This is where Kazi comes into the picture, with a new, proprietary technology solution developed with some of the top minds in Belgian college universities. At Kazi, we see a job as more than just a place of employment. It’s more like a mission, so we’ve created a comprehensive, expectations scan questionnaire for employers and job seekers, to make sure that culture, job expectations and fit are all assessed in advance, and everyone is on the same page. Improvements in retention and employee satisfaction are all measurable. This is what happens when you bring the right tech solutions to the task.

The Best and the Brightest behind the scenes

In setting about developing our tech-driven solution to HR’s biggest problems, we partner with some of the most forward-thinking institutions and individuals in Belgium. Our research was designed and conducted in partnership with Thomas More College University in Mechelen. Together, we established a core framework of questions to understand a total of 14 values and roles that every (non) job seeker and every workplace has, and mapped how they interact with each other to create the best results for both, and created the best environment for employee and company to thrive together. After all, that’s the true power of technology!

Changing the game for Job Seekers

As frustrated as companies are to have to find the right employees, so can job seekers get overwhelmed and intimidated by the prospect of finding a job that fits their personal goals and life mission. And this is where Kazi’s profiling technology eases a lot of the uncertainty and anxiety. Because our technology is compact and concise to ask only the questions necessary for understanding where they fit in their team role profile and work value profile, which pairs them with companies and on company teams that fit their style and goals. This means that both job seekers and employers will want to stay with each other for longer.

Getting the expectations right

Kazi believes work is more than just a job; it’s a mission. And so we have harnessed the best in new technology to help employers and job seekers avoid the most common pitfalls of the HR process. Kazi’s expectations scan technology removes more than 90% of the uncertainty and makes sure that the company and the employee are on the right mission, the same mission, together. That’s a match that’s sure to work!

Want to know more about what Kazi does? Check it out here!

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Working with your Employees to Help them Develop the Skills of the Future

The old model of the 20th century was that a student would go to school for a bunch of years, and then enter the labor force already knowing what they need to know to be a successful employee and thrive together with their employer. That model is dead.

Just like Nikolaas recently explained in the Techmag show, the world of technical and soft skills is changing every few months now. And the skills you learn in your freshman year of college can easily be obsolete by the time you graduate. As employers and employees, it’s going to be necessary to work on constantly up-skilling, even after you are working with each other. Employers that rise to this challenge and provide the resources and encouragement for their employees will find that they not only cultivate more capable employees, but more loyal and satisfied ones, too! We’ve all got to keep learning!

Build Creativity into more tasks

We’ve all been hearing for years about the importance of “soft skills,” and the value of thinking in different ways. As stated by HRdive.com, these approaches can bring out solutions you might not have even known you were looking for.

These are often the best kind of solutions Well, the best way to ensure that these kinds of skills and ideas rise to the surface is to build in the need for creativity into more of what you do as a company. When employees are thinking with the creative side of their brains, they engage different modalities, and see new opportunities and solutions. As you may already know, our unique expectations scan helps identify employees that are preternaturally-inclined to work better in creative environments and think in unconventional ways.

The centrality of adaptability

For decades, the watchword of Human Resources and employee identification was “Talent,” so much so that in a lot of industries the two words are still used interchangeably! But now there’s a new word in town. Don’t get us wrong, talent still matters, and you don’t want to go hiring people who aren’t capable. But think of it more like, there’s now something you need to think about at least as much as talent, and that’s adaptability. According to The Telegraph, it’s key to success in the HR industry.

With both the external and internal environments central to work changing so much and so fast, the capacity to adapt, change, and grow seamlessly and without stress and confusion is going to become more important. What’s problematic is that most university educations don’t provide any good indicators as to how adaptable someone is – the educational environment is still very controlled. That’s why at Kazi, we work on how to identify other kinds of proxies to point out where and how you can find employees who are adaptable and resilient, and ready for the challenges of the 21st century workplace.

The Rise of Working with the Machines

The Robots are coming … to work with you. By this point, it’s pretty clear that the 21st century is going to be the century of the robots. But a lot of the hype around them is needlessly overblown. Relatively few jobs are going to be literally cut out of the workforce as a result of adding automation and robots. What’s going to be much more common is the rise of jobs that people are going to have to do alongside robots. This will be the killer skill of the next decade, for employers and employees alike. Some people are going to be able to bring to bear a whole new array of skills and approaches to getting the most out of working with Artificial Intelligence programs and robots, and they will make the difference between the winners and the also-rans of the next few years. This is an emerging field, and there’s still a lot we don’t know, so this is one where you need to allow for more creativity and adaptability to help identify the best players before anyone else does.

At times of great change, and speedy change, the name of the game is flexibility. Can you learn, change, adapt and revise, on-the-fly, and repeatedly? Are you able to create new ideas out of whole cloth and move from ideation to implementation in a span of days instead of months? With the right team in place, you can! At Kazi, it’s our objective to help align your mission with the employee’s job, and to make sure everyone has the best skills for the task at hand. If you’re ready to have a conversation about making the next step into this exciting and ever-changing field, drop us a line today and we’d be happy to chat!

The post 4 Strategies to Prepare Your Company for the Future of Work appeared first on kazi.

The Netflix generation

Just in case you didn’t know: At Kazi, we developed what we call the  “Expectations scan.” This is a kind of twofold questionnaire, with which, companies and talent can make their needs and expectations clear. Our algorithm identifies those two.

Why is this important? “The majority of the audience that is looking for a job today is part of what might be called the ‘Netflix generation’ “, Nikolaas tells Magali De Reu. “They’re not just looking for a salary and that’s it. And that’s not just me saying it. Gartner research has shown that people expect more from their employers these days.”

“Putting employees first shouldn’t be just a PR move.”

Nikolaas correctly points out the issue of “personalization” is currently applied predominantly to customers. Data, data and more data. But what if we applied that same philosophy to employees? “The Netflix Generation wants to be served by their employers,” he says. “That runs from recruitment through to retention. It is more than just a nice PR-talk to boost your employer branding. “

Looking beyond the CEO: Can the workplace offer solace?

The idea that led to the creation of Kazi clearly began with Nikolaas’ own frustrations with the education system. “I really felt like I was banging my head against the wall with no result”, he admits. “I’ve always been an ADHD student – I was not like the other students. Yet I just had to participate in the system like everyone else. No one ever asked me “What do you like? What makes you happy? Once I was on the job market I’ve consistently been incredibly miscast. Was it  my fault – did I not understand what was expected of me? Or were employers not communicating correctly? I don’t know the right answer; I don’t want to point fingers. “

“Learning on the job at the workplace helps make a job understandable and tangible quickly”

Although today Kazi focuses more on reconciling different expectations in the labor market as we find it, each of us at Kazi believes that a drastic change will need to take place in the education system in the longer term. “I am a big believer in workplace learning”, Nikolaas adds. “Today you learn at your school desk, and then you join the labor force with your degree. In the future, with even some movement I see today, companies will become learning places. Employers are going to start giving more education workshops. For example, employers and talent are already growing closer together at an early stage. By adopting this model, the work is made tangible more quickly. “

In the interview, Nikolaas uses an example of someone studying to be a pastry chef. “What would be the best way to keep this student stimulated during training?”, he reflects. “Well, if the student is a talker who loves variation, he is probably going to respond best to a small, artisanal-style bakery where he’ll have a lot of contact with customers. But maybe if he’s quieter, and cares about accuracy and process, he’d be better working in an industrial bakery. This way, students can immediately get in touch with their job. You know, make their education a lot more interesting and enjoyable. “

“Swahili is the only language in the world in which ‘Job’ and ‘Mission’ are the same word, which they call ‘Kazi’ ”

At Kazi we all hope that this word, ‘Kazi’ will become the term that educators and the labor market uses worldwide. In the Swahili language, “Kazi” means both ‘job’ and ‘mission’, That makes it the only language in which those two concepts are joined. I hope that soon, this will be the norm everywhere, that is my Kazi! “

Make it fun, make it tangible

Although Kazi relies on technology to spread these ideas to the public, Nikolaas does not believe that technological innovation will be the cure for everything. “We are all afraid that our jobs will be swept away and that technology will replace us,” he says. “But technology can’t get far just by itself. It’s a team player; it needs to work with people. That’s why I believe that we should blind ourselves to learning as many soft skills as possible, to make sure we remain relevant. It’s important to foster an attitude of continuous learning. “

But how can we set about creating such an atmosphere that encourages this continuous learning? “You’ve got to make it fun, and make it tangible”, he responds. “As I’ve said before, work must be made as concrete and tangible as possible in education. Then it will be fun. “

Nikolaas proudly states that he’s still learning every day as an entrepreneur. And that keeps him sharp. “I know where I want to go,” he says firmly. “Kazi has to connect talent, HR and education back to each other; this was not the case when I was coming up, and I felt the effects of it. And even though I obviously don’t want to fail, if I do, I look to see how I can learn and grow from it. This is how I can build a successful company with my whole team!”

Want to know more? Watch the video (Dutch) below!

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