We have focused on two specific topics . This is based on the requests we have received from several recruiters and HR professionals across the globe.  

• What is Workforce Quality, and why is it gaining momentum?
• Recruiter Cheat Sheet for DevOps (a skill all companies are actively hiring)

Definition

• Workforce Quality means that employees are motivated to improve their skills and creativity to achieve better results while accountable for their performance. Workforce quality is also measured with the sub–variables of commitments, qualifications, expertise, achievement orientation, and accountability.
• Our point of view on this is that workforce quality cannot be defined by just two or three parameters like attitude and sincerity towards work; it should also measure domain knowledge, soft skills like leadership and managerial quality, creativity, and the ability to learn and adapt to the changing environment.

Impact of Workforce Quality on Organizational performance

• Success in today’s ever-changing, globally competitive environment demands an agility-a capacity for faster and more flexible responses to customers and other stakeholders’ needs. 
• Research papers show that there is a positive relationship between workforce quality and organizational performance. Multiple deductive reasoning methods were used to study this. Also, in conditions of high competition in the market, the one who has a higher quality of service, the quality of the product, higher labor productivity, and better management of the enterprise will benefit. These indicators directly depend on the workforce’s quality.

Factors promoting Workforce Quality

1. Quality Hiring

• There is a common pattern among high-performing organizations, “Hire for Attitude and Train for skills.”
• Importance of behavioral rounds during interviews – Studies have shown that structured post-event interviews can achieve up to 87% reliability in predicting job performance. Behavioral interview questions ask candidates how they handled past situations instead of asking them how they “would” handle situations.
• Creating a documented and systematic hiring process serves as a guideline for the company employees to interview and raise workforce quality.
• In one of the recent reports published, a pattern was observed that companies are continuously looking for candidates who learn and adapt, demonstrate a strong work ethic, have a customer service orientation, and innovate.

2. Organization Culture

• As mentioned earlier – “Hire for Attitude.” By “attitude,” it typically means the ability to identify with and “live” core values of the organization, such as insisting on the highest standard, being self-critical, customer-driven and other similar attributes.
• A favorable work environment elevates workforce quality.
• Interactions between leaders and teams provide an essential locus for creating the social cohesion and the unified hybrid virtual culture that organizations need in the next normal.
• When the workforce is hybrid virtual, leaders need to rely less on hierarchical and more on inspirational forms of leadership. The dispersed employees working remotely require new leadership behaviors to compensate for digital channels’ reduced socioemotional cues.
• Leaders can also establish an open-door policy and hold virtual “fireside chats,” without any structured content at all, to create a forum for less formal interactions.
• Implementing mechanisms to measure workforce pulse towards current organizational practices bring out suggestions that can aid workforce quality. Atlassian, a software company analysis, shows that almost 47% of employees complained that the time spent on meetings was one of the top factors that hinders productivity during work hours.
• Our research shows that during the pandemic,  teams suffer from poor collaboration techniques, and the job of the HR is to unlock this puzzle.

3.Training

• Companies need to invest programmatically in the workforce and workplace enhancements. Training programs show employees that their companies value them and are willing to invest in their future, so employees feel appreciated. Plus, enhancing their knowledge base and skill set can boost their confidence. According to our analysis, 40% of job seekers who left their job within the first six months said that more effective onboarding and training could have helped them stay longer
• Creating a strong employer value proposition. With the introduction of employee training programs, we are contributing to the organization’s employer value proposition (EVP) — i.e., an organization’s values, culture, and other benefits it offers to employees to attract top talent. Providing training to employees is a good way of attracting new candidates, thus having a stronger group of potential candidates to choose from.

4. Goal, Progress, and Feedback

• Provide the direction and management needed to align the interests of your high-performance workforce with your organization’s goals and desired outcomes
• Provide regular feedback to employees that lets them know where they stand and how they can improve.
• Employee recognition – Making appreciation a norm in the organization. If an employee has done a good job, show that you know it.
• The term OKR, which stands for “Objectives and Key Results,” is a goal-setting system innovated by Google. As the name implies, OKR has two major components- the Objective and the Key Results. Objectives are the SMART goals that an employee needs to complete. Objectives should be achievable and specific.

5.0  Peer Comparisons at Employee Level (not just at the enterprise level)

• The days of making peer comparisons only at the Enterprise level is over.  Draup has developed several models to compare at the engineer level
• We have built several models to compare, say, CTO of different companies and Engineers of different companies.  This also helps in Workforce Quality (from a learning journey standpoint)

Recruiters need to understand DevOps in this day and age.  Here we have attempted to simplify this.

What is DevOps?

Dev – Development – developing a product.

Op – Operations – releasing the product.

Traditionally, in the Software Industry, these two areas were kept separate. The developers wrote code and the operations team dealt with production and maintenance.  DevOps is a culture where there is transparency between these two areas of work. But it doesn’t mean a group of people who can do both development and operations.

DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products faster than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to serve their customers better.

We are quite excited about the role H.R. can play under the emerging circumstances.  If we plan the initiatives correctly, we can accelerate transformation and adaptation and make our enterprises that we genuinely care for a great place to work.