You can’t win without a winning team – Getting and keeping the right ones on the field makes all the difference!

By Paul Decelles & Phyllis Rizy

Getting the right people to work for you is hardest and most important task you have as the leader of a profitable business. The second most important task is to keep them! Attracting and keeping talent is a costly exercise...especially for companies who have lousy reputations with potential employees. If you really want to win big in business, you need to continually attract the best people...and you need to keep them!

The challenge and cost of turnover is one of the most discussed, most frustrating, and most misunderstood problems our businesses can face. If you do not know what turnover is costing you, many authorities agree that you can come surprisingly close to the cost of a single turnover incident by simply multiplying the annual salary for the position times 2.5—that will cover productivity loss, recruiting and hiring cost, training cost, liability, unemployment, and the other 101 hidden costs that we usually try not to think of when we lose an employee.

The problem is even more significant in areas of the business where specialized expertise is required. Successful employees at these levels often define the success of the business and have a enormous impact when they leave, far exceeding the 2.5 multiplier effect. Finding individuals with the “right stuff” quickly becomes a challenge that can seem insurmountable. The good news is that, although the task can seem daunting, it can be successfully accomplished. The most important lesson to remember is that, although everyone concentrates on the hard skills and experience, true job success depends on the soft skills.

That point is perhaps best understood by looking at the computer knowledge required for virtually any management position today. Look at the hard skills that were impressive 5, 10 or 20 years ago. The software and/or hardware knowledge that is needed to be a successful professional today was virtually non-existent only a few years ago. So, if the hiring decisions that we made only a few short years ago had been predicated exclusively on the candidate’s currently held computer skills at the time of hire, they could be making a very poor decision indeed.

When you go out in the marketplace to find a new employee, you are very much in the role of a tournament fisherman! You and all the other employers seeking a new recruit, standing around the shores of the same pond, all wishing you could catch a world-record fish…but, unfortunately, that fish may not be so easy to catch! How, then, are we employers to compete?

Like tournament fishermen, we are likely to do much better if we have the best equipment, the best bait and know something about the fish available in our pond! As employers, we will have the best return on our investment if we have good tools to maximize the quality of our options (knowing which ones to keep and which ones to throw back) and have the best company to offer the best candidates. Once we choose them…they choose us!

In learning about the characteristics of our applicant population, and in targeting the most desirable among them to transform into good employees, we need a competitive fisherman’s mindset, and tools that will allow us to measure the population and select the best from them. We need to measure the “whole person” – how they think, learn, communicate, problem-solve, multi-task, work with others, assert their will, follow rules, think “outside the box”, compete, cooperate, deal with authority – and a host of other traits that they will bring to the job. These are the things that really matter in the long run, because these are the traits that you use when you list the qualities of your best employees! Fortunately, the science of assessment has produced increasingly useful tools that provide this level of data to companies in need of new talent. In the YardeZone, we know our people and we help them grow.  

But even if you do all those things right…and you find the perfect candidate…what would make that perfect candidate choose to work for you? If they truly are that prized a catch, they probably hold allot of appeal with every other company looking to hire a perfect candidate. Who wins in that battle??? The company that has the best culture and working environment wins hands down every time! People will even work for a lesser entry level salary or even take a cut in pay if they see the opportunity is brighter…and in the YardeZONE™ …the opportunity for the very best candidates is always brighter!

Remember, you can’t win without a winning team. The most important decision any Manager makes is who they hire to join their team. It is possible to make great decisions. Like any decision, you just need to use the right information. Then you need the right hook with the right bait to bring in the best catch!