Are Good People Really That Hard to Find?

One of the challenges that many business owners face is being able to attract, retain, and motivate enough high-quality employees to keep the business going and growing. This is true of most all service-based businesses, but I don't agree with those who overstate the so-called "shortage of good help".

I think there are enough people in the workforce who are interested in becoming excellent service providers, but there is insufficient work being done by business owners to attract, train, reward, and retain them. If you consider the sheer number of "graduates" being pumped out of some of the profit-driven schools these days, you would be hard pressed to believe there was a "shortage of good help".

I think what we have instead is a shortage of good recruiting practices, good behavioral interviewing skills, and properly structured pay plans to make these graduates want to dedicate their careers to our industries once they finish school. There are too many businesses using the backward philosophy of "quick-to-hire and slow-to-fire" instead of the correct philosophy of "slow-to-hire and quick-to-fire".

What I mean is, a business owner or manager should take the time to conduct a thorough search for a candidate to fill a vacancy and then do a comprehensive behavioral interview and maybe even a test-drive before making the hiring decision. Consideration must be given not only to the technical skills or training a candidate has, but also to the candidates personality and the likelihood that he or she will be a good fit with the rest of the team. The worst thing that we are sometimes guilty of in business is being too quick to hire any warm body with the technical know-how only to discover after a couple of weeks that they are like a cancer beginning to infect the once healthy organism that was our business.

Once a hiring decision has been made, the owner should have a clearly defined on-boarding process that includes orientation, training, buddy-shadowing, a complete benefits explanation meeting and an outline of what the ongoing training and evaluation program will be like. The new hire should also be given a cell phone number for either the owner or manager so that any questions he or she has can be answered quickly during this important time.

When it becomes obvious that we have made a good hiring decision, the work of retention and motivation begins. People need to know that they are valuable contributors to the overall business and this can be done by making sure that everyone understands exactly how his or her contribution impacts the company. I'm a big proponent of open-book management to as great an extent as the owner can bring him or her self to allow. Frequent feedback on performance is also critical not just in the early stages but throughout the employment relationship. Far too often we let good employees feel abandoned and unimportant because we don't share regular feedback - both bad and good - with them. A regular schedule of performance appraisals is good, but it's even better when coupled with a team meeting rhythm that includes weekly huddles and monthly goal review meetings.



Are Good People Really That Hard to Find? - To learn more about this author, visit Randy Nowell's Website.

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