Category: Zoho

The coronavirus outbreak is foremost a human tragedy, but it is also having a growing impact on the global economy and the way businesses function. While productivity can be allowed to dip in some areas, payroll is one business-critical function that cannot afford to be delayed and is even more important during a crisis. This article is intended to provide payroll professionals with some tips on how they can continue to deliver accurate payroll on time, and how cloud technology can help payroll departments hold things together and support their employees.

 

Bridging the communication gap

Wherever we are, is our workplace now. Organizations have already planned for employees to be unable to return to work for significant periods of time, whether it’s due to personal illness or caring for sick family members, or just working remotely from home as a precaution. No matter how far away they are, it is crucial for employers and their employees to be on the same page. Here are some top priorities for HR and payroll staff when communicating with their employees.

• Know the whereabouts of your employees to ensure they’re okay, and communicate organization best-practices promptly. When your employees reach out, it’s important for the HR or your organization’s spokesperson to be available for help. It’s important to be compassionate now, more than ever.

• Communicate organization-wide policy changes where everybody can see. It is important for you to choose a platform that is usually preferred by your employees, and ensure to follow-up promptly.

• Inform your employees proactively if you think paychecks might be delayed. Give employees enough information to plan their finances, and be prepared to respond to questions and requests for emergency advances.

• Keep your employees informed about Government initiatives that help them reduce taxes or defer taxes for a certain period or any other relief measures that can be of help.

Cross-functional collaboration

We all know that payroll is a methodical process, and highly dependent on inputs from multiple teams. Cross-functional collaboration can be difficult even during normal scenarios, and it is even more difficult to pull off during emergency situations. While there’s no replacement for face-to-face communication, the next closest thing is to leverage cloud technology that allows your HR, finance, and payroll staff to collaborate productively from wherever they are.

Creating group communication channels among all these departments can help them see through the clutter and get the inputs they need quickly. If any one of them hits a roadblock in their work, a quick video conference is the fastest way to get all the people involved on the same page. Cloud-based software gives you the advantage of connecting quickly from anywhere.

Managing employees’ leave and attendance

Perhaps the most important aspect of managing payroll remotely is collecting employees’ leave and attendance data. This ultimately decides how many days the organization is going to pay each employee for, and it may be even more variable than usual right now. To keep up, your system needs to be agile.

Cloud-based systems offer an advantage, as they are inherently capable of allowing people to work from where they are. HR and payroll systems based in the cloud also come with features that are specifically useful for remote work, like web check-ins and geolocation-based attendance tracking that gives HR staff the up-to-the-minute attendance data they need.

Trusting software that is compliant by design

Managing your business compliance can be tough during this time. In some countries, there will be temporary regulation changes, some countries propose to defer the tax payments to a later date. All these timely measures are definitely helpful for the business owners but those compliance policy changes are still rules that has to be followed.

Having a payroll system that is compliant by design or with ability to quickly adapt to changing regulations can make a big difference. While any good payroll software makes it possible to calculate taxes accurately and keep your business on a legal footing, cloud-based software offers the extra advantage of swiftly adapting to changing tax laws. Because it allows the payroll staff to work from where they are, data validation, tax-reports generation, and secure collaboration are a cinch.

Digitizing processes through self-service

HRs always have many priorities to work on, so it helps when they can delegate some of the routine work to employees. This is the perfect time to give the traditional pen-and-paper systems a break and start digitizing operations wherever possible.

Some cloud-based payroll systems come with self-service options where the information collected is inherently digital, freeing up HR time. Employees can submit investment proofs and reimbursement requests online, from wherever they are, for the HR department to validate. This helps to get employee expenses reimbursed as quickly as possible, which is especially important right now.

Digitized systems can also automate post-payroll activities like payslip distribution and payroll accounting. In turn, this can speed up your payroll, reduce enquiries to your HRs, and create space for HRs to focus on their top-priority communication tasks.

The way forward

Many organizations are currently planning for their employees to work remotely for significant periods of time. While there are plenty of business priorities to address, payroll is vital for businesses to continue their operations and maintain their staff. Fortunately, payroll departments can depend on cloud technology to help them navigate this situation, sustain their spotless compliance records, and future-proof their payroll processing operations.

Durante la crisis ocasionada por el COVID-19, Zoho Corporation ofrecerá de forma gratuita Remotely, su completa suite de aplicaciones en la nube de colaboración, asistencia remota y productividad. Así, se une a la iniciativa del Gobierno Nacional, INNpulsa Colombia y Fedesoft, para apoyar a las empresas locales.

En las últimas semanas, el mundo ha tenido que enfrentarse a los estragos sociales y económicos que ha ocasionado la llegada del COVID-19. La necesidad de que los ciudadanos permanezcan en sus hogares, está afectando directamente la operación de miles de organizaciones en el país.

En muchos casos, la crisis económica las está llevando a cerrar sus operaciones al no contar con los recursos para adquirir soluciones en la nube que les permitan adoptar esquemas de trabajo remoto.

Por esta razón, Zoho Corporation ha decidido entregar completamente gratis Zoho Remotely, una completa suite de diez aplicaciones en la nube para comunicarse y colaborar con equipos, hacer seguimiento del trabajo y dar soporte remoto a sus clientes desde cualquier parte del mundo. Esta suite estará disponible sin costo para todas las organizaciones interesadas, hasta el próximo 1 de julio.

Para acceder a este beneficio, los interesados solo deben registrarse en el sitio web de Zoho Remotely: https://www.zoho.com/es-xl/remotely/. En este sitio web también podrán encontrar una descripción detallada de cada una de las aplicaciones que componen la suite.

Nos unimos a la iniciativa de Gobierno Nacional, INNpulsa Colombia y Fedesoft para aportar de forma gratuita

Acceso ilimitado a la suite Zoho Remotely, hasta el 1 de julio de 2020, cuando esperamos que haya pasado la emergencia causada por COVID-19. Este producto está compuesto por las aplicaciones de Zoho: Cliq, Meeting, ShowTime, WorkDrive, Projects, Sprints, Assist, Writer, Sheet y Show.

#EsAhoraColombia momento de unirnos porque #ColombiaEmprendeEinnova

¡Todos somos parte de la solución!

Para conocer más de Zoho Remotely, por favor dé clic en el siguiente enlace: https://www.zoho.com/es-xl/remotely/

From a business point of view, the coronavirus pandemic has made it more important than ever to stay connected with customers. It’s crucial to have clear communication strategies in place to answer the questions our customers are bound to have when faced with such a large-scale change. While the coronavirus is obviously an extreme example, this change could also be something far simpler, like a new industry-wide policy announcement. During such times, customer relationships are all about maintaining your customers’ trust in your business.

Mass emails are the go-to medium for communicating critical information during such times. Don’t let the word “mass” confuse you, though. Even a mass communication strategy requires a scalpel approach, and you should keep the following points in mind when creating a plan tailored for your customers’ needs.

Be clear in your message content

Naturally, customers would like some reassurance that you have everyone’s best interests at heart. However, vague platitudes can only get you so far. Include concrete answers on how your business has or will be affected. Are your offices functioning on a reduced capacity? Will your shipments be delayed? Has manufacturing been paused? Even if your news isn’t positive, being upfront about it will earn your customers’ appreciation. If you have new business processes in place, explain them clearly. For example, if you run a food delivery service, continually emphasize that you now offer zero contact delivery—provide a step-by-step breakdown of what it is and how it works. Finally, make it easy for recipients to engage with or respond to your emails. Highlight any dedicated hotline numbers, lead them to a dedicated landing page with relevant business updates, or provide links for them to track their orders. Simplicity and clarity are key in times of confusion.

Put in some thought about your target audience

Mass messages don’t necessarily have to go out to your entire audience base. Your content can vary with different customer segments. You should tailor your messages based on geography, lead type, product interest, or any other relevant differentiating factors. You can even go deeper, and segment them based on their volume of business, how engaged they are with your brand, and so on. Choosing the right niche within a wide lead or customer base helps make your content appear more personal, and therefore relevant, to each recipient.

Decide who your messenger is, and who receives customer responses

Messages are best received when they come from a trusted source. Obviously, a note from the CEO will have a higher open rate than one from a generic support ID. A message from the sales rep a lead or customer has had contact with in the past will appear more personal. Select your messenger with care to increase the chances of your message being distributed effectively. Conversely, you should also be deliberate in choosing who will receive your customers’ responses. If you expect your customers to respond with standard questions, you can redirect these to your support team. If you are expecting high level, non-standard responses, you can opt to send them directly to a concerned manager.

Schedule messages and follow-ups at appropriate times

Aiming for high open rates, impressions, or engagement is a standard priority with any message you send out. In times of change, however, it becomes even more critical that your message is seen by a majority of your customer base. While you may have an idea of the best time to send out an email, these times may vary if your customers are going through a period of change as well. You should take the opportunity to monitor open rates more closely. It’s okay to send out messages a bit more frequently, since message distribution is a higher priority. Finally, if you have several distinct updates to share, you can send out multiple follow-ups. You can plan a series of three to four short emails and send them out in a clear flow based on those who have received or opened the previous messages.

Automate response steps and track message performance

Sending out a high volume of emails might result in a high volume increase of redundant manual tasks like data entry, call scheduling, and so forth. Where possible, you should automate these response actions. For instance, if you send out a mail asking your customers if they would like to speak to a company rep, you can schedule calls with those who respond. You can also schedule calls with customers in case of an email bounce. Or, you could create follow-up tasks to check personally on their order status if they engage with mails talking about shipment changes. Doing all of this automatically reduces a substantial amount of overhead and streamlines business operations. Finally, you should regularly track the statistics for all of these emails and refine your messaging or targeting if needed.

To reach out to your customer base, you may also choose to disseminate critical information via SMS, social media, advertisements, and other mass communication channels suitable to your business. While the majority of this article applies to email communication, it can be relevant to other channels as well. Zoho CRM comes with features to manage and track both mass emails and social media communications. CRM also includes a host of useful integrations for SMS communications. You can use all of these features to implement your mass communication strategy remotely and analyze its performance.

Mass customer communication is just one element of your sales framework. The upcoming posts in this series will highlight various other such elements. With Zoho CRM, you can build and implement your sales strategy all from the comfort of your home. Visit our website to gain a holistic look into how Zoho CRM is the perfect remote sales software.

These are unprecedented times which have dramatically changed our daily lives. Schools and colleges are suspended, and students and trainees are losing precious time in classes. This is impacting their academic and skills development progress.

While we know the situation in the world can feel unsettling, virtual classroom software is here to help. The most asked question about online training sessions is about interaction with students since the teacher is not physically in front of the class. Most people think that engagement and satisfaction go down significantly when the face to face element is lost. We however, emphatically disagree.

Read on to see how Zoho ShowTime can offer a comprehensive training platform for your employee training and student education exercises—just like you’d do in a brick-and-mortar classroom.

Virtual classrooms offer incomparable convenience and flexibility!

Virtual classrooms can be attended from anywhere—a bedroom, garage, backyard, or any other place deemed fit—all anyone needs is a laptop or smartphone with an internet connection. Even better? There’s no traveling involved—the class comes to the trainee. Brilliant!

Given the current crisis, it’s adviced to self-isolate and work from home. With virtual classrooms, you get the benefit of safety and defense from the virus, while still getting access to outstanding learning experiences on your schedules. There is no physical classroom that can match that.

Student-trainer interaction takes the spotlight.

Let’s address the elephant in the room—real-time classroom interaction. In a traditional brick-and-mortar classroom,  opinions are shared, questions asked and answered, examples described, and naturally high levels of engagement and interaction among students, peers and trainers. But this engagement isn’t a result of physical proximity.

Showtime is the perfect tool for delivering classroom style, face-to-face sessions, full of features to that ensure every virtual session is engaging and interactive—just like the real deal. The trainer can keep the students engaged mid-sessions with polls. Rich chat features allow for real-time communication between peers and trainers, while screen-shares, shared learning materials, handouts, and whiteboards make the online classroom a complete substitute for the traditional experience. You can also use Zoho ShowTime’s co-trainer option to introduce l subject matter experts from around the world to your students.

Trainers can also assess the trainees’ participation in the session, share great questions with the class, and record the session as it unfolds. The recording can later be sent to the participants who missed the session or want to review it, making sure that everyone can get the information, at their own pace, as many times as they’d like.

Every student is unique—curating on-demand content for self-paced study.

Want to train employees abroad? Finding it a challenge to keep up with time zones? Does your institute provide self-study material or offer certification courses? If the answer to any of those questions is a “yes”, then Zoho ShowTime is the solution for you.

You can upload course videos for employees and trainees to watch at their convenience. As a trainer, you can also share hand-outs as reference material. And you can follow up with tests and quizzes to make sure the information is hitting home. 

Virtual or physical, learning is always taking place.

In conclusion, virtual classrooms leverage the best of remote teaching technologies to make learning an easier and more convenient experience. They also help significantly lower training costs while providing vastly superior reach for students and teachers both.

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Zoho ShowTime is a single comprehensive tool for all your remote teaching needs. If you’d like to experience ShowTime for yourself, please sign up here. Follow ShowTime’s Twitter handle to stay updated about the product, as well as receive tips and tricks on how to become a successful trainer.

Gone are the days when manufacturing industries, construction and software companies were the only major consumers of project management tools. Every industry has slowly evolved to understand the importance of using a project management methodology to handle all their tasks systemically.

ITS, a dental college in Northern India has started managing all their academic activities using Zoho Projects, our project management tool.

Dr. Gagandeep Arora, their Dean and a veteran in the educational industry, tells us how Zoho Projects has made life easier for him. His favorite feature in Projects is Templates. Dr. Arora says, “It took me 12 hours to plan a conference in 2018. And in 2020, using Projects, it took me just 3 minutes to plan the same conference”. 

In 2018, when Dr. Arora had to plan an international conference, he spent a lot of time organizing it by creating tasks, milestones, custom fields and statuses, and assigning them to the right people. The templates feature helped Dr. Arora plan his conference in 2020 without having to redo everything he did in 2018. This also reduces the time and effort he would have to spend on planning other conferences in the future.

Mr. Vijay Sharma, Director of Admin Operations at ITS, spends most of his time on Zoho Projects monitoring the wide range of reports that are available. 

Our Resource Utilization chart helps him understand how occupied his team is, helping him delegate work items effectively to strike the right balance. Another interesting way Mr. Sharma uses these reports is to rate staff performance based on the data that’s available from the Planned vs Actual report and Task Reports. 

This helps him understand the performance of the ITS Dental College team during that specific academic year and make an informed decision while finalizing their Annual Performance Review. 

Mr. Ashutosh Singh, the Head of Operations, is someone who is always busy with meetings and not often found at his desk. He uses the Projects mobile app to approve requests and assign tasks to individuals, helping him stay on top of things, even when he is on the go. 

Since most of the ITS Dental College professors are at times busy traveling to global conferences, the collaboration features that Zoho Projects offers have been a great help to them. The integration with Zoho Meetings, for example, helps them get together for a quick digital meeting, no matter which part of the world they are in.

And that’s how ITS Dental college uses Zoho Projects to manage their work more efficiently. We’d love to hear your story as well and publish it here, to share with the whole Zoho community.

Submit your story

When there’s upheaval in the market, small and medium enterprises often take the first hit. And while larger companies have business continuity plans (BCPs) in place, individual teams within those companies often struggle to establish a setup that works for everyone. Why do SMEs, and individual teams at big enterprises, struggle? A lack of preparedness.

Many organizations face hurdles when it comes to equipping themselves to handle emergencies. We’re all human, and we’re sometimes wary of technology, or just set in our ways. We might prioritize today’s deliverables over tomorrow’s preparedness. We think “this can wait,” but the recent global crisis has taught us that the perfect time to prepare never arrives.

While having a business continuity plan is a whole topic in itself, for an SME that’s already been hurled into the remote work world, or for a leader heading a core team, here are some tips to help you steer clear of productivity pitfalls:

Stay focused

While letting your teammates know what you’ve done and what’s pending on their end is important, some people can go overboard and wind up just talking shop. How do you ensure task continuity? Simple. Use a workflow automation tool to run your process. Your tool will automatically notify you on what you need to do, and if you’re a manager, it will help you keep a tab on all your team’s work items.

Capture every detail

With processes come task dependencies, and dependencies aren’t just limited to human resources. For a process to flow smoothly, all the information about the process, like the requestor’s name, its priority, and related documentation must also be shared. When you’re all sitting one desk away from each other, getting what you need is easy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case when you work remotely. Missing important documents, or sending outdated ones is a risk, and it might not be discovered until much later. A workflow management tool, in addition to running your processes, will also help document all the details of every task passing through the system, and make it accessible for everyone involved.

Leverage work insights

In your office, all you had to do to stay up to date was ask your team members what they’d done, and record work progress on spreadsheets. But that can be a time-consuming task, especially if the entire team is working remotely. Well, now’s the perfect opportunity to map out all your processes into neat workflows and begin running all of it using a workflow automation tool. This way, you know everything that’s going on with your team—how much is pending, and who’s doing what—so you can allocate work accordingly. The exhaustive process data, performance insights, and custom reports provided by your tool will make tracking and reporting much easier.

Work from mobile

Trying times lead to revelations. Many jobs that were previously not possible from a “work from home” situation have suddenly become remote-friendly. This has given businesses the opportunity to revisit their policies and think of efficient ways to enable remote working. What better way to do it, than to switch to a tool that lets you track your work right from your phone? If you could simply use your phone to get notified of something that’s come your way, or to retrieve pending tasks, then you’re truly empowering your business and your workforce.

Ensure business continuity

If you’re a leader, you might manage a business, product, or service. But you’re also responsible for the team of people working with you. Analyze risks, identify solutions, and implement security measures for every functioning unit of your team—starting from data backups to ensuring workarounds for things you usually get done by working together. Having every possibility thought out and prepared for will benefit not just your business, but also your workforce. Remember, loyalty is hard-earned.

For organizations that can’t go remote

Hospitals, insurance companies, banks, essential commodity suppliers, transportation and shipping companies, media and telecom companies—what do all of them have in common? The nature of their work doesn’t let them go remote, or cease operations. How can such industries ensure their work goes on unhindered during emergencies?

Here’s how a tool like Orchestly can help essential services stay prepared:

• Define your communication command center, and establish emergency communication lines to keep staff informed.

• Make all the latest emergency preparedness materials accessible from a single location.

• Quickly onboard new staff, and retrain or cross-train existing staff.

• Record and keep track of all employees, equipment, issues, services, and processes.

• Expedite purchase requests for essential equipment.

• Conduct quality testing for manufactured/purchased equipment.

• Ensure automated and on-demand sanitation and disinfection services within your premises.

• Integrate Orchestly to run in sync with your usual applications—HIS, AMS, MRP, TMS, and ERP—so you can run your processes effortlessly.

During dire times such as this, you need to have all your systems in place to ensure work goes on uninterrupted—and for this, you can count on Orchestly.

If you’re ready to adapt to these changes, adopt Orchestly and empower your business and workforce to run smoothly, regardless of where you are.

The rapid increase in the number of Coronavirus cases has made so many organizations adopt remote working. But the increased demand for remote work is not only due to the ongoing crisis.

As technology advances, remote work will become more and more prevalent in the business world. During this crisis and into the future beyond it, it’s essential to ensure that HR operations keep up with these changes. With this in mind, we’ve put together the different ways in which Zoho People facilitates remote workforce management:

• Provides a hassle-free remote onboarding experience to new employees by consolidating all the required documents in a single location

• Helps HR professionals and managers provide performance reviews to employees even while working remotely

• Enables employees to mark their attendance regardless of their location

• Organizes and handles employee cases efficiently

• Allows employees to communicate and collaborate with each other

• Records the time employees spend on different projects and eases payroll processing

• Empowers employees to access essential HR documents and provides information about their attendance hours, time-off balances, insurance, and more.

• Facilitates remote learning and helps course instructors conduct live online sessions

• Collects vital information from employees and stores it online

Read more about how Zoho people facilitates remote work in our HR Knowledge Hive.

Let’s be honest. We all have sat through it at least once in our lives – a boring presentation pitch.

Poorly designed and delivered pitches will leave your ideas dead in the water, but presenting them expertly takes a lot of time, dedication, and effort.

That’s why we’re offering some guidelines to help amplify your efficacy and engagement in your marketing presentations.

Start with a bang

70% of marketers believe that presenting interactive content is key for engaging the audience.

Compelling data and interesting facts keep your audience engaged. Using these elements at the beginning of your presentation makes it even easier to grab their attention.

Oli Gardner, who is famous for his mind-blowing presentations, follows this formula well. He presents a few pessimistic, doomsday-style slides and then, once the audience is sufficiently bummed out, he swoops in with good news.

Slides from Oli Gardner’s 2014 HeroConf presentation, I Give A Sh!t About Your Conversion Rates

But not all of us are Oli! We’ve got our own speciality.

To make it easier, draw out a “presentation path” and identify the weakest sections. Map out each and every slide in the form of a graph.

If a slide portrays positive information then map it above the baseline, if not, do the opposite. If your final graph doesn’t exhibit a series of sine waves – as taking your audience for a roller coaster will surely make your ideas withstand the test of time.

Rely on built-in templates

Marketing templates not only allow you to get a head start in the design process, but they also provide you with unlimited options to customize your presentation to fit your ideas perfectly.

Fine-tuning them further to reflect your brand identity makes your slides unique and ensures your audience will remember your points even after your talk is over.

Besides just presentation templates, Show goes a step beyond its competitors by offering Slide Templates where you can choose from professionally designed individual slides and plug them into your deck.

This way, your customization options become unlimited.

Maintain minimalism. Configure consistency.

Gone are the days when presenters impressed their audience with loud animations and over-done visuals.

Today, the concept of design is moving towards minimalism, leaving traditional design techniques at crossroads. Thus, it’s always better to tailor your content to your audience to best convey messages.

Put more emphasis on the visual elements, such as customizable shapes, infographics and smart elements. Likewise, a good color scheme ensures consistency without distracting from the essentials you’re presenting.

Convey actionable takeaways

There’s no point in learning fascinating new data if you can’t figure out how to use it to your advantage. Great presentations do not just highlight problems but also provide clear instruction on how to fix them.

 

As you can see, the presenter is posting users with a challenge.

But unless for the below image which provides a solution, the above slide means nothing to your audience.

Provide actionable takeaways to your audience

Use Gifs for Reaction Slides  

If you want an easy laugh, gifs are the way to go.

Giphy has an enormous library of gifs and excellent collection of media.

And the good news is, Show’s integration with Giphy simply makes it easier for you to explore and add GIFs to your slides without switching apps. Elegant!

Review. Rehearse. Repurpose.

There’s nothing more mortifying than standing on stage alongside a slideshow riddled with grammatical errors. This would be a nightmare that would haunt you even after the session is over.

The best way to avoid this mishap is to review your presentations multiple times. Proofreading is a great start, but you may overlook simple errors, so ask your coworkers or friends to review if possible.

When your team reviews your presentation, you can get some valuable insights into what makes sense and where you fall flat. Take the time to understand their suggestions and adjustments before you get on stage.

Practice makes perfect

Finally, when you do your formal presentation, ask the audience a few questions along the way. Ask these in a way that doesn’t put anyone on the spot, and that the audience might have a little fun with. If possible, try to come up with a joke or two they’ll like.

So those are our best tips for how to create and deliver a great marketing presentation. We hope these have been helpful.

Digital recruitment is more than just posting vacancies on online job boards and social media. It involves a whole host of digital tools and strategies that span the entire recruitment process, from sourcing to hiring.

Examples include:

Digital recruitment is the process of using technology and the internet to find, attract, assess, and hire candidates to fill your open job roles. You might already be using one or two of the methods listed above. However, an optimized digital recruitment strategy will use several modern tools. Here’s some of the benefits you can get from digitizing your recruitment process:

• A more extensive reach: Recruiters can reach remote and passive candidates from anywhere in the world.

• Greater efficiency: Sourcing, selecting, and hiring candidates takes less time with better communication tools and automation.

• A higher ROI: Though an initial investment is needed, a digital recruitment strategy allows recruiters to hire top-performing candidates in a shorter time frame.

How to build a robust digital recruitment strategy:

1. Create and share relevant content

Refine your messaging so you can engage with different groups of candidates more efficiently. This means taking the time to discover who your ideal candidates are and using this to fuel your copy. This targeted approach will also give you a better idea of where to share the content. For instance:

• Your company website

• External blogs

• Social media handles

• Email newsletters

There are many strategies that you can use to make your content more compelling for a specific audience. For example:

• Using stories and testimonials from current employees

• Publishing industry salary reports

• Posting industry news and updates

Research what your potential candidates are interested in before launching a digital recruitment strategy.

It’s also worth noting that, to create and manage content effectively, you’ll need to discover the needs of your candidates and provide them solutions. The better your solutions, the more you distinguish yourself from your competition.

This means tailoring content to engage with your ideal job seeker. To do this, you must understand their:

• Online habits

• Interests

• Lifestyle

• Average expected income

With this info at your disposal, you can better create informative pictures, infographics, or videos that explain and eventually convince potentials to apply to work for you.

2. Have a solid social media recruiting strategy

A strong social media presence is vital in today’s recruitment industry. Once your company profiles are up and running, try to publish informative posts or videos and engage in discussions with potential candidates.

As the ongoing COVID-19 crisis continues, we hope you’re safe with your family, coping as best as you can.

Many major industries have been affected by the Coronavirus, but recruitment hasn’t completely frozen. Remote work is still highly in demand across the globe, and finding qualified candidates to fill these roles will involve changing your mindset about traditional hiring. Switching to a remote hiring platform will help you stay ahead of the curve now and in the future after COVID-19.

Here are some prerequisites for building a remote hiring platform:

Build a strong employer brand online 

An employer brand refers to a company’s identity and reputation as an employer. Having a good employer reputation helps you to attract and retain qualified talent. Provide a great candidate experience right from the start by accurately describing the way your company operates. Assure your online presence defines you as a trustworthy, high-profile company that allows candidates to visualize themselves as a member of your team.

To get to that level, create a powerful careers page and an attractive social channel that explains the culture of your organization. Include employee testimonials from remote workers to serve as inspiration for people who are considering applying.

“I was the first-ever remote employee at Zoho. When I joined back in 2008, remote working wasn’t really a thing. Fast-forward to now, and the world has changed drastically. The Coronavirus has accelerated this change, but the change was coming all along. Our modern-day technology and the internet allows most office professionals to do their jobs no matter where they are.

In all these years of working remotely, I have truly come to believe that work is what you do, not a place you go.”

Meera Sapra- Product Manager, Zoho

Digitize your recruitment process

Still figuring out ways to move your team to a fully virtual work environment? You’ll need a comprehensive set of tech tools to run your business from a distance. Screen applicants virtually with video interviewing platforms and connect with top talent from all over the world. Reduce time to hire and automate your recruitment process by creating a video interview invitation email template. Send them to your huge database of candidates, and shortlist the best fit.

With e-sign, you can get rid of the pen and paper and authorize all paperwork online. Send call letters, interview invites, non-disclosure agreements, application forms, and offer letters directly to your candidates’ email inboxes for digital signing.

Find talent and let talent find you

Select the best places to broadcast your job openings. Reach out to the most talented candidates, and stay updated on all ways they apply for jobs. Consider advertising on popular job boards and social networking sites. If your job is location-specific, it might be a good idea to advertise your job openings on local job boards. Looking to fill remote positions? Here’s the ultimate list of the best remote job websites.

Interact with candidates in real-time 

Recruiters need new, innovative tools to reach candidates where they are actively looking for jobs. One way to achieve high candidate engagement is through text recruiting. With the highest open and response rate, text recruiting offers an incredible opportunity to reach and connect with candidates in real-time. Proactively reach passive candidates and draw from a library of quality questions.

If candidates can’t easily apply for your jobs using their mobile devices, texting won’t be as effective. A mobile-friendly application for your job listings is important.

Participate in virtual career fairs

A virtual career fair is an online event where employers meet job seekers in a virtual environment using chat rooms, teleconferencing, webcasts, and webinars to exchange information about job openings. Applicants can upload their resumes and match with an employer’s job description to move on to the interview process. This limited duration job search has proven successful for many.

 Virtual career fairs can be much more targeted than traditional career fairs. Eliminate bias and encourage candidates to give their first best impression.

Collaborative hiring is the key  

Whether you’re hiring for remote roles or you are a remote recruiter yourself, connecting applicants with the perfect job will remain a priority no matter where you are. Bring your entire recruitment team onboard and collectively discuss your next great hire. They can be involved in the initial stages of remote hiring. Review candidates together, add notes and comments, and assess based on the skills required for the job.

We hope this checklist will help you break away from traditional hiring methods. With modern technology, you can make the most of the increased demand for remote work. Long after this crisis is resolved, one of the lasting impressions will be in the area of remote employment and recruiting. Get started now, and stay competitive as your business grows.

Please reach out to us with any questions at [email protected].

Stay home. Stay safe ✌️