Is it Too Easy to Fire People?

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“I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people.  At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies.” – Lawrence Bossidy

How effective is your hiring process?  How do you know? If it was difficult or impossible to fire people after you hired them, would it change your process?

If it was a given that every hire would stay with the company until retirement, most companies would likely change their hiring practices.  The fact that we are able to fire people fairly easily, though, allows us to worry less about the effectiveness of the process and distracts us from addressing the real issues that affect long-term performance.

The objective of the process should be to recruit and hire people who have the right skills, are a good fit with the company’s culture, continually learn and develop, meet or exceed performance expectations, and stay with the company until retirement.  When this is understood, people begin to see that, whenever someone is fired or quits, the process has failed and the effort to find a replacement is rework.  The time and cost associated with dismissing an employee, and recruiting, interviewing, orienting, and training a new one is waste and would not have occurred if we hired correctly in the first place. 

Although a rather blunt way of looking at the issue, a company that truly wants to be the best has to hire the best; and “best” means those who meet the objectives described above.  Hiring is one of the most critical processes for a company, yet it is rarely taken as seriously as many other less critical processes.

Elements of Effective Hiring

The elements of an effective hiring process that are often missing include the following:

1. Assuring the Hire is Necessary: Although it is pretty common in most companies to justify the necessity of a new hire, it tends to stop there.  Fiscal responsibility should drive companies to always question whether hiring a new employee is necessary, but the emphasis on reducing headcount should coincide with tension to improve processes to the point where replacements are not always needed.  The focus should be improvements first, and hiring second.
2. Finding the Right Person: Wanting to hire a new employee quickly should never drive people to shortcut the need to find the right person.  It takes time to screen candidates effectively which, unfortunately, often leads companies to become impatient and hire the wrong person.  Concern about the extra workload caused by a vacancy should be dealt with accordingly (e.g., contract labor or temporarily shifting responsibilities), and any concern about losing a position by not filling it quickly is irresponsible and potentially destructive.
3. Training and Developing People: Training and developing people once they are hired helps assure they succeed in their jobs, grow and learn, feel respected, and reduces the chance they will leave for a job at another company. Although many companies talk about the importance of training and development, very few actually do it well.  Like any critical process, developing employees should have clear objectives, a defined method, effective measures, and the proper focus to assure it happens.
4. Measuring Effectiveness of the Process: Because the hiring process is so critical to the success of the organization, it is important to measure its performance and use the results to drive improvement. Some of the events that should trigger problem-solving include firings, resignations, and the need to hire leaders from the outside. The measure should be visible to everyone involved in the process so its objectives are clear and performance is visible.

When the culture is driven by a continual improvement mindset, hiring for any reason except replacing a retiree or to staff up for growth signifies a breakdown in the process.  If it were impossible – or extremely difficult to fire people – this concept would be much easier to accept.  As long as it remains easy to fire people, though, there will be little tension to improve the hiring process, and successfully driving a continual improvement culture within the company will remain elusive.

Why Companies Hire Poorly

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“A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.” – Jim Collins

When a company is buying an expensive piece of equipment, there is often a detailed process to justify the expenditure, study the alternatives, and gain approval.  Leaders throughout the organization are often aware of, or even involved in the process to assure it is done well and that the investment pays off for the company. 

Given the importance of the decision, this makes perfect sense.  What is baffling, though, is why so many organizations don’t place the same level of importance on hiring a new employee as they do on buying a new machine.  Although the amount of damage a poor hire can do on the organization is significant, the decision is often made quickly by a relatively small group of people.

Along with promoting and developing leaders, hiring is one of an organization’s most critical processes.  And as long as a company fails to recognize the importance of hiring, the chance of successfully driving and sustaining a culture of improvement is relatively small.

WHY WE HIRE POORLY

In my experience, there are four main reasons for poor hiring practices, and those organizations that tend to hire poorly often exhibit all four of them.

1. Don’t Know How: Many organizations just don’t understand how to find and screen candidates effectively to assure they fit into the company’s culture.  Just like the work done on the shop floor, screening and interviewing are processes that need to be standardized and continually improved to achieve consistent results.  Without a standardized process – and associated training – there is no way to assure that people throughout the company are using the same approach or that improvements are in hiring are sustained.
2. Don’t Realize it’s a Problem: Companies that do not track employee turnover most likely do not consider it important.  When continually reducing turnover is not considered important, employee satisfaction tends to be low and the associated costs tend to be high.  Besides the costs of rehiring and retraining new employees, there are significant losses resulting from low morale and the loss of knowledge when people leave.
3. Hire When it’s Too Late: There is an understanding in most organizations that bringing on a new employee is costly.  Because of this, the search begins long after the need arises.  When a team cannot keep up with its workload, there is often panic to bring in someone immediately to get the work back under control.  This panic can lead to cutting corners, hiring quickly, and unfortunately, bringing in the wrong person.
4. It’s Easy to Fire People: I have always felt that, if it was difficult to fire people, companies would take much more time to justify the need to hire a new employee and, when it was deemed necessary, would assure that the right person was ultimately hired.  In the machine example at the start of this post, companies tend to take more time to procure capital equipment because, once they make the purchase, they are stuck with it for many years.  If we approached hiring in the same way, the process would be taken more seriously and, most likely, produce much better results

IT’S ABOUT RESPECT

Successfully achieving and sustaining performance improvements cannot happen without the heavy engagement of the people in the organization.  And there is little chance that people will become and remain engaged unless they feel respected.  Making sure that the hiring process results in bringing in a person who has the right skills and fits with the company’s culture and values demonstrates respect for existing employees as well as the person being hired.