You hear companies proclaim, “People are the most important thing in our business,” every day. Business gurus tell you to focus on your people, develop your people, train your people and of course, the new favorite: empower your people.
And – it’s true. Happy employees give the best customer service; they produce better quality products and generate fewer errors. Treat your employees right and they will repay you tenfold. It is the people, not the technology, that make businesses run successfully. None of this good stuff happens if you keep hiring the wrong people. You are the one who brings them in the door. It is up to you to make sure they are quality candidates, because if they aren’t, you aren’t going to change them. It’s a critical step in building a successful business. You need to hire “good” people – people with the skills and the right attitude to be an asset to your company. When you hire the “right” people, you can “empower” them to do the right things and achieve your business goals.
So - how does a company go about recruiting the “right” people? High turnover is expensive. Hiring the wrong people is an avoidable mistake. Yet companies do it repeatedly. There are a lot of costs associated with hiring a new person. You place ads, sort through résumés, do interviews and ultimately hire someone. This takes time and money. Bringing the new employee on board takes time too. New employees require all sorts of handling and paperwork. They need health insurance, business cards, an office or a desk, a computer, 401Ks, payroll set up, etc. If that employee walks out the door two - three months later, you’ve wasted a lot of time, effort, and money. And worse – now you get to do it again!
Meanwhile, each unsuccessful hire drives your current employees crazy!! New employees need training; this task is usually left to the existing team. You call it “on-the-job training”. Your loyal employees think of it as a thankless more work for me job. They don’t have the time or the desire to train the new person, particularly if they suspect he or she isn’t going be around very long. This wears employees down.
The truth is that most small companies don’t have a personnel plan. They don’t anticipate their future staffing needs. Someone retires, another person moves out of state - suddenly we are short of people. What to do?