how do you provide engaging learning & development offers nowadays? how can it be applied both in the workplace and educational institutions? we compare old school ways of learning versus new ways of learning. check the slide deck below to see how kazi approaches l&d.

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Hire for Capability, Train for Talent

A lot of companies mistake the ability to do one thing well with the ability to be a great employee or all-around rock star team member. But the fact of the matter is that usually, before getting to your company and learning your style, approach, and the inner workings of your company, most people won’t know that much about how to be really amazing inside your work culture. Work to identify people who have some excellent core competencies, but who are superior at learning and growing with your team. You’ll get stronger talent than you expected, and often from unexpected places. That’s why Kazi relies on our unique expectations scan, which can help identify these kinds of skills in a latent phase

Remember that Recruitment is just another numbers game

At the end of the day, all the techniques in the world won’t change the fact that hiring is, really, a numbers game. And in order to meet the right people, you will sometimes have to go through a lot of other people to get there. What’s important about this is to make sure you approach it with the right attitude, and not to get discouraged, distracted or dispirited.

Even companies like Google or Apple still have to look through dozens of candidates for any one post to find the right person. Also important is to make sure you define your objectives well enough that you can recognize the right candidate when he or she comes across your desk, even amid all the hundreds of other applicants.

Don’t be afraid to offer high compensation

Rockstar employees know their worth. They’ve often come from lots of other high-powered jobs, and know what the market offers. If you’re going to commit yourself to hiring the best talent, be prepared to shell out for it. This is a combination of setting high benchmarks on your job listings to attract the right people in the first place, and also being willing to contend with people who are often very good negotiators.

But remember, sometimes what’s most interesting or valuable to a particular candidate won’t just be more money, but could be more flexibility, or some other perks. Understanding their personality is key.

Remember your internal talent pool

The most reliable pool of talent you have is the one that already works for your company!. When you’re small, it can sometimes seem like you want to grow the company with outside people, to increase your headcount if your workload is increasing. But your existing team already knows each other and works together. You’ve already gone through talent and personality assessments with them – maybe with the Kazi questionnaire – and they have experience with your culture, your work, your clients! That’s a lot of stuff that you will have to get other employees up to speed on. Sometimes, of course, it’s not possible, especially if you need a special skill set, but it’s usually worth looking into promoting from within! Save time, save money, keep the team together.

Understand the deliverables for the position really well

Good talent knows the right questions to ask in a job interview. In fact, for the top candidates, it’s as much them interviewing you as you interviewing them. You’ll need to have really sharp answers to questions about the expectations, deliverables, and work products expected to come out of the position you’re talking about. How much work? How quickly? Delivered how? When you’re starting a small company, and working with a startup mindset, it can be common to just think about “winging it” a lot. And maybe that works, or was necessary, when it was only two or three of you. But you’re hiring with the big boys now, and you need to understand and communicate your job expectations properly if you want to compete.

Staying on top in the War for Talent is a complex and ongoing process. And at Kazi, we know you can’t manage it alone. That’s why we are here to help you navigate this quickly-changing Human Resources environment. If you have an existing HR challenge, or just want to hear about how Kazi can improve your hiring and retention processes, drop us a line today, and we’ll be happy to talk about it with you!

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Foster an environment of Trust

This is the most crucial, and influences everything else. Making sure your work environment trusts and respects your employees will help them feel comfortable enough to believe their insights will be taken seriously. And this extends beyond just when you’re asking them for feedback. Make sure their work is taken seriously and that you trust them to manage their time without constant micromanagement. If employees get the sense that management doesn’t see them as serious professionals, they won’t want to offer their ideas. Treat people to a high standard, and watch them meet it.

Allow for both anonymous and attributed feedback

Not all kinds of feedback is the same. Some is uncomfortable, such as if a boss or supervisor is running things badly and makes people uncomfortable. Other feedback might be a source of pride or excitement for an employee who has come up with a way to improve things around the office. Employees might want credit for something like that, and you’d want to give it, right? Don’t assume that all will be one kind or another. So, if you’re designing feedback processes and forms, structure the attribution of the feedback around the kind of feedback you’re soliciting. We spend a lot of time at Kazi developing our expectations scans to get the right kind of answers from employees. It’s not just as simple as asking “What do you think?” You need to ask well to get useful answers.

Show feedback in action

There’s nothing quite so dispiriting as putting a lot of time and thought into a quality feedback for your employer, and then not seeing anything done about it. And not even a response. It might be the case that not all employee feedback is ready or ripe to be used right away, which is okay. But make sure that once you collect feedback from your employees, you make sure they know you got it, read it and took it seriously. If you’re implementing changes they recommended, let the company know! If you’re putting together a plan based on their ideas, tell them! And even if you can’t do what they said, acknowledge the feedback and help them understand why. Make sure employees understand that feedback is not a one-way process.

Make feedback a regular part of the company

If employees come to understand that their feedback is solicited only when something goes wrong or when upper management got bored for a while, they’re not going to value giving it, and not going to make an effort. This results is demoralized employees, and worthless feedback. Make feedback part of what goes on at the company normally. Maybe something really simple, like a suggestion box? Or yearly feedback meetings? Or regular CEO lunches with employees? There are literally an endless number of ways to integrate feedback into the background of your company. Kazi has developed a number of very effective methods that we’ve helped clients put to use for themselves.

The most important thing about feedback is that your employees understand you take them, and their ideas seriously. That doesn’t mean putting all of them into practice, but it does mean treating the feedback process like you care about it. This starts with the employee environment, and filters all the way through your interactions with them. There are lots of ways to improve the ways you collect and implement feedback, and at Kazi, we’d love to help you work through them. If you’ve got an interest in better employee feedback, drop us a line, and let’s chat!

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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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Getting the Description Right

Sometimes, it’s best to start with the most straightforward, and back-to-basics part of the process: the job description. This can sound rudimentary, but there’s a reason it’s the foundation of the right candidate. Getting the job description first of all makes sure that you and your team get your heads around the role properly. You can’t hire for a position that you yourself are unclear about it. This kind of planning and thinking clarifies your needs, and helps telegraph to potential candidates that the position is meaningful, and with a team that knows what it’s doing. Real professionals recognize and respect that. When your description is on-point, both you and your applicants are starting from a stronger foundation.

Innovative Candidate Assessment

Once you’ve put your job description out there and gotten your first batch of applicants narrowed down, you need to start separating the “wheat from the chaff,” as it were. In the past, some companies and organizations have tried multi-directional and highly expansive tests – like Google – where others look for much more specific job-knowledge skills – like government agencies. But in the fast-moving corporate environment that dominates the experience of many younger and tech-focused companies, the nature of the job itself can often be subject to change from month to month, or even day to day. For that, you need to get more of a sense of how the candidate functions in different situations and with what kind of work focus. This is at the core of why we developed our Kazi Expectations Scan for potential candidates. Rather than focus just on personality or job knowledge, it mixes both to provide a more rounded understanding of the candidate’s best ability and work style

Get out of the Interview Room

We’ve all heard the metaphor that dating can be like an interview? Well, it works both ways! Interviewing can be like going out on a first date. And few situations are more constructed and artificial as a first date – or interview – atmosphere. Most of a company’s time spent with an employee is in a more natural, working situation, not a highly rigid question-and-answer session. Often times, people function very differently in each of these, and being able to shine in an interview might not be a reliable indicator of someone’s work style. Kazi’s Expectations Scan incorporates knowledge about how your candidates like to get down to business, but it’s always a good idea to deploy this knowledge quickly. Try to incorporate job tasks, or a day in the office, along with your interview work, to get a sense of how the candidate behaves at work. The results could be surprising!

Broaden the Interviewer Pool

Everyone on a team has a unique and valuable insight into the workings of the company and the nature of the projects. And yet, often, the only people who assess whether a candidate is right for the team are those within the HR department. Consider integrating the input of people on the target team about their new potential candidates. You can even combine this techniques to get the candidates out of the interview room and collaborating with the target team. By broadening the the scope of internal team members who can weigh in on a candidate, you develop a much richer and deeper understanding of what your candidates are really like. The Kazi Expectations Scan can help you design the proper kinds of tasks and work projects to get the information you need, and your team can help answer your questions. Don’t underestimate the value of diverse input!

Getting the right candidate for the job is a perpetual challenge, but one that, at Kazi, we’re determined to help you overcome! By deploying the right kinds of assessment techniques, and expanding your definition of what constitutes useful information to understand your candidates, you can dramatically improve your ability to attract and hire the best job applicants to your company. Drop us a line today to see how Kazi can help you!

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