Intangible costs of a poor hire are five times the tangible costs
Intangible costs are not as easy to quantify. Here are a few that other company owners have shared with me:
- Loss of company reputation
- Loss of potential clients and referrals
- Loss of employee morale
- Loss of team productivity
- Loss of credibility with other team members
One poor hire can also cause the turnover of productive team members. Remember, people join a company, but they tend to leave a poor leader or manager. When I facilitate a discussion of average turnover costs with company owners, we never reach a total cost of less than $8,000 in tangibles and $40,000 in intangibles.
Selecting the wrong manager is worse
Worse than poor hiring decisions are poor management selection decisions. Select a poor manager and your turnover costs are the number of people managed times the average cost per turnover.
Time and time again, I have witnessed the loss of an office or that entire profit center because there is a poor manager or leader in place. In the case above, if the team has eight members and we assume that they produce a million dollars of revenue, then losing this unit is a million dollar loss! This is only the “opportunity cost” for each year.
The question I often ask CEOs and business owners is: How much do you budget for staff turnover? They always answer, "We don’t." My follow up question is, "Where does this loss appear?" The answer is: "From bottom line profit."
My own real life success story
Do you wonder how the selection process you’re about to discover works in real life? Wonder no more. Before I learned and implemented the selection process outlined here, I ran a sales office with 32 part-time and full-time employees. By using this process, I doubled my sales with a much leaner staff of just 12. A commitment to hiring only high quality team players who were the right fit and could produce made a huge difference in the success of my business
Great talent isn't retained without this
When I conduct organizational studies, part of my process is for all managers to write their perception of their job by listing their key activities. Having read hundreds of these responses, I’m sad to report that there’s no reference to staffing their team and no reference to recruiting as an activity. Great talent is not going to be retained if management does not recognize recruiting and selecting great talent as a key leadership activity.
The bottom line is that when you select great talent, your organization will grow and prosper. When you do not, you end up with morale issues, lower production, slower growth and lower profits long term. Selecting great talent also gives you more options at the time of succession due to the depth of talent within your organization.
The right person in the right position will be a great asset. The right person in the wrong position will be a detriment to the organization's success. The right person in the right position is easily trained, develops naturally and will accomplish the job objectives.
To receive an overview of a selection process that works please email bclinton@business-wise.com request "Selection Overview"