Next Steps in Hiring

Any port in a storm.  This economy is a "perfect storm" that will drive the future of hiring, and I'm focused on finding the best tools, from pre employment testing to EEO Reporting.  The arms race is back on, and we'll be reporting from the battleground for you.

The economy is affecting hiring in surprising ways. At a time where the volume of hiring is slowing, each hire becomes more crucial.  Before the downturn, there was a problem with people not telling the truth in the hiring process. Now, it gets worse.

As unemployment numbers start heading up, the pressure on screening and hiring systems increases.  Advanced applicant tracking and assessment tools that apply "LEAN HR" are part of the modern Human Resources software suite.  These tools are the first line of defense for an organization trying to maintain their "employer of choice" status.  Good human resource planning requires good support tools.

Admit it - the arms race of the hiring process had kind of slowed down.  Now, the race is speeding up again because of the combined forces of a slowing economy pushing unemployment up and organizations properly focused on building a high performing work force. 

Organizations must use proper talent aquisition to produce job fit, employee engagement, and great job performance.  At the same time, they must use whatever advanced tools they can find to keep applicants out of the process that are not sharing their true values and attitudes, and are simply trying to get inside an organization - any organization - and are willing to say whatever it takes to get there.

So, the arms race is on.  Let's keep a step ahead....I'm looking for links to good blogs and sites that might help - share them if you have them!

Things to do that will help with survival in these times -

Develop, Develop, Develop - Catch up on technical and soft-skills training. Don't miss opportunities to build employee competencies. Pay particular attention to your cross training and coaching efforts.   Now is exactly the time to build bench strength.

Maintain, Maintain, Maintain – This is a great time to do preventative maintenance in all of your systems – both physical and virtual.

Retain, Retain, Retain - This mantra remains vital for ongoing success. Use creative redeployment, job sharing, contract and gain sharing techniques coupled with developmental strategies to retain talent for the upturn. A key ingredient is a detailed and well communicated plan for keeping and developing your talent.

What are YOU doing?

I was presenting to a room of CFOs this morning about Human Capital issues, and found them to be scared of the future.  By nature, CFOs are risk managers, and they were dealing with the high risk issues of the market shakeup.  They were trying to make order from the chaos. 

In addition to the craziness of the capital markets and the realization that the "old rules" for doing business were falling away, they were asking me questions that indicated that they were looking for the "new rules" of how to handle the people side of the current crisis.  In this forum, I will be sharing some of these new rules that I am picking up from the front.  Feel free to share your comments for others to learn from...sharing is good.

One quick new rule is to be more carful about the screening you do for new hires - with strange economic times, applicants are driven to do and say WHATEVER it takes to get inside a safe harbor in a storm.

What new rules do you see in human resources?

On the theme of strange times, continued from the last post...

Then, there are the people you already have...

You may have noticed some disquieting trends in your organization at the end of summer of 2008 – absentee numbers that are higher that you prefer, low productivity numbers, the occasional loss of key employees, and the difficulty of hiring good people.  They are all connected – and most businesses are feeling the same pinch.

Don’t get caught in the trap of focusing just on hiring new employees and bailing out the leaking ship.  You have probably noticed that your top performers – the 16% that are stars – produce 80% of the bottom line results.  The remaining 20% of good results come from the 68% of employees that are average performers.

Do the math – that’s 100%.  Let’s also agree that about 16% of employees hide under rocks, hoping that you won’t notice that they haven’t produced anything useful, ever.  Continue to ignore them for a moment - today, we’re talking about the high performers.

My point is simple - retaining all employees at any cost should no longer be your goal.  Focus your retention effort on those few people that are producing 80% of your results.  Do whatever you can do to keep your best on board.  I am not recommending that you ignore the rest – just focus your efforts in the short term on a very important part of your staff. 

I'll wager that if you were to shadow a manager for a day, most of their time would be spent on the lower performing people, leaving the high performers to self-manage.  Not a good strategy...the high performers feel under-loved and will, over time, either become average performers or, worse yet, leave.

Even if you have a good human resource management system, practice good lean hr, and read all of the talent management books you can find, you will still be at risk for the departure of your high performers. 

Action point - sit down with your supervisors and make the above point with them...and get them to spend more of their time with the ones they want to keep.

I can show off my literary knowledge - the opening lines of "A Tale of Two Cities" "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." 

The ongoing turmoil in the business world will be showing up on our employment doorstep.   With all of the stress on the workforce, the temptation is greater for applicants to shade the truth and do whatever it takes to get past the interviewers and onto your employment rolls.  Once there, the chances for good job fit and high productivity are reduced...a lose/lose,  The point of all of this is simple - now is the time to increase your vigilance on the people on the way in. 

Now, back to reading the classics...

Reading the newspaper (yes, actually the paper version...) it became clear that all of the business stories were focused on financial metrics.  They seem to have forgotten that no matter what, you HAVE to know your people….

Fact: As your organization changes shape and direction, the selection and motivation and management of staff make all of the difference in building a high performance culture.  If you have to restructure, change shape or downsize, knowing your people is equally important.

The only question that remains is, how do you do it?  Assessments?  Talent Management?  Employee Engagement?

As an extrovert, I hate this point, but you have to get better at listening...and you have to pay attention for the smaller details.  Those details can come from watching, from listening, and from building metrics that matter into the management process.

I'm doing some significant research on current metrics - and how to apply them early in the hiring cycle so that job fit is more likely.  Any advice on what metrics you are using will be welcome in this forum...

So, there we were.  A room of senior human resources people and recruiters, all discussing the issues of metrics, assessment, job fit, human capital measurement, and measuring performance.  In short, most of the important issues facing staffing today.  We were all having fun, and it seemed everyone in the room agreed on the main points of the discussion.

 

Then, there was a magical moment about halfway through where everything stopped and the world suddenly became more complex .  Objective feedback appeared that we were not expecting.

 

It had begun simply enough, with a discussion of how assessment tools might be applied to measure job fit, leading to the secondary ability of measuring engagement.  Fine so far.  We had all agreed that leading edge indicators were superior to trailing edge indicators, and the challenge was figuring out leading edge indicators that made sense.  My point was that most people in the room were measuring turnover, a trailing indicator because the individuals that are a part of it had already left the organization when they were measured.  On the surface, employee engagement seemed to be a better metric because it was a measurement of people who were still a part of the organization, and therefore a leading edge metric. 

 

I asked for further input, and got it.  A woman leaning against the back corner quietly asked “Isn’t it true that high performing people would challenge the system more than mediocre people, and therefore high performing people would score worse on engagement metrics?”  Well.  Interesting.  Most people in the room leaned back from their note taking, thoughtfully started chewing on their pens, and nodded in agreement.  The discussion immediately took an unexpected turn, and several audience members have volunteered to give me more data on the subject.

 

To me, the most important point was not that high performers may score differently on engagement assessments.  The most important point is that we must always keep feedback loops in place, to make sure that what we think we’re measuring is actually reflected in real life. 

 

It is human nature to see the world through the filter of what we already know.  For our work in measuring human capital and applying modern assessment tools to human resources, we must always remember to keep objective the backboards in place to keep us on target. 

 

Simply put, I hope this blog can be a part of your personal feedback loop and keep you on target. I look forward to the challenge.