It used to be that people needed companies - employees were loyal, jobs were scarce, and everyone accepted the standard employment package offered. Today, things are very different. Companies need people – talent is hard to find, few make long term commitments, and many are demanding a lot more than before. Project-based companies are particularly impacted since without the right people in place, projects suffer, customers suffer and so does the bottom line. Therefore, having an applicant tracking system is a necessity to deal with the challenges of talent acquisition.

Expediting Talent Acquisition

These days, companies are the ones trying to convince talent to join the firm while the competition is courting them as well. It is crucial that the time it takes from sourcing candidates to interviewing to offering positions is greatly shortened. An applicant tracking system provides a clearer picture of the entire process. It shows right away if any of the steps are taking longer than necessary and allows firms to be more efficient in the hiring process. Project-based companies need the right people available at the right time to keep projects running smoothly.

Talent Pools

With people moving around as much as they do today, firms should always have a reserve of potential talent. An applicant tracking system helps with creating and maintaining these pools of talent. When resumes are entered, HR can flag those candidates who would be good fits for future opportunities. So, if a project manager leaves unexpectedly or a new project is won, a talent pool is immediately available to contact which reduces the delay in staffing. Nothing is worse for project-based firms than having to put off a project start date because of lack of appropriate personnel.

Candidate Experience

Another benefit of an applicant tracking system is that it ensures a positive candidate experience. The candidate’s experience moving through the hiring process has a huge impact on whether an offer will be taken. Firms must make candidates feel that they are valued. An applicant tracking system makes it easier to stay connected with candidates, so they feel informed and not forgotten. Project-based firms will not only have excited quality talent coming on board from this positive experience, but word of mouth will spread creating a talent pool for future projects.

Invest in an Applicant Tracking System

Project-based firms make money when projects are done on time and to customer satisfaction. Without the right personnel on the project, firms are destined for failure. An applicant tracking system expedites the hiring process by reducing inefficiencies and encouraging quality talent. Firms can easily overcome the challenges of talent acquisition by investing in one today. What is your firm waiting for?

Employee engagement is the extent to which individuals are personally involved in the success of a business. Interestingly enough, it does not mean employee satisfaction. Employees can be satisfied in their jobs, but still not be engaged. The fact is engaged employees are invested in their company, and they have an emotional commitment to the organization and its goals, so they will go the extra mile for their firm.

Benefits of Employee Engagement

Gallup firm research shows that 68.5% of U.S. employees are not engaged in their current roles. This lack of engagement costs U.S. companies between $450-550 billion in lost productivity a year. When employees are engaged by their work, however, there are higher levels of productivity, a boost in the company’s bottom line, better retention rates, an increased sense of health and well-being and happier customers.

It is important that businesses create the conditions to engage employees. Doing so provides valuable loyalty inspiring experiences which will in the end drive profits. The best business leaders realize that an engaged workforce can propel innovation, increase performance, and grow the organization.

9 Key Areas of an Employee Engagement Strategy

1. Purpose – This is the thing that drives the firm forward. A sense of purpose is crucial to creating the emotional bond between employees and their work. With a specific mission and clear company values, employees will become engaged.
2. Communication – The emotional component of communication speaks to the basic human need to feel valued. When employees receive proper, frequent and constructive communication, they feel in the loop which establishes trust. It is critical to not rely too heavily on email in communication.
3. Health and wellness – A Gallup study found 62% of engaged employees felt work positively affected their physical health. Established health and wellness campaigns play a role in creating emotional connections. Again, these emotional connections engage employees.
4. Workspace and environment – How companies set up employee workspaces determines the feel of the environment. With functional and inspirational workspaces, a sense of pride is created along with a desire for employees to be there. Wanting to be at work increases performance.
5. Well-defined roles – Defining roles connects the company’s mission with its employees’ daily activities. Firms must show how each employee’s efforts contribute to the overall mission. This identifies how each individual employee is thus responsible for the ultimate success of the firm.
6. Relationship with colleagues – Numerous studies have shown that firms where friendships are common have more engaged employees and better business. Gallup research even found that people with a self-described best friend at work are seven times more likely to be fully engaged. Relationships create another emotional connection to the firm.
7. Recognition and incentives – The act of being recognized for individual efforts makes employees feel like valued team members and creates another emotional connection. Also, certain monetary incentives like profit sharing activate an emotional response with a vested interest in making a profit. Engaged employees will financially benefit from their hard work.
8. Buy-in from managers – According to SHRM, employees who trust their managers appear to have more pride in their firm. They are more likely to feel that they are applying their talents for both their own success and that of the organization. Management buy-in to encourage employee engagement is a necessity which goes hand in hand with frequent communication.
9. Personal growth and development – Personal growth and development is the final emotional component that will support employee engagement. Employees need to know that they can advance in their firm, and they want opportunities for education and training. Seeing how they can progress in their contribution to the firm’s mission will also help maintain engagement. 

Benchmarking Employee Engagement

Having engaged employees is essential to a successful business. Creating and implementing an effective employee engagement strategy is crucial as well. What’s left to consider is how to benchmark the employee engagement. Using an employee engagement survey, firms can determine the types of activities employees want to participate in as well as their thoughts on the state of the workplace. Listening to the voices of your employees and sharing what you have learned will continue to encourage employee engagement and let your firm reap its benefits.

Firms in the professional services industry often have a difficult time managing the large volumes of information that come with each project. Having access to all project information from emails to drawings to contracts is important and vital for effective project management. With information silos, disorganized yellow folders and different systems per team, there is a greater chance for a less than successful outcome on firm projects. Deltek Project Information Management, or PIM, changes the way professional services firms manage information.

PIM Challenges the Norm

Many professional services firms believe that using yellow folders to store project documentation is the best option. While they are certainly easy to create, these folder structures offer no options for controlling access to the most up to date project information. Critical project data can easily be missed, and uninformed decisions can be made without a central place to view all current documents like offered with PIM. 

Email Communication is Valuable Information

One of the biggest mistakes that project-based businesses make is not considering email communication valuable project information. Emails and their attachments have significant details that help keep track of the project progression. Issues crop up in email correspondence that are essential for project members to see. For the project to run smoothly, these emails must be stored appropriately as PIM provides. 

Benefits of Using Deltek PIM 

• Organized project files improve efficiency – Users can store, manage, retrieve and share documents in a central hub
• Better collaboration – Project communication is improved when all team members can see all the relevant information
• Quickly find critical data – All key project information is available to monitor project progress and make better decisions
• Protecting the firm – Risk can be reduced with greater visibility into project data
• Mobile connection – Enables on-the-go field work where photos can be taken, or drawings can be viewed on site
• Integration with Deltek ERP– Every critical piece of project information is in one location to manage budgets, schedules and resources for every project in Deltek 

Goodbye Yellow Folders, Hello Deltek PIM 

Deltek PIM offers a cohesive information management system which ensures that the correct knowledge is always available to all project team members. By implementing PIM, professional services firms can store, catalog and retrieve all essential project management documents from one place. If your firm is still managing project information using yellow folders or keeping information silos, the best decisions are not being made. PIM can help make better ones.

Change is inevitable but planning for change can certainly alleviate its impact. If you’re the owner or leader of a professional services firm, you know that senior level personnel are eventually going to retire or might simply move on to new challenges. With this in mind, your firm can be prepared by having a succession plan in place for when employees leave.

What is Succession Planning?

Stated simply, succession planning is the process whereby an organization ensures that all key roles can be replaced by competent new employees. As part of the succession plan, employees that are going to eventually fill these high-level vacancies will participate in a training and mentoring program to prepare them to become future firm leaders. The succession plan should also include replacing lower level employees as they move to higher positions within the firm.  

The succession plan should be presented to employees as a professional development and training opportunity. It should provide a map to employees on where the firm believes their individual skills will benefit the organization in the future. In an effort to plan for staff leaving, the process actually encourages retention of other high-quality employees.

Developing a Succession Plan

Creating a succession plan requires firm leaders to take a hard and honest look at their current financial situation and where they predict themselves to be in the future. Additionally, they will need to determine when certain employees will retire, and which employees are appropriate to develop as future replacements. Each role no matter where it is in the firm will require a different training program that includes a mix of activities to ensure the skills required to be successful are learned in advance of any departure.

Common Challenges of a Quality Succession Plan

Creating and maintaining a quality succession plan is challenging. Here are some common issues firms face with succession planning that must be considered:

• Smaller firms have fewer positions which makes it difficult for advancement
• Tapped succession employees may leave for better salaries at other firms
• Project-based firms can experience ups and downs to the number of contracts/jobs they manage and deliver which affects staffing
• Senior leaders may stay in their position rather than leave when planned
• Chosen succession employees may lack motivation to advance
• Plan falters due to poor communication or the lack of clear development and training taking place

Investing into the Future of Your Firm

A succession plan is an investment into the future of your firm. The time and effort required for a successful succession plan is costly, but the plan can also create future savings. Having a great succession plan in place will encourage retention since employees will feel valued, but it will also prevent the negative impact of change if someone unexpectedly leaves.

Annual review time is often seen by many employees as a stressor. For even the most productive employee, the question of what hasn’t been said until this one point in the year causes concern. From the manager’s perspective, how is it even possible to clearly remember a year’s worth of employee performance? It makes much more sense to offer feedback consistently throughout the year. Let’s take a closer look at the value of continuous employee feedback especially for project-based firms.

Employee Engagement

With continuous employee feedback, managers can initiate employee engagement which leads to further discussions. The more opinions and ideas that are gathered will ultimately improve the project and ensure that it is done efficiently and on budget. If issues crop up, as they often do, engaging employees frequently will allow for proactive problem resolution instead of reactive analysis down the road. 

Good Balance

Keeping a balance between positive and negative feedback is another benefit of continuous employee feedback. While an employee’s performance may have to be corrected over some issue during a project, other things that have been done well can be provided to offer encouragement. This way, employees are still motivated to do their best work and don’t react negatively to the one matter that needed improvement.

Actionable Feedback

Continuous feedback provides actionable items that are mutually beneficial to managers and employees. Freshly addressing the situation at hand allows managers to respond and employees to correct immediately rather than reacting to what has already transpired and cannot be changed. Employees can also be given proper training to improve their efficiency and the outcome of the project. 

Goal Setting

Talking regularly about performance allows employees to set goals for themselves. When employees see how they are contributing to a project and know they will be a part of the positive outcome, they are inspired to perform better than before. Goal setting benefits managers and employees alike. 

Learn from Feedback

Offering continuous feedback is a way for employees to learn, grow and develop. It is a much better strategy for project-based businesses than annual performance reviews. Consistent feedback encourages conversations, goal mastery and efficiently run projects which is a win for everyone in your firm.

According to the 39^th Annual Deltek A&E Clarity Industry Study, one of the top three firm initiatives to address financial challenges is managing growth. Firms are needing to quickly expand departments, hire and train new employees, and find ways to retain them to prevent turnover. Not only are project managers dealing with staff shortages, but inexperienced project managers ultimately lead to client dissatisfaction and poor perception of firms in the marketplace. Firm financials are being directly impacted by issues with human capital management.

Turnover and Talent Acquisition

The results of this year’s Deltek A&E Clarity study show that human resources (HR) professionals are seeing higher voluntary turnover, more open positions with longer average time to fill plus difficulties with talent acquisition. Turnover has increased by nearly two percent compared to last year, and the percentage of firms that take 31–60 days to fill an open position went up by four points. Regarding talent acquisition, many firms are not focused enough on improving the efficiency of the talent management process. The majority are still using outdated HR systems with 63% of small firms having not updated their HR systems within the past five years making it a challenge to track KPIs. Talent acquisition remains the most expensive business process facing HR.

Drop in Utilization Rates

Additionally, firms have seen utilization rates drop slightly for the second year in a row, declining to 59.4% from 60% last year. This may be due to firms having a harder time recruiting, onboarding, and retaining talent this year and leading to higher employee salaries to attract the best talent at lower billable utilization. This shift in utilization rates is also reflected in the small increase in overhead rates. Firms should develop a strategic onboarding process to reduce the time it takes to get new hires assigned to billable projects. Another issue affecting financials is that increased turnover means senior staff are pulled to train new employees pulling them from their current tasks.

HR Stuck in Recruiter Mode

This year’s Deltek A&E Clarity report also noted that with growth management, HR professionals tend to get stuck in recruiter mode leaving little time to focus on other essential tasks to help keep staff engaged. Firms need to first properly train their staff, so they are productive. They must then find out what professional development and learning opportunities their employees are looking for to ensure retention. According to the study, only 13% of firms said they have a learning management system (LMS). This is down two percentage points from last year, when 15% of firms reported having an LMS.

Succession Planning and Retention

Another key aspect to employee retention is succession planning. The Deltek A&E Clarity study showed that of all firms, only 43% have formal succession plans. Therefore, firms need to focus not just on identifying tomorrow’s leaders, but also on engaging high-potential employees in a way that keeps them at the firm and lets them know that the firm is invested in their success. For 68% of firms with a succession plan in place, it only applied to current leaders or those next in line. Only 7% had plans that applied to all employees. Regardless of size, without a succession plan, the future of the firm is especially at risk if something happens to its current leaders or key staff.

Future Human Capital Management Strategy

Of particular interest, the Deltek A&E Clarity study suggested that to develop an effective future human capital management strategy, firms must evaluate what different generations want and need. With baby boomers voluntarily retiring, firms must change their approach to new hires by offering tailored benefits such as tuition reimbursement and the ability to work from home. Overall, firms that offered these and the more traditional benefits, including stock ownership options, medical, 401(k) or retirement plans, performance bonuses, or paid overtime, do have higher total employee costs. However, firms that did so would have higher employee retention rates, thus reducing the financial burden of turnover.

Clarity Outlook for Human Capital Management

Firm financials are being impacted by challenges in human capital management. In the next year, firms should focus on updating outdated human resource systems, appealing to the new workforce generation, providing strategic onboarding, offering top professional development and learning opportunities, and creating succession plans for all employees. For the future, financial leaders must manage growth by tracking the costs of talent acquisition and investing in their employees to prevent turnover. To really understand the true cost savings of employee retention, HR must continue to work closely with financial professionals. Lastly, make sure to download your free copy of the 39^th Annual Deltek A&E Clarity Report now.

With repetitive sourcing for candidates, constant scheduling, and continuous boilerplate interviews, recruiting and hiring has become very mechanical in nature. It should instead be focused on discovering the best talent fit for the company culture and be done in a more strategic and efficient way. To accomplish this, recruiters need to improve their methods which have often been unknowingly biased, think outside the box, and find ways to streamline the recruiting and hiring process for quality talent. Let’s check out the top 4 recruiting trends.

Seeking Out Diversity

It has been shown that diversity is directly tied to company financial performance. Companies with diverse leadership are more successful and are thus better able to win quality talent. There is also increasing evidence that diverse teams are more productive, innovative and engaged. Based on these facts, recruiters are now actively pursuing more diverse candidates in the gender, ethnicity, age, and LGBT categories. Nonetheless, for the diversity initiative to really work, it must start at the management level. Senior executives should be held accountable for the company diversity and inclusion outcomes.

Utilizing New Interviewing Tools

Conventional interviews have been shown to present bias and be an ineffective way to really read candidates. As human beings, we are comfortable with the familiar and often unconsciously choose applicants like us as the best hires even though other candidates may be more qualified. Additionally, with traditional interviews, there is less ability to address soft skills and weaknesses of the candidates. Now, with new interviewing tools, recruiters can get many more useful details to determine quality talent:

• online soft skill assessments - used to measure traits like teamwork which give a better picture of candidates
• job auditions - candidates are paid to do real work, so their skills can be observed in action
• casual interviews - take place during a meal and offer a look into a candidate’s character
• video interviews - recorded or live and help tap a broader talent pool in less time

Being Super Data Driven

While data has been used in the past to make recruiting decisions, the amount of available data for talent acquisition and the speed at which it can be analyzed has increased. This data can now be used to predict hiring outcomes rather than just track them. Data can even be used to test the effectiveness of diversity initiatives. With all this accessible data, every recruiting and hiring decision can be made on facts instead of feelings. Essentially, the sheer volume of data allows recruiters and their companies to compete for quality talent with their own talent intelligence strategy.

Streamlining with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming the recruiting industry standard. Using AI, recruiters can capture information from candidate resumes for qualities that indicate a workplace culture fit. AI can also be used to increase diversity in the workplace as it can be programmed to ignore demographic information when sourcing candidates. Once candidates have been hired, AI can even help with retention by identifying ideal learning opportunities. Finally, letting AI do the more tedious tasks for recruiters will offer more time to build relationships with quality talent which has a greater impact on company success.  

Recruiting Quality Talent for the Future

When vying for quality talent in a very competitive market, recruiters must stay on top of current trends instead of relying on standard recruiting protocols. Recruiters can maximize their talent acquisition efforts by choosing new technologies and streamlining their inefficient processes. With super data at their fingertips and a plethora of AI options to choose from, recruiters are well positioned for a successful talent acquisition future.

Many people don’t realize that talent management is a key business strategy and is vital to a firm’s success. It begins with recruiting potential hires and follows employees throughout their entire life cycles with a firm. Since talent management has such a great financial impact on a firm, talent metrics should be used to show return on investment and to make informed business decisions. So, which metrics are the most significant?

5 Important Talent Management Metrics 

1. Cost to Hire

It is very expensive to hire a new employee. Up front, you have ad placement and sourcing costs. Additionally, there is the time spent by the recruiter and managers to interview and determine the best candidate from the pool. As much effort and time will be put into selecting and onboarding the right match for a position at your firm, you want to ensure the new hire is a good return on investment. You also want to assess whether your ad placements and sourcing tools are getting you the quality candidates you desire. 

2. Time to Full Productivity

Every new hire needs some time to become acquainted with the new position and learn the ropes. Generally, it requires several months before a new hire can be fully productive. However, it is imperative that your firm has an effective onboarding and training program to get new hires up to speed as fast as possible. The quicker a new hire moves to full productivity, the faster there is the return on investment. 

3. High Potential Talent

As part of your talent management plan, you should hire a percentage of people that you expect to provide more value down the road for the organization. This talent should be the best of the best. These employees will be the ones you pull from for future succession into higher-level roles. Making sure you hire talent with potential is necessary to avoid more costs of hiring. 

4. Talent Mobility

Retention of talent is another important factor to consider, especially when concerned with the financial impact of hiring a replacement. Employees need to know that there are opportunities for them to move within the firm, so they don’t stagnate in the same position after several years. Your firm should offer career paths for upward mobility for top performers who seek new challenges. 

5. Talent Turnover

Turnover is probably the most relevant metric of all. Your firm will want to keep this number as low as possible to reduce its financial impact. With turnover, you have the cost of replacing the position with a new hire and the loss of the knowledge gleaned during the years of service. Additionally, turnover stops the cohesive flow of business and causes efficiency to wane.

Manage Your Talent Well

Of course, there are cases where turnover cannot be prevented no matter what the firm does. Overall though, your talent should be chosen wisely, trained properly and given opportunities for mobility. When you manage your talent well, you will in fact reduce your costs because word of mouth is free and high potential talent will come to you.

Gone are the days where human resources (HR) professionals simply focused on just filling staff requisitions. Today’s HR professionals are looking to build relationships which will impact their organization’s bottom line. With this in mind, they must successfully compete for and win the best talent which fits the needs of their firms. The talent acquisition team can boost the efficiency of both the recruitment and on-boarding of this talent using an automated system.

9 Talent Acquisition Processes that are Improved Using an Automated System 

1. Standardized Job Descriptions | Having standardized job descriptions that can be automatically pulled into a requisition allows HR professionals to immediately begin finding qualified candidates. Establishing standardized job descriptions also sets skills requirements, job expectations, and success measurement. 
2. Requisition Request and Approval | Automating the requisition and approval process ensures the team knows about a new hire request. This process also gives team members one last opportunity to evaluate the job description and provides tracking for the position moving forward.
3. Write Once, Share Often | One of the biggest benefits of an automated talent system is the ability to share the job request in multiple locations without duplicating efforts. HR professionals can now streamline the publishing process by posting the position on the firm website, job boards, and social media, while enabling employees to share via their social networks. 
4. One Place for Qualified Candidate Pool | A talent acquisition system ensures candidate submissions go into one centralized location. When candidates submit their resumes online, their information is associated to the requisition and can also be assigned to future pools for searching. No more excel spreadsheets needed nor keeping up with random emails and submissions from various locations. 
5. Quick Candidate Notifications | Letting a candidate know his application was received and is being reviewed can make a positive impression. Even if a candidate doesn’t fit this position, he may fit a future position. The ability to send quick notifications to multiple candidates streamlines the recruitment process because candidate contact is automatically maintained. 
6. Standardized Letters | Standardized letters (offer, decline, interview, etc.) allow HR to respond automatically to all candidates. These letters are significant to the candidate experience, and the automatic response reduces the work it would take to individually contact each candidate.
7. Electronic Forms and Checklists | Reducing the amount of physical paperwork needed throughout the application and onboarding process is necessary for efficiency. Electronic forms and checklists make sure all necessary information is gathered, and that the process is seamless. 
8. Internal Notifications | The first week of a new hire is the most important time to make a good impression. Automated internal notifications keep everyone involved with the new hire in the loop, so no one drops the ball.
9. Let It Flow | The beauty of an automated talent acquisition process is that the flow of information eliminates duplicate entry. Once the candidate enters his information on the job application, it continues to flow through to the on-boarding process thus reducing manual entry. 

Automate Your Talent Acquisition Process 

Every HR professional wants to find and match the right candidates to open positions as quickly as possible. However, they also want the candidate experience to be a positive one for lasting relationships. Having an efficient talent acquisition process can improve new hire readiness and decrease time to revenue, while keeping the candidate experience in mind. Is your firm ready for an automated system?

Organizations with antiquated talent management philosophies will struggle to attract, nurture and retain top talent in 2017. Many HR teams make the common mistake of having decentralized or ineffective systems and processes. This infographic illustrates six key statistics that demonstrate why HR teams can no longer be reactionary and should evaluate their talent management processes and systems.

Learn More about the Challenges of Talent Management

Interested in learning more about how to overcome the increased competition for talent in 2017? Join our webinar where we will discuss how HR can overcome the top five challenges with talent acquisition.