How to create work processes that your employees will like?

Work processes start from recruitment

Relations between an employee and a company begin even before signing the labor contract Experience has shown: if you want effectiveness, build work processes from scratch. This is how we do it:

Stage 0/4. Vocational training

Specialists are usually educated in universities. However, a large IT-company has more opportunities to give students experience of working with state-of-the-art technologies. That's why we built our own system for talent development:

• fundamental education based on IT-universities in Tatarstan;
• short IT special courses (Database, IT Security, etc.) provided by the company; 
• internships for students, working on real projects;
• scholarships for talented IT students.

126 people took our internship last year and 84 more studied on special courses. They are not obliged to work for ICL Services: the knowledge they gained can be used in other companies and even other spheres. Nevertheless, 52 % of graduates from our special courses decided to work with us. And every one of them is familiar with our working methods. 

Stage 1/4. Recruitment

Cooperation processes with an applicant should provide:

• access to company information. That's why we are represented on job sites, at career fairs, in social media and on other platforms, and we respond quickly;
• objective and clear evaluation. During the interview, the applicant talks to HR, technical experts and their future manager;
• comfort and care. For example, we compensate 50 % of transport expenses for applicants; new employees will get help in finding a home and handling registration.

Stage 2/4. Adaptation

After recruitment, new employees need help in on-boarding in the company and getting acquainted with the team. We have built corresponding processes: 100 % of new employees will have a buddy for the first 3 months. This is an experienced worker and "personal adviser" who will answer all questions related to work and associated issues.

Stage 3/4. Work

Apart from compliance with the labor code of Russian Federation, employees will receive:

• clear performance evaluation. Personal KPI will decompose the company's strategic goals up to the level of individual experts. Automatic evaluation eliminates subjectivity. The evaluation system meets the interests of the company and of its employees: before implementation, the system was tested for six months by 100 % of staff, which allowed us to improve the system based on feedback;
• comfortable offices and safe workplaces, reviewed by external experts;
• opportunities for education — internal and external courses (technical, soft skills, foreign language), vendor certification, internal library, "labor pool", etc. Every year 90 % of employees undergo training;
• clear "game rules". Work processes are logged in internal documents. Each employee can study them and they are mandatory for all staff, including top-managers. In non-regulated scenarios, you shall be guided by the company's code, and in critical situations (legal noncompliance, financial and reputational risk, etc.) contact the compliance manager and directors in person;
• extended compensation package:
  1. health care (private medical insurance, vaccinations, allowance for health centers for the children of employees, allowance for sports, free football, volleyball and basketball sessions); 
  2. rest and entertainment (leave allowance, holidays for employees and their families, corporate recreation center, internal tournaments, corporate discounts in more than 30 coffee shops, stores, travel firms, etc.);
  3. help in important events (zero-interest loans, allowance for weddings, birth of children and funerals of relatives);
  4. help with accommodation (relocation allowance or corporate apartment if moving from another city, housing communities for employees, allowance for mortgage interest).

Stage 4/4. Leaving the company

We keep in contact with former colleagues – for example, we invite them on corporate holidays and tell them about new job openings. In turn, our "Alumni" act as brand ambassadors and recommend our company to their friends, and sometimes they return to ICL Services.

P.S. Search, find, improve, and repeat

The figure of 83 % (the percentage of employees who would recommend our company as an employer) is not only due to well-adjusted work processes, but on dozens of other factors. We work with those factors as follows:

Search (what to improve in the company) → Find (what brings most problems) → Improve (even if it's not related to work processes) → Repeat (skip this step if you are perfect)

An example of a factor that is not directly related to work but influences employee engagement is communication and feedback. Employees need the chance to:

• ask a vital question and get an answer in a timely manner and, if necessary, from the very top of the company;
• influence events inside the company, suggest improvements and changes.

Both issues are addressed using open feedback channels. ICL Services has 13 of these, including:

• Strategy Update – personal meeting of top-managers with volunteering employees;
• expert consultations – answers from field-specific employees (HR, administration, etc.) on staff questions;
• "Red button" – a way to communicate about privacy violations, reputational risk for the company and other critical situations;
• iC-SAT – internal Customer SATisfaction – a survey to quickly evaluate the performance of internal services;
• and even an information terminal to collect feedback on the quality of food in the corporate canteen.

Result: according to a general internal survey, 95 % of employees don't have problems with information inside the company. 71 % are sure that they can address top-managers, despite occupational hierarchy.

Every year we survey employees and continuously resolve issues they encounter. Communications, recognition programs, office greening and many other issues are what we are trying to improve in addition to major work processes, in order to make working for ICL Services even more comfortable.

This approach is individual for every company. But we hope that our example will be useful for others.