What if Employees Came with an Instruction Manual?

Oh dear. Nearly a quarter of newly employed staff in Australia leave their jobs within one year, according to Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) and LinkedIn research.

This is a staggering statistic when you consider the time, energy and money pumped into the recruitment process by Australian companies desperate to find perfect employees.

These premature exits are costing the nation’s business around $3.8 billion in lost productivity and $385 million in avoidable recruitment expenses, the joint PWC-LinkedIn study reveals.

So what is amiss in the way we identify and try to retain new staff?

In a nutshell, we:

• Routinely value experience and qualifications above transferable skills and personality fit.
• Miss vital opportunities to bring out candidates’ real character and capacity at interview.
• Fail to provide our people managers with the skills they need to maximise employee potential.

It’s a tricky area. Candidates are notoriously hard to read. Like the most impressive icebergs, it’s impossible to know how much is hidden below the water line.

And even if you do score a winning candidate, top-notch staff are discerning. They will expect to be challenged, rewarded and developed in equal measure – also impossible for the average employer relying on luck and under-resourced managers to give new staff a reason to stay.

So new employees don’t come with an instruction manual, warranty or option to return if faulty.

It’s up to the smart employer to write their own guide book and drastically reduce the likelihood of buying faulty goods.

Successful recruitment depends on identifying precisely the right candidates for the role – and then knowing to manage, coach and develop them to ensure they stay for the long haul.

The best new employees will quickly expose gaps in a company’s training systems, career progressions and culture, leaving sooner rather than later if their needs are not met.

And the worst new employees will start to make their mark, as the true mismatch between person and job slowly – or quickly – becomes apparent, to the detriment of the business as a whole.

What the mismatch between talent and jobs really means

The ground-breaking PWC-LinkedIn research, bringing to light a crippling lack of talent alignment in Australia, involved data drawn from 277 million LinkedIn members and 2,600 global employers on the PWC database of people and performance metrics.

With these credentials, it’s hard to ignore the stark results.

• Australia’s short-term resignation rate is more than 23%, compared with only 4% of Netherlands employees who resign within the first 12 months.
• Australia emerges with an overall Talent Adaptability Score of 52 – sixth in the world behind Singapore and the USA (57), Canada (61), the UK (67) and the Netherlands (85).
• The Talent Adaptability Score is measured by the ability of a country’s labour markets to adapt to evolving demands. This includes employee willingness to adapt skills to jobs, and employer ability to identify talent to fit available positions.
• Australia is spending $385 million a year in unnecessary recruitment costs due to high turnover caused by mismatch of candidates to positions – and losing $3.8 billion annually in lost productivity.

While Australia beats France (41) and Germany (39), the recruitment money drain is enormous and economic growth is suffering.

Creating your own staff instruction manuals

Better outcomes are within every company’s grasp. The answer lies in the smartest contemporary people solutions, and the extraction of maximum ROI from your human capital.

It might surprise you to know that intelligent recruitment tools are proven to reduce early failure rate by 46% and crippling employee turnover by 47%.

So let’s take a look at the three main challenges and solutions in the areas of recruitment and management of top performers – enabling you to create your own unique instruction manual.

1. Look beyond experience to find capacity

Oh dear again. We have some way to go in our recognition of candidates’ core attributes.

According to PwC Head of HR Services Jon Williams, “Australian organisations are 10 years behind the trend to employ people for capacity and fit rather than experience.”

What employers should really be looking for – over and above industry experience and qualifications – are core or transferable skills.

These are strong, often innate skills which can be applied successfully to roles across a range of industries and specialties.

They include great communication skills, empathy, ability to manage people and build teams, flexible thinking, pragmatism, forward planning, capacity to learn, hunger for knowledge, problem-solving expertise and willingness to tackle new challenges.

Behavioural traits can also trump experience in the job stakes. An outgoing candidate who loves people and learning could be a better team builder than a shyer person who has been in the industry far longer.

2. Identify a candidate’s real hits and misses

It’s hard to assess an interview candidate’s real capacity. Nerves, exaggeration and misrepresentation too often get in the way.

That’s why JobFit assessments are so crucial in identifying the core competencies and critical success attributes of your job candidates and employees.

What does this actually mean? It involves creating a blueprint of the ideal candidate, drawn from the ‘success DNA’ of your star performers.

Even the most talented team leader, however, will fail to thrive in the wrong job or environment.

So the key lies not only in identifying the success attributes of the candidate or employee, but matching them carefully to the appropriate position.

This allows the employer to move beyond focus on a candidate’s years of industry experience and impressive qualifications.

Only by looking past the traditional drawcards can you discover the reserves of strength, flexibility, creative thinking and team-building skills which might be lying dormant in a fresh-faced candidate new on the job market or an old hand stuck in an ill-matched position for too many years.

JobFit and customised people assessments can be tailored to meet the unique needs of your business, company or organisation – giving you the tools to look beneath the surface and beyond the obvious.

3. Give people managers the resources they need

Around 45% of managers designated to look after human resources lack the skills to coach and develop employees, according to research by SilkRoad.

The online survey showed 73% of HR professionals reporting inconsistent performance standards across the organisation, and 32% not having the time to properly assess the performance of employees during the year.

When managers lack proper training in people management and development, it’s extremely hard to retain the best performers.

It’s no good having the ability to identify and employ the cream of the crop if you have no idea how to manage these rare gems when they start work with your company.

Real talent will assess your company culture, career development options and reward system with a critical eye.

So don’t give them the opportunity to go elsewhere. If you lack a dedicated HR team, outsource the process to a specialist company.

This offers the ongoing business coaching and career development essential to maximise your employees’ productivity – and also retain them.

While new recruits arrive without a training manual, there’s nothing stopping you writing your own. We can help!