How to Keep Employees Happy?

Over half of the US workforce is not engaged. This is a shocking and worrying statistic given that we spend over 8 hours a day working on average. The resulting impact on productivity is predictably massive and costs us hundreds of billions of dollars a year. There are many reasons for not being engaged, but they typically fall into the culture or the career bucket. Cultural fit is determined by how well a person gets along with his/her peers, superiors and subordinates and whether the values of the company resonate. A lot of amazing work and thought has been put into empowering employees from a cultural point of view.

However, there is a surprising lack of innovation in addressing the second cause, which is advancing an employee’s career. People want to learn and grow not just in titles, but in terms of knowledge, skills, and achievements. Career Development is rarely the highlight of any job offer and lack of career mobility is a leading cause of employee churn. Such churn is often predictable and preventable and, as a result, self-inflicted. The cost associated with replacing an employee is massive, up to 400% for specialized roles. The situation is made worse by the fact that many organizations report talent shortages while being completely unaware that their own disengaged employees could be interested in and a great fit for those openings. Talent Mobility would lead to increased engagement, higher productivity, and huge cost savings.

That is precisely the problem Rallyteam solves! Rallyteam connects employees to opportunities, both full-time jobs and short-term projects, within the organization that match the employee’s interests, skills and experience. This empowers employees to pursue their interests while enabling organizing to retain and grow talent.

“People want a choice of what they work on. People want to do more than their day job.” — Rallyteam Customer

Churn and A Changing Workforce

Historically, talent management software has served as a defensive platform for compliance reasons. Integrated talent management strategies focused on bringing together standalone HR processes such as onboarding, learning, performance, and compensation. However, these systems were not built with a focus on the employee and consequently see very low engagement besides the mandated interactions. They are primarily a tool for HR to manage the regular hire-work-churn cycle.

But, the composition of the workforce is changing dramatically. Millenials are making up an increasingly larger portion of the workforce and will reach 75% by 2025. This generation has an intimate relationship with technology and is looking for more than a paycheck. Millenials consider career advancement, flexibility and personal development as crucial factors in choosing an employer. Unfortunately, HR platforms aren’t set up to track the interests and goals of employees and to support them by matching to the needs of the organization. As a result, only 18% expect to remain in their job long-term and 50% will switch jobs immediately, creating a worsening spiral.

Talent Mobility

Rallyteam addresses both pain points by making the talent truly mobile and filling the needs of an organization rapidly and efficiently. The Rallyteam platform seamlessly integrates with major HR and business solutions to automatically create rich profiles of employees and job openings for full-time positions and short-term projects. It then identifies the strongest candidates for each position and creates a match based on the interests and needs of all parties. The profiles are regularly updated based on feedback and engagement. A robust analytics and intelligence layer gives HR, managers, and employees a view of actual performance and contribution to the organization. This also enables all parties to collaborate in the development of a data-driven career growth plan.

If your head of marketing, for example, needs an expert on blockchain as part of a new campaign, Rallyteam can quickly find the engineer who not only knows about blockchain technology but is also interested in marketing. This talent marketplace benefits both the organization and the employee. The head of marketing avoids having to hire an expensive consultant and the employee is given a career development opportunity that fits his interests. The feedback from this project then plays a role in long-term career planning for the engineer and helps the company track how employees are helping the overall business.

The increased engagement from employees will play a huge role in reducing churn and increasing productivity. A number of leading organizations are already using Rallyteam for that purpose and to truly track and promote innovation inside their organizations. Rallyteam has already proven to be very effective at companies like ebay (Case Study), GE, and a top 5 US Healthcare organization.

“We are trying to transform the way works gets done and the way we develop people.” — Rallyteam Customer

An Adaptive Organization

In an age of global startups, the gig economy, flexible work hours, continuous feedback, and collaborative product development, it is imperative that organizations are agile and adapt constantly to the demands of the market and the competition.

The benefits in terms of time, productivity and cost are enormous. Studies have shown that 71% of employees would take a pay cut for their ideal job and 89% would consider a lateral move. 90% of millennials would choose to stay in a job for the next 10 years if they knew they’d get annual raises and upward career mobility. Your employees have already been vetted and trained. Ensuring employee engagement and talent mobility is not only important but a strategic imperative for the success of any business today.

“We want our employees to grow and develop a portfolio of experiences within and outside our company.” — Rallyteam Customer

Team

One of the most exciting aspects of Rallyteam is that the team has a deep understanding of the space. Their commitment to connecting our careers with our passions is inspiring.

At Storm, we are thrilled to join Rallyteam on their journey to create a truly mobile and engaged workforce and make Mondays as enjoyable as Fridays.

You can learn more at Rallyteam.com. Follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn.