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March 2018

avocado toast - PayReel
  • Heidi McLean
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The avocado toast generation and the case for hiring Millennials
The avocado toast generation and the case for hiring Millennials 5397 3598 Heidi McLean

Gone are the days when you could rely on your workers to put in their time at the office and stay loyal to one company from cradle to grave. These self-indulgent, entitled youngsters want to get promoted just for showing up. Millennials want avocado on their toast, purpose in their jobs, and a healthy work/life balance. Ugh. Let’s put aside any bewilderment about the fancy toast and $5 lattés with frilly foam designs for a moment and consider the case for hiring Millennials–those born between 1981 and 1990:

 

  1. Millennials work hard

    Boomers may grimace and fight the urge to growl, “Pay attention!” when they see young, talented managers texting away in a meeting. But the truth is, Millennials work really hard. They may even be the most workaholic generation yet.

  2. Work/life balance is good for business

    It may come as a surprise that it’s just as hard for Millennials to achieve as anyone (noted above), but these young laborers do value a work/life balance. Facilitating and cultivating this balance is actually good for business.

  3. Diversity is good for business

    Each generation brings a unique set of attributes to the workplace that, properly interwoven, can create a focused, exuberant, high performing workplace. Keeping multi-generational workers engaged is the key. Engagement equals performance, and performance equals results.

  4. They’re the most highly-educated generation in history

    As education opportunities have opened up to men, women, and all ethnicities, this generation has become one of the most highly-educated of all time.

  5. They want to contribute to something that matters 

    People of any age will work their tails off if they’re personally connected to and inspired by their goal. They’ll give their best for something they believe in. Tap into that desire to work for a purpose, and you’ll access a goldmine of creativity, talent, and time

The bottom line

Avocado toast has become the shorthand for all that’s supposedly wrong with Millennials but it’s a tale as old as time. Until they’re the older generation, the young generation is always the worst. Through the lens of hindsight, the young rabble rousers of the 60s became celebrated flower children. Recognizing any generation’s weaknesses and strengths allows hiring managers to leverage those strengths to build a solid team.

 

About PayReel

At PayReel, we minimize the time and effort it takes to get you ready for your project, make sure you get paid quick and easy, and have Client Relationship Managers on call around the clock to answer your questions. All you have to do is call 303-526-4900 or email us. The PayReel team makes event payroll easier, faster, and seamless.

The next time you work an event or a production, tell your supervisor you love working with the PayReel team.

 

  • Heidi McLean
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How have “work relationships” changed as offices become obsolete?
How have “work relationships” changed as offices become obsolete? 150 150 Heidi McLean

Gone are the days when “work relationships” are made up of people we see on a regular basis. We can literally have an entire functioning relationship without ever seeing a person or even hearing their voice. Talk about an evolution from the days when sharing an office building was a prerequisite. Here are some of the biggest ways work relationships have changed with the evolving workplace.

From office space to any space: Working in the same vicinity as people used to be a necessity. If you couldn’t walk down the hall to knock on someone’s door or get together in a conference room to discuss the next initiative, you couldn’t get much done. Now, you can work from anywhere. That means you can have meetings across time zones and without even leaving your home. You may still see your co-workers virtually, but you’re less likely to have spontaneous conversations at the proverbial water cooler.

Blurred lines in the work/life balance: There used to be a somewhat forced separation of work and home. While you could take your work home with you, it was a lot harder to reach people with a random thought or question late at night or on the weekend. You were unlikely to call someone’s home and risk waking their kids at 9 PM. But shooting off an email or a text at 9 PM is socially acceptable and reading work communication as you’re going to bed or first thing in the morning is expected. Getting responses in a few minutes is so much the norm that a “delayed” response of even 10 minutes can cause concern. Now, it almost seems like you literally have to go underground (on the subway) or take a flight in order to get a break from electronic communications.

Communication is easier and harder: With this level of access, it’s incredibly easy to communicate in a moment. It’s incredibly easy to reach people and get a response. But we arguably have just as many communication errors since we can’t truly read people over email or text and emojis don’t quite replace seeing a live human face. Replacing live communication almost completely has its own challenges.

The bottom line

Work relationships have changed massively in the digital age. FaceTime often substitutes for face time, emojis often substitute for actual facial expressions, and all our “time savers” eat away at more and more of our time. It will be interested to see if the pendulum swings back to more personal interaction or if we will lean more and more on technology to replace the live interactions that used to be necessary.

About PayReel

At PayReel, we minimize the time and effort it takes to get you ready for your project, make sure you get paid quick and easy, and have Client Relationship Managers on call around the clock to answer your questions. All you have to do is call 303-526-4900 or email us. The PayReel team makes event payroll easier, faster, and seamless.

The next time you work an event or a production, tell your supervisor you love working with the PayReel team.

work relationships - PayReel
  • Heidi McLean
  • No Comments

How have “work relationships” changed as offices have become obsolete?
How have “work relationships” changed as offices have become obsolete? 400 266 Heidi McLean

Gone are the days when “work relationships” are made up of people we see on a regular basis. We can literally have an entire functioning relationship without ever seeing a person or even hearing their voice. Talk about an evolution from the days when sharing an office building was a prerequisite. Here are some of the biggest ways work relationships have changed with the evolving workplace.

From office space to any space: Working in the same vicinity as people used to be a necessity. If you couldn’t walk down the hall to knock on someone’s door or get together in a conference room to discuss the next initiative, you couldn’t get much done. Now, you can work from anywhere. That means you can have meetings across time zones and without even leaving your home. You may still see your co-workers virtually, but you’re less likely to have spontaneous conversations at the proverbial water cooler.

Blurred lines in the work/life balance: There used to be a somewhat forced separation of work and home. While you could take your work home with you, it was a lot harder to reach people with a random thought or question late at night or on the weekend. You were unlikely to call someone’s home and risk waking their kids at 9 PM. But shooting off an email or a text at 9 PM is socially acceptable and reading work communication as you’re going to bed or first thing in the morning is expected. Getting responses in a few minutes is so much the norm that a “delayed” response of even 10 minutes can cause concern. Now, it almost seems like you literally have to go underground (on the subway) or take a flight in order to get a break from electronic communications.

Communication is easier and harder: With this level of access, it’s incredibly easy to communicate in a moment. It’s incredibly easy to reach people and get a response. But we arguably have just as many communication errors since we can’t truly read people over email or text and emojis don’t quite replace seeing a live human face. Replacing live communication almost completely has its own challenges.

The bottom line

Work relationships have changed massively in the digital age. FaceTime often substitutes for face time, emojis often substitute for actual facial expressions, and all our “time savers” eat away at more and more of our time. It will be interested to see if the pendulum swings back to more personal interaction or if we will lean more and more on technology to replace the live interactions that used to be necessary.

About PayReel

At PayReel, we minimize the time and effort it takes to get you ready for your project, make sure you get paid quick and easy, and have Client Relationship Managers on call around the clock to answer your questions. All you have to do is call 303-526-4900 or email us. The PayReel team makes event payroll easier, faster, and seamless.

The next time you work an event or a production, tell your supervisor you love working with the PayReel team.

telephone booth - PayReel
  • Heidi McLean
  • No Comments

Throwback Thursday: Hiring contingent workers pre e-anything
Throwback Thursday: Hiring contingent workers pre e-anything 4404 2477 Heidi McLean

On the rare occasion I pay a bill the old-fashioned way, I marvel. It wasn’t so very long ago that, for each bill, we’d sit down, handwrite a check, and then actually put it in the mail. Just as online bill pay has become the way of the modern world, so too have email, job boards, and social networking sites have proven the ultimate game changer for hiring practices. They’ve made a once-tedious and manual task more efficient and also brought the phrases “freelance” and “work from home” or “work remotely” into our modern language and culture.

Hiring short-term engagements via pre-electronic mail, pre-E-lance, and pre-e-anything was a totally different ballgame. As the founder of PayReel, I’ve had a front-row seat to that game and its remarkable evolution. It’s hard to believe we have gone from faxing and phoning to pointing and clicking in my personal 30-plus years in the business. It’s even harder to imagine the days before my involvement.

A brief history of hiring contingent workers pre-internet

Sometimes I wonder how anything got done before we had the power to hold the whole world wide web in our hands. But early hiring tools included job fairs, notices on community bulletin boards, government employment offices, or even a good old-fashioned “now hiring” sign. Here are some of the significant markers in the history of hiring contingent workers.

The 1800s, “free lances” fight for pay: While freelancing as we know it today may feel like a rather new phenomenon, the word’s origins date as far back as the 1800s. Merriam-Webster defines “free lances” as soldiers who sold their soldiering to the highest bidder.

The 1700s, “Help Wanted” ads appear: The Boston News Letters began carrying ads in 1704. Paying by the word, employers put an ad in the classifieds and waited for a response via snail mail. One such ad, from 1892, would be subject to anti-discrimination laws today. It sought, “A young lady of German parentage; must be a 36 bust and understand bookkeeping on a small scale.”  

1890, Consultancy and recruiting agencies incorporate: Before online databases, where you could vet and possibly even book talent from a pool of candidates in minutes, we had telephones. Hiring managers might reach for the Yellow Pages and start down the list of consultancy agencies. The very first of such, Arthur D. Little Inc., was founded in 1886 and incorporated in 1906. The company broadened over the years but at first, focused on technical research. In a sense, as someone hired to do a very specific job, these early consultants were the first freelancers. Like today’s freelancers, they kept companies from having to hire full-time. Similar firms cemented their place in the U.S. economy in the 1900s.

The 1980s, Fax machines take over office buildings: While inventor Alexander Bain first sent an image over the wire in 1843, the fax machine didn’t make its way to frequent commercial use until the 1980s. These miracle workers reduced turnaround time by taking resumes out of mailboxes and into the printer room. Employment agencies (who still had to pull resumes from their giant paper databases) could now send candidate details to employers in minutes, leading to speedier vetting and hiring. While bulky by today’s standards, the fax machine was one of the early innovations that led to greater efficiency in the hiring space.  

Significant moments in hiring contingent workers post-internet

Of course, with the internet, things really picked up. In evolutionary terms, it’s comparable to a leap from apehood to personhood.

1994, Email brings mail to inboxes everywhere: We all know what happened when email came out. The whole world changed. Suddenly, candidates could send resumes as digital files that were instantly received and could be printed in perfect quality. Individual candidates sent resumes as attachments and agents sent them to employers electronically, too, making rolodexes and endless file cabinets of resumes obsolete. This was the tool that made a paperless world imaginable.

1995-1998, Online job boards post positions: Yep, it’s the biggie. Platforms like CareerBuilder, HotJobs and Monster took over the internet. Email brought mailing resumes to a halt and then these job boards nearly replaced emailing. This is where filters that allowed hiring managers and recruiters to sort candidates (by skills and location, for example) came into play.

2003, Online interviewing tools : Video chat services such as Skype allowed recruitment agencies to conduct initial interviews online, no matter where in the world the candidate happened to be. This reduced travel costs and turnaround time. It also reduced dress time for the candidates, who only had to look professional from the waist up.

About PayReel

Producing multimedia content and executing live events is chaotic. At PayReel, we make sure our clients can hire who they want when they want and that everyone is paid properly. Leave the details up to the PayReel team so you can focus on pulling off a flawless production. Contact us anytime at 303-526-4900 or by emailing us here.

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