertising on. Are they highly educated or blue collar professionals? Active or passive job seekers? Is it a niche job board targeting engineers, nurses, or even pet groomers? Does the site only advertise hourly positions or target seasonal hires?

How much traffic are they currently seeing on their site? It doesn’t matter how inexpensive a job posting is if no one ever sees it. Find out how many million users are searching for jobs on their site and whether their traffic is growing quickly or slowly declining.

How long will your job be posted on their site? Many job boards offer 30 or 60 day terms. Are you tied to a monthly commitment? Is it up to you to track when your listings expire to ensure they don’t go dark? Or will the listings be auto-renewing every month on your original credit card until you remember to cancel?

Comparing The Cost

• Glassdoor offers employers a do-it-yourself30 day job listingfor £149 in the UK. For employers looking to post more than five jobs, Glassdoor recommends its complete job advertising solution that helps target the 27+ million members on Glassdoor who might not have your company at the top of their mind. This can be a more effective use of recruitment budget that can deliver measurable results for companies of all sizes in as little as 90 days. Additionally, Glassdoor solutions are half the price of LinkedIn.

• Monster offers a 60 day job posting option.Pricing for a single job posting starts at £265, with discounts when purchasing in bulk. Special Offers include multiple job posting packs and the opportunity to feature jobs with bold or highlighted font.

• Career Builder single job posting pricing begins at £239for 30 days only, with discounts ranging from 7%-58% for the advanced purchase of up to 50 jobs postings which must be used within 12 months. The single location extends to a 50-Kmradius.

• LinkedIn sells a 30-day posting in the UK for $295 (about £195), a 5-job pack at a 20% discount, and 10-job pack at a 40% savings, but your job location cannot be edited once your job is posted.

• Reed sells a 6 week job posting for £175 with discounts as you buy more up to 10 jobs.

• JobSite sells a 2 week job posting for £99(roughly £198 for a 30 day posting). Slight discounts are available ifyou buy up to 5 jobs.

• TotalJobs sells a 28 day job posting for £149 with discounts up to 6 jobs.

The post How Much It Costs To Post A Job Online appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Scoring a place on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list is no accident; it requires an unshakeable commitment to excellence that few companies are willing to make. But, for those that accept the challenge, the rewards are manifold. In fact, the data is crystal clear: Best Places to Work winners boast more satisfied workers, and financial results that significantly outpace their competitors.

One business that has clearly figured out the secret of success is the winner of our Employees’ Choice award (for the second year running), Expedia. Every day, senior leaders at Expedia demonstrate their commitment to fostering a culture of transparency, honesty and accountability by placing these values at the core of every business decision. So, if you want to get your company on next year’s list, here are 6 actionable tips from Expedia that will help you on your way.

Embrace Difference

A well-known fruit-based technology company once exhorted us to ‘Think Different’. Expedia takes a similar view, building upon the strength that comes from seeing old problems in new ways. This means encouraging new ideas, diverse backgrounds and unique approaches—because averages can lie and sameness is dangerous. At your own company, remember that rules may not be one-size-fits-all and will naturally evolve over time. When it comes to recruiting, understand that diversity, far from being a source of tension, can bring a welcome, fresh perspective to your company and a diverse set of voices that can lead to a more creative workplace.

Lead Humbly

During victory parades in Ancient Rome, servants would be stationed behind the returning general to repeat, ‘Memento mori’ (‘Remember that you have to die’) as a means of keeping him humble. While we’re not suggesting that your senior leaders adopt such a drastic approach, it does help to remember that a successful business is built from the ground up. Great leaders serve their teams, not the other way round, and while leaders should take their responsibilities to their teams and the company seriously, they should never take themselves too seriously.

A winning company continually makes hypotheses, rigorously tests them and then learns from the results, understanding that no one person has all the answers. This scientific approach is the great leveller—ideas can come from any level within the organisation—and empowers all team members to put forward new ideas; this, in turn, fosters creativity and innovation which leads to better results. Remember that even the most junior employee can have valuable insights into your business.

Be Transparent

The value of transparency in business cannot be overstated; in fact, it is one of the key determining factors behind employee satisfaction. Every employee, from the mail room to the boardroom, wants to know that they are valued as a member of the organisation and that their voice is being heard. Expedia encourages open and transparent dialogue on a regular basis, through its ‘Passport to Performance’ scheme, which ensures that conversations around development, feedback and coaching do not just happen at annual review but are ingrained in the day-to-day life of the company. Make sure that everyone in your organisation is equipped with the tools and authority to communicate openly and honestly, at all levels: upwards, sideways and downwards. That way, any difficult issues are surfaced quickly, allowing you to act upon them and learn from them.

Organise for Speed

A winning company is always ready to adjust to changing conditions. They gather data as fast as possible, and move as soon as necessary. This focus on speed allows them to make mistakes (which we all do, right?), but to learn from these mistakes and constantly improve. Focusing on speed applies to every aspect of the business, including product development, marketing strategy, web UI and design, app development, platform work, big data/analytics, machine learning, web e-commerce, backend services, etc.

Believe in the Scientific Method

Everyone’s ideas are equal in the face of hard data. In other words, data should be used to guide—but not define—your company’s actions.

At Expedia, they embrace a ‘Test & Learn’ philosophy. That is, the company focuses on data-driven, rather than opinion-led, decisions. This actively encourages people to fail (as long as they move fast and learn!), accepting that failure is a natural (and welcome) part of growth, and is an essential requirement for improvement. Give your employees as much input as possible into what the company builds, and how, while placing the emphasis on dispassionate analysis. In this way, employees can claim ownership of the end result, while an analytical environment creates a less political culture.

Act as One Team

At the end of the day, a winning company culture is one in which all employees are striving towards a common goal; and in order for that to happen, everyone must know what the goal is! Open and honest communication throughout the organisation is essential to ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

Expedia’s overarching goal is to optimise for the greater good—not just their own, or even their own teams’ interests—and they are actively interested in the success of others. Although the company manages various brands and business lines around the world, including Retail, Marketing, Product and Engineering, they are united in their desire to create engaging experiences for their customers. This type of structure allows for employees to collaborate and get exposure to multiple parts of the business and fosters inter-company moves as well. In this way, they are empowered to engineer their own career path.

To learn more secrets of the winners, and put yourself in the running for next year’s list, check out our eBook, “The DNA of a Best Place to Work”.

The post Expedia's 6 Tips for a Winning Company Culture appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

Every organisation requires many types of people to effectively carry out their mission—which means you’ll have some buttoned-up, organised types, and you’ll have some who are, ahem, “neatness challenged”. In many modern open office space environments, this can present a problem.

A big public mess can diffuse the focus and sap the morale of whomever has the special privilege of sitting in view of the department’s well-loved hoarder. But some people claim that messiness is their natural state and that they work better in the midst of chaos—as if their creative engine is fuelled by desk detritus. Whether it’s a backlash to the streamlined gospel of minimalism or not, some truly extol the virtues of embracing clutter.

We believe in both: that there’s a way for a desk to look professional but still have warmth and personality. After all, it’s important to be more than a robot at work. Employees who truly connect with their colleagues are happier and far more productive, which has been proven to be good for any business.

Ten years ago, all the talk was about feng shui. Today, the buzz is about hygge and KonMari. Hygge (pronounced HOO-gah) is the Danish word for cozy—a concept that’s earned a broad following across Europe and has been outlined in The Little Book of Hygge, by Meik Wiking. And KonMari is the method touted by Marie Kondo, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying. We think there’s something to be said for borrowing from both. After all, Denmark is frequently listed as one of the world’s happiest countries, and the minimalist Japanese aesthetic is undeniably professional.

Here are 5 tips for encouraging your employees to clean up their workstations, starting with KonMari to decrease the clutter and ending with a little hygge to add warmth and personality. In the process, your organisation will become more environmentally responsible, you’ll boost employee engagement and increase collective productivity.

Go paperless!

Put an end to the paper chase. When employees stop or minimise printing out emails and reports, there’s less to pile up now—and less to shred later. Move document sharing to the cloud and shift to digital statements and billing. Your desk will stay clear, your briefcase will get lighter and you’ll find that it’s easier and quicker to collaborate.

Encourage team members to eat together (instead of at their desks)

Not only is eating together great for team building, it’s great for individual wellbeing. And, when it comes to keeping desks tidy, it’s key. If your employees don’t eat at their desks, you eliminate gross smells, keyboard crumbs, sticky surfaces and empty food cartons all in one fell swoop.

Host a Hygge / KonMari day

Schedule a day to collectively tidy your office. Not only will people get motivated to clean house, it’s a great opportunity to increase employee engagement and build connections within your organisation. Incentivise your team or department by offering a prize for the most breathtaking “before & after” shots! Have everyone start by decluttering KonMari-style, then encourage them to add a few items to make it hygge—a framed photo, a plant and a desk lamp that casts a warm glow. And suggest that people who get cold in the office bring in a cozy throw blanket that’s soft and comforting. When you host your hygge / KonMari cleanout day, have everyone dress casually and fill the space with happy, energetic music and throw open the windows (if you can). The day will make everyone’s surroundings more pleasant—and you’ll accomplish a great team-building exercise in the process.

Establish outboxes

We’re talking rubbish bins, not mailboxes. Make sure each desk has its own waste paper bin, but encourage employees to toss any items with an odour in the break-room or kitchen bin. No one wants to be smelling what’s left of a tuna sandwich four hours past its prime. And be sure that there’s a convenient place for recycling and compost that everyone can access easily. Remind everyone that getting up to walk something over to its proper bin is a great way to get the blood moving, get closer to their 10,000 steps or get a validating buzz on their Apple Watch.

Appoint a resident organiser

Choose one person in your department who’s well-liked, creative and organised to help give feedback and advice on organising and styling workstations. This person can be in charge of coming up with small incentives and awards for people who keep their desks clean and tidy each month. And they can be tasked with giving one-on-one advice on how to create a more effective workflow.

If you’re not sure of the impact it might make for your entire organisation, start by adopting these 5 tips for yourself or a smaller group. And when you see that productivity spikes, moods improve and the overall atmosphere looks more professional and inviting, you’ll be ready to tackle a large-scale declutter—and get everyone happier at work.

The post To Hygge or KonMari? How to Encourage Employees to Clean Up Their Desks appeared first on ROW | Glassdoor for Employers.

You can tell a lot about a company by the way they go about recruiting their people, and job seekers know it. You might have a strong employer brand and are able to offer exceptional opportunities, but it could be your recruitment process that ends up putting job seekers off. Your ATS is important for retaining information and offering stats on your recruitment performance, whilst numerous rounds of interviews can help managers and their teams make decisions. But what is important to you may look entirely different when viewed from a candidate’s perspective.

Greater recruiting transparency means that job seekers are able to find out a lot more about a business before they apply, and with Glassdoor offering them the opportunity to post comments on interview process, your recruiting method is now as visible to prospective candidates everywhere.

Here are five questions you should be asking before beginning the search for new hires to make sure your recruitment process doesn’t let you down:

Do we know what we're looking for?

One of the biggest frustrations for job seekers is to go through the interview process and then be told that the specifications have changed and the hiring manager is now looking for something or someone different. If word gets out that you're a business that can't make its mind up over who it wants, job seekers will be put off from applying.

Instead, ensure your hiring process starts with a properly scoped out hiring need. Is it a replacement, or a new role? What exactly do you want someone to do? What's the scope for developing the role? Smart recruiters now don't just take into account what a new recruit can do at day one, but also how they might develop within the business, and what other skills they can bring in to the company that might be useful in future.

Is there already someone in the business who could do this?

Being told after a selection process that you've lost out to an internal candidate is also very frustrating, and not just for the job seeker. Think about the signal are you sending to employees if they can't be promoted without first being compared to external candidates. It can easily look like they aren't trusted, or ultimately are a cheaper option than hiring from outside. Retention, and the availability of development opportunities, are key employer brand strategies when attracting new talent. Your company needs to be living your brand and seeing who you’ve already got internally who might be able to take on more responsibility. Otherwise, you’ll end up with disgruntled employees and candidates.

How good is the job description?

When you’re building your job descriptions, start with a blank canvas instead of a list of duties and responsibilities that someone else has been doing. The chances are that you don't need a replica of the last incumbent, whilst the pace with which technology is continually impacting the workplace also means that no-one's role stays the same for very long. Candidates don't apply to jobs because a checklist of day-to-day actions and deliverables; they want to be a part of something big. Start with a blank sheet and try to describe what the role is really about, the internal relationships, broader skills and capabilities that can help as the role develops. Make sure the job description also encapsulates the vision, values and culture of the business, helping a candidate understand more about the role than just daily activities. But don't oversell - no one wants to apply for a position and then find the reality is very different.

Do we really need a CV?

This is always a contentious question, but for so many positions a formal CV is probably unnecessary. If you want to use it as a way to filter out candidates who aren't right, then the issue you need to address isn't the application, but rather how you've scoped the role and are taking it to market. If a sourcing team has identified candidates from a variety of sources - be they social channels, referrals, previous candidates, wider network - then the chances are that you probably have all the information you need to take the candidate forward for interview. If your managers want to use the CV to help structure their interviews then they shouldn't. Provided the matching is good, the interview should be about finding out competencies, capabilities and fit and not a run thorough of past duties.

Are our managers fit to hire?

In a perfect world, the best hiring managers should use the interview process to find out what they need to know about each candidate's drive, motivation, capabilities and competencies to assess cultural fit. They need to be able to sell their own opportunity and also be an ambassador for the company, personifying its vision and values. They should respect the time that interviewees put in to preparation by keeping to pre-agreed interview times and starting them on time. And they should be ready to provide full and constructive feedback to those they have interviewed. If you're working as a recruiter, or in an HR team, you should try and make sure that hiring managers can do all of this.

The impression that a candidate gets of your company and their likelihood of accepting an offer will be shaped by how they find the recruitment process and the interactions they have with their eventual managers. A piecemeal process is unlikely to impress and will most certainly lead to a negative reputation.

Every day we seemingly ask job seekers to jump through hoops and show how much they really want to work for our company, so we should show the same respect and commitment in return. Don't try filling 21st century vacancies by using 20th century processes and thinking.

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When an employee leaves a job after just a short period, one of the questions inevitably raised is whether they were a good cultural match for the business. The person in question might have an impressive CV and performed well in the interview – but it could soon become apparent that they do not share the company outlook or perhaps struggle to get along with colleagues.

Aware that replacing a staff member is a major drain on resources, employers are increasingly prioritising a candidate’s personality when taking on a new hire. But what is the best way to approach this? A more rigorous recruitment process can help reduce the risk of an ill-judged appointment.

Shared values

“Culture add” is not about filling your office with carbon-copy team members who all have an identical outlook. Diversity should always be encouraged as companies comprised of people from a range of backgrounds are almost always more dynamic and successful.

Rather than looking at how people appear superficially, employers should instead try to find out whether a candidate has the right attitude. For example, would they be willing to work unsociable hours if needed or pull out all the stops to meet a deadline? It doesn’t matter if members of your workforce disagree on music or football as long as, like a sports team, they can work together to get the job done.

Values vary depending on the organisation and sector; establish what yours are and also what your non-negotiable behaviours are to guide the selection process.

Soft skills

Similar to values, the recruitment process is an opportunity to establish the personality traits – or soft skills – most suited to your company.

This is one of the reasons why talent-pipelining using psychometric assessments plays an important role in recruitment in 2017, particularly if an employer has limited time for several rounds of interviews. Psychometrics can highlight how adaptable someone is, whether they can work independently and how adept they are at problem solving. Recruiters often undertake psychometric testing on behalf of their client to provide a short-list of people who not only have the right experience and qualifications, but also behavioural qualities.

Maximise your interview time

The all-important job interview is when an employer really makes a judgement about whether a candidate is likely to fit in, but all too often they rely on generic questions that elicit generic answers. It is, after all, an artificial situation so a nervous candidate might give stilted answers. If possible, invite them in for a trial day to see how they interact with other people in the office and get to know the ‘real’ person.

For businesses, our “Macildowie One” service, aims to streamline the process for clients into just one day. Recruitment can sometimes be lengthy in terms of time and this service takes the majority of work off their hands, including reading CVs, conducting first-stage interviews and creating a shortlist. All the client needs to do is set aside a day to meet the candidates and make a final decision, meaning that they steal a march over other businesses competing for the same talent.

When conducting an interview, don’t forget to really listen to the candidate’s answers. If someone casually mentions they are a volunteer first aider or perform in a band, it could suggest they are highly committed and good at working under pressure.

In it for the long haul

Good recruitment consultants consider their own personal brand and therefore understand the importance of building long-term relationships with candidates and clients alike in order to win “long term business”. They realise that there is no point trying to force a candidate into a role just to secure the fee. An employee will soon realise if they don’t fit into the environment and could spend several unhappy months languishing in a job they hate waiting for the next opportunity. Chances are they won’t use that consultant when job hunting again either and nor will the employer.

It therefore makes sense for both recruiters and employers to invest time getting to know a new starter before the contract is signed, although this can be tricky in the real world. If a company urgently needs to fill a vacancy, it may have to sacrifice cultural fit for experience and qualifications, especially if there is limited resource for training. But there are alternatives, including short, fixed-term contracts or taking on freelancers and temps.

Fitting in…or shaping?

It’s not always the case that a candidate will display all the right attributes from the start – otherwise there would be no room for development. This is why companies often look for the potential to grow into the team. Indeed, when it comes to taking on school-leavers and recently qualified apprentices, an employer can help to shape the work ethic they carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Similarly, a start-up business may not yet have established its core values so the initial intake of staff could help to forge them, under the direction of the leader.

Download Glassdoor’s Behavioural Interviewing Questions and Templates to help ensure that your interview process leads you to the best hires. Behavioural-based interviewing is a highly effective technique used by many companies to find out more about about a candidate’s skills, attitudes and values – and determine if the ‘culture add’ is a good one.

About the Author: James Taylor is managing director at recruitment consultancy Macildowie. He has been with the company since 1997 and has been instrumental in growing the business into one of the most respected in the industry, recognised in the Sunday Times as an “extraordinary place to work” and by the Recruiter Awards for its exceptional client service.

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Employee unhappiness rots a culture. And as culture disintegrates, so does market share, revenue and sales. So, what should your company do to turn around seriously unhappy employees and protect future sustainability?

1. Ask your employees why they are unhappy. This may sound simplistic and obvious but quite likely is not happening if your employees are visibly miserable.

Written surveys will not extract the root of discontent -- employees will feel vulnerable and at-risk of jeopardizing their jobs. However, if it isn't apparent, you must find a way to unearth the why behind disgruntlement in order to effectively respond.

One example is to talk with employees one-on-one. Ask specific questions about their accountabilities. If they are a project manager, for example, ask them to describe their most recent achievement in attaining a project goal or achieving a milestone. Then, ask what project they are struggling to get to the finish line, and what resource would help propel it forward.

In other words, just start talking with them about their normal day-to-day and let the conversation evolve. Issues will bubble up if you give the conversation time and attention.

2. Perform after-hour visits. Ensure senior management makes their presence known locally at your service center, dealership, regional branch office, or wherever makes sense. Conduct a town hall meeting after hours. Listen, take notes and then follow-up to divisional or regional leadership with your findings. Follow up on your follow-up and ensure the loops are closed.

3. Examine your company’s values. Does your company see employees as cogs in a wheel? Or, do they balance performance expectations with kindness and respect for employees at all levels of the organisation?

As one executive shared recently, "The way in which you get results is as important as the results themselves." In other words, the more you treat your employees with respect, the more they will do for you (and the happier they will be).

4. Help your employees become their best. Define a plan for everyone from entry-level to supervisors, managers, directors and vice presidents to advance their careers. Map the goals of your employees with the goals of your company. Clear a path and provide resources for future growth and advancement. Without an inspiring journey in view, employees at all levels begin to feel rudderless.

5. Shift gears from focusing on costs to focusing on service and results. In other words, if your employees feel constantly pressed to trim costs with little opportunity to grow value and increase the business, then it's likely they are feeling institutionalized. Instead, reframe the conversation and action plan around how not only should they reduce costs but also how they can build a better widget, provide more exceptional service and expand market share.

6. Hire better leaders. If your leaders are stuck in the outdated hierarchical mode of bossing their people around, no questions asked; and, if your leaders wield their "gotcha" attitude, lying in wait for their employees to make a mistake, then you probably have found a source of your unhappy employees.

Leadership who dictates versus serves and leads their employees often are at the root of withering employee morale. Take a hard look at the behavior of your current leadership and either compel them to make a change or replace them with leaders who will.

7. Organise a retreat for your leaders. Perhaps your company has undergone a series of acquisitions that resulted in leadership silos, which in turn created disharmony and disconnect among and between employees. Whatever the reason for a less than agreeable and collaborative group of leaders, you may consider bringing them together for a brainstorming retreat.

During this initiative, share feedback and discuss methods to unite your region for maximum results. Create a unified message that you can then bring back to your employees – something team members can really get behind.

8. Communicate to your employees every day. In line with number 7, you must be sure every single employee understands – and believes in – what needs to be done to achieve success. As well, translate the financial needs of the business to each individual employee so they can be an ongoing contributor to the bottom line.

9. Eliminate meetings and redundancies. In other words, let your employees do their jobs without the constant interruption of administrative oversight and unproductive meetings. Enable your teams unbroken focus on projects and action plans aimed at completing their deliverables.

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