Four Insidious Impacts of a Mis-Hire

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The world’s innovators are calling for reinvention and transformation of human resources (HR) departments. Given that the majority of hiring responsibilities fall within HR, and it is — in most cases — the entry point into companies, reinventing HR must start with transforming the way leaders think and behave about hiring.

Many innovative leaders and early adopters are already operating highly effective, conscious hiring programs out of pure necessity. While some may advocate for the complete destruction of HR departments, the proper solution is the complete destruction of old, outdated, unconscious and ineffective hiring techniques. Frankly, while people and business have remained virtually unchanged, human beings’ perspectives, outlooks, attitudes about work and ability to manifest what they want — when they want it — has spurred a fundamental shift in the way people operate in and around business and work today. With a plethora of newly created job options coupled with a major changing of the guard in the workforce, smart companies must equip themselves to navigate new employee/workplace paradigms.

HIDDEN COSTS OF MIS-HIRES. 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 throughout your organization. By continuing to operate with outmoded hiring practices, you become susceptible to four specific hidden consequences of a mis-hire:

1. Fragmented customer service. Excellent service begins with ensuring your team understands your products and services, and why customers use them. You can — and should — bridge the knowledge gap for new hires with comprehensive product and service training; however, you cannot train your workers to care about the customer. 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 people are in a role in customer service for the wrong reasons, no training will compensate for their lack of connection to the work itself.

This is a common experience when customers expect one level of affinity from the place their money is spent and receive service that is counter to that expectation. This leads to feelings of disengagement, dissatisfaction and even extreme anger. When you hire a person whose heart is not aligned with your mission and your service offerings, or who lacks the basic service acumen to execute your customer service objectives, your customers will experience this same disconnect and dissatisfaction.

2. 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 (or service) set is stable and customers are buying, continual improvement and innovation is required to stay ahead of the copycat curve. When some of your people cannot seem to get it together, miss basic deadlines, or don’t find problems until your customers do, innovation is not even an option.

When employees are hired because their resumes list the right key words, but the people behind the resumes lack conceptual thinking ability and theoretical problem solving, they lack the access within themselves to come up with creative and inventive solutions. Often this lack of ability shows up as excuses, finger pointing and roadblocks outside their control. It is important to understand that people who lack these traits are unaware they lack them and that, most often, these traits and competencies are very difficult to teach. So for roles that require innovation, you should hire only those who have innovator competencies, behaviors and values.

3. Workforce productivity. When you hire in a hurry, you are most likely to experience turnover. If you are lucky, the turnover happens fast. But, in most cases, it is months before the problem surfaces and the impact of the wrong person doing the job wrong has already disseminated throughout the team, if not the department. In high-level roles, specifically for senior leadership, the impact is detrimental not only in the immediate area of influence; it permeates throughout the organization. In sales, for example, if you have two or three people who are continually not achieving quota and are approaching their positions with poor attitudes, it poisons the well for those who are producing and are aligned with the position requirements and level of activity required for success.

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 and engagement busters are happening in your culture, good people either leave or move into autopilot until they can leave. The indirect and costly impacts are higher staffing costs to make up for the lack of employee and team productivity; institutional knowledge loss when good, trained people leave; and increased training costs to continually retrain new blood into the organization.

4. Leadership and team time and energy loss. We have all heard the adage that 80% of our time is spent with the bottom 20% of performers. As it happens, this statement may be closer to 30% of the underperformers. As the competition for talent increases and the fear of the empty chair blocks your good sense, you can feel pressured to fill a job with the first decent person who surfaces with a reasonable resume. Hiring the wrong people because you are “in a rush” to put a butt in a seat leads to more empty seats; or worse: full seats with empty pay offs.

One of the hidden costs of turnover, as reported in recent employee and manager engagement surveys, is that 70% of managers surveyed reported that they are coping with burnout and a job misery rating 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 or babysitter.

CONCLUSION. We often see managers and leaders looking to HR to fix people and situations that could have been avoided by more consciousness and awareness before, during and after hiring. In many companies, it seems that admitting to having made a poor hire is a 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 philosophy about people and hiring consciously just makes common sense.

The author is CEO of Conscious Hiring and Development and author of The Wealth of Talent. For more information, visit www.KeenAlignment.com.