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In the world of hiring and recruiting, the summer months are sometimes looked at as a time of reduced hiring activity, with springtime and the turn of the calendar year conventionally seen as the times of the year when candidates are there looking for new roles. There is some logic to this—the idea of a summer break transcends almost every type of industry, after all.

In the modern employment landscape, however, observing this unofficial lull may not always lead to the best outcomes. When operations postpone their recruitment efforts until later in the year or even set their staffing or restructuring focus at the beginning of next year, they miss out on several potential advantages that the summer season can bring for landing top talent. The reality is that people’s lives are not all on a consistent, predictable schedule, and highly qualified candidates are out there looking for jobs year-round.

Here are some of the unique advantages you can leverage by ramping up, rather than slowing down, your hiring campaigns and onboarding activities this summer:

• Less Competition – if your competition is still following an old-school policy of slowing down their hiring during the summer, this creates a unique opportunity for you to attract exceptional candidates. Contrary to popular belief, the summer months offer a distinct advantage for companies in terms of reduced competition for top talent. Of course, some job seekers also adhere to the misconception (or their lived experience) that says hiring slows down during this time, which can lead to a decline in applications and a bit of a vicious cycle. By actively promoting job opportunities during the summer, however, businesses can attract these high-quality candidates who are receptive to opportunities but not actively looking, as well as gather great applications from summer job seekers who are themselves strategizing and looking to stand out in a less crowded pool. In short, there are plenty of great summer candidates out there if you put in the effort to reach them. If you do so effectively, embracing the summer season will allow you to gain a competitive edge and secure top talent before competitors ramp their hiring efforts back up.
• Making the Most of the Slow Season – Even operations that don’t deliberately plan to slow down their hiring activities during the summer can be affected by the season. Vacations and scheduling challenges at small and mid-size operations can drastically lengthen the job posting, interviewing, and onboarding processes due to waiting for one key person to get back from their family vacation. Even this disrupted pace can be leveraged strategically, however. Companies can use these longer wait periods to conduct more thorough evaluations of candidates, with in-depth assessments and comprehensive background checks, or simply by using the extended timeline to bring in more candidates than usual. All of this can lead to more thoughtful and deliberate decision-making and, in turn, better staffing outcomes. In this way, the slower summer pace actually enables hiring managers to invest more time in each candidate, leading to better hiring decisions and ultimately securing top talent for their organizations.
• Making Summer Vibes Part of Your Employer Brand – While every season has its charms, the summer months are generally known for fostering a positive and relaxed atmosphere, which can be advantageous for hiring campaigns. In the summer, people are generally just in a happier, less stressed mood and more focused on enjoying and enriching their personal lives—or at least this is the perception when people think about the season. By capitalizing on this energy, businesses can create an engaging and appealing recruitment experience aimed at people who want to level up their lives (by way of their career situation) this summer. Lean into that summer feeling to showcase company culture and create a favorable first impression among your new hires.
• Expand Networking Opportunities – With professionals in some key positions having more flexibility in their schedules or workloads, summer presents an opportune time to expand networking efforts and tap into a broader pool of potential candidates through having a presence at job fairs, community events, and industry conferences. Hosting your own events or networking sessions is another great way to achieve this, and in today’s remote-friendly employment culture, utilizing online platforms to connect with other professionals is an option as well.

All things considered, the annual summer “lull” in the business world actually offers unique advantages for strategic hiring. For more great recruiting tips and actionable insights into hiring, keep following the Stang Decision Systems blog.

Experts across just about every industry have come to accept that ChatGPT could represent a paradigm-shifting disruption to all sorts of processes and practices. At the same time, those of us who have played around with ChatGPT (and there are apparently over 100 million of us at this point) have also come to realize the limitations of the tech pretty quickly.

While ChatGPT has a legitimately uncanny ability to “talk” to the user—at length and in real-time—about an endless variety of topics, it is fundamentally limited by the fact that it has been trained on existing, human-made content. This means that when it comes to actually “creating” something… well, it sort of can’t.

You see, ChatGPT isn’t actually “thinking” or doing research for you. It’s merely running a complex routine against a huge database of text in an effort to put together words that make sense as a response to whatever prompt you gave it.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, however—far from it. While ChatGPT can’t truly “create,” it’s great for other purposes, such as quickly and coherently re-organizing or synthesizing various types of information you feed it. This could be used to take a long list of overly wordy job requirements and turn them into a concise first draft for a job listing, as just one example.

It can also evaluate text (like resumes and CVs) at incredible speed and do so in whatever fashion you’d like (e.g., searching for keywords). Furthermore, changing the query parameters doesn’t require learning SQL or some proprietary software system. With ChatGPT, it’s as simple as changing what you’re asking for in plain English.

Because of the broad applications for these sorts of tasks, are many specific ways recruiters, hiring managers, and HR pros can effectively leverage ChatGPT. So many, in fact, it’s hard to know where to start.

So, why not get it directly from the robot horse’s mouth?

When asking ChatGPT, “what are some ways you might prove useful to a hiring manager?” it is interesting to note that we did not get back the expected short blurb in the program’s usual wishy-washy, redundant style. Instead, it offered an exhaustive list. That list is summarized and analyzed below, with the exception of less supported claims.

1. Job description optimization: As mentioned earlier, ChatGPT can also help you create clear, compelling job descriptions to attract great candidates. It can quickly synthesize long lists of job duties and requirements into a more digestible form. Remember, however, that ChatGPT is not a great writer, so you’ll still want to edit the output carefully. Use ChatGPT output as an outline or first draft when creating highly formal documents like job postings and descriptions.
2. Interview prep: ChatGPT can provide near-endless lists of potential interview questions sourced from its vast mound of textual data, which no doubt includes many an eBook and blog post about corporate practices and interview techniques. You might even ask it to provide ideal sample answers for those questions if you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for from your candidates.
3. Onboarding and training support: Depending on your industry, it is likely that ChatGPT contains a wealth of industry info that could be helpful to you. When it comes to actually writing employee policies and educational materials, however, you won’t want to use ChatGPT for anything more than generating outlines and ideas. The best way to use ChatGPT in this area is to upload your hand-written documents and ask ChatGPT to provide feedback on problem areas you may be struggling with.

In short, ChatGPT’s impressive natural language AI text generator can be a great tool, as long as you’re not using it as a text generator. Instead, treat it as an all-in-one easy-to-use, organization, and proofreading tool. Applied effectively, ChatGPT will have you saving time on your most tedious tasks, but it cannot replace human creativity in the hiring process.

Stang Decision Systems – Your Trusted Partner for Hiring and Recruiting Tools

For help landing and retaining the right candidates, look no further than Stang Decision Systems and our comprehensive suite of high powered tools.

As we continue to navigate the changes to business that have occurred over the past few years, it’s clear that remote work has become a new norm for many. The remote work paradigm shift has changed the entire culture of work for two primary reasons. First, it allows employees to work from the comfort of their own homes, saving time and money (and the environment) on their daily commute. Second, remote work can cut down on certain office expenses, like supplies and utilities, for the employer.

Just because it’s currently a red-hot topic among business analysts, HR professionals, and employee advocates, however, that doesn’t mean remote and flex work is right for every business. Let’s explore some key factors to consider when deciding whether to implement remote work policies at your operation.

Pros of Remote Work

As you might suspect, there are numerous benefits to remote work, including:

• More Flexibility – Remote work allows employees to have greater control over their work-life balance. Many remote and flex workers are given some freedom to adjust their schedules to fit their personal needs, which can result in a huge boost in job satisfaction for professionals leading busy lives.
• Savings – The direct savings made available for workers facing long commutes are obvious, but that’s not the only financial benefit of remote work. By eliminating the need for physical office space, employers can also save on rent, utilities, and other office-related expenses.
• Access to a Wider Talent Pool – When employers get on board with the remote work revolution, they can hire employees from anywhere in the world rather than being limited to a specific geographic location.

Drawbacks of Remote Work

Of course, remote work isn’t a perfect solution. Every business is unique, but drawbacks of remote work may include

• Communications and Monitoring Challenges – It can be more difficult to communicate effectively and track employee workloads when everyone is logging in from separate locations. Collaboration and teamwork can also suffer without a good technology framework in place to keep everyone connected virtually.
• Isolation – Working from home can be freeing for many people, but it can also be isolating, particularly for employees who live alone. This can have a negative impact on the mental health and morale of certain workers.
• Technology Issues –Remote work is very susceptible to technological hiccups. When technical difficulties do arise, it can be challenging to get the IT support needed to resolve the issue because your employees and equipment are scattered rather than all being together at a centralized office.

Key Remote Work Factors to Consider

If you’ve been considering whether remote work may be a solution for some or all of your employees, keep these factors in mind.

Consider the Nature of the Work

Not all positions are well-suited for remote work. This is true even in companies where the remote work model might be great for most employees. Certain key roles that require face-to-face interaction with clients or in-person management of sensitive equipment are likely better suited for the traditional office setting.

Communication and Collaboration

When poorly implemented, remote work models can create a lack of communication and collaboration, leading to issues like confusion, duplication of effort, or missed deadlines. To mitigate these risks, businesses must ensure that their remote team members have the necessary tools (often in the form of software and cloud-based services) to collaborate effectively with you and with each other. For example, you might implement video conferencing software to conduct team meetings and one-on-one sessions or instant messaging tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to check in throughout the day.

Productivity and Motivation

Due to the lack of direct oversight, remote work may have a negative impact on employee productivity and motivation for employees with certain personality types, leading to decreased output and quality of work. To avoid this, businesses can offer opportunities for professional development and training for team members who are struggling with the transition to remote work and consider implementing flexible work hours to allow remote workers to manage their time as effectively as possible.

Are You Going Remote or Going Back to the Office?

While remote work is growing in popularity and offers many benefits to certain types of employees and businesses, it won’t be suitable for every situation. By carefully addressing the key factors outlined above, businesses can determine whether remote work policies are a good fit. Consider the nature of each employee’s role, your overall company culture, and the preferences of employees, and your company can make an informed decision that works for everyone involved.

For more information about current business trends and hiring insights, consult the Stang Decision Systems blog.

In today’s competitive, dynamic markets, finding and hiring the best employees can be a challenging and time-consuming process for operators in any line of business. Business owners and hiring managers who want an edge when it comes to recruiting and hiring are looking in all sorts of unexpected places for new tools that will help in this endeavor.

Psychology is one such often-overlooked tool. While specialized health fields might not seem to have anything to do with your business at first glance, the fundamentals of psychology actually offer valuable insight into what makes a great employee, as well as how to identify those traits during the hiring process. By incorporating these insights as a foundational part of your hiring practices, you can build a strong and successful team that will help drive your business forward.

Understanding Personalities

One of the most important factors to think about when hiring new employees is personality traits. According to the Hogan Assessment Systems personality inventory, which is already ubiquitously used by some larger HR operations, certain personality traits can be extremely good predictors of job performance for certain types of roles.

Some of the best, most broadly-applicable traits you will want to target when recruiting include:

• Conscientiousness – reliable, responsible, hard-working
• Emotional stability – stress management, performance under pressure
• Openness to new experiences – creative, adaptable

Psychology and Cognitive Ability

Everyone learns and thinks differently. Sometimes this can cause misunderstandings or tension, but this is also one of the core reasons diversity is so beneficial for your workforce and other types of communities.

That being said, certain indicators of certain types of cognitive function can be another key psychological consideration when hiring employees. A study by the University of Iowa found that various markers of cognitive ability can be strongly linked to job performance across a wide range of occupations. For the purposes of such studies, “cognitive ability” includes things like problem-solving skills, analytical thinking, pattern recognition, and the ability to absorb new information quickly. By assessing candidates’ relevant cognitive tools during the hiring process, you can identify job seekers who are more likely to be strong performers within your organization.

Bias: The Other Side of Hiring Psychology

Lastly, let’s turn things inward on our own psychology—as both an individual leader and as an organization overall. It’s of critical importance to always consider the impact of bias on the hiring process. Unconscious biases can influence the way we evaluate job candidates and can lead to unfair hiring practices and bad outcomes. For example, research has shown that hiring managers of any background are more likely to select candidates who are similar to themselves in terms of race, gender, and other characteristics. Using well-designed applicant screening technology in the early stages of hiring and recruiting can help mitigate some of these unconscious biases. Whether you are scanning resumes by hand or using algorithms to ensure all applicants are treated fairly, it will be important to be aware of any potential bias in your processes and to take steps to minimize the impact of those biases on the hiring process.

Overall, incorporating principles of psychology into the hiring process at various stages can help you find quality employees for your business. By using cognitive ability tests, emotional intelligence assessments, personality assessments, and working to minimize the impact of bias within your organization, you can increase your chances of hiring employees who are a good fit for your company. Hiring the right employees can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so it’s important to take the hiring process seriously and use all the tools at your disposal to find the best candidates.

Stang Decision Systems – Trusted Experts in Hiring and Analytics

For even more high-quality tools that will help you land the right candidates, contact Stang Decision Systems today. We can help you improve your processes and build a winning team for any industry.

Nearly every successful business model depends on placing the right personnel in their most effective roles. This process starts by convincing the ideal candidates to click on an ad or job posting.

That’s why major corporations invest millions of dollars in improving their recruiting and onboarding processes. Thankfully, the vast resources of a Microsoft- or Amazon-sized company aren’t necessary to create snappy, effective advertisements and job postings that funnel the right job seekers to your organization.

Creating a Job Ad that Connects with the Right Candidates

When writing a job advertisement, you must always have your target in mind. Imagine your ideal candidate for this role. What is their:

• Work history?
• Educational background?
• Attitude?
• Personality?
• Geographic location?

Knowing the answers to these questions allows you to effectively target your ad and deploy it strategically where your ideal candidates spend time online. Even a high-quality posting can be lost in the shuffle of the major job search sites. Appealing to a specific audience requires speaking a precise language and understanding a particular set of values. If you’re unsure about the skillsets or the typical CV someone should have in a role you’re trying to fill, don’t hesitate to contact consultants or experts for more information.

Branding Matters

Unless you’re a major corporation or a large employer in your region, it’s possible that many candidates haven’t heard of your company before seeing your job ad. Even if an applicant has ordered a product from your company or used your services in the past, they likely know very little about your organization.

A job ad is an excellent opportunity to build your brand by directly referencing your company values, history, and mission. Don’t use your job ad as an essay about your company, but make sure anyone who clicks “apply” will do so with a solid understanding of who you are and how they might fit into your operation.

Make Your Ad Valuable to Job Seekers

Don’t merely talk about your values in your job ad; use it as an opportunity to demonstrate them. One of those values should be transparency if you want to compete for the best candidates in today’s fast-paced climate.

Include elements like:

• An accurate and complete job description: Use concrete language and thoroughly (but concisely) explain what the job will entail.
• Bring the company to life: While explaining the job itself is crucial, you’ll also want to tell your organization’s story.
• Compensation and benefits: There is a minimal upside to being mysterious about what you offer candidates. It’s better to be upfront about pay and benefits in today’s competitive staffing climate.
• Growth potential: Don’t hesitate to mention if the job you’re posting makes a good potential starting place for a long-term career.
• Be visual: Ensure your ad adheres to your company’s branding and style guide. Include photographs of your workplace to help candidates better understand what a workday with your company will look like.
• Organize well: Use engaging headings and subheadings to effectively break up the sections of your job posting in a way that makes sense. For example, you wouldn’t want your company mission statement running directly into the job duties for the specific role.

Assembling a great staff is vital to getting work done efficiently and at a high level. A carefully planned and crafted job ad can attract ideal candidates, helping you build a talented and capable workforce.

When it’s time for you to hire, let Stang Decision Systems help. We can help ensure you get the right candidates for the right job.

For some time now, Goldman Sachs has served as an important bellwether for the financial services sector, and, to a lesser extent, the economy as a whole. Goldman Sachs is synonymous with high-end financial clients—according to investor documentation on the firm’s website, you need about $10 million in assets just to open an account—and trouble at the top of the financial structure inevitably is felt throughout all strata of the economy, sooner rather than later. As goes Goldman Sachs and their clientele, so goes the nation, for better or worse—at least according to some. Business leaders in the financial world who subscribe to this notion that Goldman Sachs is a reliable indicator of the state of finance more generally are understandably nervous today, as the firm heads into 2023 rolling back on hiring.

Jobs at Goldman Sachs are incredibly competitive, with the company receiving about a quarter million applications each year. They are about to get even more competitive in 2023, as the company significantly scales back its plans for hiring.

Recent Job Growth and Hiring at Goldman Sachs

The current hiring slowdown can best be described by the numbers, but we’ll need to contextualize Goldman Sach’s recent history to do so:

• Over the past 5 years, Goldman Sachs has had a 39% increase in total employees.
• In 2021 and 2022, job growth at the company remained strong in spite of Covid-19-related challenges globally. Goldman Sachs added about 10,000 employees, with over 6,000 added last year alone.

So, what’s happening to this strong positive growth trend?

The Future of the Goldman Sachs Workforce

In a third-quarter wrap-up call to investors, the firm’s current CFO Denis Coleman was forthright about the trend ending—even reversing—in the immediate future, stating that the company was already in the process of reducing the “velocity” of new hiring.

These comments seemed to support and reiterate comments made previously in the second quarter investor call, wherein Coleman initially warned of the hiring slowdown. He revealed that the company would not be immediately replacing those who left the company through “attrition”, which presumably refers to employees who leave the firm voluntarily.

Per the Q3 call, the Goldman Sachs hiring policy will focus on being “nimble” and “strategic”. While these terms were not explored in detail on the call, they might refer to:

• Fast onboarding time (using technology to go from posting a position to hiring a candidate in a matter of days, rather than weeks)
• Smarter targeting and recruiting to proactively find ideal candidates for key roles
• Continuing to let roles disappear through “attrition” and fill only those empty roles which are crucial for core operations
• Expanded use of contractors and temporary employees to make the workforce more “nimble” in the sense that it can be scaled up and down in size as needed

Without further clarification from the Goldman Sachs brass, however, this is mostly speculation. It remains to be seen if the hiring slowdown will snowball into a hiring freeze, or even layoffs, in the future.

What Does It Mean for You?

There’s a good reason that some experts in the financial sector look at Goldman Sachs as a bellwether. Other high-end bankers already appear to be on a similar track, with Wells Fargo’s workforce shrinking nearly 6% over the last year, and high-end investor Blackrock posting few, if any, open jobs of late.

While it is useful to be aware of stories and larger trends in finance, the situation at Goldman Sachs does not need to scare you out of hiring the people you need to fill key roles. It definitely pays to be cautious and to think carefully about every dollar you spend in tumultuous economic times. However, a hiring rollback at someone else’s company shouldn’t be taken as a one-for-one reason to stop hiring at your own operation.

If you choose to take any lesson from Goldman Sachs’ hiring freeze, it shouldn’t be “stop hiring because Goldman Sachs stopped hiring.” Instead, it should inspire you to think carefully about your own hiring processes, and how you can also make them more “nimble and strategic”. For tips on how to do just that, you can start right here at our informative blog.

Generation Z’s debut in the American workforce (the oldest Gen Zs are creeping into their mid-20s already) has brought both unique opportunities and unique challenges for employers. Gen Z workers can be highly self-motivated, and many have tech and media skills that come as second nature. However, it can be difficult for old-school business types to understand the values and culture of Generation Z.

Some business operators misunderstand this cultural divide as laziness, lamenting that “kids don’t want to work anymore.” You make this reductive mistake at your own peril, though. While you are writing off an entire generation, your competitors are figuring out how to leverage their unique talents and attitudes.

The truth is that people still want — and need — to work, but many Gen Z workers are skipping out on the time-tested tradition of entering the workforce through back-breaking, minimum wage roles. Instead, they’re going to work for themselves online. This can mean flipping used goods on auction sites, monetizing videos, hustling on rideshare and delivery apps, or promoting brands on social media. Often these jobs offer a better hourly return than traditional entry-level work. Why spend eight hours at a hot grill when you can make videos with your friends for the same paycheck?

With these additional options lessening the pressure to “get a real job,” Gen Z workers have different priorities. Younger people want a positive working environment, meaningful work, and a flexible workplace. They value a paycheck like anyone else, but they also value their own free time and mental health, and many of them are inflexible about protecting those things. Companies that aren’t putting enough on the table in terms of compensation and benefits will likely see their median staff age increase over the ensuing years as Gen Z candidates land elsewhere.

Rethinking the Interview Process for Generation Z

Because of Gen Z’s unique priorities and values, employers that bring in young candidates for interviews should be tailoring the process to speak to them. Create a dialogue instead of performing an interrogation. Young professionals won’t hesitate to ghost a callback if their interview didn’t leave them feeling like they would be valued and respected at your company.

Treat your Gen Z candidates like any other qualified, adult job hunters. There is no need to be cute or reach for artificial ways to make yourself relatable, such as asking if they think your company is “lit.” You also shouldn’t attempt to “hit the griddy” or any other TikTok dances as an icebreaker. This would be “cringe” in the parlance of our times, and cringe is not good for your brand. Simply treat young people like people, and you may be surprised by the results.

Here are some great questions to ask your Gen Z candidates when interviewing:

• Do you work well as part of a team? With the pandemic causing many young people to finish out their high school or college careers online, certain basic social skills can get rusty. Ask candidates to provide examples that show they can work well with others. Don’t laugh it off if they turn to an example that you consider frivolous, such as multiplayer online gaming. If you’d accept someone’s high school football experience as an indication of their team-building skills, there’s no reason virtual activities shouldn’t be given the same consideration.
• How do you stay focused and inspired when working on tasks or projects that you don’t personally find interesting or important? Self-motivation is key. Even in an industry you love and care about, part of most people’s workdays is going to be tedious and repetitive. That’s just the nature of work for many of us. Learning what tools a candidate has to help power through the drudgery can be key.
• What is motivating you to transition from your current situation? Unless the answer is obvious (someone just graduated college and is looking for their first job, for example) there is a lot to be learned about someone’s personality and ambitions by finding out why they’re leaving their current situation behind, be that an existing job, self-employment, homemaking, or a mental health break.
• What do you know about this organization? This isn’t specific to Gen Z candidates, as it’s always nice to know if someone has done their homework. Gen Z candidates, however, tend to be particularly fast at using Google and other ubiquitous technologies and are constantly plugged into online spaces. If they haven’t used that to their advantage before the interview, it can be a red flag.
• Who is the person you admire most, and what job do they have? Because Gen Z candidates may lack real-world job experience, it can be valuable to know what they aspire to.
• Have you ever waited tables or worked fast food? If the answer is yes, ask what they found most challenging about that work (also find out how long they stuck with it, and why). If the answer is no, ask why they’ve avoided it and what they think they would find challenging about it. There is no particular right answer you’re looking for, but whatever someone has to say about repetitive, low-wage tasks can give you great insight into their values and priorities as relates to the workplace.
• What does your ideal workspace look like? There is no right or wrong answer here. Rather, you’re trying to figure out if your office setup will work for the candidate. Gen Z workers tend to place a high value on “vibe.” This may seem like an intangible, but you can directly impact your company’s vibes through an open and welcoming layout, reducing the use of cubicles, and providing thoughtful perks and amenities. Cultivating a great vibe is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to hiring because a good vibe attracts good candidates — yet nothing will help your vibe more than hiring great people who bring positive energy to the workplace.

Gen Z workers can bring many benefits to your workplace. You just need to know how to harness those positive qualities and skills, and asking the right interview questions is a great place to start.

Many businesses (other than those in the retail space, of course) tend to slow down for the holidays, with some shuttering operations entirely for days at a time around Christmas and New Year’s Day. Even those offices that remain open throughout the jolliest of days tend to scale back on certain non-critical operations.

This can seem like a natural choice. With so many contractors and upper-level personnel taking time off, it is a challenging time to do business in general. People want to enjoy themselves or spend time with their families around the holidays. For this reason, recruitment and hiring are often one of the first areas non-retail companies will press pause on during the holiday hustle and bustle.

There is some logic to this lull. Nobody wants to spend Christmas Eve speed-reading resumes, and nobody wants to be bothered about a work-related opportunity while sleeping in on New Year’s morning, right? But as it turns out, hiring around the holidays can actually present organizations with a lot of unforeseen upsides.

Enjoy Less Competition

Some companies simply don’t hire at all in Q4 as a matter of policy. In holiday terms, this is analogous to your cousin who doesn’t like pumpkin pie—it means there’s more for you! Remember, just because many business owners in the United States and some other regions like to take time off for the winter holidays, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world stops turning. There are many qualified candidates out there who don’t celebrate winter holidays at all, for cultural, religious, or personal reasons, and if they need a new job, the time of year isn’t going to deter them. By posting open positions through the holidays, you increase the likelihood that they see yours.

Leverage Those New Year’s Goals

Don’t be so sure that nobody wants to be bothered with a work-related call around New Year’s. Many people work their career ambitions into those New Year’s resolutions, so a call from a prospective employer around the turn of the calendar can seem like a fateful sign rather than an annoyance. Candidates who are open to new opportunities around January 1 also tend to have great qualities for high-level staff. Taking the new year as an opportunity to focus on career goals can be a hint that the candidate is focused and goal-driven.

Catch People Mid-Transition

Many professionals who leave their jobs in a planned-out way will target the holidays as the right time to say farewell. This is a smart strategy because the employee may be able to combine their remaining PTO with vacation days to continue getting paid for a few weeks after leaving the office, and it also allows them to enjoy the holidays without any work-related pressure hanging over their head. This gives you a unique opportunity to reach them before they pick up their hunt for a new job in earnest (usually after New Year’s Day).

Find Fresh Graduates in the Hiring Pool

Students who graduate at the end of the winter semester without any job prospects in place are another great talent pool that also tends to wait until after the new year to really turn their focus to job hunting. By effectively marketing your open positions throughout the holiday season, you may be able to reach them first.

Regardless of the industry, Mondays can be a notoriously challenging time at work. The common trope of Mondays being extra hard at the office or job site has been hammered home for decades in popular TV, movies, and comedy. However, this stereotype exists because it’s based on truth.

Having “a case of the Mondays” isn’t merely a matter of feeling blue that another weekend has passed or being stressed out about being back under your boss’s thumb. While depression and stress are certainly important workplace issues in their own right, Mondays are also associated with some extremely serious problems like heart attacks and suicide.

As a manager or business operator who cares not only about your team’s efficiency but also their well-being, there are some things you can do to help battle those common Monday blues. You may not be able to mandate how much sleep your staff gets over the weekend or how heavily their problems at home weigh on them when they come in, but you can create an empathetic, focused, and supportive environment. Do this well enough, and your employees may begin to see coming in on Monday morning as an important part of their daily structure and personal support system rather than just another stressor on their plate.

What’s the Deal with Mondays?

It turns out that our cultural distaste for Mondays may be part of a dangerous and toxic feedback cycle, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that may create psychological barriers that make Mondays harder than they need to be. A study examining various day-of-the-week stereotypes (think “TGIF,” “hump day,” etc.) found that the actual effects of a particular day of the week were more pronounced when survey respondents were predicting their mood for the upcoming week versus remembering their actual mood from a previous day. This doesn’t mean that your case of “The Mondays” is all in your head, however. Specific Mondays, such as those following a holiday or daylight savings time change, have more pronounced negative effects.

Strategies for Upgrading Your Office’s Mondays

There are a few things you can try as a boss to help your team stay productive and comfortable through typical start-of-the-week struggles. If your operation has an issue with Mondays, try one or more of the following:

1. Re-think Casual Team Building Activities – Oftentimes, when we plan special “just for fun” appreciation events for our staff (think catered lunches, jeans day, etc.) or playful, low-stakes team-building activities (company picnics, etc.) we schedule them as an end-of-week reward, or a mid-week bonus to push our employees forward through hump day. Instead, try planning these perks for Mondays. Some bosses fear that special treats at the beginning of the week will leave their staff with nothing to work towards, but this mindset is infantilizing. The morale boost of a Monday pizza party or casual dress day can carry your team into their workweek to pay lasting dividends.
2. Structured Monday Morning “Me” Time – if the logistics of your operation allow it, have an hour of prep time/free time built into every employee’s Monday schedule. For best results, this should be early in the day. If that’s not possible, a free hour at the end of the day (or even the opportunity to leave early) can also function as a nice incentive to pull someone through their Monday slump. Always avoid first-thing-Monday-morning meetings, regardless of how hard inspiration struck you over the weekend and how excited you are to share your new ideas.
3. Support Good Sleep Habits – most experts track the “Monday blues” back to a simple origin: the fact that many of us disrupt our sleep cycles during the weekend—then pay for it on Monday morning. Distribute workplace literature about the importance of good sleep so that your employees are informed. With personal, wearable technology becoming ubiquitous, you could even develop an opt-in sleep-tracking program that rewards employees for showing up well-rested on Monday.

Every business is unique, and so is every employee. These will not be one-size-fits-all solutions. Whatever you’re able to invest in improving Mondays, remember that empathy and humanity cost nothing and will go a long way toward stabilizing morale and helping employees feel like they are valued and fully invested members of your team.

It’s not always obvious, but the transition from summer to fall is a difficult time for some people. Even folks who don’t struggle with a medical diagnosis like Seasonal Affective Disorder can notice a marked annual change in their energy levels and attitude when the days get shorter and colder.

Employees who are susceptible to these fall ho-hums can bring this sluggishness into the workplace with them, which may contribute to feedback from other employees who are feeling the same way. Sometimes, effective management means meeting people where they are and finding healthy, effective ways to guide your team through that dreaded end-of-summer slump.

Here are 5 ways you can help beat your staff’s autumn blues while keeping a professional and productive environment.

Remote Work Options

The option to work some hours from home is a huge sell for employees, especially after 2020. You may have some doubts about work-from-home being the most effective model for your business. But remote work flexibility has practical value among both employers and job-seekers in the wake of the Covid-19 shakeup.

Use Employee Data Intelligently

Most business operations handle a great deal of their work on the computer. As a result, software-based employee monitoring and tracking systems have been having a moment over the last decade. Instead of turning your office into an unwelcoming surveillance state, you can use these technologies to monitor your employee data, such as looking for changes after morale-building meetings or offering small perks. This can help you understand which incentives your staff responds best to. You can also use it to determine which parts of the day are best for which tasks. Use employee data effectively to understand your employees’ needs, and learn how they can best fit your operation.

Create or improve incentives

Find room in the budget for better perks: restaurant gift cards, event tickets, additional PTO, early release days, and more. This is a fundamental tenet of employee morale that is too easily forgotten during budget-crunching meetings. When incentives and recognitions have a practical value for your employees, their motivation to pursue those incentives will increase accordingly. The returns will be seen in your bottom line and will justify any up-front expense.

Honesty and Clarity

The job market has been volatile and stressful for many employees over the last several years. Your employees need to know exactly where they stand. Some transparency and corporate clarity can go a long way towards building trust and stabilizing morale in uncertain times.

Lunch!

When morale is shaky, go back to basics. Take a survey of your employees to find out what their favorite restaurants are, then find a popular one that can cater a planned appreciation lunch. A free meal is a timeless way to let the people you depend on know you appreciate them, and sharing food together can be a bonding experience for your staff. Traditional wisdom says to do the special lunch on a Friday so that employees have something to work towards, but a nice meal on Monday can be a way to start the week on a high note and to shake off those fall feelings and the weekly case of “The Mondays”.

You could even plan a “fall harvest week” where you do a free lunch on both Monday and Friday, and have fall-themed casual dress days with comfy sweatshirts, football jerseys, or lazy Halloween costumes. You can make it as simple as you wish. It’s hard to go wrong with any straightforward gesture that improves an employee’s workday in a memorable way.