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Tag: Change Management

C-suite Execs and Directors in HR Disagree on Recruiting Realities

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Imagine you’re putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You feel pretty confident in your abilities to build the perfect puzzle; after all, you have the finest puzzle pieces on the market. But once you get down to business, you find that the pieces don’t align. 

HR leadership is like a jigsaw puzzle. While your leaders may be amazing individual contributors, your company is headed for trouble if they’re not in sync on the most critical matters. Misalignment among HR leaders means bad news for your hiring goals.

Our 2022 Hiring Insights Report surveyed 560 HR leaders across seniority levels to understand their perceptions on the most pressing challenges facing their teams, and how to succeed in a candidate’s market. The data shows that C-suite executives and directors disagree on multiple grounds, from the status of the hiring landscape to the conditions of their own recruitment operations.

Different Outlooks on the Hiring Landscape

Interested in learning how HR leaders perceive the state of the hiring landscape? We got you covered— but don’t expect a straightforward answer. The perceptions of C-suite executives and directors greatly differ.

When asked how they would say that the hiring landscape has changed in the past 12 months, the majority of C-suite executives (45%) said that the hiring landscape has become less competitive due to an increase in available talent. Meanwhile, the majority of directors (50%) said that it has become more competitive due to an increased demand for talent.

This pattern held true when asked how they believe the hiring landscape will change in the coming 12 months, with most directors believing that the landscape will remain more competitive, and most C-level executives believing it will still be less competitive in the future. 

If you browse through recent headlines and analyst reports, you’ll see that they align with the opinions of directors—those who are more entrenched in the day-to-day recruiting. It seems like almost everyone’s in the know on the ruthlessness of the hiring landscape…except for CHROs. In short, employees who have a closer connection to daily recruitment operations have a different perception of business functioning.

Disconnect on the Status of Their Hiring Process

Directors’ closer proximity to the hiring process also impacts their understanding of their own process and operations. When asked how their acceptance rate has changed over the past few months, C-suite executives rated it more favorably than directors. 74% of CHROs said their acceptance rate has increased. In contrast, 49% of directors—25 percentage points lower—said the same.

Our survey also evaluated their general attitudes on their recruiting process. The majority of C-level executives (53%) rated their overall process as excellent, while the majority of directors (58%) rated their process as good.

C-suite executives remained more optimistic than directors when asked about the efficiency of their talent acquisition process. Sixty-seven percent of C-suite executives rated their process as very efficient, compared to 41% of directors. 

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

Calculate Your ROI

Don’t See Eye-to-Eye on DEIB

Diverse teams reign supreme. It’s a known fact that diverse employees boost revenue and innovation. However, the C-level executives and directors from our survey differ on their prioritization of DEIB.

When identifying which areas of their hiring process they looked to improve in the past 12 months, and which areas they plan on improving in the future, “making DE&I a measurable priority” was the second most popular answer both times for C-suite executives.

CHROs are highly focused on DEIB, while directors aren’t. DEIB was the least popular answer for directors, both for the past and for the future (24% and 29%). Instead, directors are reportedly hyper-focused on boosting efficiency.

Now, don’t be fooled: this doesn’t mean that directors believe that improving DEIB is a waste of time. Since directors typically have a closer relationship to the hiring process than C-level executives, they understand how much time and resources it takes to properly prioritize DEIB. Directors know that creating successful DEIB initiatives is a lot easier said than done.

Want the Latest Insights? Read the 2023 Hiring Insights Report

Reaching alignment among the HR leaders at a company doesn’t just happen magically. It takes work—but it’s worth it. Trust us. Especially in today’s ever-evolving, intense hiring landscape, leaders need to become a unified force in order to conquer each challenge that comes their way.

Want to catch up on the latest hiring trends? Get excited: our 2023 Hiring Insights Report is now available. 500+ HR leaders, 1,000s of real findings, 1 industry-leading report. Read the report today.

4 Companies Pioneering the Future of the Distance Economy

Posted on by Rachel Heller

In the Distance Economy, work transcends beyond physical offices and across time zones. “It doesn’t matter where you live” is now the new hiring mantra. More and more employers recognize that candidates want freedom, autonomy, and trust—all found in flexible and remote work arrangements. 

While our new world of work widens the talent pool, it also widens the employer pool. Companies must offer applicants the work models that they seek, or get lost in the competition. After all, if your organization doesn’t give candidates what they want, another organization will.

Here are four trail-blazing companies that have reimagined what the workplace can be.

Spotify’s Work From Anywhere Program

In Spotify’s opinion, work is something you do—not somewhere you go. The streaming powerhouse uses their Work From Anywhere Program to allow employees to work wherever suits them best.

How They Navigate the Distance Economy

  1. Allow employees to choose their “work modes” (mix of home and/or office).
  2. Set up multiple registered entities in different locations across the globe for employees who want to work in the office. 
  3. Focus on creating virtual experiences, rather than in-person events, to emphasize belonging across the company.

Why This Work Model?

On their HR blog, Spotify described how the flexibility within their work model benefits everyone. Flexible companies not only retain existing employees thanks to a better work-life balance, but they also attract large sums of candidates.

Spotify’s thinking in the right direction. Our latest data shows that 32% of HR teams expect to struggle with retaining talent in the next 12 months, and 28% believe that they’ll face difficulties in attracting qualified candidates. The way forward is clear, and it’s offering flexible work.

Zapier’s Long Remote Work History

Remote work is nothing new to Zapier. They’ve been remote-first ever since their inception in 2011. The software company’s employees are spread across over 18 different time zones and 38 countries.

How They Navigate the Distance Economy

  1. Establish a 100% distributed workforce.
  2. Create a global community founded on DEIB principles. Hold candid conversations on the experiences of employees and take active steps to boost diversity and inclusion.

Why This Work Model?

Zapier cited that on multiple grounds, remote work just makes sense. From a financial perspective, they don’t have to handle the significant expenses that come with maintaining a physical office. After all, flashy office perks are old news. 

Their model also increases the amount of time that each employee has at their disposal. Without the distractions that arise in a traditional office space, Zapier allows for more valuable focus time. (And not having to sit in traffic during a long commute is a pretty sweet deal.)

HubSpot’s Flexible Work Options

“Work isn’t a place” defines HubSpot’s flexible work philosophy. In 2021, they shifted to a hybrid remote-office model.

How They Navigate the Distance Economy

The company offers three work arrangements to choose from, called @office, @flex, and @home.

  1. @office: Work from one of their offices for three or more days per week. Employees receive a dedicated desk space in the office.
  2. @flex: Work from one of their offices for two or fewer days per week. Employees get a “hotel desk” rather than a dedicated space, but will receive support in setting up a WFH office space.
  3. @home: Employees do the majority of their work from home and within a HubSpot-approved area. The company assists in assembling their home office.

Why This Work Model?

Before the switch to their current work model, HubSpot considered themselves a “remote-ish” company. However, the feedback from an internal survey signaled that they needed to evolve. Back when HubSpot closed their offices due to the pandemic, two-thirds of their employees reportedly planned on working remotely more often once their offices re-opened.

Determined to elevate their commitment to DEIB, HubSpot also cited how remote work serves as a crucial component in diversifying their community of talent and future employees.

Pinterest’s Pinflex Initiative

Two principles guide Pinterest’s work model: flexibility and collaboration. Their Pinflex initiative champions an autonomous workplace with a healthy dose of in-person interaction.

How They Navigate the Distance Economy

  1. Encourage employees to work wherever feels best, whether this means working at home, in an office, or another virtual location.
  2. Allow U.S. employees to live anywhere in the U.S., and international employees to live anywhere within the country or region where Pinterest employs them.
  3. Create in-person experiences for all employees to attend throughout the year.

Why This Work Model?

While Pinterest recognizes that most work can be completed anywhere, they also see the need for in-person collaboration to drive innovation and connection. Pinflex kills two birds with one stone.

Occasionally bringing employees together in person is a smart move. Studies show that remote workers feel isolated at higher rates than those that work on-site. Like Pinterest, companies should include strategies to foster human-to-human experiences within their flexible work plans.

The New World of Work Means New Hiring Tools

Spotify, Zapier, HubSpot, and Pinterest embraced flexible work in varying ways. But the common thread that unites them? They all use GoodTime.

The Distance Economy flipped recruiting on its head, but GoodTime Hire helps talent teams win candidates throughout each challenge. Hire harnesses Candidate Relationship Intelligence to build connections with every single applicant.

But don’t just take our word for it. Hear from HubSpot, Pinterest, and more in our customer testimonials.

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

Calculate Your ROI

GoodTime’s Ahryun Moon Talks the Evolution of the Hiring Landscape

Posted on by Rachel Heller

A word of advice for the modern-day hiring team: get comfortable with change. Because if there’s one thing that we’ve learned in recent years, it’s that the hiring landscape can evolve in an instant. GoodTime’s Co-founder and Head of Company Strategy Ahryun Moon met with RecTech Podcast’s Chris Russell to discuss recent and upcoming shifts in the hiring industry, and how GoodTime helps teams adapt to the changing times.

If you’d like to hear the conversation in full, the podcast episode can be found here. Read on for a quick rundown.

“Everything has shifted so quickly and so fast over the last couple of years. Even the most tenured HR leaders with multiple decades of experience are still trying to figure things out.”

— Ahryun Moon, Co-founder and Head of Company Strategy at GoodTime

Tumultuous Recent Years in Hiring

A lot has changed in the hiring industry and job market—where do we even start? For one, companies felt the sting of the Great Resignation back in 2021, and the phenomenon is still going strong. A record-breaking 4.5 million people in the U.S. quit their jobs in March 2022.

Ahryun noted that based on GoodTime’s conversations with customers, the “big quit” isn’t limited to just the U.S. It’s happening across the globe. And that’s not the only worldwide hiring trend; the entire world is also facing a severe shortage of knowledge workers. In February 2022, there were 5 million more job openings than unemployed workers in the U.S. alone. This all culminates into a hyper-competitive job market.

On top of these changes, job seekers have drafted up new demands, heralding the next era of recruitment tactics.

“Now that we’re working remotely and in hybrid mode, all the past lure of office spaces, the physical spaces, those perks are not very relevant anymore,” Ahryun said. 

Instead of placing value on in-office benefits, candidates now vet employers on elements such as DEIB, work-life flexibility, vision, and mission. Above all, candidates want to connect with employers.

Upcoming Changes in the Hiring Landscape

An outpour of hiring freezes, slowdowns, and layoffs characterize the latest changes in the job market. Major tech companies like Uber and Twitter slowed their hiring, while startups like Klarna and Carvana laid off employees.

Ahryun’s take? The market is correcting itself. She noted that it doesn’t look like these recent events in the market will remain as permanent trends. From her view, it seems that the market will stabilize over time.

All things considered, the market’s recent volatility shouldn’t come as a surprise. In many ways, 2021 created an unsustainable environment.

“Last year was crazy, a whole slew of unicorns had been born,” Ahryun said. “Some companies are extremely solid companies that are worthy of becoming unicorns, and some probably not in terms of the metrics.”

In opposition to the downturn in Silicon Valley, there’s several forces at play that will keep other companies hiring. A severe lack of knowledge workers remains within an extremely competitive hiring market, Ahryun added. Companies will continue hiring—just not as recklessly. The smartest companies will implement the best TA tech to hit the ground running and prepare for future growth.

How GoodTime Has Adapted to the Shifts

Talent teams aren’t the only ones that must adapt to the ever-changing hiring landscape. In order to solve the most pressing issues facing companies, TA tech must also evolve with the times.

GoodTime Hire has changed quite a lot to respond to the latest customer needs, Ahryun said. Hire uses Candidate Relationship Intelligence, which includes two main focus areas: speed and relationships. The focus on speed comes from the increasingly fast-paced talent competition. 

“Nowadays, candidates get about four offers on the table within about 18 days of their job search, which is crazy,” Ahryun said. 

The fastest talent team is often the team that snags the best candidates. On the flip side, a slow hiring process heightens the risk of losing qualified candidates in the middle of the funnel. To satisfy the need for speed, Hire’s automation removes any time lag that occurs on both the recruiting team and candidate side.

Hire’s focus on relationships stems from the need to form meaningful connections with candidates to win top talent. As a way to cultivate these connections, Hire makes data-driven decisions to place the right interviewers into each and every interview. Better yet, one of the latest features, Candidate Pulse, gathers candidate sentiment throughout the interview process to help teams better understand the quality of their relationships.

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

Calculate Your ROI

Want the Latest Insights? Read the 2023 Hiring Insights Report

Keeping up with the constant flow of changes in the hiring landscape can feel overwhelming. Luckily, our 2023 Hiring Insights Report is now available. 500+ HR leaders, 1,000s of real findings, 1 industry-leading report. Read the report today.

Remote Companies Stumble in the New Hiring Landscape

Posted on by Rachel Heller

The rise of remote hiring stands as one of the most influential trends impacting today’s hiring landscape. What started as a way to adapt to the pandemic has evolved into a method to combat the talent shortage and deliver on the work flexibility that many candidates now desire. The problem? Most remote companies have stumbled rather than soared.

For our 2022 Hiring Insights Report, we surveyed 560 HR, talent, and recruiting leaders across both remote and in-person workplaces. We learned that compared to their in-office counterparts, remote TA teams fall flat on multiple grounds, from hiring efficiency to connecting with candidates.

And to top it all off, most remote TA leaders don’t even have full confidence in their own operations. When rating their overall recruiting process, 25% of remote leaders rated it as excellent—compared to 42% from in-office leaders.

Let’s dig into the data.

Candidate Relationships Take a Back Seat

Applicants expect to form a relationship with your company and your TA team that’s founded on trust and mutual respect. Our report’s data shows that fully-remote companies are least likely to create bonds with candidates—though if anyone should, it’s them.

Among fully-remote workplaces, just 25% will look to build relationships with candidates in the next 12 months. This is 11 percentage points lower than in-person workplaces.

Remote employees report higher rates of isolation, yet connection is at the top of most candidates’ wish lists. When hiring at a distance, it’s even more important to invest in these connections—and the data shows that these companies have a lot of work to do.

With the lack of emphasis on candidate relationships, it’s no wonder that 63% of remote workplaces reportedly struggled with retaining talent in the past 12 months. Talent retention begins once a future employee has their first conversation with a recruiter. The secret to turning candidates into long-term hires lies in creating authentic connections with new hires from the start.

Remote TA Teams Struggle With Efficiency

The efficiency of remote companies’ TA processes leaves much to be desired. But at least the majority of them aren’t blind to this; just 38% of remote workplaces rated their TA process as very efficient, compared to 56% of in-person companies.

In today’s intensely competitive job market, hiring fast is essential. The best candidates disappear from the market in just 10 days. Yet here’s the kicker: a shocking 100% of fully-remote companies said that their rate of time-to-hire increased in the past 12 months. In comparison, 65% of in-person companies said the same.

Even worse, remote talent teams said it takes them an average of five weeks to hire a new employee—contrasted against three weeks for in-person teams. With a hiring process that lengthy, remote employers shouldn’t be surprised when their star candidates lose interest and look elsewhere.

Remote companies reportedly spend 41.6% of their time scheduling interviews, three percentage points higher than in-person companies. Yet while remote companies spend a bit more of their time on interview scheduling, they’re way behind in-person companies when it comes to the number of interviews that they schedule. On average, remote workplaces schedule 50 interviews per month, versus 125 for in-person.

So what’s the hold up? It’s possible that remote teams haven’t equipped themselves with the proper TA tech to get to where they need to be in scheduling volume. But if anything’s certain, it’s that if remote TA teams don’t get to the root of their efficiency issues, they’ll only continue to struggle.

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

Calculate Your ROI

DEIB Efforts Show Grounds for Hope

Want some positive news for a change? On the bright side of things, fully-remote companies are most likely to emphasize DEIB in the near future. Thirty-eight percent of remote workplaces surveyed will make DEIB a priority in the next 12 months, two percentage points higher than in-person workplaces.

This is a good move, especially considering how 25% of remote teams reportedly expect to struggle with a lack of qualified candidates. A broader talent pool comes with more diverse candidates, and an increased need to improve—and communicate a commitment to—diversity.

While the stats on DEIB and remote companies are promising, all companies surveyed could—and should—make greater strides in championing DEIB. Diverse teams that feel welcome and supported boost revenue and innovation. Smart companies make DEIB a top priority.

Want the Latest Insights? Read the 2023 Hiring Insights Report

Remote companies, you have your work cut out for you. While some assume that remote workplaces have it easy thanks to a wider talent pool, they forget that the Distance Economy also widens the employer pool. This makes it even more critical for remote TA teams to take meaningful, calculated steps to attract, win, and retain candidates.

From connecting with candidates without physical interaction, to conveying intangible company values through a Zoom window, it’s not too unexpected for newly remote workplaces to trip up. Hiring remotely comes with a learning curve. Yet despite the challenges ahead of them, remote TA teams must act fast to avoid getting swallowed up by the talent competition.

Want to catch up on the latest hiring trends? Get excited: our 2023 Hiring Insights Report is now available. 500+ HR leaders, 1,000s of real findings, 1 industry-leading report. Read the report today.

Four-Day Workweek: A Magic Bullet for Talent Acquisition?

Posted on by Rachel Heller

When considering the major shifts in work arrangements that we’ve seen in the past few years (oh hello, remote work), the recent buzz around the four-day workweek comes as no surprise. If we’ve learned anything from post-pandemic life, it’s that the typical 9 to 5, in-office work paradigm is old news. Normalizing three-day weekends—once just a pipe dream—sounds a lot less far-fetched.

Proponents praise four-day workweeks for prioritizing the wellness of employees with promises of decreased stress and increased happiness. With numerous companies testing out a shortened workweek, we now have evidence to use when judging if this new arrangement really delivers on its promises. Spoiler alert: it does.

Overall, the rise of the four-day workweek comes at an incredibly opportune time for TA teams. With the Great Resignation showing no signs of slowing down, teams must pull out all the stops to attract candidates and keep employees from jumping ship. And with 92% of U.S. employees in favor of a four-day workweek, implementing this policy may be just the thing that puts your company ahead of the rest.

Employee Well-being Wins Talent

The companies that champion employee well-being are the ones that snag and retain the best talent. It’s just that simple. The positive byproducts of shorter workweeks mark a whole new frontier in supporting the wellness of employees.

In a Paychex survey, six out of ten employees identified well-being benefits as a major priority when job hunting—despite the fact that less than half of employees feel their current company makes it a priority. Among five areas of employee well-being, 24% of respondents rated mental and emotional wellness as their biggest struggle at work. This was due to a lack of benefits such as flexible schedules. 

As for the number one way to support well-being, the majority of employees rated additional time off as the best employee benefit. In a similar vein, 68% of workers said they’d rather change careers for a better work-life balance than higher pay.

Noticing a theme? Today’s burned-out employees want companies to honor their personal wellness, and they want to see this through more free time. All signs point to four-day workweeks as a solution to giving workers what they clearly desire. 

Four-day Workweek in Practice

In theory, a four-day workweek and the allure of additional personal time seems like a logical way to elevate talent acquisition. But in practice, does this work arrangement stack up to expectations? Let’s look at the companies that recently tested the waters.

Bolt Improves Work-life Balance

To combat employee burnout, Bolt, a fintech startup, conducted a three-month 32-hour workweek pilot. Employees worked from Monday to Thursday each week and experienced no reduction in salary. 

At the end of the trial, a company survey revealed that 94% of workers and 91% of managers wanted to continue the program. The vast majority of Bolt employees reported experiencing a better work-life balance and more productivity throughout the three months. As a result, Bolt made four-day workweeks permanent.

When first rolling out the pilot, Bolt employees wiped their entire calendars clean. This way, they’d be highly intentional when scheduling meetings and would avoid squishing five days worth of work into four. Workers cut some meetings in half, made some less frequent, and eliminated others altogether.

The Wanderlust Group Boosts Profits

The Wanderlust Group, an outdoor tech company, took a slightly different approach to the four-day workweek. In order to give employees more time to invest into themselves, TWG piloted a 32-hour workweek program that eliminated Mondays rather than Fridays. Like Bolt, employees received no reduction in pay.

The results? Employee morale increased and TWG saw a 121% year-over-year increase in profits. The only loss? A reduction in bad meetings that employees didn’t want to attend anyways. Unsurprisingly, their Tuesday to Thursday schedule is now a permanent policy.

On the logistics side of things, TWG realized that they’d need to cut down on their meetings to maximize productivity during their four days of work. They slashed around a third of their standing meetings and weeded out any meetings without a robust agenda.

TWG also recognized that they’d still need their customer support staff to help customers on Mondays. To alleviate this problem, they adopted a rotating schedule where some staff take off on Mondays while others take off on Fridays. 

thredUP Attracts Candidates

thredUP, a fashion resale platform, tested out a Monday to Thursday 32-hour workweek in 2021 and never looked back. The company wanted to actively prove to employees that a true work-life balance matters.

As a result, thredUp reported that more than half of their new hires who completed an onboarding interview mentioned that the abbreviated workweeks influenced their decision to join the company. 88% of employees cited the new work policy as a positive change. Better yet, voluntary turnover within the corporate team decreased by over 50% since the four-day workweek’s implementation.

Similar to Bolt and TWG, thredUP mentioned that for the new workweek to succeed, employees needed to reconsider the importance of certain meetings. As a whole, employees had to prioritize the most high-value tasks.

No One-size-fits-all

A four-day workweek can do wonders for talent acquisition and retention, yet implementing a successful program isn’t cut and dry. Evident from Bolt, TWG, and thredUP’s varying programs, there’s no “right” way to implement a 32-hour workweek. For a four-day workweek program to succeed, companies need to establish their own unique operational and workflow changes based on their business model.

However, if there’s anything to gain from the recent four-day workweek pilots, it’s that we could all benefit from reprioritizing how we spend our time at work—and that means rethinking our meetings.

Spotify’s Work From Home Revolution

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Remote work from home is nothing new, and if we’ve learned anything over the past two years, it’s that WFH can be just as productive (if not more so) than working in an office.

But what if your company wants to adopt a WWYWB (Work Where You Work Best) policy? Lindsay Goring, Global Talent Acquisition Lead at Spotify, sat down with GoodTime’s Head of Customer Success, Lauren Costella to discuss options for remote work and the strategies that made their approach a success.

If you don’t have time to watch the full video, here’s the TLDR with the five main takeaways from the session.

Consider Your Remote Work Approach With A Globally Distributed Team

Spotify has implemented a strategy that enables employees to work from anywhere. Employees at Spotify are encouraged to view work as something they do, not a place they go. This enables great flexibility for employees to work fully remotely if they choose.

Though this strategy has been successfully implemented at Spotify, it’s not for every company. The fact is, there is no one size fits all option because you have to have the right infrastructure to support this work style, and the right strategies to implement these kinds of company policies. 

The way a company approaches these policies is one of the most important elements to consider. Spotify’s approach was very people-focused and they aimed to analyze what their employees needed to work their best. This meant that they had to provide flexibility for their employees because some of them worked best in a remote environment. 

This Is How Spotify Approached Work From Home: 

  1. Try to ensure that teams are within similar time zones to work seamlessly with each other instead of having 8+ hour time differences. 
  2. Set up multiple entities in different locations around the world so that those who do need the office can access it. 
  3. Choose specific regions when you’re looking to fill certain roles. 
  4. Allow employees to choose their work modes (office or home mix).

Prepare With Your Team

This is all about getting your team ready for change by understanding the goals and strategies used to make those changes a success. Preparation is also crucial for leaders to understand which employees prefer working in the office and those that prefer working fully remotely. 

It’s important to remember that it will take months to fully prepare for this kind of work environment because these changes can be quite drastic. Some roles have to adapt fully online, while others will need to be hybrid.

These Are Some of the Factors Spotify Had to Iron Out Before Getting Started: 

  1. Employee laws in different countries
  2. Payment methods for different currencies and countries 
  3. Co-working spaces for those who want office spaces in different locations
  4. Human resources and internal comms
  5. Training and retraining staff to adapt to remote work
  6. Getting the recruitment team ready

For Remote Work, Employer Branding Is Key

This is an important element in recruiting talented people because they need as much information about their employer as possible. Spotify has a dedicated website just for careers at the company to highlight the different roles available. This lets candidates see which roles are eligible to be fully remote and the ones that require office work. 

This kind of method is quite effective in employer branding because the website gives in-depth details about the roles as well as the company culture that candidates should expect. It’s better than just having a few hundred words on a job board that give very little knowledge about what the employer’s values are and what work mode options are available at the company. 

This kind of employer branding is fundamental because it ensures that candidates already know before they apply what kind of role they want and what work mode they are eligible for as well. 

Spotify’s Results

Once these kinds of changes are made within the company, it’s essential that people are measuring the level of results. Spotify has seen many great results and one of those is the increase of applications once they announced that they’d let people work from anywhere where eligible. This attracted many talented people based in different parts of the world. 

By allowing people to work from anywhere, they no longer had to turn down applicants who were unable to relocate due to personal reasons or COVID-related challenges. This leveled the playing field for applicants and gave them the chance to hire more talented people regardless of their geographic location.

Remote Companies: Time to Give Your Tech Stack an Upgrade

Having the right tools is critical for companies trying to move to remote work. Spotify works to ensure that collaboration is asynchronous by using tools like Slack, Workplace, and GoodTime.

GoodTime Hire’s automated, intelligent scheduling serves as a major asset to companies that have to navigate through different time zones with candidate schedules. This is one way that the Spotify team can automate coordination, eliminate manual work to save both time and money, and make the application process a positive experience for candidates. 

Learn more about how GoodTime Hire’s interview scheduling software can supercharge your recruiting to win top talent.

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

Calculate Your ROI

5 Takeaways for TA Teams: Diversity Recruiting + Alto Pharmacy

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Neil Frye, Chief People Officer at Alto Pharmacy, was able to dive into the organization’s diversity recruiting journey in the past year in our DE&I 2021: Moving from Awareness to Action webinar.  You can watch the full, 45-minute webinar below, but for the quick rundown, here are five key takeaways from the session.

1. It’s a pivotal time for DE&I conversations in the workplace

Last year, the senseless violence in the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Jacob Blake, and other innocent POC underscored the need for systemic change. The #BlackLivesMatter protests, while long overdue, was a moment for action for organizations to address diversity and inclusion in the workplace. At Alto, the focus on diversity recruiting has always been in place. If anything, 2020 accelerated the journey by pushing practices to get a second look.

DE&I conversations are not new in the workplace. Organizations have formed policies and practices to address issues of their employees and their community. Yet, as US-based companies contend with with systemic racism as well as ongoing misconduct in the workplace, there are still faults and inefficiencies in their programs. Alto knew that this was the moment to drive actionable change – the goal here is getting results that mean something.

“We condemn the violence and systemic racism that has harmed marginalized communities, specifically Black communities, for far too long. At the same time, we commit to look inward and educate ourselves to continue to create safe spaces for Altoids and to act on what we learn.”

—Neil Frye, Chief People Officer, Alto Pharmacy

2. Diversity recruiting starts with self-awareness

The corporate world has always looked for ways to improve their diversity recruiting. Recently, the emphasis has shifted to systemic racism and gender inequality. While it may be easy to draft up policies, the task gets significantly harder when management has to actually implement, or encourage behavioral and mindset shifts. Perhaps what was lacking previously was the aspect of empathy. Coming from a place of privilege, the issues of the underrepresented communities may be underplayed or unrecognized by people in power. That’s where the problem begins. 

The corporate environment can only be as inclusive as its C-level suite. Neil Frye, Chief People of Alto Pharmacy, shares that he identifies at a cis-white gay man, and uses he/him/his pronouns. By establishing this, executives like Frye are able to uncover their hidden biases and prejudices that they may not have realized before. For him, the awareness comes from knowing that as a cis-white individual, he’s standing in a place of privilege, compared to marginalized counterparts that may be trans, a person of color, or female, despite also being a part of the LGBTQ+ community himself. Only when people understand their own identities, then can they empathize with their peers, before achieving advocacy.

3. Leaders must educate themselves

While diversity recruiting has always steered toward reducing bias, it is crucial that organizations have clear parameters of what DE&I means to take it forward.

Prior to talking to the teams at Alto, leaders of the organization had to educate and uncover the roles they played in the current DE&I landscape. Previously, in the fight towards equality, the burden of education fell on underrepresented communities to educate their privileged counterparts. Today, that responsibility falls on advantaged individuals to champion this change.

4. Being specific and defining diversity for Alto

DE&I in the workplace has never been one-size-fits-all. Each company considers factors like region, culture, and the diversity of teams. Because of this, it’s crucial for business leaders to build initiatives that meet the people where they are. From organization to organization, both workforce challenges and underrepresented communities differ.

Management and leaders have to start by putting themselves in the shoes of their workforces. The journey towards DE&I began with an internal audit. Alto tasked management executives to listen to the needs and voices of every employee through various listening sessions. Through this, they uncovered a series of complaints, experiences, and emotions. Parents, POC, marginalized groups told their stories about their communities, how they felt, and what their individual experiences were. The goal of this work was to craft strategies that truly reflect the communities they serve, rather than taking the page out of someone else’s handbook.

5. Alto’s strategic pillars for DE&I: Hire, Include, Develop and Invest

After months of planning, Alto developed a DE&I framework with four strategic pillars to drive real progress: Hire, Include, Develop, Invest. These four pillars were part of Alto’s aspirational goals and defined a specific action plan to produce tangible results. Prior to this, Alto has identified Black, Latinx, Hispanic, and women in STEM roles as the underrepresented communities they want to serve through their DE&I initiatives. Thus, the first pillar was focused on hiring, retaining, and promoting these individuals. Fleshing this out meant that they had to first define their current workplace diversity, which then set a benchmark for aspirational goals. From managers to directors, VPs and advisory board members, it was clear that these areas of the organization were lacking the various members that they identified earlier. Thus, Alto had to shift their focus to promoting internally, as well as hiring new members through GoodTime’s diversity recruiting solutions.

Companies must move past the awareness stage into advocacy. Acknowledgment alone of any issue, let alone one as complex as workplace diversity, doesn’t solve it. Alto Pharmacy’s journey into a more diverse workplace comes from taking actionable steps to promote, include, and achieve equality by listening to its employees, leveraging the right tools, and measuring success in an accountable way to continually move forward. That’s how progress starts.

Check out the full session here: