Most business owners I know wish that all of their hires turned out to be star performers. Hiring with a consistent process can do wonders to boosting success in hiring. Most executives rely on their instincts when selecting a key employee. As much as I'd like to tell my executive clients that they have the infallible judgement in that respect, I can't. Instinct is subjective. Without solid information with which to define a candidate - instinct amounts to nothing more than a guess. I doubt most business owners would like their subordinate hiring managers to use the instinct method when hiring Therefore, a comprehensive and consistent evaluation process in essential.
Beginning the process is fairly simple. Define the Goals of the Job. Define the Person (traits, skills, attitudes). Define how the employee will be managed. These three things do not have to be done in a particular order. The order should vary depending on the level of responsibility and autonomy required by the position.
Hiring more top performers frees up time and energy to address the problem of low performers. The following article by Dr. John Howard offers valuable advice on how to address the problem of low performing employees and steps to help boost their value to your company.
What Can We do About Low Performers?
by John Howard, Ph.D
Every business, despite best efforts in recruiting, hiring and motivating employees, eventually faces the problem of consistently low performers. Tasks get done but seldom on time. As absenteeism and tardiness creep up, the manager gradually shifts some of the workload to other, higher-performing workers.
It's like the slow creep of some deadly disease, with the whole department or business being silently but steadily reduced in effectiveness and morale. As the manager, you wish people like this would just disappear, but it seems they never do. They just seem to hang on and on.
In some circles this is labeled "presenteeism," and having these low performers at work may be costing you more than if you paid them to stay home!
Top performers, saddled with the extra load of carrying dead weight, may simply choose to move on. Customers who interact with low performers think twice before bringing their business back to your company.
If you have low performers in your operation, and you think they will eventually go away, think again- they may have already outlasted your two predecessors and are planning a party around your eventual departure!
What can you do, then, to solve this dilemma?
Identify the problem in clear, measurable terms. If you've been meaning to set performance standards for each job in your area, now is the time. Absenteeism, tardiness, missed productivity levels and timeline delays could all become part of a set of performance standards (although you will be well advised to set these standards in their more positive polar opposite verbiage.)
Meet with your low performers, lay out the expectations and the places where performance regularly falls short and make clear what the specific expectations are for future performance. Make it clear these expectations will be tracked and frequently evaluated. Then do just that - make the consequences of failing to meet these goals clear and enforceable.
Work your plan. Execution is the key. Follow your scheduled evaluations of performance with clear feedback. If expectations are not being met, give the feedback immediately. While your fondest hope may be to see these people improve their performance, it's much more likely you are simply documenting the path to the door. Either way, timely feedback, action on promised consequences and consistent application are your keys to solving the problem.
Document your process. Since the odds are highly in favor of the eventual departure of your low performers, make sure you have clear documentation of the entire process, from identification through consequences.
If their performance, after all this effort, falls short of benchmarks, fire them!
One successful manager said, "The most expensive time an employee is on my payroll is the interval between when I decide to fire them and when they go out the door."
Because firing someone, especially someone who has been with the business for a long time, is very painful, you may find yourself procrastinating. Your delay at this stage can only compound the damage.
Following Jack Welch's advice to remove the bottom 10 percent of employees each year is not an easy path, and you may differ in your approach to making your business better, but to ignore a consistently low-performing employee is to ensure your operations will never be as good as they could be.
Of course, when it is time to hire a new employee, we would all like to avoid replicating the departed one! This is the opportunity to use a well-structured hiring process, information from assessments and other sources, background checks and any other valid information you can gather to try to add a top performer to your business.
Studies have shown top performers, in nearly any business, will out-produce low performers by anywhere from 200-to-900 percent! Imagine the effect on your company, if you could replace one low performer with one top performer Then, imagine you did it again and again... The good news: You can!
STEP ONE SURVEYII - The least you can do in refining the selection process.
Opportunities for Reducing Hire Failure - Applying Assessment Selection Criterion
A relatively large medical practice has used the Step One Survey II in its selection process for nearly two years. Recently, the practice shifted its attention to what was perceived as an unacceptable level of early hire failures (27 percent of new hires failing in 180 days or less.) The company enjoys "preferred employer" status in its market and has continued to have a high number of applicants, even as unemployment has declined.
Historically, the practice has used the results of the assessment to influence the hiring decision (Average scale scores are appreciably different between the groups of applicants who were hired and those who were not hired), but it is clear they have not applied consistent criteria to the scale scores by eliminating applicants below criteria levels. (Several hired applicants had one or more very low scale scores on the assessment.)
The data was analyzed for the possible effects of applying different criterion levels to the scores. Criterion 1 was calculated as if no applicants had been hired with any scale score of 3 or less. Criterion 2 was calculated as if no applicants had been hired with any scale score of 4 or less.
As the graph shows, applying either criterion would result in a dramatic decrease in the rate of early hire failures.
Criterion 1 would reduce the rate from 27 percent to 21 percent, while only reducing the percentage of hires working beyond 180 days by 5 percent and the applicant pool by a mere 1 percent.
Criterion 2 would further reduce the failures to 17 percent but would reduce the percentage of hires working beyond 180 days by 27 percent, a level that may be unacceptably high. The statistics provide a job-related basis for adopting Criterion 1 and should be more defensible than the current, less structured approach.
To further reduce the percentage of early failures and provide the increased productivity effects usually associated with improved job fit, the company may well benefit from adopting a job fit assessment for finalists for these positions.
