HOW CONFIDENCE IN HIRING PRACTICES IMPACTS EARLY TURNOVER

HOW CONFIDENCE IN HIRING PRACTICES IMPACTS EARLY TURNOVER
William E. Miller

Hiring and developing new people are the first steps in building a winning organization and avoiding expensive employee turnover. To develop new people, especially during their initial training, managers must have complete confidence in their company’s hiring system. Without confidence in the quality of new hires, managers lose their commitment to help them when they stumble, falter and face discouragement. I‘ve seen early job discouragement more times than I can remember. It usually happens like this …
During the hiring process, candidates want to convince you that they’re qualified for the job, and you want your company to look appealing enough to attract qualified candidates. It’s a perfect environment for making hiring mistakes. The interviewing environment often creates unrealistic perceptions of the job. Because the candidate is qualified and looks like a good fit, the interviewer is likely to “sell” the position to him. This results in the candidate overlooking negative aspects of the job, which could become a serious problem if the candidate is hired.

For this reason, when I conducted interviews, I tried to paint the job as realistically as possible. I made a point to clearly describe the positive and the negative aspects of the position. I did my best to show candidates exactly what they were getting into. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never prevent candidates from developing false illusions about the position. They tended to look at the job through rose-colored glasses, seeing only the positive and ignoring the negative. New hires believe that the job is much easier than it really is. When they arrive for work on the first day, they’re enthusiastic, excited, fired up, and ready to go!

Then they begin their training …

It isn’t long before the recruit makes some disheartening discoveries. The lenses on those rose-colored glasses are clearing up. The job is harder then he thought it would be, and there may even be some parts of the job that he can’t stand. The recruit is easily discouraged, and his enthusiasm and motivation decline. Eventually, motivation declines to a point where it interferes with learning, and the recruit’s progress slows or stops all together. The new hire is on a slippery slope of motivation and performance decline. There must be management intervention to turn the situation around, or you run the risk of expensive employee turnover.

These are not isolated incidents. Job discouragement occurs in all new hires. The only variables are when it occurs and how serious the discouragement. If your company has excessive employee turnover, you will likely find that most of it is occurring during the first or second year of employment. Poor hiring is usually the primary cause of the problem. But job discouragement can be a major contributor as well, especially if turnover is occurring somewhere in the initial training and development phase of employment.

On the slope of motivation/performance decline, there must be intervention. Without proper intervention from you - their leader - new employee turnover is very likely. Mishandling discouragement virtually guarantees losing a potential high performer.

Proper intervention begins with the manager’s awareness of the early job discouragement phenomenon. You should be expecting it and be looking for signs that the problem is developing. When you detect early discouragement, you must stop the motivation/performance decline. You must provide first aid and stop the hemorrhaging. The emergency first aid needed is encouragement, and you should give plenty of it. Discuss the problem openly with the recruit. Empathize with the new hire. After all, we all have experienced job discouragement at some time in our careers. Reassure the recruit that he can overcome this slump. Let him know that you have complete confidence in his ability to succeed and that you will be there to make sure.

After encouraging the recruit, it’s important to develop a clear action plan to improve. Don’t skip this step. If you do, you will make the problem much worse. Your encouragement will be just cheap talk and empty promises. You may have uplifted the recruit at the moment, but the effect is short lived. He’ll return to the job facing the same problems and learning difficulties. You’ve sealed his fate for an early departure unless you change the training plan to meet his needs.

Ask the new hire, “What areas of the training do think are the most difficult? What areas of the job are giving you trouble?” When you’ve isolated the problem areas, change your training plan and focus on them.

When you’re managing job discouragement, follow these three steps to solve the problem.

• Understand the phenomenon of early job discouragement and be looking for signs that it’s developing.
• Stop the hemorrhaging with plenty of support and encouragement.
• Refocus the training plan to meet the recruit’s needs.

Using this approach to solve early discouragement requires complete confidence in your hiring system. Training an enthusiastic new hire is a great management experience. It was something that I enjoyed in my career. But when discouragement set in, as it always did, things changed. I didn’t see the happy face, the smile, or the positive attitude of the recruit. Working with him was difficult, and I didn’t look forward to my day.

It isn’t easy to train a discouraged new hire. It takes real effort, and you have to work at it. Discouraged recruits are no fun to be around. Human nature pressures us to avoid these people. It’s difficult for us to believe that this negative, complaining, unenthusiastic new hire is still good ore and a potential performer. It takes faith in the recruit and confidence in the hiring system to keep up the effort. But that faith and confidence can be shaken with a string of obvious bad hires and misfits. Without complete confidence in the hiring system and faith in the recruit’s potential, it’s easy to assume that you’ve made a bad hire and the recruit will not receive the leadership he needs. Managers actually discourage them and in effect, chase them away. It all ends with excessive turnover, high operating costs, and increased risks of legal hassles.

William E. Miller
Performance Leadership, LLC
www.performanceleadershipllc.com
www.wmiller@performanceleadershipllc.com