The business world has shifted, and recruiting and retention have become more important than ever. With technology that lets anyone communicate from anywhere, workers can now look for jobs all over the world. Furthermore, they’re flexing their newfound muscle in numerous ways, seeking companies that provide more than just a paycheck for their time. That’s become a serious concern for forward-thinking businesses. When staff leave, vast amounts of time and money are lost in hiring and training replacements.
Conversely, companies who attract and retain skilled workers can reap a number of benefits, including improved loyalty and productivity, better customer interactions, and long-term consistency that improves the entire organization. Low turnover means increased expertise, as well as a team that knows how your business works and can function together with extraordinary efficiency. Companies that can address their employees’ needs and concerns can only benefit, and in numerous ways.
Employee Recruiting and Retention: Current Challenges
The impact of the pandemic continues to be felt, largely in the changes that businesses underwent, and the way those changes have reshaped the world for good. There’s no “going back” to the way things were done before. Staying connected and facilitating collaboration have proffered a number of considerable rewards. With global business poised to roar in 2022, companies agile enough to adapt to the new normal will boost their bottom lines considerably.
That starts with your workforce. Employees who have options now as they never did before and who require something more flexible than the traditional 9-5 office space. Hybrid workspaces, where employees divide their time working from home and in a centralized location, can be both a very effective work environment and a key means of recruiting talent for long-term positions.
That comes with its own set of challenges for HR departments and hiring managers, starting with the creation of a hybrid workplace. Sticking with a traditional 9-5 model can not only be costly, but it can also drive away the very workers you hope to retain. The flexibility of a hybrid model (more often than not) results in an improved work-life balance, without diminishing quality output. Indeed, hybrid workplaces often raise productivity, as employees respond to the attention given to their personal lives with greater loyalty and improved commitment.
The workforce enjoyed increased leverage in 2021, and “The Great Resignation” has created a renewed need focus on recruiting and retention with an eye on long-term positions.
HR teams should approach the prospect of hires with that in mind and consider:
- Remote recruiting. Workers are now very comfortable operating from their homes and in-person interviews are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Remotely interviewing candidates requires an adjustment, but opens up the entire world as a potential recruiting pool.
- Finding qualified talent. Screening inconsistencies, high-volume applications, and similar issues can make finding qualified candidates difficult without proper preparation.
- Pleasant hiring experiences. Hiring processes that feel routine, impersonal, or cold won’t find many takers, and a prospective hire who feels ignored or taken for granted will readily pursue other options.
Designing a Hybrid Work Environment for a Global Workforce
One of the biggest benefits of a hybrid work environment is the potential for a global workforce, allowing you to recruit and retain talented people no matter where in the world they might be living. Technology has advanced to make any workspace a virtual workspace: exchanging data and information to team members anywhere as readily as passing a piece of paper to the other side of a desk. A hybrid workspace, connecting employees to each other regardless of location and powered by the right tools, can make a huge difference.
How? The benefits of a hybrid environment apply to more than just the company itself. An employee who can work from home, or divide work time between home and the office, has the flexibility to address important needs in their own life. The ability to pick children up from school or attend to matters like car repairs on their own timetable saves them considerable time and energy—to say nothing of sparing them the hours spent commuting to an office. That in turn creates the kind of positive environment that employees are looking for.
A company that grants this flexibility demonstrates it cares about its employees’ needs, showing it in concrete terms that manifest in the daily lives of the workforce. Those experiences, in turn, create renewed collaboration and effort, as well as the loyalty and long-term retention that keeps your best and brightest in-house while attracting new talent from anywhere in the world.
Smarten Spaces creates technology with just that scenario in mind. It works as a centralized digital platform, allowing you to easily manage the specifics of a hybrid workspace and reap the benefits accordingly. Consider the following solutions:
- THE WORLD’S FIRST HYBRID SCHEDULER. Smarten Spaces empowers employees to construct flexible schedules combining office and work-from-home hours. AI-based recommendations work with their schedules and management to find the ideal options based on all factors.
- DESK BOOKING. Flexible desk space is often a requirement for modern safety standards. Smart Spaces lets employees book available desk space in real-time, along with status and Wayfinder features to let team members find each other in the office and see who’s working from home.
- MEETING ROOMS & AMENITY BOOKING. As with desk booking, Smarten Spaces gives employees the ability to reserve meeting rooms, parking spaces, and amenities such as gym time and cafeteria orders.
- WORKPLACE EXPERIENCE APP. The app is unified and allows management, employees, customers, and partners to access everything they need in a single place.
- EMPLOYEE HEALTH & SAFETY. Automated social distancing guides, vaccination status checks, occupancy control, and scheduled sanitization schedules provided healthy and safe working environments.
- SERVICE REQUESTS. Employees and managers alike can book requests for IT support, sanitization schedules, emergency services, and more. Automated queues let them monitor the status of their requests.
- 80+ OUT-OF-THE-BOX INTEGRATIONS. Best of all, Smarten Spaces works seamlessly with numerous existing systems, including Gmail, Zoom, Outlook, Okta, and IoT.
Designing Hybrid Work Environments for a Global Workforce
A hybrid work environment is the key to harnessing a global workforce—but only with the right tools. Smarten Spaces is award-winning workplace technology and is the first in the industry to build Hybrid Work Scheduling with AI-based recommendations to manage team and employee work-from-home and work-from-office schedules. The SaaS technology brings together desk booking, hybrid work scheduling, meeting room bookings, amenities booking, contactless entry for employees and visitors, and much more. The deep functionality of the solution makes it scalable and future-proof, making it easy to transition into a hybrid workspace perfectly suited to your company.
Smarten Spaces not only helps you to attract and retain the best talent but assists you in maintaining that competitive edge going forward. Schedule a demo today and see how partnering with Smarten Spaces can support and accelerate your business!