Quadient’s Key to Internal Mobility & Creating an Agile Workforce That Lasts

Employee experience is finally having it’s well deserved time in the spotlight — especially as more companies feel the squeeze of tight labor markets and aim to reduce turnover with a unified talent solution that also facilitates internal mobility. 
 

The prioritization is warranted. Although 94% of employees said they’d stay with companies they believe are invested in their careers, most organizations struggle when it comes to developing their internal talent pool and increasing visibility of career growth opportunities for their people. 
 

But there are key strategies and technology that can help. Shelia Gray, VP of Talent Acquisition at Quadient, shared how the international customer communications leader overhauled its approach to internal mobility to power a better employee experience and turn intention into action.
 

Why Internal Mobility Is More Critical Than Ever
 

On the heels of the pandemic, organizations have emerged with fresh insights when it comes to fostering employee agility and career growth. Two top motivators companies need to consider, according to Gray: 
 

Your employer brand and employee value proposition are at stake. Internal mobility represents a commitment you make to your employees — and you need to demonstrate that you value it, Gray said, or your employer brand can suffer. Even more importantly, “You definitely do not want to lose your employee value proposition,” she revealed. “If employees don’t feel that the organization truly values them, they’ll seek opportunities that do.”
 

Candidates view internal mobility as a differentiator. When choosing between potential employers, key considerations for top talent include salary, purpose, culture, and professional development opportunities. Gray’s team commonly fields questions regarding career growth offerings from both external candidates and internal employees. They’re looking for a “differentiator” and a stand-out candidate or employee experience, she said.
 

The Disconnect Between External vs Internal Apply Experience
 

A poignant fact Gray emphasized: More than 50% of respondents to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends survey thought their employees would have an easier time finding a new job with a new employer than within their current organization.“That’s a reflection on us as HR professionals,” Gray said. “What are we doing to make the internal experience meaningful?”
 

A very visible starting place is the experience that employees encounter when they apply for an internal position. How does your internal job site stack up against your external career site? Chances are, it’s not as “sexy,” Gray pointed out. 
 

Instead of a seamless experience filled with engaging video content, personalized job recommendations, and a job seeker-friendly chatbot to handle FAQs, interview scheduling, and more, employees may not even have a central organized place to see internal opportunities and apply.
 

This was the case for Quadient. Despite their amazing candidate experience, the apply process for employees was notably less sophisticated and efficient. “When it came to internal mobility, we were sending out old-school emails, we were putting stuff on bulletin boards internally to the organization instead of leveraging technology and building off of our community,” she said. 
 

The unfortunate consequence of this approach? Employee resumes can easily fall into a black hole, Gray noted, instead of ending up in front of recruiters and hiring managers where they belong. 
 

CASE STUDY: How Kuehne+Nagel built a scalable internal sourcing strategy

Prerequisites to Support An Internal Talent Marketplace 
 

Gray knew that to improve internal mobility, the concept would need to be holistically integrated into organizational culture. But how?
 

Ask the right questions. “The first piece for me on my journey with my organization was to look at our culture around internal mobility. How easy is it to move from one opportunity to another? How do you know what opportunities exist? Do we have platforms, tools and support? And what is our philosophy in terms of managers supporting the movement of their people throughout the organization?”
 

Invest in the right technology. Gray was laser-focused on making Quadient an enabler of internal mobility, and something she knew they needed was the technology to support it at scale. Quadient chose to invest in Phenom Employee Experience and its internal mobility capabilities, which provides AI-powered job recommendations, as well as learning and upskilling opportunities tailored to an employee-defined career path. 
 

To create and develop a flourishing internal talent marketplace, visibility is key. A convenient employee microsite now gives employees a one-stop-shop to browse and apply for open roles, keep track of applications, identify growth opportunities, and even make referrals.   
 

“We spent time with our employees and actually created a name for it: the Career Hub,” Gray said. “So people know, ‘If I’m looking for opportunities for development, I go to the Hub.’ It’s a wonderful, wonderful catch-all.” 
 

Align employees, recruiters and hiring managers. At Quadient, Gray established policies to guide the posting of internal jobs and the movement of eligible employees. When developing internal mobility policies, organizations need to consider: 
 

Should hiring managers be able to proactively contact internal employees and encourage them to apply for open positions without discussing it with the current manager or HR? 
 
Do employees need to inform managers when they’re looking at internal opportunities?
 
Do managers need to know when team members are being considered for another opportunity?

“Think about those questions carefully, because it makes a statement to employees,” Gray advised. “If you require them to notify their manager every time they’re applying for another position, what does that say about their ability to own their career?” On the other hand, once things have progressed to the point where employees are being considered for an opportunity, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to managers. 
 

Encouraging managers to champion internal mobility is another important piece of the culture. But it can be difficult for managers to lose an employee they’ve invested in and coached, Gray acknowledged, so it’s important to help them embrace new thinking. 
 

“The message to managers here should be: You’re not losing them – the organization is gaining that knowledge. Feel proud as their manager and coach that you’ve allowed them to grow to meet new opportunities,” she said.
 

Assessing Workforce Planning Metrics
 

Aligning employees, recruiters, and hiring managers is central to all successful hiring initiatives — internal positions included. According to Gray, part of that alignment comes down to understanding and sharing two essential workforce planning metrics:
 

Attrition. Continuously backfilling the same positions may indicate stalled growth. ”When we find we’re spending most of our time filling turnover roles, we have to ask ourselves why people are leaving,” Gray said.
 

Exit interview data. When asked “Why are you leaving?,” exiting employees overwhelmingly cite “better opportunities”. That needs follow-up, Gray said. “Do we ask, ‘What does that look like to you?’ Do we learn from that?” Digging deeper to uncover trends and areas of improved career growth visibility can only strengthen your internal mobility initiatives. 
 

“When I look at the jobs we fill, I look at the time, effort, and dollars we spend in the external market. I always stop and say, ‘Is there a better way to do things? Am I fully utilizing internal mobility to benefit the organization? Is my organization and my function delivering on our commitment to employees?’”
 

Having access to powerful real-time talent analytics that provide key data and insights into all of your talent experiences can expose areas for improvement and ways to track success. 
 

Tying Internal Mobility to KPIs 
 

Organizations are beginning to take better ownership of employee development, as evidenced in a study by CEB, a subsidiary of Gartner, which found that senior executives at 20% of companies surveyed had a performance objective tied to internal mobility metrics.
 

This is good news for employees and organizations alike, because accountability inspires action. “We own the concept of being internal coaches and sponsors for our employees,” Gray asserted. “That’s a big commitment, and now we need to live up to it.” 
 

In addition to tying internal mobility initiatives to KPIs, many companies are going beyond a check-the-box approach to internal mobility by offering mentoring programs, too, Gray mentioned. The right mentor can be instrumental in helping someone learn, network, and develop a fulfilling and successful career trajectory.
 

Gray’s parting words of advice: “When you think about internal mobility, think about it as an investment. Think about it as a long-term strategy… and how much richer your organization will be if you invest in it.” 
 

Employees are paying attention, and it is a game-changer to attract and retain top talent in this competitive market.

See what Phenom Employee Experience can do for your most valuable assets! 

jennifer.thomas
Fri, 06/18/2021 – 15:00

It’s All About the Bot: How Stanford Health Care Connects with Candidates

Michelle Hart, Lead Talent Strategist at Stanford Health Care, joined Talent Experience Live on June 10 to discuss how implementing a chatbot on their career site has transformed the talent experience for the organization. Get the scoop on what they learned, benefits of the chatbot, and how they’re planning to optimize their hiring strategy for future candidates!

Most of us are familiar with chatbots from shopping our favorite brands online. But they’re not just for consumer sites – chatbots can help employers provide a stand-out experience for candidates, giving TA teams the ability to deliver personalization at scale by automating sourcing, screening, scheduling, and FAQs. 
 

However, our State of Candidate Experience: 2021 Benchmarks report revealed that only 9% of Fortune 500 companies have a chatbot on their career site.
 

How exactly can an automated chatbot – essentially, a 2D robot – help provide a more personalized, candidate-friendly experience? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Discover how Stanford Health Care’s chatbot is doing just that — watch the full show below and read on for highlights! 
 

Chatbot FAQs reveal what candidates want
 

Chatbots save time for both recruiters and candidates. Beyond this key advantage, chatbots also provide insight into how employers can continuously adapt and improve the candidate experience on their career site.
 

For Stanford Health Care, a U.S. News & World Report Best Hospital, this benefit crystalized right away.
 

Leading up to the chatbot’s launch, Hart and a team of recruiters brainstormed FAQs they thought would be the most common and useful for candidates. Once the bot was up and running, however, a different picture emerged. 
 

“What it began to show us was some of those FAQs were not necessarily the same as what our candidates were wanting. So we were able to tweak those,” Hart said. She and her team adjusted the scope of FAQs to match what candidates asked about most often – an insight that wouldn’t have been so readily available before implementing the chatbot. They also mine questions coming in through the chatbot on a regular basis to guide career site changes and additions (more info on this later!).
 

Simplifying the candidate journey
 

Nurse recruitment is a challenge for any healthcare organization right now. Covid-19 further strained the existing nursing shortage, creating an extremely competitive market.
 

Stanford Health Care’s chatbot makes it easy for time-strapped nurses to complete the application process at their convenience, right from their cell phones. “We get a lot of responses and actual applies for our nurses through the chatbot,” Hart said. 
 

Relevant job matches. The chatbot takes nurses through a few questions, then suggests positions that best fit their skills and experience. 
 

Applying made easy. If a job candidate can’t complete the application process in one go, the bot allows them to pick up where they left off at any time. “If they happen to get disconnected, they can come back … or we can follow up with them,” Hart said. “The process is so simple.”
 

An engaging experience, site-wide

Candidates often enter a company’s career site from job boards and other channels, so their first encounter is not necessarily on the home page. But no matter where a candidate enters Stanford Health Care’s career site, the chatbot is there to engage and answer questions. 
 

Another benefit to having the chatbot available across the site? The bot “follows” candidates on every page and throughout the application process, which means candidates don’t have to leave the page they’re on if they have questions when applying for a job. 
 

“I also like that it remembers you, and will pick back up from conversations you’ve had previously, so you can see the interaction you’ve had with it,” Hart said.
 

With chatbot-CRM integration, personalization soars 
 

Although the chatbot launched in July 2020, it wasn’t until January 2021 that Stanford Health Care went live with a new integrated CRM. Now when the bot captures candidate details and the positions they’re interested in, that information gets passed along to the CRM. 
 

It’s made a dramatic difference in their recruiters’ ability to execute highly targeted email or text campaigns, or conduct personal follow-up with candidates. “It allows us to not miss out on candidates,” Hart said.
 

Staying connected with partial-apply candidates

Recruiters send “let’s stay connected” emails to keep Stanford top-of-mind with candidates who leave the career site or drop off during the apply process. “We’re saying ‘Hey, let’s stay connected. This time may not be right, but let’s look at the future – here’s the job you were interested in,’” Hart said. 
 

Personal FAQ follow up

Similarly, the recruitment team can see candidates’ specific questions on the FAQ page. Because the chatbot captures their email addresses along with the question, recruiters can follow up if needed to make sure questions were answered adequately. “We take it to the next level, and we can respond individually to them,” Hart said.

Related: The Value of 1M Chatbot Interactions: Southwest Airlines Tells All

Metrics: A quarter of a million chatbot interactions
 

As with any new technology, Stanford Health Care leaders initially questioned the chatbot’s ROI, Hart noted. Analytics made it easy for Hart’s team to demonstrate its value, showing that the bot drove: 
 

35,000 unique visits
11,000+ candidate leads
12,000 apply clicks
 
But the metric that made the biggest impact? Since the re-launch in January, the bot has garnered a quarter of a million interactions. “That was surprising to them, that there’s that much interaction that takes place on the career site. And for many [candidates], that’s the only interaction they have,” Hart said. 
 

“I think our leaders were truly blown away by the fact that that so many people interact and get a lot of their responses that way – so that’s why it’s even more important that our responses are relevant and meeting the candidates’ needs.”
 

Chatbot analytics enable agile career site optimization
 

With a daily check-in on chatbot analytics, Hart has been able to quickly adapt the career site to better meet candidates’ needs and expectations. 
 

“Our chatbot, along with our net promoter score … those two pieces provide me insight into how the site is doing, and any challenges somebody may be having with the site,” she said.  This feedback has prompted changes from minor tweaks that prevent frustration (e.g., fixing broken links and upload failures) to more major revisions. 
 

For example, Hart’s team noticed many questions coming in from newly graduated nurse candidates about the application and hiring process. “We realized there was such a need that we’re actually creating a more robust landing page on our career site with videos and links and more details, just for our new nursing grads. And that came from our chatbot,” she said. 
 

Reducing the number of support tickets

By using insight from the chatbot, Hart’s team can proactively address issues that typically would have resulted in calls and emails to HR from confused candidates. As a result, support tickets in the recruiter queue have dropped from an average of 50 per week down to one or two, according to Hart. 
 

Next up: automated scheduling 
 

In talking with department leaders, Hart has discovered that scheduling is a major bottleneck in the hiring process. Needless to say, she’s looking forward to implementing automated scheduling through the bot. 
 

“We want to add that so we can save our recruiters even more time, [as well as] our hiring managers – and have that strong candidate experience,” she said.
 

Check out Stanford Health Care’s career site for inspiration and to view the chatbot in action!
 

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Level up your candidate experience with a chatbotRequest a demo
 

monica.montesa
Thu, 06/17/2021 – 23:12