CEOs, business leaders and managers are acutely aware of the fiscal costs of a mis-hire, but there are some invisible—and potentially insidious—costs that can wreak havoc on your organization. Although it might not be top of mind, when you hire a person who does not fit with your organizational culture and/or operating philosophy, the impacts are pervasive.
Fragmented Customer Service
Ensuring your team understands your product and service set and why customers use it is where excellent service begins. You can bridge the knowledge gap for new hires with comprehensive product and service training; however, you cannot train employees to care about customers. Behavioral and performance research shows that great service is delivered through a fundamental set of values, attitudes and beliefs that are in alignment with a service philosophy. When you hire a person whose heart is not aligned with your mission, or they lack the basic service acumen to execute your customer service objectives, your customers experience dissatisfaction.
Reduction in Innovation
Companies arrive at a sustainable business model through innovation, creativity and a keen awareness of how to bridge a gap in the marketplace. Once the product set is stable and customers are buying, continual improvement and innovation is required to stay ahead of the curve.
When an employee is hired because his or her resume lists the right key words, yet the person behind the resume lacks conceptual thinking ability and theoretical problem solving, then the employee lacks the ability to come up with creative solutions. Often, this lack of ability shows up as excuses, finger pointing and roadblocks outside their control. It is important to be aware that a person who lacks these traits is unaware they lack them and that most often these traits are difficult to teach. If time is on your side, hire people for roles that need to innovate with these competencies, behaviors and values.
Workforce Productivity
When you hire in a hurry, you experience unwanted turnover. If you are lucky, it happens fast; but in most cases it is months before a problem surfaces and the impact of the mis-hire has already affected the team. In high-level roles—specifically senior leadership—the impact is detrimental, because it permeates the organization.
Tolerating people who are not engaged and thriving waters down the engagement and productivity of those who want to win. When any of these morale busters happen within your culture, good people either leave or move into autopilot until they can. The indirect and costly impacts are higher staffing costs to make up for the lack of employee and team productivity; knowledge loss when good people leave; and increased training costs to retrain new employees.
Team and Leadership Losses
We have all heard the old adage that 80 percent of our time is spent with the bottom 20 percent of performers. As the competition for talent increases and the fear of the empty chair blocks your good sense, you can feel pressured to fill the job with the first decent person who surfaces with a cogent resume.
One of the hidden costs of unwanted turnover is that 70 percent of managers surveyed reported that they are coping with burnout that is detrimental to their overall happiness. When the workplace culture turns into one of micromanagement, correction and reprimand rather than collaboration, creation and mentoring, the manager's job becomes one of parent and babysitter.
In many companies, it seems an admission of making a poor hire is a far worse offense than tolerating subpar performance. Furthermore, the cost of doing nothing about a bad hire far outweighs the cost of being proactive and creating high-impact hiring solutions. When you think about it in terms of bottom-line profitability and overall success, shifting your hiring philosophy is just common sense.
