Having Trouble Hiring? Here’s How to Market to New Employees

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With job creation up significantly and unemployment at a 50-year low of 3.5%, a full 51% of small businesses are unable to fill jobs as 2022 begins. There’s no question that in this climate, it can be difficult to find the right person for the roles your company may be trying to fill. Hiring looks different than it did, even just a few months ago. With many companies competing for the same talent, brands must go above and beyond to appeal to potential candidates. So how can you attract qualified individuals to your organization, streamline the hiring and onboarding process and increase worker retention? We suggest following these four guidelines to help build a solid team. 

Offer a Remote Work Option

To stand out in a tight labor market, improving the benefits you offer to potential candidates is a surefire way to make your job listing more attractive to a potential candidate. In 2022, that means considering the possibility of offering fully remote or partially remote work, allowing for flexible work schedules or filling several part-time roles. Research shows the most talented and skilled candidates will opt for a remote position over a traditional position. Green Apple Strategy is a fully remote company. While our origins, heart, and investment are in Tennessee businesses, we’ve brought in talent from Colorado, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Alabama. Offering this flexibility to workers means that we received applications from qualified candidates all over the U.S.

Network Proactively 

While tools like LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, and ZipRecruiter have made finding qualified candidates easier, intentional networking (online or in-person) is hard to beat for connecting with vetted candidates you can trust. Interact with candidates on LinkedIn, follow leading HR firms, and connect with local colleges, universities, and trade schools in order to increase both the quantity and the quality of your hiring pool. 

Create An Apprentice or Internship Program 

Bringing in young, talented individuals is always a good idea, as they can provide a fresh perspective and are often eager to start their career with a bang. When you run an apprenticeship or internship program, you’re cultivating a qualified hiring pool and building relationships with potential new employees. Even if your program doesn’t end in a full-time hire, participants will receive experience and education and you will expand your talent network. It’s a win-win. 

Improve Your Benefits Package

In lieu of remote work, or to supplement that offering, consider making changes to your benefits package. In a crowded labor market, anWWi attractive benefits package can help your job listing stand out among other, similar roles. Changes to benefits don’t have to be huge but see if you can get creative in what you offer. Could you extend health care coverage to part-time employees? Increase the 401K match you offer by a percentage point or two? Offer a coworking space stipend to remote employees? Increase PTO by a week or move to an unlimited PTO option, as many tech companies do? Candidates weigh the pros and cons of each position they consider, and it can sway a candidate towards accepting a particular role.

Research Your Hiring Competitors

It’s tough to offer a competitive job listening if you’re unaware of what other roles your potential candidates are vying for. Make use of LinkedIn to research similar roles to the one you hope to fill. After all, your candidates will be viewing many of the same listings. And don’t forget to look outside your local hiring market. Candidates today have access to national and international job listings. Have a good sense of the salary, benefits, and responsibilities that the role you are hiring for entails. It will help you to craft a more informed and competitive job listing that’s likely to attract attention from candidates. 

Start Attracting Qualified Candidates Through Targeted Marketing

A strong presence on hiring sites like LinkedIn is one of the best ways to position your brand to attract new and skilled talent. Let Green Apple Strategy craft an innovative approach to your social media channels so that you can start targeting and attracting new team members.  Reach out to us today for a consultation.

How to Improve Remote Employees’ Morale

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Remember those “water cooler” chats that you once had with people in your office?  You would stand in the common area and catch up on what you did over the weekend or share the scoop on that new restaurant you tried last night. Although those conversations seemed insignificant at the time, the interactions boosted morale and made your team feel connected. These moments, among others, contributed to team morale in ways that may seem difficult to maintain when you aren’t physically together.  Green Apple has been a virtual team since March of 2020, and we’ve learned a lot along the way about keeping everyone happy, collaborative, and engaged. Based on what we’ve learned along the way, here are a few of our tips for improving your remote employees’ morale.

Create Opportunities for Connection

Keeping your team connected and communicating is crucial when working remotely. Even when you can’t be together, you can create out-of-the-box ways to bring your team members closer together. We encourage you to get creative!  A few of the ways that we stay connected include: If your team is located within driving distance, and it’s safe to do so, plan team outings to help everyone have shared experiences. For some inspiration, the Green Apple team’s most recent team outings were taking a boat tour in a Kentucky cave and visiting a Tennessee vineyard. Even as a remote team, we enjoy finding opportunities to make memories together. 

Send “Happys” to Your Team

Everyone loves a surprise. Even a small gesture, such as a handwritten card or a $5 coffee gift card, can brighten someone’s day. Recently, we’ve been loving Thnks, a platform that allows you to send thoughtful gifts of gratitude with just a few clicks. Remember that even a quick message of appreciation to your team can make all the difference.

Encourage Positive Language and Kudos

We say “thank you” often and freely at Green Apple, and it’s one of the things that gives our team a positive glow. Showing gratitude to those around you doesn’t take much effort, and it fills your workday with good vibes and warmth. Some might think, “well, they’re just doing their job,” but it’s still important to thank them for what they’re contributing to your team. When people feel appreciated, they feel a stronger sense of satisfaction and purpose in their work. 

Remind Team Members to Take Time Off

When work and home collide, you may notice your team taking less time off. One of the advantages of remote work is that schedules become more flexible; however, that can turn into a disadvantage if employees begin taking fewer vacation days because they can balance work with personal matters. Encourage your team to take time to completely unplug from work so that they can come back refreshed and prevent burnout. 

Maintain an Open Door Policy

Open communication is an essential piece of the employee-morale puzzle. Encourage your team members to express their challenges and worries, as they may otherwise harbor frustration. If you feel that someone on your team is feeling down or overwhelmed and they aren’t reaching out, it could be a good time to set up check-in meetings with individual employees to give them a safe space. Even when all is well, your employees may benefit from consistent communication to ensure they’re feeling balanced and supported. There are a multitude of ways that employers can support their remote team members. Most importantly, though, your team wants to feel connected, appreciated, and heard by you. 

Want to Improve Employee Morale?

Green Apple can build an internal marketing program that allows you to support employees while sharing your company’s message to help your team connect with your vision. Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

Tone from the Top: Should Leaders Be Marketing to Their Employees?

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Yes, you absolutely should be marketing to your employees! You might be thinking the phrase “internal marketing” sounds a bit redundant, but we are here to tell you it is a vital component to the success of your external marketing strategy. Internal marketing is based on the core belief that employees are your most valuable (and influential) customers. Therefore, you must sell your brand to your team, first and foremost.

If employees feel emotionally connected to the services they are selling and the vision of the company, then they are more likely to contribute to the success of external marketing efforts. “Sounds great! Sign me up!” you might be saying. But, wait just a minute. Although it sounds simple enough, integrating an internal marketing campaign takes planning, coordination, and thoughtful execution. We’re here to help.

Consider these tips for why and how you should implement internal marketing efforts within your team:

Corporate Storytelling to Inspire

We’ve seen it before: a company promotes their brand to external customers using inspirational, high-energy commercials, which make customers instantly want to get off the couch and join the fun, and then the company falls flat while marketing to its internal team. A popular scenario involves retelling the origin story of how the great, great grandfather of the company had five dollars to his name and then started a multi-million dollar company—a worn-out, not-so-relatable story that employees quickly wish to tune-out.

Employees aren’t particularly motivated by the financial success of the founder of your company. They want personal meaning from their job, a belief that they are serving a vision that aligns with their goals. So, tell the story of your company to your team, but focus on thematic elements, such as innovation, perseverance, and passion—not monetary gain.

How to Get Started

Just like external marketing, internal marketing requires a plan prior to launching a campaign. It’s important to keep in mind while planning your internal marketing efforts that the goal is to unify and inspire your employees with a shared vision and purpose. The alternative is cross-team miscommunication and employee disengagement, both of which harm external marketing efforts. 

While planning your internal marketing campaign, consider the following as important steps to your success:

  • Employee brand education
  • Encouraging employee collaboration
  • Establishing employee incentivization for contribution
  • Implementing multiple channels of streamline communication

It’s important that your employees understand that they are vital to the success of your company, and as a result, their opinions and willingness to collaborate are greatly valued. Take concrete measures to demonstrate this!

A Culture of Collaboration (and Trust)

So, now you’ve armed your internal team with brand knowledge, engaging corporate storytelling, and you’ve incorporated employee incentive programs that reward their contribution; it’s now time to set them loose into the wild of social media. Trust your employees to live the values of the brand where potential customers will take note and perk their ears. 

Employees make the brand come alive for potential customers. In fact, allowing your employees to create original content via blog and social media posts may inspire more trust from potential customers than traditional PR efforts. 

Internal marketing is a powerful resource for company unification, which inspires team collaboration, as well as trust from potential customers as they watch your employees live the company values. Marketing to your employees is well-worth the time and energy of leadership, as it has long-lasting rewards for your company’s reputation.

Are you looking to make an internal marketing plan for your business? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

How to Get Your New Hire Up to Speed with Company Culture

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We all need someone in our corner. Someone to go to bat for us, to vouch for our character and pure intentions. In the business world, you need an entire team of these people on your side—your internal team.  You might be thinking, We already provide a livelihood for our employees—of course they’re on our side! Sure, money is an instrumental source of encouragement for employees; however, company culture has been proven to be the most significant influence on employee engagement and productivity.  Internal marketing is a brand-building strategy to embrace as your company strives to build brand awareness and strengthen employee trust. Remember: external marketing efforts are only as strong as the confidence and sincerity demonstrated by the employee pitching these services. Here are a few helpful ways to immerse new hires in your company culture to create a productive and cohesive work environment.

A Personalized Experience

The process of job searching, applying to a company, undergoing the interview process, and then accepting a new position, is a very personal experience resulting in life-altering effects in a person’s professional and personal life. Any given employee has different reasons for seeking a position at your company; it could be their dream job that they have used significant resources to finally reach; it could be a much-needed source of income after a time of unemployment; it might even be a complete career-pivot to a new industry in which they’ve been building confidence to take the leap. Whatever an individual’s reasons for accepting a position at your company are, it should be clear that they deserve a personalized onboarding experience, (i.e., not just a quick review of a one-size-fits-all Powerpoint to be reviewed alone in a meeting room). A new hire should be celebrated. They should be individually introduced to other team members, specifically noting who might be a direct resource to them throughout the training process.  Have a virtual team lunch, or maybe send a company-wide introductory email. Your new hire should leave their first day on the job feeling that they are part of something personal and special.

Incorporating Storytelling in your Company Culture

Write down your company’s origin story and share it often. Your employees need to know why leadership is passionate about the work they do, why the quality of their work matters, and why the primary motivating factor of the success of the business is not just monetary. The heart of most every business is the well-being and happiness of the customer—their satisfaction and confidence after conducting business with your company.  Engaging with and improving the lives of other people should always be the foundation of your company’s vision and mission statements. These statements, along with the company origin story, should be regularly referenced within employee onboarding, employee reviews, company-wide email, and social apps.

Employee Trust = Employee Engagement

It’s a no-brainer that the more an employee feels seen and valued, the more engaged they become with the company goals, often becoming brand ambassadors as they speak about the job they enjoy at the company that supports them within their daily interactions.  So, how do you establish this beneficial symbiosis between employee and company? Communication! Specifically, creating multiple two-way channels of management-employee communication is key.  New hires should be able to immediately identify the multiple channels of communication to leadership that are available to them. These channels could take many different forms including:
  • Regular quarterly reviews in which feedback is encouraged
  • Weekly check-ins, especially during the first 6 months of employment
  • Encouraging communication via social apps such as Basecamp or Slack
No matter the mode of communication in place, feedback should always be encouraged during the employee onboarding process. This is a fool-proof way to immediately establish trust with new employees. Internal marketing might initially sound like an extra step or a redundant effort, but we assure you that creating a company culture in which employees feel valued and proud is worth the time and effort. Not only will internal marketing efforts improve productivity rates, but employee retention and satisfaction rates will be organically shared on employee social media and daily interactions. Are you looking to make an internal marketing plan for your business? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

Should I Hire an Internal Marketing Team or Outsource to a Local Agency?

Marketing is crucial to the success of a business. It helps you meet your sales goals, increase your brand awareness, and tell your story. Though many understand the importance of marketing’s role in growing a business, few are sure of how to go about it. Should you hire an internal team, or should you outsource to a local agency? For the most robust, effective marketing strategy, we recommend outsourcing. Let’s talk about why. In this article, we’ll cover a few reasons to consider outsourcing, including:
  • Staying ahead of the curve
  • Getting more out of your marketing budget
  • Having a comprehensive marketing team without searching for employees
  • Focusing on your core business operations

With an outsourced marketing agency, you can…

Stay Ahead of the Curve
A marketing agency lives and breathes innovative tools and effective strategies. They are working daily to research new methods, test the effectiveness of a tactic, and identify the best way to connect with your audience. Not only do agencies stay ahead of the latest trends, but they also invest the time into learning about your internal operations and your target audience’s expectations and needs.  Agencies live in the marketing mindset, whereas internal teams are living inside of your industry’s world. When you outsource your marketing, you know that you’re working with a team that will identify your vision, build a strategy, monitor that strategy continually, and do everything in its power to deliver results. 
Get More Out of Your Marketing Budget
Can you believe that hiring an external marketing team could actually make your budget stretch further? When you think of it in terms of overhead, you can skip hours of searching for an internal employee and the countless dollars you would spend hiring, training, and managing that new person.  Having an agency on retainer also ensures that your marketing strategy will not be put on hold when someone leaves your team—allowing you to continue growing even during times of turnover. Finally, consider the continual training costs necessary for professional development, such as conferences and classes, and industry organizations’ membership costs. All in all, agencies bypass your overhead costs and provide you access to a diversely talented and well-trained marketing team that always has a finger on the pulse. 
Have Access to a Comprehensive Marketing Team without Hiring 
An agency removes the need to hire someone to fill every role—content, digital marketing, graphic design, photography, web development, and so on. You will have access to each of these skills, all in one place. It’s as simple as that. In Green Apple’s case, we approach each new client strategy by handpicking a team of marketing professionals to fit your business’s specific needs. We serve as a full-service, one-stop-shop for all things marketing, and you’ll find that it takes the stress off your plate. Rather than piling marketing tasks onto your to-do list, you know that an agency is already five steps ahead of you. 
Focus On Your Core Business
Your business’s core operations are where you want to spend your time. If you’re a roofing company, for example, you don’t want to spend your days wading through marketing tasks, nor should you have to. When companies have the internal capacity to tackle their core focus, that’s when they reach their highest potential. An agency identifies that potential and makes sure that your marketing aligns appropriately. You, on the other hand, focus on what you know and what you love doing. We take care of the rest.  Are you ready to take your business goals to the next level? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation. To have marketing insight sent straight to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter—The Core.