An undeniable truth for the hiring world: the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a paradigm shift in the workforce as businesses were forced to pivot to work-from-home overnight. Many increased their layoffs to stay afloat. Amidst these efforts to ensure business continuity, employer-employee relationships and the way they viewed their careers and priorities experienced a drastic change. 

Now, people are more open to career changes, often prioritizing flexibility, company values, and mission-driven work in favor of upward mobility. The rollercoaster of global events upended the state of the workforce and highlighted an underlying issue: employee burnout. Frequency of employees burning out during their work hours at home was accelerated by the uncertainty caused by financial, career and health concerns. In a socially distant world, employees also lack the support and tools to effectively identify and fight disengagement. 

A Closer Look at Addressing Employee Burnout 

With WFH variations setting pace to be the “new normal,” never has employee burnout become a more relevant topic than now, and keeping top talent is paramount. Quality employees are able to secure business objectives, effectively align with company values, and speed up productivity. On the flip side, losing these valuable workers can have a detrimental impact on the organization.

This is especially pertinent as the workforce goes through the Great Resignation – a term to describe the post-pandemic resignation boom. Led by a shift in priorities, the tidal wave of workers leaving their jobs is mostly driven by a desire to feel valued and appreciated by their employers. 

Through these changes, TA teams are inundated with hiring more people, picking up the slack of those who have left and continuing to do their own work while not compromising on their own performance. For the employees picking up more than they can carry, burnout is imminent. Unfortunately, this is also a driving factor for many to start looking at new opportunities. 

Employers must do more to keep their employees satisfied in order to secure quality hires. One of the main issues that has long plagued the workforce: a lack of mental health support. 

With employee burnout and disengagement posing a serious threat to business health, how can talent leaders tackle flight risks effectively?

Keep a Reasonable Work Schedule (And Work Load!)

With WFH blurring the lines between personal and professional life, it can be hard to tell when it’s closing time. In fact, studies have shown that remote workers tend to experience burnouts more than their on-site counterparts. Perhaps this is due to juggling work and home life simultaneously, in addition to family or pets.

Even in the office, workers are often expected to stay past the usual 9-to-5 just to fulfill manager or customer expectations. They end up feeling pressured by work, and in turn, can have a negative effect on quality and productivity. Enforcing office hours, even in remote situations, can go a long way in promoting a healthy work/life balance.

For hiring teams trying to maximize quality interviewers, interviewer training and load balancing the interview workload is critical to stave off burnout of top performing employees (ie, the folks who do most of the interviewing.)

Raise Mental Health Awareness

Employee burnout is not new. More often than not, employees themselves do not realize what they’re experiencing before it’s too late. They may just attribute this to general exhaustion or a lack of motivation, without acknowledging its severity. 

Normalize vocalization of mental health issues in the workplace. This can encourage employees who are feeling overwhelmed to speak out. Proactiveness on the employer’s part can also identify flight risks and potential burnouts.

Keep Communication Constant

Detachment from a job can happen due to a lack of support and a close relationship with their peers. Employees who work in silos may have feelings of separation and loneliness. To prevent this, it is important for managers to keep a constant line of communication. 

Schedule weekly meetings to check in on teams, manage expectations and receive feedback. Bonding sessions are a great way to build closer relationships between teams, essentially forming a robust support system for employees.

Encourage PTO and R&R 

Taking time off work can do wonders for an employee’s well being. Encourage employees to use their vacation days so that they are not constantly working. GoodTime offers flexible R&R for all employees who need to take time off, whether it’s for a vacation or just a mental health day. 

During this time, ensure that you have enough resources to manage without them. It can be frustrating for an employee when they are still required to tend to work matters, or even worse, cut short their off days to return to their desk.

Lead by Example

The chances are that your employees are spending one-third of their day in the office. It is crucial that this is an environment that they are safe and comfortable in. Promote mindfulness and a healthy work/life balance by creating an environment that employees want to work in. This can be through company initiatives, such as benefits like wellness programs. It can also be as simple as providing workers with a comfortable space, such as using ergonomic chairs or a pleasing interior design.

While burnout has a direct impact on employees, it can lead to devastating effects on business performance. Managers and leaders play a key role in warding off employee burnout. As we continue to navigate the new era of work, we must be prepared to embrace new solutions and adapt to survive.

GoodTime Transforms Interviewer Training 

It’s time to make a shift toward candidate-centered, connection-driven interviews. 

Learn more about how to make that happen for your team to win top talent faster and create more meaningful connections with candidates than ever before. 

There’s no question that employees are the number one resource at any given company. Plainly: they’re the ones getting it done to nail business objectives that ultimately lead to success.

However, if a company hires a candidate who turns out to be a wrong fit for the role, it could bring about dire costs — and not just speaking financially. Unqualified candidates could potentially waste the time and energy of managers and existing employees in any organization, which in turn, can deteriorate culture and team dynamic.

Studies have revealed that hiring the wrong candidate can costs up to $240,000. This happens more than you might think. 74% of employers stated that they have had bad hires. Not to mention, that’s also a colossal amount of money to blow on someone who doesn’t bring value to the company.

The case with bad hires isn’t as simple as it seems. In fact, the cost can be broken down into several aspects, from sourcing, interviewing, hiring and rehiring. All these associated costs add up to the real cost of a bad hire. The good thing is that these costs are avoidable. 

So, what is the real cost of hiring the wrong fit for the role? Why is it so essential to business success that managers have to get it right the first time?

The Financial Impact of Poor Quality Hires

Direct Financial and Time Cost of a Bad Hire

When a bad hire is brought in, it means that the entire recruitment process adds up to your losses. Essentially, you’re looking at the potential cost of:

• Writing and reviewing job postings
• Hiring a recruiter or paying for ad space on job boards
• Screening candidates for background and work experience
• Reaching out and communicating with candidates, following up after interviews
• Scheduling interviews and dealing with last-minute cancellations
• Finding the right interviewers to conduct interviews
• Time spent waiting for qualified candidates to respond
• Negotiating offers

When it comes to the usual work hours, multiple interviews can end up taking up a bulk of your time. The average employer interviews six to ten candidates per job, with each candidate going through two to three rounds of interviews. If each interview goes on for 45 minutes to an hour, it could eat into more than half the work week for the typical office worker. 

These days, there are a myriad of alternatives to the hour-long back and forth interview process. Interview technology makes it possible to use machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct asynchronous interviews. Basically, employers don’t have to sit through tedious screening of resumes and background checks anymore. However, to truly build a connection with candidates, it is crucial to at least conduct a face-to-face interview before finalizing the new hire.

Cost of Replacing the Bad Hire

Considering that all this is done to hire the bad fit in the first place, now you have to do it all over again to replace them. This means writing new job postings, buying more ad space, and screening candidates to find the right fit. 

Additionally, you are looking at the associated costs of training and onboarding the new hires. Any time an employee joins a new company, they’ll usually go through a substantial amount of training and onboarding during their first few weeks or months. When you are essentially investing a good amount of knowledge and resources into nurturing a new employee, it means that all this goes to waste when they do not generate any returns for your company.

It is also worth noting that the employee doesn’t necessarily get terminated right away, even after realizing that they may not be the best staff for the job. While there is usually a learning curve, a bad hire is someone that falls short of expectations even after. This could mean being unable to perform tasks or having a negative attitude. Bad hires usually complete their probation period, if any, and move on to being a permanent role. During this time, productivity fails to hit optimal levels, and customers get frustrated. This adds on to the price that companies have to pay for bad hires. 

Emotional Cost of a Bad Hire

It’s important not to just look at quantifiable costs. Besides the typical monetary cost per hire, the wrong type of employee could lead to productivity and morale loss that stunts business growth.

Besides losing out on important accounts and clients, hiring the wrong employee has a substantial impact on internal staff and culture. Not only does a bad hire negatively impact the HR department, this can ripple out into the other teams as well.

Whether it is due to making up for a lack of skills, disengagement, or frustration with the new employee, other employees of the organization have the potential to be affected by a less-than-desirable hire. At the very least, this would lead to tension among employees. On the other hand, if left unaddressed, employers run the risk of losing a few good employees.

Team members are expected to work together towards organizational goals. However, when there is a certain employee that pulls down the team and affects the harmony and collaboration, it could lead to a plunge in motivation and engagement. Engagement is, after all, highly contagious.

Impact on Interviewer Experience

A CareerBuilder survey found that 22% of interviewers did not have the relevant expertise in hiring effectively. More often than not, interviewers may lack the experience or knowledge to hire and interview candidates. This could mean asking the wrong questions or missing important red flags in a potential talent. Perhaps this could be because the need for talent came on a short notice and hiring managers lacked preparation. 

Seeing that bad hires create exceptional damage, it’s crucial for business success that this process is done right. Moving forward, interviewer training programs should be implemented to help an organization and its employees, protecting their time, budget and culture.

GoodTime Transforms Interviewer Training 

It’s time to make a shift toward candidate-centered, connection-driven interviews. 

Learn more about how to make that happen for your team to win top talent faster and create more meaningful connections with candidates than ever before. 

In today’s competitive job market, companies are overhauling their hiring processes to stay ahead of the curve. But in the rush to create a top-notch candidate experience, many recruiters are forgetting to focus on one of the most foundational elements of hiring — legal compliance for interviewer training.

To mitigate the risk of expensive legal trouble, a damaged brand reputation, and unnecessary headaches, hiring practices must be compliant with both state and federal laws. But with the EEOC reporting 68,000 discrimination cases in 2020 alone, it’s evident that there’s a gap between what employers should be doing and what they are doing.

Most of us aren’t experts in the law, and even the most well-meaning hiring leader can inadvertently make a wrong move. So where to begin? The first step is simply being aware of basic hiring laws, and learning best practices for how to comply with them. More often than not, legal issues stem from a lack of training.

Here are four legal issues that untrained interviewers create, and what to do about them.

Issue 1: Untrained Interviewers Can Ask Illegal Questions

Never assume your interviewers understand how to avoid inappropriate questions and statements.

While most interviewers have the best of intentions, it’s easy to let a formal interview turn into a friendly conversation that broaches topics pertaining to a candidate’s personal life and background. And doing so opens the door for illegal questions that can easily turn into a serious issue.

Instead, interview questions should be carefully selected and predetermined for each job. Keep questions role-related, asked in the same manner, and in the same order for each and every candidate. If the question has anything to do with the candidate’s age, race, ethnicity, ability, gender, sexual orientation, relationship status, or religion — leave it out. 

Hiring leaders can empower all interviewers to feel confident in the questions they ask by preparing a list beforehand, then training interviewers on how to stick to those questions — and which ones to avoid.

Issue 2: Untrained Interviewers Can Pose Legal Questions in Illegal Ways

In addition to understanding which questions are off-limits, interviewers should also have a grasp on interview “gray” areas.

When specifically related to their ability to perform the job at hand, topics related to a candidate’s height, weight, citizenship, finances, or current employment status can be appropriate. For example, in certain financial or banking sectors, it’s common to ask about potential employees’ personal finances and credit history. But for jobs in most other industries, it’s not.

As a hiring leader, if you’re unsure which topics approach gray areas and which ones don’t, make sure you stay up-to-date on current discrimination laws. Don’t forget to keep your interview team in the know, too.

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Issue 3: Untrained Interviewers Can Collect Biased Interview Data

Today, many companies are taking big steps to minimize the implicit biases that have long been a part of the hiring process, and developing new practices that are more inclusive and equitable. But unfortunately, with 42% of people saying they’ve experienced some type of discrimination during an interview, we still have a long way to go.

In the same way they can ask inappropriate questions, untrained interviewers are also prone to unknowingly using personal biases to navigate their time with a candidate. We’re all hard-wired to seek out commonalities in other people. But unfortunately, left unchecked, relying on those “instincts” too often leads to bad, biased hiring decisions.

To minimize bias, interviewers should first be trained to bring it to their awareness. With a solid understanding of the hidden biases they have, interviewers can then focus on asking meaningful, role-related questions, and collecting useful information about job fit.

Issue 4: Untrained Interviewers Make Hiring More Expensive

Don’t let an interviewer make unnecessary, costly mistakes just because they’re untrained.

When interviewers aren’t prepared, they’re likely to hire the wrong candidate for the job — and those costs add up fast. Poor hires have been proven to cost a business up to $240k in eventual employee replacement costs, and a salary with no ROI.

But when interviews take an illegal turn, it can get even more expensive. Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission won nearly $440 million for candidates. The average single discrimination lawsuit settles for $40k, which doesn’t even include legal fees. 

Fortunately, avoiding interview-related lawsuits is possible when the people facilitating the interviews are up to speed on the right rules and regulations.

It’s Time To Get Serious About Interviewer Training

When determining whether or not a candidate fits an open role, knowing how to interview well is critical. By not proactively understanding the legal implications of poorly-executed interviews, hiring teams are likely to not only lose the best talent but also become liable for discriminatory lawsuits.

The time is now to implement interviewer training. GoodTime’s interview scheduling software helps you train interviews with ease, giving you one hiring experience solution that lets you track interviewers and their progress and train them at scale. GoodTime gives you the confidence that your selected interviewers are evaluating candidates effectively.

Want to learn more? Download The GoodTime Guide to Interviewer Training.