Urban Pioneer Spurs Downtown Growth

Urban Pioneer Spurs Downtown Growth

Doug Barry is showing his commitment to Dayton by taking BarryStaff, Inc., downtown.
By Jamie Kenny

Doug Barry has gotten a lot of attention lately. His commitment to downtown Dayton and his love for the city have been contagious as he begins construction on a new building for BarryStaff, Inc., near the Dayton Dragons’ stadium at the corner of Monument and Webster Streets.

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6 Reasons Companies Outsource their Recruiting

6 Reasons Companies Outsource Recruiting

1. They’re Having Trouble Finding Great Candidates
Yes, even in this economy organizations are having trouble finding the right people to fill their open positions. No, they don’t always have this problem because they are being too picky or because they want to pay a lower-than-standard salary. If the organization is serious about finding great candidates and getting those positions filled, then they may outsource their recruiting to source candidates in more places, to improve their employment branding, and/or work on the job descriptions for these positions.

2. It’s Taking Time & Resources Away from the Core Business
Not everyone is in the hiring and recruiting business, and even though most companies have some sort of recruiting function, sometimes it could take away from a business’ core. This is especially true for smaller companies, who might not necessarily have someone on staff to just work on recruiting. Here, outsourced recruiting helps them by allowing a consultant or a provider to do what they do best without taking away from what the rest of the company does best.

3. They Need to Reduce Their Turnover Rates
The turnover rate is the percentage of new hires that leave within a designated period, say the first month or two of the position. A high turnover rate can hurt a company’s bottom line, and is often a sign that there are bigger problems with the company’s recruiting functions, problems that aren’t necessarily fixed by increasing the salary or by doing a better job interviewing (although, both might help). In this case, an organization may outsource its recruiting to a recruitment process outsourcing firm to reduce the turnover rate as well as fix those bigger problems.

4. It Levels the Playing Field
Start-ups and smaller companies will outsource their recruiting because they don’t have the resources in-house to keep up with larger competitors. By outsourcing, they can level the playing field and not have to worry about losing good talent because the competitor did a better job of selling the position or offering better benefits.

5. They’re Current Recruiting Functions are Out of Control
Companies who are on the fast track, or face seasonal cycles, often have recruiting functions that are tough to handle. Fast-growing companies are having a hard time keeping up with their hiring and recruiting, while those that are seasonal may need to hire many people very quickly, only for the rest of the year to be slower. Outsourced recruiting helps these companies handle the fluctuations, or could serve as a temporary solution to a temporary problem.

6. They Need to Cut Costs
Companies outsource recruiting to reduce their costs, whether that’s labor costs, capital costs, or perhaps costs from the previous reasons. Perhaps, unfortunately, they can’t justify the staff anymore. Or, the company has already spent too much money on headhunters and recruiting fees that they’re looking for another way. Maybe the organization didn’t do a good job of creating a standardized approach to hiring, so outsourcing will provide the organization needed.

Keep in mind that outsourcing your recruiting is different from outsourcing your human resources, as the latter may include benefits, compensation, employee and labor relations, and legal issues as well as the recruiting. Although outsourcing your recruiting to a recruitment process outsourcing firm includes a cursory look and a revision of those aspects, outsourced recruiting typically looks at the hiring process from sourcing great candidates to the new employee on boarding process.

 

The Real Harm in Multitasking

You’ve likely heard that multitasking is problematic, but new studies show that it kills your performance and may even damage your brain. Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

A Special Skill?

But what if some people have a special gift for multitasking? The Stanford researchers compared groups of people based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps their performance. They found that heavy multitaskers—those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time. The frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another. Ouch.

Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.

Multitasking Lowers IQ

Research also shows that, in addition to slowing you down, multitasking lowers your IQ. A study at the University of London found that participants who multitasked during cognitive tasks experienced IQ score declines that were similar to what they’d expect if they had smoked marijuana or stayed up all night. IQ drops of 15 points for multitasking men lowered their scores to the average range of an 8-year-old child.

So the next time you’re writing your boss an email during a meeting, remember that your cognitive capacity is being diminished to the point that you might as well let an 8-year-old write it for you.

Brain Damage From Multitasking

It was long believed that cognitive impairment from multitasking was temporary, but new research suggests otherwise. Researchers at the University of Sussex in the UK compared the amount of time people spend on multiple devices (such as texting while watching TV) to MRI scans of their brains. They found that high multitaskers had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region responsible for empathy as well as cognitive and emotional control.

While more research is needed to determine if multitasking is physically damaging the brain (versus existing brain damage that predisposes people to multitask), it’s clear that multitasking has negative effects. Neuroscientist Kep Kee Loh, the study’s lead author, explained the implications: “I feel that it is important to create an awareness that the way we are interacting with the devices might be changing the way we think and these changes might be occurring at the level of brain structure.”

Learning From Multitasking

If you’re prone to multitasking, this is not a habit you’ll want to indulge—it clearly slows you down and decreases the quality of your work. Even if it doesn’t cause brain damage, allowing yourself to multitask will fuel any existing difficulties you have with concentration, organization, and attention to detail.

Multitasking in meetings and other social settings indicates low Self- and Social Awareness, two emotional intelligence (EQ) skills that are critical to success at work. TalentSmart has tested more than a million people and found that 90% of top performers have high EQs. If multitasking does indeed damage the anterior cingulate cortex (a key brain region for EQ) as current research suggests, it will lower your EQ in the process.

So every time you multitask you aren’t just harming your performance in the moment; you may very well be damaging an area of your brain that’s critical to your future success at work.