I once had the greatest mentor who told me, “This business would be easy if it weren’t for the people.” 

People can be your biggest strength and weakness. 

Having the right people starts with the hiring process. How do you screen your potential employees? Where are you advertising open jobs? How accurate are your job descriptions? The Economist reports that personality tests are a tool that can reduce the chance of putting the wrong person in the wrong role.

Aside from the skill set you are looking for in your employees, how much weight do you put on how well potential employees align with the vision and values of your organization? Every company has a unique culture, and you have to make sure that each person fits in with that culture. One person with a particularly dominant personality can affect the culture of a company in either a positive or negative way.

The first thing you have to address is to make sure your company’s vision and values are clear and shared by everyone. It
starts with the leader. Forbes cited a Leadership IQ report which stated that only 29% of employees say their leader’s vision for the future always seems to be aligned with the organization’s. You need to make sure your vision is in alignment with the company’s vision and then work to make sure management and staff are in alignment as well.

Each hiring candidate should be evaluated based on whether you feel they will be a good fit with the rest of your organization.
Hiring your employees is just the first critical step in having the right people in your organization. You need to make sure they are properly trained. Implementing proper training processes and establishing clear goals with regular periodic evaluations of staff and procedures, will improve individual employee and overall company performance.

Remember that what gets defined and measured gets done, so you want to be sure you have a proper mechanism to evaluate staff members on specific measurable goals that tie in with the vision and values of the company. One of the biggest challenges happens when there is a disconnect between what your performance expectations are for an employee and what they perceive as their performance targets. Having the goals written down, signed, and agreed to by both the manager and employee will make the evaluation process much more effective. There should be no misunderstanding on the specific measurables and how the employee performed. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh once estimated that bad hires had cost the company “well over $100 million.”

What happens if you hire a person, train them, and then discover they are not performing well? Either they don’t understand the job, they don’t have the skill set to do the job, or they may not even have the desire to do that job. If any of those things are a problem, then that person may not be a good fit for that specific job. It is crucial to quickly make a decision on that employee to move them to a more appropriate job, or you may come to the conclusion that they are not a good fit for your company.

Surmani Business Coaching can help your company find the right people for the right jobs so that every person in your company aligns into your organization’s specific culture and is the best fit for their position.