By Alex Yohn
Sep 10, 2020
So much has changed since March of this year. While many of us are still working from home to stay safe, business as usual has continued – especially for those in office jobs. And despite the odds, many businesses are finding continued growth during the pandemic. And with that growth comes interviewing and hiring candidates virtually.
If you’re used to an office, hiring virtually may be a bit daunting of a task. Video chats are great, but there’s something a little different about making a decision to bring someone onto your team without ever shaking a hand (or safely bumping an elbow).
Kin has been 100% remote for almost three years, so we’ve hired a good amount of people onto the team during that time. In fact, we have people we haven’t even met in person yet who are some of the most impactful members of our company. It’s crazy to think we can build such connections without ever sitting in the same room.
Here are some of the tips and tricks we’ve learned over time on finding – and hiring – the right person 100% remotely.
Develop a hiring team that isn’t all people from the same department or discipline
The most important part of hiring remotely is having the right people “in the room” to help you make the decision. If you have a team in place and this isn’t your first hire, you have trusted people who will help you grow your team and your culture in one move.
When I develop a hiring team for each position, I look for the following people:
The hiring manager for the position. This person will likely be the head of the discipline we are looking to hire for. For example, if we are looking for a front-end developer, then Grant Black, our head of engineering, will likely be on the hiring team. If not, we’ll have a lead developer on it.
Someone to help gauge a cultural fit. Finding the right person to do the job is great, but making sure they’re a cultural fit is vital. We believe that the magic of Kin is because of its people. We care about each other and our work, and we want to find others who are as passionate about what we do, too.
Someone to help gauge organizational skills and self-management. Working remotely can be tough for those who haven’t done it before. We typically will have our project manager, Molly, on to ask questions about how the individual stays organized and motivated while working at home.
The HT Group uses the same formula with a variety of people interviewing a new candidate as well. The more perspectives the better, but keep the room limited to 3-4 people on your side at the most to keep it comfortable for the candidate.
Develop the right questions ahead of time
When you’re hiring remotely, there are a lot of questions that will come up due to this context. For example, this person will likely not be working from your office. Do they have reliable internet at home? Is their workplace set up free from distractions? Do they need any additional hardware or software to complete their job you might not have thought of?
Be sure to add these questions into your normal prescreen questions. You can either bake them into the application, or ask them during the initial phone screen (which we’ll review in a minute). I personally like to ask them during the phone screen so I can get some context around each answer throughout the conversation.
I will also gather questions from the hiring team I have curated and heavily rely on the hiring manager for the position who will be on the team. If she or he has any make or breaks for this position that weren’t covered during the application process, they’ll be asked during the phone screen.
Start with a phone screen
This may seem counterintuitive, but you can learn a lot about someone by just picking up the phone and talking with them. I typically start each interview process with a phone screen – no video. I want to see how they interact when the sense of sight is removed.
Remember, working remotely means we have to be masters of communication, regardless of which type. Some of our clients prefer phone calls, while others are fine with video chat. I want to see a potential hire in both scenarios so I can understand how they communicate in a variety of ways.
The phone screens typically last between 15-30 minutes. I get my basic questions out of the way then, including the general connectivity questions mentioned above. I also ask a handful of skillset questions at a high-level to make sure what we’re looking for in this position is there. I don’t dive in too deeply here, as we’ll have them do an exercise later on that allows us to better assess their skills, knowledge and experience in what we’re looking for.
Looking for more pre-screen questions? The Balance Careers has a great list for you to pick and choose from here.
Create a small “proof of skill” assignment
If the phone screen goes well, well immediately move them to the next step which is sending out an exercise for them to complete. This exercise allows us to understand more about this candidate’s experience, how they work, and – you guessed it – how they communicate via the written word.
If they are a developer, it’s typically a coding exercise that also requires documentation. For other positions, it varies based on the discipline and position level. But one tie runs through each exercise: communication. Each person must explain why they made the choices they did in written communication.
We usually give a 72 hour window to complete the assignment, which should take no more than two hours to finish.
Between this and the phone screen, I’ve now gotten a taste of both verbal and written communication skills. If the assignment comes back with high marks and they seem to be a good fit so far, I’ll schedule a group video-chat with the hiring team I’ve curated for the position.
Conduct a group interview virtually
This group interview is typically two parts. One, the hiring manager and the candidate will first meet one-on-one to review the exercise together. Once that’s complete, the rest of the group will join in.
As mentioned above, each person has a role to play in group interview and their questions align with that. Before we hop on the group interview, we share our questions with one another to make sure there is no overlap.
Our team will typically also ask more conversational questions, too. The ultimate goal is for us to spend time together with the candidate to determine if they have the skills we need them to in order to be successful in this role, and if we feel like they could be a good cultural fit.
Trust your gut
Have we made a lot of great hires using this method? Absolutely. Have we missed the mark on some? Absolutely.
The common theme for those we missed the mark on is we didn’t trust our gut. We either really needed to hire someone fast so we ignored warning signs, or we felt like things would be different once the individual was in. This has always come back to prove as an ineffective strategy when hiring.
When one of our hiring team members feels uncomfortable about the choice we’re making, we take the time to thoroughly discuss it. If it’s a tie-breaker between two candidates, we’ll bring in our CEO, Craig Bryant, who will have a final chat with each person and help us determine who would be best suited for the job.
Get to hiring
Once we’ve chosen the right candidate, we call them directly and offer them the position. Once they’ve verbally accepted or expressed interest, we send over an offer letter with all of the details we discussed on the phone.
From there, we get their Kin account set up and begin planning for their first day.
Wondering how we go about onboarding remotely? Check out our latest blog post on the topic here.
By Alex Yohn
Sep 9, 2020
This is the first in a multi-part series about offering paid time-off in small businesses. This article looks at the time-off options and how to support your employees as well as your business by offering this benefit.
The team at Kin used to have an unlimited paid time-off policy. But as Craig Bryant, our CEO wrote, the unlimited days “did a pretty poor job of getting folks out of the office.” That defeats the point, doesn’t it? (Which is why we decided to change our time-off model.)
Unfortunately, not taking time off isn’t that unusual for American employees. According to research from Project Time Off, 55% of workers in the United States had unused vacation days in 2015. All together that made for a total of 658 million unused vacation days!
Nearly 65% of employees surveyed by Project Time Off reported that they hear nothing or receive mixed and discouraging messages about taking off from work. When policies are ambiguous and paid time-off isn’t tracked, employees tend to err on the side of taking too few days off. Having clear approach, as well as a practice for scheduling and managing time-off, are important ways to help ensure that employees take time away from work in order to remain productive and engaged.
Paid Time-off Models
Successful time-off models address basic needs for both employees and employers. Ideally, when employees put their time-off to use, it helps them achieve a better sense of balance by providing time to address various needs. And, while employees may not use all of their time-off, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), when it comes to what employees want from their employer, time-off “ranks near the top of employees’ preferences even above cash bonuses, modest raises, and future career advancement.”
Even though vacation, personal or sick days may impact small businesses more than larger organizations (due to fewer employees to cover the workload), that’s not stopping small businesses from providing paid time-off.
There are several time-off models, including:
• Traditional leave models which allocate employee paid time off in separate items, such as vacation, sick and personal days.
• Paid time-off (PTO) bank models are those in which time-off allowances are grouped together.
• Unlimited time-off models allow employees to take an unlimited number of paid days off.
The most common time-off model in small businesses is the traditional model in which the business provides days off with a specified amount of days allocated to specific categories (e.g., vacation, holiday, sick, and personal leave).
According to recent data from a WorldatWork survey, only 1% of organizations offer unlimited PTO programs. The most cited reason for offering unlimited PTO leave was, “it aligns with organizational culture”. But 26% of organizations in the survey said they are considering rolling various types of leave together into a PTO Bank model that employees can use for a variety of needs. Employers mentioned the simplicity of plan administration, cost savings, and the recruiting benefits as reasons why they were enticed to change to a PTO Bank model.
Regardless of the model your small business uses, offering paid time-off benefits communicates that your business values employees’ lives outside of work, and as such is an important part of your total pay package.
Time-off Categories
Time-off falls into two main categories: mandatory and voluntary leave. Identifying what falls into each of these categories is the place to start when determining what paid time-off your business wants to offer to employees.
Mandatory time-off
There are some time-off/leave requirements which are mandated by federal regulations. Whether or not an employer must pay an employee for time off used for these reasons is dependent on local laws and company policy.
Federal regulations require that employers grant leave for the following reasons:
• Family leave (Family and Medical Leave Act and Americans with Disability Act (for employers with 50 or more employees)
• Military duty (Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA)
• Religious accommodation (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act)
• Workers’ compensation for on-the-job injuries (dependent on state law)
• Jury duty
Some states also require maternity or paternity leave for an employee who needs time off for the birth or adoption of a child. Although millions of workers are caregivers for young children as well as aging parents, according to the Department of Labor, only 12 percent of U.S. private sector workers have access to paid family leave through their employer.
Voluntary time-off
You may also choose to offer leave that isn’t required by law, although some employers may be required by a labor union’s collective bargaining agreement to offer some of these. Common types of voluntary time-off include:
• Vacation
• Personal days
• Holidays
• Bereavement
• Sick leave
According to the National Compensation Survey, which collects data about the percentage of workers with access to and participating in employer-provided benefit plans including paid time-off, about 68% of small businesses provide paid holidays as well as paid vacations for employees.
“For small businesses, I recommend that they mix company needs with employee wants and affordability to create a good, solid time-off policy,” says Jen Teague, a Staffing & Onboarding Coach for small and growing businesses.
“An employer needs to do some math on how much it will cost to offer time off, knowing that less work is getting done. They also have to take into consideration company needs such as scheduling conflicts, seasonal changes, and other factors. Lastly, an employer needs to hear what employees want. Most of the time, they just want time to spend with family or take a vacation, so an employer should try their best to accommodate that.”
When looking at what your time-off policy will cover, it’s important to consider what you will and won’t cover in regards to both mandatory and voluntary time off. At a minimum, providing your employees with paid holidays and vacations is a basic benefit that isn’t too costly to businesses. As you create a program, be sure to balance the benefit to employees with what you can afford to provide in both compensation and productivity loss when an employee is out of the office. At the same time, don’t forget to consider what your competition provides—if your time-off policy is too limited, you’ll feel the expense when you lose top talent.
By Alex Yohn
Sep 8, 2020
Your employees are your most valuable asset. This year, more people have been thrust into remote working than ever before. When they were in the office, it was easy to offer perks like free snacks, flexible working schedules, Food Truck Friday and more. But now that everyone is spread out, perks take a little more personal of a tone versus the group activities they once were.
Here are a few ideas of some great perks you could offer while your team is working remotely to let them know you’re thinking of them.
Subscribe to an employee recognition system
Did you know that 89% of employees believe that targeted recognition contributes to their workplace happiness? By taking the time to say thank you and recognize each employee’s contributions, you have the opportunity to not only up employee happiness, but build relationships with your team by seeing all of the good work happening around you.
At Kin, we use Bonusly as a way for our team to do peer-to-peer recognition. It’s hard for us to know every single good thing happening across the company as leaders, but our team members see it. Through Bonusly, they’re able to recognize each other and provide micro-bonuses. Those micro-bonuses can be redeemed for gift cards to popular retailers or can be cashed out using PayPal.
Whenever a micro-bonus is delivered, it alerts the entire team in our general Slack channel. That way, we can keep a pulse of all of the cool things our remote workers are doing throughout the week.
Reduce prescription drug costs.
The cost of healthcare is constantly rising, and for many families it’s a source of frustration. Providing high-quality and affordable healthcare as an employer can be one of your best ways to attract and retain employees (after you check other cultural boxes, of course). But it doesn’t stop there.
Great insurance doesn’t cover everything, especially when it comes to medication. Companies like GoodRx are trying to solve that problem by helping to lower out-of-pocket costs on prescriptions for remote workers.
Prescriptions through GoodRx are often under $10, beating out the $15-20 co-pays many insurance companies have. The best part? It’s 100% free to employers and employees, and is accepted at 70,000+ pharmacies throughout the United States.
Provide a wellness program
Insurance is important, but overall wellness is key to remote-working employees leading healthy and happy lives both inside and outside of work. More and more wellness companies are taking the hint and popping up with incredible programs that incentivize movement among your team – whether in the office or not.
While we’re cooped up at home during quarantine, movement has become something that isn’t as plentiful as it was before. By offering different wellness programs that inspire your remote-working team mates to get up and moving, you’re likely helping them feel better about themselves, their work and their overall outlook on life.
Companies like Sonic Boom Wellness even provide apps that have fun challenges such as activity streaks. When someone does at least X minutes of activity for a certain period of time, they can earn rewards such as $100 added to the HSA or cash back into their paycheck.
Provide a monthly home office stipend
If home is your workplace, it should be as comfortable as possible to be productive in. Employers should be invested in creating a great work environment just as they would do if they had an office.
Companies such as WebFlow provide monthly stipends to be used on home office supplies for remote workers. Webflow gives $380 a month to each employee to help them cover things like a new chair, keyboard, desk or their internet and phone bill. You could use the money on anything from a new chair, to a new keyboard, to a new desk or to cover your internet and phone bill.
The bottom line is the more comfortable an employee feels in their work environment, the more productive they’ll be. It’s up to us as employers to get them there.
What are some other perks that you offer your remote working employees to keep them engaged, happy and productive at home?
By Alex Yohn
Sep 4, 2020
Podcasts are an excellent way for small business owners to get the information they need to grow their business. With so many podcasts out there on a variety of topics, it’s an easy way to learn new things on-the-go. But where to begin? There are so many different podcasts on the market right now but it can be daunting to dive into the medium.
No matter your interests, you can find a podcast that is right up your alley. From business, to inspiration and life coaching, to even weird medical facts when your brain needs a break from moving your company forward, there’s bound to be a podcast for you.
At Kin, we have some avid podcast listeners on the team. Here is a list of just a few that we enjoy turning into each week.
The StoryBrand podcast
You don’t have to be a marketer to enjoy this podcast. Don Miller, author of the popular book and marketing strategy, StoryBrand, brings on a variety of authors, philosophers, business strategists, and athletes to talk about different aspects of business. Each episode is chock full of great information on how to get out of your own way and grow your business.
A few of our personal favorite episodes include interviews with Ryan Holiday on how the best business leaders know how to be still and Gary Hamill on why micromanaging is killing your business.
Give it a listen for an instant shot of confidence.
The Michelle Obama podcast
Despite being a political figure, Michelle Obama’s podcast isn’t necessarily one about politics. Michelle talks about growing up in Chicago, being a mother to young women, feminism, and developing her own identity outside of being first lady of the United States. It’s an inspirational podcast to listen to regardless of your political affiliation.
This podcast is pretty new, so it’d be hard to say which episodes are our favorite. You can check out the first few here.
How I Built It podcast
If you’ve ever wondered how an individual took the simple idea and turned it into a multimillion-dollar business, this is the podcast for you. How I Built This sits down with entrepreneurs that have found extreme success in their field. They break down exactly the steps they took to get to that success. Business owners like Spanx founder, Sara Blakely, and Brian Chesky of Airbnb have all sat down with the host, Guy Raz, to talk about the ups, downs, ins and outs of building their brands.
If you’re stuck and looking for inspiration from people who have made it through, tune in. After an episode or two, chances are you’ll be ready to tackle your next big challenge.
Business Casual podcast
If you’re looking for a podcast where some of the biggest names sit down and are asked questions that might make them feel a little bit uncomfortable, Business Casual is the podcast that you want to start listening to now.
This podcast explores everything from prison labor to networking in the time of coronavirus, to solving the issues that capitalism can bring. It’s honest, insightful and just plain good listening.
You can tune into the podcast anytime here.
Have a few podcasts you’d recommend? Drop us a line with them here.
By Alex Yohn
Sep 1, 2020
Stress. We’re all feeling it. Whether it’s stemming from work, or it’s coming from the twists and turns that 2020 has given us, it’s the undercurrent of this year’s journey. And while we know the cost of stress when it comes to our physical and mental health, we also have to consider the cost of it on our relationships at work, productivity of our employees and our company’s culture overall.
Long-term stress isn’t productive or healthy. To handle the reduction of stress at work, we first need to really understand how it affects us humans, then, how we can work it to our advantage, and finally, how we can potentially reduce it. Here are a few great Ted Talks to give us the information we need so we can move forward and combat stress in the workplace.
Before we begin to look for answers, let’s understand what stress does to us mentally. In this Ted Talk, educator Elizabeth Cox details the relationship between stress and memory. While some degrees of stress can be good, short-term stress can impact your memory when it comes to retaining basic facts and figures. Losing this ability to quickly recall basic concepts could have a huge impact on your employees. Understand how your brain works through stress to see how reducing it can help you (and your teammates) in the long-term.
Did you know that work-related stress costs the US economy nearly $300 billion a year? Not only does it cost us by crushing our ability to be productive, it also hurts our work relationships and can aid in depression and anxiety. Rob Cooke, a wellness advocate, breaks down some ways to help you realign and put your well-being front and center at work again.
Is stress always a bad thing? Psychologist Kelly McGonigal doesn’t necessarily think so. During this Ted Talk, Kelly walks through ways we can see stress as a positive, and shows us how to use it as a way to build relationships with one another.
By Alex Yohn
Aug 27, 2020
Think of the leaders you’ve connected with most in your career. They likely really understood your impact in the organization, helped you move forward and connected with your passions and motivations on the job. In other words, they had empathy for you and your work.
Empathy plays a huge role in great workplaces. Being able to understand and share each other’s feelings helps teams build bonds that create indestructible working relationships. This is really the secret sauce to the best of the best teams.
At Kin, we believe empathy isn’t just happenstance. It’s something that you continuously, consciously practice with each other, year after year.
Through trial and error, here are a few ways we’ve found to help foster empathy within a team without over-engineering it and losing authenticity.
Creating space for real communication
When we started to grow our team more rapidly in 2016, some felt a little bit out of touch with our senior leadership. Our CEO, Craig, wanted to keep communication transparent and informal, which has always worked best for our crew. But how, with a team growing in numbers and only one Craig?
We decided to do an optional Wednesday morning town hall via video chat, aptly named Craig’s Q&A Buffet. There, people could get together and have 30 minutes of time with Craig to talk about just about anything.
It was a level playing field. Whether you had been at the company since it started, or today was your first day, Craig’s Q&A buffet was a place everyone could feel equally welcomed as they spent time with our founder sharing viewpoints on everything from work, to kids, to good food, to hobbies, to life in general.
Utilizing the resources you have to create understanding and open-communication environments is key to tapping into organizational empathy. If you feel like conversations aren’t hitting the mark in your company, perhaps it’s because it always comes with an agenda that stops you from being able to truly express yourself. Try putting together your own Q&A buffet to see if your conversations become more genuine as the weeks go on.
Invest in comfortable, productive workplaces
At Kin, we’re 100% remote. That means everyone’s workplace has a flavor of its own. Some people have multiple monitors, other folks are on their couch with a laptop on their lap despite having a desk close by. Our motto has always been to work where you’re happiest, and we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is to make it happen.
Every new employee is equipped with a laptop, all software they request to help with their job, and any other additional hardware to make it easier such as keyboards, mice, laptop stands, monitors, etc.
We don’t believe it should cost our team members money to work. Instead, we make any reasonable accommodation we can to deck out their technology stack and workplace to be the best it can be for them.
If we’ve decided as a company to have our team work remotely, it doesn’t mean that we get to opt out of helping them create great workplaces. It just means that our priorities shift. We may not have a company espresso machine, but we do have spots throughout the country that we have helped our employees help curate to do their best work in.
Uphold your values
Values serve as the foundation for empathy in your organization. They help align your existing team members and attract the right people for new opportunities within your workplace.
At Kin, our values are inherently people-centric. We take pride in being inquisitive students and humble teachers. We’re proactive. We enjoy sharing big and small wins with each other and our clients. Understanding our values helps us determine what actually matters in our workplace. They’re what our culture is built on.
When we know the values of a workplace, we can quickly self-identify if we are a good fit. More importantly, when an opportunity to bring another person in arises, companies can quickly identify if they’ll be good cultural fits based on that individual’s values, and of course, their response to ours.
Having this type of empathy toward our workplace values can help you avoid costly hiring mistakes and keep your company’s mission and vision front and center.
While these three tips seem so simplistic in fostering empathy, when done correctly, they can provide so much value to your team members.
What are a few ways you help usher in empathy to your organization?