Take a minute to let that thought simmer…

Now, think of your favorite team sport. Perhaps your favorite team.

Imagine you’re the owner, GM, coach, or talent scout and you need to build from scratch, fill critical positions, and perhaps thinking about ‘repurposing’ a player.

You meet a prospective player and are extremely impressed by their sports knowledge, their sports resume, and you ‘really like’ them overall.

Now…hire them without ever having observed them play the sport, the position, nor alongside the rest of the team.

Got your attention?

Above may sound like a ridiculous scenario, but it’s exactly how most companies make people-decisions; with gut-instinct, subjective bias, and fingers-crossed hope, and in many cases, with vague, inconsistent, and even conflicting opinions of what they need in the role to begin with.

Most people think that the only costs associated to a bad hire are the recruitment costs, both time and direct expenses, onboarding, training, salary and benefits. What they don’t realize is how expensive the indirect costs to a bad hire can be, for example:

• A bad hire robs all connected positions/employees of their ability to deliver their optimal productivity.
• A bad hire damages confidence in management.
• A bad hire drills holes through trust. Repairing trust takes….too much here. Google it.
• A bad hire catapults your top talent to your competitor’s doorstep.
• A bad hire needs to be removed……hello lawsuit!
• A bad hire burns relationships with your customers.
• A bad hire derails a client project and the marketplace will find out quickly.
• A bad hire radiates toxicity throughout the work environment.
• A bad hire needs to be replaced – now someone’s doing two jobs.
• A bad hire commits piracy on employee engagement initiatives.
• A bad hire…..well, I bet you have ‘fun’ bad hire stories of your own….please share in the comment section and help save the world!

Above was about ONE bad hire. Imagine how many bad hires a company makes during the fiscal year.

So who are these ‘thieves’ skulking and lurking around companies?

These ‘thieves’ are NOT the failing and toxic employees.

The thief is not a person at all.

The thief…….is the process.

The #1 reason companies fail to achieve their set goals is 100% an unstructured people strategy.

It’s a company’s anemic people strategy and talent management process that is robbing capital, performance, morale, productivity, trust, revenue, profits, and reputation.

Is your people strategy plundering your company to pay your competitors?

My firm prevents hiring nightmares with objective and predictive data analytics.

Let us help you be a hero to your company’s most important assets, its people.

Originally published here by Clayton Sullivan

Shoot me an email at csullivan@pimidlantic.com.