In talking with business owners, I often hear a familiar complaint: “I can’t seem to find any good people to work for me!” This is often followed by the remark, “Young people these days don’t have the same work ethic that we did when we were coming up.” So, is this true? Are we doomed to never find good employees that are hard-working, dedicated and loyal?
The good news is that there are good people out there! I have worked with many business owners and managers that have one or more employees that are exemplary and cherished. This being the case, why is it sometimes so hard to find a great employee. Let’s examine a few ideas.
One of the most important prerequisites to finding great employees that we must consider is what is the mindset of the employer? Believe it or not, attitude and atmosphere come from the top. If you are a person of high moral integrity, hard working and organized, then your organization will tend to follow suite. If, on the other hand, you are a person that is out for a fast buck, selfish, and unorganized, you can rest assured that your organization will have lots of issues along those lines. As a business owner, you need to do a “check up from the neck up” to ensure you have the right mindset and display it accordingly.
The next prerequisite is in addition to setting the tone for your business, have you determined the direction? To say you exist simply to make money is vague indeed. Does your business have a compelling vision? Have you articulated the mission statements of your business? Are your unique points of culture published? Employees tend to function much better when they know where their company is going and how it is that they are supposed to get there. Along these lines is the writing of a complete employee handbook that covers general policies applicable to everyone in the organization.
The next area to consider is have each of the positions you want to fill been thoroughly described? Do you have a detailed job description for each position in your company? Have you set written performance standards and attached an incentive plan for exceeding the standards and explained what will happen if they fail to achieve minimum standards? This is very important and an area which is regularly forgotten. Many employers seem to think that the people that they hire should “already know what to do”. This is really an unrealistic expectation as every company is different; even in like positions the expectations from one organization to another can be wildly varied. Even subtle differences can be major when it comes to employee relations at your firm.
Finally, have you really identified the type of person that would be ideally suited to the position you are trying to fill? There are certain personality and thinking styles that tend to perform better than others in a given position. It is well worth the time, money and effort to research the best qualities that each position in your firm requires. There are a variety of ways to gauge this, such as DISC profiles, Meyers-Briggs testing, and behavior profiling (ProfileXT comes to mind) to name a few. Remember that profiling cannot be the sole basis of a hiring decision, but it can be an important factor.
All of this may seem like an incredible amount of work just to find a great employee, but can you really afford not to do it? Each year, companies spend millions of dollars hiring and training employees. When you factor in government mandated requirements, benefit plans and office space and equipment needed for your people to do their jobs, the stakes get much higher. Consider how much money you could lose in lost sales, customers that won’t return or stolen merchandise and embezzled funds that a bad employee can cost you. Perhaps now you see that a good bit of forethought, some excellent preparation and a commitment to finding great employees is something you simply can’t afford not to do.
Take hiring employees as serious as you do selling your products and services and you will find the payoff to be wonderful!
Tags: Business, Business Advice, Hiring Employees, Human Resources
May 22, 2009 at 12:38 am |
Doug,
How do you get an employee onto your bandwagon, to share your vision for success, (to work when you are not watching!)…..?
Your blog article is timely in this economy, when companies are trying to maintain their bottom line and avoid layoffs.
How can we make better employees out of the ones we already have….so we can keep our bottom line healthy?
You are worth listening to!
Kay