As I see it, both on organizational and personal level I can inspire and encourage further development. I can inspire to achieve more.  

I believe that everyone has their special talent. All the obstacles and limitations are created in our mind. In most cases, they are caused by our attitudes, fears, social restrictions, no the lack of opportunities. As a business coach and organizational change expert I endeavor to create the environment which achieves full potential of the organization and its employees. In other words, we reinforce the process of ‘internal scaling’ through optimization and application of strength.   

As for my character traits, I am optimistic and I advocate for result-focused work. I value openness and trust. I enjoy learning something new and gaining new experiences. The process of learning and its results truly bring me joy. I can go through a difficult strategic session, improve and enhance the culture and structure of the organization, achieve the results that have not been achieved without my assistance. I can also set new goals and synchronize the values of a team. This is very inspiring.  

I have been working for more than 20 years in the boards of directors and as a consultant I’ve been helping organizations recruit, build and motivate efficient like-minded teams, in which people develop in the same direction and are willing to achieve great results together. I am also capable of designing a dynamic system of efficiency metrics (key performance indicators) for the team and creating the system of evaluating and meta competences development.  

In your opinion, how can HR professionals improvise, adapt and innovate in an ever-changing world?

I am convinced that the analytics of team involvement and constant interaction with employees and the labor market are necessary to be taken into consideration. A lot of fruitful ideas are already present in teams but it is necessary to implement them on time. To achieve this goal, regular mechanism of consolidation of new ideas for the constant process improvement in the organization and prompt change implementation are needed. It is crucial to attract supporters within the team and its ecosystem and look for decent solutions which will eventually benefit the organization as well as its employees. A great deal of ideas can be implemented by the team provided that its members are willing to develop in the sphere. In this case, people come up with ideas of their own and eagerly realize them, thus implementing their creativity & help further competencies development. 

The edutainment (education + entertainment) format facilitates the process of improvisation. People enjoy playing and it also helps them think outside the box, decreases the formality level and increases team engagement in projects and other activities.  

There are many digital tools nowadays that help to assess ‘team mood’, engagement and loyalty. These tools promptly gather opinions and eliminate routine, providing HR with more time to communicate and generate new ideas.  

It’s crucial to remember that various target audiences, groups and generations coexist within the organization, so the culture should be open and focused on omnichannel communications and diversified social projects. 

The synergy of resources and timely organizational synchronization are important. This is where transparent areas of responsibility and internal communications with all stakeholders and dynamic KPIs come to help. Like any other tools, metrics should be created considering current & strategic objectives. They should then develop and adapt together with other organizational processes. This topic is extremely relevant now and we have been researching its issues with the experts of the Train Your Brain agency for many years. 

One of the results we have achieved is a new methodology for measuring productivity indicators — the SAPI Indicator Globe. I’ve recently presented it at the International Conference on Innovation, Management and Technology in Dubai. This is a multi-dimensional, dynamic and flexible efficiency map which includes priority qualitative and quantitative indicators depending on the tasks of stakeholders. The globe allows to evaluate the metrics from different perspectives: within a specific task or the work of a department; at the intersection of several processes; from the point of view of the organization itself and its external processes; from top to bottom and from bottom to top. And, most importantly, it is able to consider dynamics, instantly reacting to the changes, which enables us to forecast the future of the organization, make long-term and short-term predictions in order to choose the optimal measures that are to be taken. 

Which are the main trends that shape the HRM sector these days?

Corporate culture is what comes to the fore. It’s a set of behavioral models, attitudes, beliefs and values that are formed within the team and which are implemented by the team when taking actions or decisions.   

The atmosphere in the team determines its engagement, as well as productivity and the desire to gain new experiences. The innovations take root better when the team is ready to change and develop. On the contrary, even the most advanced innovative solutions do not work if they do not meet the principles and norms shared by the team. 

At the same time, it is important to work proactively: teams should be encouraged to change in advance. A necessary ‘mood’ must be formed beforehand if we don’t want to struggle with the consequences. In this respect, the development of meta-competencies among employees (along with soft and hard skills) becomes relevant: consciousness and mindfulness, emotional stability and intelligence, proactivity and creativity, resistance to stress and uncertainties, etc. This help to build a strong team in which members reinforce each other’s ideas and cooperate for personal and organizational benefit.  

At the same time, the process of learning and developing should be continuous. The concept of lifelong learning is yet another trend which determines modern technologies improvement. It’s therefore necessary to develop in the rhythm of current changes in order to remain on the top. And this applies not only to analytics and strategy, but also to the team. The team is the ‘engine’ that makes change possible. 

We’ve come back to the issue of productivity. To implement innovations and digital solutions, it is important to take into consideration operational models, competencies, structure, decision-making process and critical thinking. 

It’s crucial to eliminate daily routine and reinforce hidden potentials, enhancing the capabilities of people and organization as well as their abilities for learning and self-developing. Train Your Brain strategic sessions offer a variety of tools that help to assess the internal potential of the organization, form a roadmap for team development, increase efficiency and create a culture of innovation, thus implementing the above mentioned strategies. 

Can you give us advice on how to overcome multicultural differences in the workplace?

It’s important to understand each other and take a genuine interest in the colleagues’ opinions. Communication remains the most important competence. By communication I mean the ability to ‘walk in someone’s shoes’ and look at the situation from different perspectives, as well as building relationships in large systems, understanding the relation between the processes within organization. And in this sense, common tasks arise that begin to prevail over cross-cultural differences, provided that mutual respect for different opinions and traditions is preserved. 

The boom of freelancing and working from home have changed organizations in terms of geography. Nowadays multinational networks of teams are being formed more easily. Such limitations as location, language or lifestyle are not applied to them. Quite the opposite, they manage to cooperate effectively. It’s a great opportunity to support each other on a new level.  

How do you define the successful HR specialist? What qualities should he/ she have?

First of all, HR team must be a real business partner. They should follow the mission of the organization and try hard to realize key objectives. They should conduct a dialogue within and outside the organization, facilitate the implementation of internal potential and project scaling through the talents of the team. They should help the employees unlock the potential, find interesting and relevant tasks and at the same time focus on priorities and achieve results. 

It is important to be the ambassador of your organization and actively build relationships with the labor market, create a positive brand image, attract new talents and help to form an organizational design & culture of flexibility and innovations in which projects can be delegated taking into account competencies & potential. 

The system should be well-balanced and ready to develop further. It is necessary to create a complementary team, maintain the key talent pool and form the common values ​​and traditions of the organization. 

To summarize, the key goal of HR nowadays is to take an active part in building corporate culture which should be based on the company’s mission and values and therefore contribute to better productivity and sustainable success even under uncertainties. At the same time, the company should be ready to change in respect with current innovations and trends.  

The post Digital culture of innovation appeared first on DiTech Media.

I work as the Director of organizational Development and HR in the consulting company Group of companies “Rusconsult”, in Russia. In addition, I work as an organizational development consultant with various business organizations. Most of all in my work, I like to observe the results of positive changes in the organization. 

Organizational development tools help businesses to change in accordance with customer expectations, market requirements, and competitors’ actions. 

The process of developing an organization is similar to growing flowers. Firstly, you prepare soil and then you plant a sprout, water it, fertilize and take care of it. Later a wonderful flower blooms from the sprout. Afterwards you face new challenges – to preserve, to protect from external influences, to create conditions for the continuation of flowering and planting new sprouts. I think that most of all in my work I prefer an opportunity to influence business creating such positive changes. 

Tell us about a memorable work experience that you had, what did you learn from it?   

I appreciate all my acquired experience. I try to see opportunities for learning and development in every life and professional situation. Fortunately, working in consulting gives many opportunities to gain new experience. 

The most important lesson I learned from my professional experience in consulting is that there are no two identical organizations, there are no two identical leaders, and there are no universal formulas and magic recipes for all diseases of business. Every business is unique; all people are so different that no typology or theoretical concept can answer all the questions. 

I realized how important is to reflect on your previous experience. The world is changing so fast. What worked fine yesterday is no longer relevant today. Moreover, before offering a particular solution to a business, it is necessary carefully evaluate the external and internal context. 

Which are the main trends that shape the HRM industry nowadays? 

A world-famous HR-specialist, Dave Ulrich, said in one of his speeches: “HR is not about personnel. The task of HR is to help your organization become successful.” 

Dave Ulrich explained that if an organization does not have a successful client experience, then all the best HR practices are useless. Initially, the company must succeed in the market. HR can help to achieve this! So I absolutely agree with this. 

Today, the boundaries between professional spheres are blurring. A modern HR manager needs to understand all the business processes of an organization in order to offer solutions that are useful for a particular business, and not just fashionable or popular. An HR specialist needs a broader view of business, knowledge of management and marketing. 

Digital transformation of business, gig economy, VUCA world lead to the fact that the business models of organizations are changing. Organizations are becoming open systems. Permanent and temporary employees, freelancers, contractors, etc. can work on joint projects. Thus, HR specialists need to integrate all participants into a single value chain for customers. 

In addition, some traditional HR functions are also changing. Artificial intelligence is being introduced to solve not only routine tasks. Already today, there are robots capable of conducting job interviews. The economic benefits of the introduction of artificial intelligence in mass recruitment will be very attractive for business as soon as such developments become available. This is also a trend affecting the HR industry. The competitive battle of HR specialists with artificial intelligence in the labor market is no longer a fantasy. This is a very serious challenge for HR specialists. It is necessary now to learn how to do things that artificial intelligence will not be able to do. 

In your opinion, how can HR professionals improvise, adapt and innovate in an ever-changing world? 

This is a very relevant question. In my opinion, many HR specialists like to innovate and improvise. Nevertheless, unfortunately, not all the proposed ideas are economically sound and timely. That is why not all innovations take root. This is partly because HR management tasks cannot be solved in isolation from the management system as a whole. An HR specialist should help business leaders make their organization successful in the long term. To do this, you need to learn how to find the root problems of the business and start changes with them. 

In addition, it is necessary to keep the focus on the long-term perspective, on trends in the economy and social life, to take a proactive position. 

For example, when a business has grown and faced with the problem of unmanageability, it is necessary to restore order, optimize business processes, and implement a business management system. All HR innovations implemented should be aimed at this. 

If the business has gained extra weight, lost dynamics and sensitivity to market signals, it is necessary to introduce mechanisms for the active development of the organization, to help the organization become lively, customer-oriented and proactive. 

If the business suffers losses, then it is necessary to coolly, like a surgeon, cut off all unnecessary, inefficient, interfering with further development. Then after optimization, evaluate the situation again and implement those initiatives that will help the organization become successful. 

As you can see, at each stage of business development, an HR specialist has different tasks. However, it is always necessary to keep the focus on the goals of initiatives and the long-term business perspective. 

What in your opinion is the best tool to motivate your employees?  

I do not believe in universal motivation tools. The organization employs people with different motivational profiles. At the European Digital Week 2020 conference, I made a presentation on motivational types and talked about how important is to take into account the individual characteristics of employees. It is very important to determine the motivational profile of an employee and build interaction with him based on this. 

In our company, we try to find out the motivational preferences of an employee when applying for a job. Then, throughout the employee journey map, we regularly discuss personal and professional goals with each employee and try to provide opportunities for their implementation. 

In your opinion, what qualities make someone an excellent leader?  

In my opinion, a leader is a person who is voluntarily followed by his followers. The profile of a successful leader depends on a number of factors: the market situation, the economic state of the business, employees, business features, etc. The leader’s profile should correspond to all these factors. At different stages of business development, different leadership qualities are needed. 

Nevertheless, I would single out several qualities without which leadership is impossible. The ability to take responsibility, the ability to self-development and self-improvement, and the ability to see further than the people following the leader. 

The post Traditional learning and e-learning: mix but don’t shake appeared first on DiTech Media.

I think I am born under a very lucky star. I have been endowed with many talents that I still discover and I want to give back as much as I can to the world.

I have become an #entrepreneur in Human Resources and #Leadership Consulting in 2014.

I have founded Dare (www.dare.com.ro) in 2016 as I always dared to dream, to want, to create, to share more and more, to do good.

I have trained, mentored and career coached thousands of people starting 2010 including teenagers, students, employees in many organizations.

I have started to deliver trainings in Asia (Singapore, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Qatar, Bangkok) in 2015.

In 2015 I have also become an #HR and #Management professor at the #Business Academy in Bucharest.

In 2020 I have founded Sweets & Spices (www.sweetsandspices.ro) as I am passionate about healthy food and nicely wrapped gifts.

I am a mentor in the Professional Women’s Network, HR School and She is Mom and I am a volunteer in many organizations.

I am passionate about everything I do and my mission is to change the world, step by step, through education.

I have a very beautiful and supportive family which gives me the daily dose of motivation and energy.

My motto is: “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” – Dalai Lama

Can you describe a time you successfully resolved differences between an employee and upper-level management?

I remember I have done this several times during my career and I do it frequently as a consultant/mediator. There is no secret – the most important thing in all relationships is the communication, they way we listen to each other, understand what the others say without judging and without having as main purpose to be right. As many conversations are not about you, but about the people in front of you that you need to pay attention to.

I cannot say I have solved the differences, but I have tried to create the proper space for each participant to say what needs to be said and to share their feelings. And it worked every time. This makes me think that people actually need to talk, to share their emotions, to be listened to, to be understood, to be treated with empathy.

What are your tips on how to create a high-performance workplace?

There are no tips, there is only common sense: listen to your people, pay attention to their needs, be present in the conversation, do the right thing even if it is not the most popular thing to be done, show respect and appreciation, practice what you preach, discover and encourage potential, reward creativity, innovation, performance, teach, coach and mentor your employees, admit when you do mistakes, give and receive feedback. These are just a few of my recommendations in order to give people a chance to become high performers as you cannot create the culture or the environment by yourself, you need the others to help you.

In your opinion, how can HR professionals improvise, adapt and innovate in an ever-changing world?

If HR professionals want to work efficiently, they’ll need to keep up with the latest innovations and adapt to an ever-evolving landscape.

To ensure the health and safety of their employees, companies have switched to a remote work model at a rate and scale they’ve never expected. As face-to-face collaboration is replaced with more Slack conversations, Zoom calls, and countless emails, HR managers have to manage difficult work under very different circumstances.

While productivity numbers have remained high during the pandemic, HR leaders must learn how to efficiently transition to a fully remote workforce for the foreseeable future. This transition includes learning how to recruit and onboard new employees remotely, ensuring communication and collaboration is not lost within team members — all while avoiding micromanaging — and offering flexibility to employees that was not offered before.

HR professionals are also under the strain of addressing the mental health and wellness of their entire staff in addition to worrying about the safety of employees still physically going to work, processing piles of paperwork, and providing solace to countless workers who have been laid off, furloughed, or had hours reduced. During these uncertain times, an HR leader also needs to ensure their company is protecting its employer brand by encouraging leaders to provide as much transparency and empathy as possible in times of massive layoffs. For employees still on the job, HR managers are trying to keep their workers productive, motivated, engaged, and connected—all of which are moving parts in this new normal. (source – Debora Roland, Vice President of HR, CareerArc)

In your opinion, what is the best tool to motivate employees?

I do not believe in external motivation or motivators. Motivation is not a pill you give somebody and expect that person to act as a puppet. I truly believe in offering employees the proper tools to work with, the support they need, the right training, a nice working environment, learning and growing opportunities, rewards and recognition, respect, a transparent communication and feedback. I also think that being so different, we have different motivations, therefore as employers we need to understand what are the main motivators for our employees in order to match our expectations with theirs so that we could deliver the business results accordingly.

What advice will you give to all the people who are just starting to work in the HR field?

First to make sure they understand what HR is. It may seem trendy, fancy and cool, but there is a lot of work, there are ups and downs and working with people, especially during these complex times, seems harder than never. Then to experience all the roles in HR through job rotations, internships, support given to their colleagues in HR, volunteer work etc. so that they could understand what is behind every role. You may want to become generalists or you may want to specialize, at the end of the day it is your choice and I recommend you to take a decision after you practice a little bit to see what you like and what you are good at. Learning is a continuous process and in order to keep up to date regarding all trends in the market, all best practices, all technologies used you need to read, to be in contact with your peers, to be involved in communities, to exchange ideas etc. And last, but not least, to love HR, to be passionate about working with people, to keep your enthusiasm and at the end of the day to be happy and satisfied with who you are and what you do despite the difficulties encountered. Good luck!

The post How to be an HR professional in the digital era appeared first on DiTech Media.

Cross-cutting strategic metric, single entities’ data (departments), core and secondary processes, long-term and short-term tasks, statistics and dynamics… Like mosaics pieces, they develop into a structured and coherent digital map of the organization and can therefore be used by various stakeholders. This is what we call the SAPI Globe –  Stakeholders Agile Performance Indicators

Multi-dimensional, dynamic and flexible efficiency map.

The Globe is a metaphorical shape that allows us to summarize the priority qualitative and quantitative indicators, depending on the stakeholders’ tasks.

The equator represents key (core) operational process which demands constant attention. The equator is then intersected with meridians – cross-cutting strategic goals which are analyzed by taking into account the implementation and execution of their specific tasks. The continents represent departments responsible for processes.

The lines that can be seen on this multi-dimensional map represent the indicators to be evaluated. The HR department deals with employee engagement statistics, their reflections of the organization etc. The marketing department considers reputation analytics, traffic segments, channels conversions, etc.

Continents may be evaluated from different perspectives.

• Locally, within the framework of a single task or the work of a specific department.
• At the intersection of several processes (omnichannel analytics). Marketing affects sales, sales affect production and logistics, logistics affect sales.
• By segments and priorities. Today, sales figures are important, while tomorrow the priorities shift towards reputation analytics.
• From top to bottom (from the general to the specific) and from bottom to top (from the specific to the general). Regular team’s, customers’ and partners’ opinions monitoring within the organizational ecosystem takes into account the interests of society and other stakeholders.
• From the point of view of the organization itself (customer orientation, productivity improvement, innovation) and its external communications (following global trends, social benefits, prompt and reliable relationships with the partners).

The Globe concept eliminates linear thinking and created a multi-dimensional perspective instead. Furthermore, it does not only focus only on current issues, but is also capable of monitoring different time lapses, strategic and seasonal indicators.

It even allows to monitor aspects that do not currently constitute a part of the project: data on cancelled orders and unrealized opportunities, labor market reflections, innovations potential, improvements application, hence quality increase, social interaction. It offers new perspectives, too:  potential requests and growth points of the organization’s ecosystem that could not be detected previously since they were out of system’s reach.

SAPI Globe Concept: extending the boundaries of KPIs

In our pursuit to create an approach which can be widely and successfully used in the modern ecosystem, we have studied numerous scientific models and systems: researches by Malo, Norton-Kaplan, Meisel, Stern, Drucker, Roberts and Adams…

We have expanded the set of metrics by adding various stakeholders related to corporate culture: suppliers, partners, government agencies, the media, and society. We have also considered the influence of the relationships within a team, it’s values and willingness to achieve qualitative and quantitative indicators.

As a result we have developed a much more complete image which comprises a variety of factors of the organization’s ecosystem as well as external influences.

Each organization needs a unique Globe of indicators.

The SAPI Globe can be used in any project by equipment suppliers, scientific institutes, beauty salons, online business schools, hospitals, industrial enterprises etc. The Globe adapts to the project with the consideration of priorities, project’s specific characteristics and may be changed or configured in the process.

Train Your Brain experts require 2 or 3 months to develop a functional map and optimize the processes within the organization. Sometimes deadlines shift due to delays at the approval stage: people have their own opinion regarding the necessity of changes and innovations. This aspect should also be accounted for. Moreover, the whole team should be involved in the system of creating and monitoring metrics.

Analytics does not turn into an end in itself or endeavors to measure all the indicators possible. The key questions we ask managers are: “What do you plan to measure and what are your priorities in respect with the target audience?” The answer becomes the foundation for strategic metrics that will be applied in the future.

This is one of the reasons for hiring a specialist from the outside in order to consider the situation from the point of view of an observer rather than that of a stakeholder. All the necessary detailed will be then provided by the organization’s employee.

Dynamic analytics – a trigger for changes and a look into the future.

Dynamic metrics help us determine the potential of the organization – what it will be like in a year or two or a decade. We can detect weak spots and unoptimized processes. This is quite a trendy topic nowadays. Dynamic indicators have long been used in experimental chemistry and in production, while measuring when assessing website traffic or traffic jams (when the traffic density is divided into sections with green, yellow and red colors and the points show the density at any given moment. 2-3 points – we are good to go, 10 points – here we go again!).

However, if several or prevailing number of indicators are dynamic, it becomes a daunting task to measure and compare everything at once. Each indicator becomes a small ‘magnet’ which affects the overall vector. It’s up to us to decide whether to use them as points of growth and increase productivity or ignore them.

For example,

In one of the regional clinics, an analysis of detailed indicators by hours and days helped to conclude that it was possible to increase the attendance of a speech therapist and psychologist on Sundays if you open an appointment to other specialists for that day. Now specialists work a full shift, and the clinic provides a larger volume of services.

The situation changes in summer, which requires dynamics evaluations to analyze the changes and then test and apply changes that will increase productivity. Detailed analytics acts as an incentive for development and helps to take timely measures.

There are also top-level indicators: economic forecasts, changes in inflation rates, trends … Everything is changing at a rapid pace, so we have to conduct analytics regularly to withstand the pressure of modern tendencies.

Dynamic KPIs aren’t a novelty anymore. They broaden our horizons and allow us to keep up with the times of even shape the future instead of constantly looking back.

The Globe SAPI concept reflects the changes that strategic management undergoes in the digital environment. Thinking within an ecosystem, innovations, speed of change implementation, organizational flexibility, engagement of all key stakeholders are priority indicators of sustainable development of organizations in the rapidly changing world.

Oxana Nabok

http://nabok.trainyourbrain.eu.com

Managing partner of Train your brain consultancy agency http://trainyourbrain.eu.com

Head of change management committee of Digital Experts Association http://deassn.ru

EFQM business excellence European model assessor

The post Analytics that consider everything and set the priorities. SAPI Globe – a comprehensive approach to measuring KPIs appeared first on DiTech Media.

I have graduated Law, I am CIPD certified in HR, I own several certifications in HR, assessment tools, management and leadership. I am also a professor at the Business Academy in Bucharest, a mentor for several communities and a coach.

What is the role of HR?

In my opinion the role of HR has been evolving since March 2020 and it is definitely transformational. HR supports the management in discovering the value and the potential in the employees, creates specific development programs, assists in creating and implementing strategies, in internal and external communication, in employer branding, employee relations, organizational design, restructuring and reorganizing, separation. HR is supposed to act as an integrator and as an advocate for the business, as a strategist and as a business partner.

As an HR person, how will you drive results?

Always true people. You cannot do business and have results without people. That is why discovering their values, motivations, talents, potential becomes crucial in order to have engaged and motivated people to deliver results and to achieve the business objectives.

What is the easiest way to discover an employee’s potential?

Through an assertive communication – listening more, observing, understanding, empathizing with the employees, but also through rewarding their successes and recognizing their achievements. All people have potential, but sometimes they are not aware about it, and our role, as HR, is to support them in discovering their potential and working with it in order to achieve great results.

What lies behind the magic of employee development?

Engaged employees go beyond a transactional exchange and are willing to give discretionary effort. They bring their hearts, hands, and minds into their jobs. The term “discretionary” implies that there is additional effort available on the part of the employee that he or she can CHOOSE to apply. However, the choice to apply this effort is something not stated in the satisfaction contract; it’s up to the employee.

What trends will shape Human Resource departments over the next five years?

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that companies that don’t transform will get left behind by those that do. This applies to developing a digital transformation strategy that will stick but, more importantly, extends beyond technology to tackle people-centric issues.

Trends We’ll Look At in HR according to Gartner survey conducted in 2020:

• Virtual work is here to stay;
• Companies double down on digital;
• Teams play an essential role;
• HR design is a strategic focus;
• Employee experience is redefined;
• HR delivers value through an outside/in approach;
• Mental health gets the attention it deserves;
• Data becomes the new currency;
• Workers are equipped with the skills and tools they need to navigate uncertainty;
• HR offers guidance to drive success;
• Companies show their true colors.

The post Discover potential and develop people appeared first on DiTech Media.

Dragon dictation

This free mobile speech recognition app allows you to quickly take notes and compose messages without having to type them by hand on a tiny mobile keyboard (free).

Mindly

Come up with ideas, organize your thoughts and plan projects using visualization tools. Create a mental map of the project and attach notes and images to it, choose color schemes, sync with Dropbox and export the result to PDF (free).

Slack

Service for group chats, the main advantage of which is the ability to exchange files of any format. Here you can also create various channels to bring together employees of the same department or people working on the same project.

Todoist

Perhaps one of the most convenient todo list apps – it allows you to sort tasks and set reminders. It exists both as an application and as an online service. Unfortunately, most of the useful features are only available to those who have installed the paid version.

AnyDesk & TeamViewer & Chrome Remote Desktop

Get secure remote access to devices on Windows, Mac and Linux. A full-featured keyboard, real-time sounds, video streaming and two-way file sharing help you keep the data close at hand and provide immediate support to clients and colleagues (free).

Pocket

Save articles and videos found online for further reading both online and offline on any of your synced devices (free).

Evernote

The famous service for taking notes. Records, to-do lists and reminders can be shared with groups of employees.

Google Drive & OneDrive

A cloud service that also allows you to work directly on documents, spreadsheets and presentations in real time.

Google Hangouts

Service for video communication with the ability to conduct video conferences and conduct group chats.

Camscanner

An extremely useful application with which you can scan documents directly from your smartphone and save it in PDF format.

Android Business Calendar

Traditional business diary, only as an application. The calendar has all the standard functions, and Android Business Calendar can form a short summary of the day and synchronize with your Google account.

Signeasy

This application will allow you to sign documents remotely without printing or scanning anything. The signature is scanned, loaded into memory, after which you just have to put it on the document. You can do the same with seals.

Zite

A news aggregator that saves a lot of time by creating collections on topics of interest to you.

Dropbox

Reliably protected “cloud” for storing and transferring files of any size and format.

Wrike

An application for collaborating on projects, scheduling group tasks and tracking their progress.

Mediametrics

Allows you to compose feeds of the most discussed and important news from social networks. Mediametrics has the ability to customize filters by topic and time period.

Hootsuites

A well-known social media posting planner.

Trello

One of the most worthy project management apps. Can be used for both business and personal purposes.

Asana

An easy-to-use and intuitive task scheduler that will be especially convenient for those who work remotely.

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The Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped both market requirements and workplaces. Even though the trend towards remote work is not new, this spring people all around the world experienced a rapid shift to #workathome habits. Businesses, regardless of size, witnessed the huge challenge of adjusting their corporate cultures and helping employees adapt and remain productive during the pandemic. The IT industry has become a frontliner to meet this challenge and help other industries to survive. They say, If You Want to Change the World, Start with Yourself First. With this in mind, the IT company CROC announced its digital transformation plan two years ago and still continues on its digital journey. As a result, the company has turned out to be not only well-prepared for the digital challenges of this pandemic time, but also capable of offering effective anti-crisis solutions to customers. CROC is also happy to share some HR tips and hints on how to initiate a change in one’s company and how to encourage employees in their home offices. It is important to rethink corporate culture, focusing on innovations, as an organic digital transformation is crucial. However, starting this digital transformation means gaining support from business owners and members of the Board of Directors, as they can lead and balance cross-functional collaboration, as well as showing how to get involved in the transformation processes in the most effective manner. At the same time, it is important to talk to doubtful employees. This is quite OK, especially in the first stage when kicking off the transformation, since not everybody is convinced of its feasibility and benefits. This is why it is necessary to explain what is going on, openly tell people what will be changed and why, thus eliminating organizational and communication barriers. Digital transformation cannot be finished within a few months, it is a long-lasting process of improvement and adaptation to customers’ demands, market needs and uncertainties. Predicting the self-isolation regime a few weeks before it was officially introduced all across Russia, CROC initiated a shift to remote work and launched a COVID-19 hotline, which any employee can easily access to receive a consultation on health issues, request a blood test or call for a doctor. Later on, the company introduced online daily morning exercises, which employees eagerly join, even with their family members. The CEO is taking part in this activity as well and once he even demonstrated his own set of exercises. Telegram tools for internal communications have become more popular and helpful. CROCNews channel (a tool to share news, and announce activities and partner’s offers) has seen a 1.5x increase in the number of subscribers, up to over 1,100 people a month. Employees can also take part in regular surveys related to remote work and share their worries about what can be improved on a corporate level. At the same time, the CROC chatbot (a tool to get colleagues’ contact details quickly, request remote technical support, check salary status, etc.) is actively used. A few new digital corporate activities were introduced as anti-crisis measures by the CROC HR team. For example, top managers have started running online weekly coffee breaks with employees in a video call format. Remarkably, every third employee regularly shows up there. In addition, a lot of entertaining activities were started such as online weekly team building events, like quizzes, mafia, etc., with a corporate branded background being developed for Zoom conferences. A landing page with over 100 special offers related to sports, arts and online parties was launched for employees, their families and friends. Notably, CROC employees while working remotely have become more involved in corporate social responsibility activities, with an eco-responsibility initiative being already in place and two more just coming: skill-based volunteering and women in tech.

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A few years ago, it was almost unthinkable to set up an information technology infrastructure without spending thousands of dollars on buying licenses. Operating systems, office productivity software, databases, and analytics solutions are some of the basic needs of an enterprise and they are available as community editions that anyone can use without paying a single penny.

These products are already running in live production environments today by hundreds of companies. The open-source products are no more just used for experimentation and have moved beyond the proof of concept stage. Open-source has found its place in mainstream enterprise-wide IT transforming the way modern data and analytics architecture is designed. Interestingly, the small and medium business (SMB) enterprises have benefitted the most from this revolution. This adoration by SMB and startup organizations is not without a reason. The whole purpose of open source is to give back to the community without anticipating anything in return.

Are you a startup or a small organization and curious to know how you can maximize your benefits from open source? Do you want to know a few but most important things to keep in mind before you start? If your answer is yes then this article is for you. Below are the 5 reasons why you should embrace open source.

1. Cost benefits: Open source can help you make substantial savings on server and end-user license costs. Most often the proprietary software has a one-time as well as recurring costs associated based on the number of user licenses. This is simply the cost of owning/renting and using the product.

The open-source products have community server licenses that allow anyone to own the software for free. The net savings means a lot for small enterprises that have limited capital and a tight budget. Now you own the product and so the responsibility of deploying and maintaining the product lies with you as with any other software product.

However, with an increased number of companies offering consulting services, you have much better chances of finding a reliable cost-effective partner in your journey. However, finding a genuine and reliable partner may be a little difficult. The commercial product vendors charge a high fee for providing deployment, maintenance, and support services. There are very good chances that enterprises will make significant operational cost savings from open source products. There are numerous examples in the industry where the companies have made significant savings in operational costs from open-source. 

2. Stability and Maturity: The general perception about open-source products was that they are used by enterprises for experimental projects or to demonstrate the proof of concept. They lacked features that made them unsuitable for production use cases. With many open source projects in the evolution stage, the source code was changing frequently with product updates and patches coming out after short gaps.

The situation has changed drastically now and open-source products are giving a head to head competition to well established commercial products. Many open-source products are outpacing commercial products in capabilities and features. Linux, MongoDB, Hadoop, Spark, Drupal, Ruby are some of the popular names and the list is endless. These products are being used successfully in production as mainstream IT applications by some of the large corporations in the world. This suggests that the products are stable, reliable, and mature enough that they can be used in large scale deployments requiring high performance and reliability.

3. Open-source community: The open source community is made of selfless dynamic people who only care about giving back to the community. The community understands the pain of each other and provides their help without any self-interest. Small enterprises that do not have funds to afford support services, seek help from this community to find solutions to their problems. It may not be comparable to tier 1 support offered by established commercial product vendors but you will definitely find answers and suggestions to your questions pretty fast.

Unless you have mission-critical applications, it can work fairly well for you. The community forums have a wealth of knowledge posted by the people in the form of videos, posts, samples, examples, code, and answers to problems.

4. Skilled resources availability: Unlike commercial products that offer free usage for a limited period or with limited features, open-source products give that freedom and peace of mind to the people who want to learn the software. With support from the community, people can get up and running in no time and gain a deeper knowledge in a short span of time. This makes more and more skilled resources available in the job market.

SMBs can utilize this vast resource pool to hire knowledgeable and experienced professionals at a reasonable rate. From a strategic point of view, it makes more sense to invest in setting up an in-house IT team. Investing in the in-house team may not look worth initially but it will always pay off in the longer term.

Tactically, SMBs can leverage college students and interns to help them research, evaluate, and experiment software products to understand the fit in their long term IT strategy. Inviting students to kickstart a small project can help SMBs set up a good foundation. Based on their experience, they can scale up and choose to hire a few of those students as interns.

5. Culture of open collaboration: Have you ever wondered what makes so many people contribute selflessly to open source projects? It’s the joy of giving back to the community. Some may argue that recognition is the driving factor but people don’t contribute just because they want recognition. It is just an outcome and comes along with it. Only a few open-source contributors actually receive recognition. If motivation had been the factor, the open-source would have died long back.

Human Resources (HR) executives struggle to find ways to motivate and retain their employees. All large and small businesses can learn and benefit from it. Try to mimic and promote open-source culture. Create a platform that allows employees to create things.

Let people from within and outside the company collaborate and contribute based on their interests. The organization should have no role except providing and moderating the platform to protect the company information. The projects can be classified as internal and external based on what data or information is used. The organizations must ensure that the external projects are not at all influenced by the leadership and management.

Encourage, recognize, and adopt the fast-growing open-source projects. The projects with internal information can be promoted within the organization. It’s critical to shield the contributors from internal politics and bureaucracy. Let employees collaborate in an open environment.

The open innovation and collaboration culture will make employees feel motivated and productive at their workplaces. Recognition for an organization as an open-source contributor would benefit from an improved brand image.

Open source is a movement and it is up to the organizations to decide how they want to react. Companies adopting a wait and watch or play safe tactics are going to miss the bus. Pretending to use open-source in an increment fashion or simply downplaying it can put businesses on an unsustainable path. Embracing open-source technology will help organizations be more efficient and innovative in true sense. The community must keep collaborating. The code must go on!    

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Disclaimer: The author has no affiliation with any government, political, or private organization, and the views expressed are the author’s personal views and do not represent the opinion or endorsement of any entity whatsoever with which the author has been, is now or will be affiliated. The author does not accept any responsibility or liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage resulting from any such irregularity, inaccuracy, or use of the information.

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Many mistakenly narrow the selection field, looking only outside the company. Inside the company, can be found enough candidates to fill the vacant spaces. We know that internal selection is a powerful instrument for managing the corporate culture, the people flue, and personal loyalty, but at the moment it is not widely used amongst HR specialists.

The digital instruments which are helping the HR manager to be in sync with the life of the organization are also extremely necessary for hiring employees. More and more often we observe the companies who are forgetting their own applications who measure the organizational climate and help the work with personnel.

The question remains: What kind of digital instruments can’t the HR manager work without?

There are many digital tools that help to eliminate manual labor, systematize data and leave more time for the HR manager to develop more employee value, benefits and services. 

First of all, it is necessary to mention the Chat bot, which helps a lot in the recruitment process. It places the advertisement in social media and conducts all necessary e-mail communication with candidates in accordance with the criteria specified in the algorithm. As a result, it provides an HR manager with candidates preselected according to the preferred criteria. In addition, it can automatically conduct a variety of analytics, which really helps to identify the best way to promote a vacancy and analyze the experience needed. Chat bot also analyzes candidates’ reactions to the position and helps an HR manager understand whether to reconfigure the selection criteria.

Internal candidates can also be part of this recruitment process as this digital tool could take data from the Company systems and determine if the internal candidate has the necessary experience and meets the criteria.

Chat bot helps to create a positive Company image by conducting relevant communication with plethora of potential candidates. Potentially it can write 1000 messages per hour and could analyze around 50 000 resumes per month. Of course this technology is used mainly for mass recruitment. But it can be also helpful for a pre–selection process for various middle level positions.  Specially since a recruiter can always conduct a sense check and validate the Bot’s results. The validity of the bot’s dropouts can be checked by any criteria. It is especially important to make a random check of the dropout resumes based on candidate experience. This criteria is sensitive and sometimes it is not possible to mention all the possible options in the technical requirements. Life is more complex than an algorithm. Improper selections can be easily solved with the help of regular Recruiter sense check  to make sure Bot did not eliminate talented people.  A recruiter could always add to the algorithm new experience options if there are any new ideas.  

Chat Bot can be also used for internal communication, integration of newcomers in the organization, sending out notifications and reminders of any nature, including employee engagement surveys and exit questionnaires for exiting employees in order to analyze the reasons for their resignation. 

Digital technologies help you quickly process internal surveys – thermometers of employee engagement and health of the organization. Analysis of surveys and reasons for resignation helps the organization become better as an employer. Digital tools form regular Analytics-dashboards about engagement indicators, for instance: quality of training, staff satisfaction, knowledge of strategic goals, and turnover indicators. Timely information helps to form preventive analytics about turnover and engagement indicators and can predict indicators for the future which can be used to identify potential problems. If this forecast shows negative trends, the organization can quickly start taking action and improve results.

The help of digital technologies in processing employee competencies assessment results is very valuable. Based on the responses to business cases, points are assigned. For a digital algorithm, it is important to carefully consider the answers and assign each digit. In this way, digital algorithms help shape the talent pool of the organization. Of course, this does not cancel the exclude the need for communication of employees with HR and their immediate supervisor, but makes it possible to focus on high-quality communication and employee development planning based on systematic analysis of competencies. 

Digital technology helps in another important aspect of management – monitoring key performance indicators of the organization. This regular collection of data is important for organizational performance measurement and employee rewards.

Thus, throughout the entire employee journey, using the right technical instruments, one can systematically measure employee experience. This helps to make management decisions on time and develop the corporate processes of the organization. In this day and age, An HR manager cannot be successful and work without digital tools.

Oxana Nabok

Managing Partner of Train your brain agency

http://nabok.trainyourbrain.eu.com

http://trainyourbrain.eu.com

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