Process Street is growing like crazy. Every day I open up Slack, there’s someone new to welcome to the team. It’s like a mini virtual party every day with less cake. 🍰

Starting at a remote start-up can be tough – especially if it’s your first time working remotely, or at a start-up, or at a remote start-up. All those first-day jitters are magnified by the fact that you don’t even have a friendly work-buddy in the next office to walk you through it.

Well, you do have the friendly work-buddy; they’re just not in the next office. Or even the same country.

With this in mind, I thought it’d be fun to interrogate our newest teammates. There’s nothing that’ll make you feel like part of the team like getting interrogated by someone you just met so they can publish your innermost thoughts for all of the internet to see. Right? 😉

In this post, I talk to Process Street’s newbies about their first month with us. Please give a round of applause for my lovely volunteers:

• Mike Schutte, Engineering
• Karolina Lasocki, Content Creation
• Dyra Manangan, Visual Content
• Brian Ralston, Customer Success
• Logan Herzog, Demand Generation

Let’s meet the team!
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It’s 4:55 on a sunny Friday afternoon. You have a whole weekend of relaxing in the backyard planned. Maybe you’ll have friends over for a barbecue, or finally finish that crime thriller you started last year and forgot about. There’s always that super-extended director’s cut of a film from four years ago that just came out.

You’re blissfully contemplating all your stress-free options when your line manager pops their head in and cheerily says, “HR wants to see you first thing Monday morning. Have a great weekend!”

The truth is, the role of HR teams – and even the name – has evolved quite a bit over the years, though its reputation hasn’t been quite so quick to keep up. People Teams, as all the start-ups are calling it these days, still have a vital role to play in the structure and organization of a company, though.

So, when is it time to create a super team-up for your start-up? More importantly, how do you do it?

I sat down with Process Street’s own VP of People, Jay Hanlon, to talk:

• The HR team’s role within an organization
• HR teams: The problem of bad branding
• Key factors in building a healthy HR team
• The final word on HR teams

Come on in and have a seat!
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How many different tabs do you have open on your computer or laptop, right now?

I bet it’s a lot.

Let me guess. You’ve probably got one open for your emails, one for your social media, one for Slack, and another for Process Street?

And, maybe you’ve also got tabs open for your HR management system, your recruitment software, your reporting platform, your payroll service, your employee engagement tool, and…well, the list could go on and on and on.

Am I right?

But, this makes finding the tab you need when you need it virtually impossible, it slows your computer…right…down, and even the simplest HR tasks can end-up taking twice as long.

“Too many tabs, in almost any web browser, will lead to overtaxed computer memory, a reduction in battery life, and, for sure, a cluttered browser workspace.” – Forbes, Too Many Tabs Open: Save Your PC Or Mac From Overheating

What if there was a way to speed up your HR tasks? What if you could get all your task notifications and updates in one, central place instead of several? What if you could improve communication with your team and spend less time waiting or chasing for updates and more time on the things that matter?

Interested?

Allow me to introduce you to our newest feature, built for Slack lovers: The Process Street Slack App. Just click the button below to add it to your Slack!

Read on to discover how the Process Street Slack App can speed up your HR tasks as we whizz through the following:

• How our new Slack App helps you get HR tasks done faster
• How Sue manages her HR tasks with Process Street’s Slack App
• How to get Process Street’s Slack App & start streamlining your HR tasks

Let’s get cracking.🌪️
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This is a guest post by Hazel Bennett, a freelance writer and blogger. She has a degree in communications and lives in Northeastern Ohio. Hazel loves writing about numerous topics and showcasing her expertise with words. Follow Hazel on Twitter.

Those with anxiety know what a struggle it can be to get through each workday. Stress, nervousness, and negative thoughts can wear a person down. As the effects of anxiety begin to take over, workers can lose the focus and motivation necessary to get the job done, leading to productivity and morale problems.

The combination of a high-stress work environment and mental health challenges can result in less-than-satisfactory work performances and unhappy employees. If you’re looking for solutions to keep your company working smoothly and your staff healthy and well, this Process Street post has you covered.

Read on for information about anxiety and how to overcome it with the help of productivity-enhancing technology:

• What causes workplace anxiety?
• Coping with chronic anxiety at work
• How to use tech as a de-stress
• Productivity hacks for workplace anxiety
• Mental health matters

Let’s take a look!
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This is a guest post by Katerina Mery, a marketing specialist at Fond. Fond is a rewards and recognition company dedicated to building places where employees love to work. Mery authors articles about how to leverage recognition programs to drive company success.

Think back to the last time a colleague acknowledged you for a job well done.

How did you feel?

Did the experience have an impact on your behavior moving forward? Did the exchange affect your relationship with the person thanking you? What about your relationship with the company in general?

63% of employees who are acknowledged for the work they do are unlikely to look for a new job. Expressing gratitude at work takes relatively little effort, but it can create an incredibly memorable professional experience. Knowing that you did a good job is one thing, having a colleague call out your great work takes the experience to another level.

Business objectives can sometimes feel at odds with an enjoyable employee experience. Employee acknowledgment, however, is a practice that effortlessly supports both.

From this Process Street article, you’ll learn how employee acknowledgment simultaneously caters to your organization’s business objectives. You’ll also learn how to meet the emotional needs of your employees using fantastic positive feedback loops that generate continual improvements across the board.

We say employee acknowledgment is a smart initiative a company can adopt – but before you take our word for it, allow us to explain why.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say.

• What is employee acknowledgment?
• Employee acknowledgment and its effects on workplace psychology
• How employee acknowledgment benefits employee wellbeing
• The organizational benefits of employee acknowledgment
• Use Process Street for your employee acknowledgment strategy

Let’s jump to it!
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This is a guest blog post by Joe Caccavale. Joe heads up content over at Applied – the blind hiring platform that removes unconscious bias by using behavioral science.

As an organization, you’re committed to improving diversity. You want to build high-performing, diverse teams.

But how do you attract and hire these candidates without simply appealing to a mandated quota or succumbing to discrimination (both positive and negative)?

The steps below will talk you through a simple, research-backed process for increasing diversity at the top of the hiring funnel and ensuring that this diversity is maintained throughout the process.
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Although the process below does not guarantee you’ll hire someone from a minority background, diversity will improve over time as a result of bias removal.

I’ll cover:

• Unconscious bias in traditional hiring practices
• Inclusive job descriptions
• How to do referrals the right way
• Start tracking your job boards
• Why the resume has to go
• Why structured interviews and scoring criteria are important
• Document your diversity hiring process
• Diversity hiring as an investment

Let’s dive in!
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Glassdoor reports effective employee onboarding increases retention by 82%.

“Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%”

Now consider the cost of hiring a new employee is between ~6-9 months salary (the average salary for a customer success manager in the U.S. is ~$85,000 annually). When you do the math, it becomes clear how costs start to rack up.

If you’re a SaaS company dedicated to growth and gaining a competitive edge, this is an unnecessary cost that every team, including your customer success team, should avoid.

One of the best ways to improve retention is by focusing on your employee onboarding. That’s what we’re going to look at in this Process Street article.

We’ll explain how we, along with Salesforce, Netflix, and Intercom, onboard our customer success managers.

And if you’re going to invest in onboarding, making sure your customer success managers are onboarded effectively is a good way to effectively hit two birds with one stone. Your CSMs are in charge of customer onboarding, so by providing a solid employee onboarding foundation to orient them, you’re also laying the foundation for a solid system of client onboarding.

By the end of this article, you’ll have learned the 16 employee onboarding best practices used by these top 4 international tech companies. Although these onboarding best practices are specific to a customer success manager role, they’re applicable across most business departments.

• Why onboarding is important for retention
• 16 onboarding best practices (used by top tech companies)
• How to implement onboarding best practices in your company

Let’s get stuck in!
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There are plenty of great quotes from inspirational leaders that perfectly sum up the importance of workforce planning, but in my mind, none of them quite capture it like this one:

“Making a plan without the right tools is like making spaghetti without a pot.” – Kris Hughes, Content Strategy Consultant

You are absolutely not going to be making any spaghetti without a pot, or at least a pot-like vessel that will hold boiling water in a way so as not to burn the crap out of your hands in the process. When it comes to workforce planning, the spaghetti is your business and the pot…

Okay. I took the simile too far. You get the picture: if your business doesn’t have the right people in the right place, you got nothing.

Think beyond that: if the right people don’t stay or aren’t being utilized properly, you still don’t have a pot to… make spaghetti in.

There is a lot out there about workforce planning, and by a lot I mean, a frickin lot. It’s my job to do research and even I got a little dizzy trying to sort through all the different takes on what is or isn’t or could be/might be the best way to manage your workforce.

This post aims to simplify all that. I’ll cover the foundations of workforce planning, specific considerations for remote work, and examine some common methods for finding the right approach for your organization.

This Process Street post is designed so you can jump straight to the info you need to know, so feel free to skip ahead.

• Workforce planning foundations
• Challenges for remote workforce planning
• Future-back planning process
• Recruit, retain, reinforce
• Workforce management tools

Let’s get planning!
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You are an HR leader at an executive search firm and you have landed a big client, who has agreed to kick-off a retained search with your company. What’s your next move?

Who am I to know anything about executive retained search? Well, I am an ex-associate from one of the top executive recruiting firms in the industry. In an article from the Economist about corporate headhunters, it was said that:

“Nobody has ever studied to become a headhunter but the profession is becoming more diverse. Those serving in its ranks include ex-engineers, a former Olympic gymnast…”

– and me, a former visual artist and administrative assistant. Working in executive search, I developed a deep understanding of how each role on the search team can greatly influence the quality and success of the retained search.

The executive search business has been operating since the first World War, through the 1940s. According to AESC (The Association of Executive Recruiting Consultants), it’s likely that Thorndike Deland formed the concept of executive search back in 1926 when he founded the first retained executive recruiting firm.

Meaning, the executive retained search industry has been evolving for over 90 years and will continue to evolve with the digital revolution. Although, there are elements of the retained search business that will remain constant, like the drive to deliver the highest quality service.

I believe it’s crucial for everyone on the executive retained search team to understand how they fit together within the retained search process. However, to impact the performance of your retained search, you have to work on the system. 94% of problems and opportunities for improvement belong to the system, not the individual.

In this post, you’ll learn the difference between a retained search and a contingent search, how to optimize the retained search process (based on my personal experience and reports backed up by leading firms in the industry), and how to maximize the efficiency of your process, especially in the era of remote work (using digital tools like Process Street).

• What is a retained search?
• What is the difference between a retained & contingent search?
• The process of a retained search
• 5 lessons on how to run an effective retained search
• Mediocre to exceptional

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Netflix doesn’t do bonuses. They don’t do formal reviews and they don’t do staff training.

Instead, their HR practices involve heavily scrutinizing employees’ skills and capabilities, and ruthlessly firing them for being good, not great.

“Netflix and chill” it is not.

But, despite these seemingly harsh HR practices, 71% of Netflix employees would encourage their friends to become co-workers. They’re officially the best place in the world to work (even beating the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple). Their employee turnover is only 11% a year, which is below the 13% annual average for tech companies. They’ve maintained a voluntary attrition rate of 3-4% over the last two years, and they make around $2 million per employee.

“Netflix has not only captivated the attention of its customers around the world, but also continues to grow its reputation as an attractive, sought-after employer.” – Forbes, Incubating Culture: How Netflix Is Winning The War For Talent

So, why is Netflix the best place to work, how do they maintain such a productive workforce, and what lessons can we take from them?

Grab some popcorn and let’s find as we go through the following in this Process Street post:

• HR practices: How Netflix does things
• 4 HR practices that changed HR forever
• How Process Street embraces Netflix’s HR practices & why they work for us
• Are Netflix’s HR practices right for you?

Settle in for the story of the year (that you can’t stream)… 🍿

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