"Even
if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just
sit there."
~ Will
Rogers
ASSESSMENT
LEADERS OF IDAHO FORMED
Assessment
Leaders announces the formation of Assessment Leaders of Idaho,
with Kandy
Weaver, of Kandy Weaver and Associates as Managing Partner.
Assessment Leaders of Idaho located in Boise, will focus on helping
companies improve performance and productivity, reduce turnover,
improve company morale, and ensure you have the right person in
the right job by utilizing the most advanced, web-based assessment
tools in the world.
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ANNOUNCING
NEW STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH #1 RATED BACKGROUND CHECK COMPANY.
In
our continuing effort to "help organizations of all sizes
and in any industry, Identify, Attract, Retain and
Advance their Top Performers", Assessment
Leaders is announcing a new strategic alliance with ESR. For further
information on how background checks protect the organization,
read the article, "Why
Perform Pre-Employment Screening?"
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NEW
SURVEY SHOWS INCREASED USE OF BACKGROUND SCREENING TOOLS
A new survey published in the September 2005 printed edition of
the HR Executive shows that employers across the United States
are increasingly utilizing pre-employment screening as a safe
hiring tool. According to a survey of 322 human resources professionals,
there has been a 64% increase or enhancement of background screening
requirement over the past three years. Thirty-four percent (34%)
reported no change while just 2% indicated they had decreased
screening.
According
to the survey, 73% of the employers screen all applicants in some
way. In addition, 97% of employers indicated that at some time,
screening revealed negative information not revealed by the applicant.
In fact, 16% of the respondents indicated it occurred frequently.
The
most utilized screening tools were criminal records and past employment
verification. The screening results most likely to eliminate an
applicant from further consideration were falsification of employment
history, criminal convictions relevant to the job, falsification
of educational history, and failure to be truthful about a past
criminal conviction. Poor credit and workers’ compensation
history were the least likely factors to be used.
See:
HR
Executive's "Background Screening" Online Survey
for more information.
In
2005, a survey published by the Society
for Human Resources Management (SHRM) showed that 82% of the
respondents performed some degree of screening, up from 66% in
a 1996 survey.
The
bottom line for employers: pre-employment screening is an essential
part of an employer’s duty of care towards others and part
of an obligation to exercise due diligence.
Order
Now… "The
Safe Hiring Manual: A complete guide on how to keep criminals,
terrorists and imposters our of you workplace."
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KEEPING
YOUR BEST — HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR ODDS
The official statistics are confusing, and more experts
are challenging the government’s methods of calculating
unemployment, but overall unemployment is clearly trending down.
As the job market swings toward increasing scarcity of qualified
applicants, a parallel trend begins to appear: top performers
in every sector of the economy start to change jobs, looking for
better pay, more recognition, opportunity for advancement, or
perhaps just a change.
Ask
yourself these questions about your people:
-
Who
is most likely to look for outside opportunities?
-
Who
finds it easiest to get a different job?
-
Who
would I miss most, if they quit?
-
Whose
loss would hurt me most, in our competitive field?
-
Who
is my competition trying to recruit?
Chances
are, the answer to all of these questions is exactly the same:
“Our best.”
If
your company has been struggling to remain profitable for these
past few difficult years, or just struggling to stay alive, you
have probably tried to cut costs, delay raises, run lean, and
expected more from every worker, especially from your best. They
may, by now, feel underpaid and underappreciated, adding to the
pressures to look around for a better deal.
Estimates
of the cost to replace a top performing employee vary, from their
annual salary to as much as four times that number. It’s
time to reappraise your practices, and be sure you are doing everything
you can to keep your best employees. There’s almost no other
place in your business with the opportunity to reap as much return
on your investment!
What
can you do to retain your best people?
Identify them: Too many businesses do not really know who their
best people are. Use measurable, objective criteria to identify
your top performers. The old saw about not being able to manage
what you don’t measure applies here, in spades!
Learn
what makes them “the best”: Characteristics of top
performers can be measured and recorded. If you know those characteristics,
you can look for new people to become your best, you can focus
on keeping your best, and you can bank the information to help
guide your future actions.
Recognize
and reward their performance: While money can be important, in
most studies it comes in fourth or fifth in importance when compared
to recognition, simple thanks, job satisfaction, opportunity to
advance, and other “soft” variables.
Give
them a path to follow for promotion: If you know the characteristics
of your best people, and the characteristics required to succeed
in the positions in your business, you can design individual career
paths to keep your best people with you, while improving your
profitability.
Avoid
the “Peter Principle”: Few mistakes in business are
as costly as over promotion. Usually, our former top performer
(promoted to the point of failure) cannot succeed at the new job
and cannot go back to the old job. We lose them to our competition,
where they become a top performer again—doing their old
job!
It
takes thought, planning, measurement and investment to keep your
best — but it pays!
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WHEN
GOOD APPLICANTS ARE SCARCE, REACH FURTHER
SELECT FOR FIT, TRAIN FOR SKILLS-OPINION, BY JOHN W. HOWARD, PH.D.
In
F. Leigh Branham’s book, "Keeping the People Who Keep
You in Business", he makes this suggestion; “Interview
applicants who may lack traditional qualifications, such as degrees
or years of experience, but have the right abilities and can be
trained…” (emphasis added).
If an
employee has the right abilities, training for specific job skills
can become efficient and profitable. Absent those right abilities,
no amount of training is likely to produce a top performer, and
even a high level of skill will not keep him/her on the job.
Our egalitarian
underpinnings continue to cost American businesses billions of
dollars, as we pursue the failed notion, “we can train anyone
to do anything.” We know they don’t have wings, but
we send pigs to flying school every day. We even subsidize their
flight schools with tax dollars!
If a business
will discipline its selection for training process, devoting just
10 percent of the money usually budgeted for training to assessing
before training, the payoff will be very gratifying.
Selecting
employees with the right characteristics, then providing training,
will produce a high number of top performers who fit their jobs,
enjoy their work, and produce profits for their employer.
If we
continue to focus on training without first identifying the characteristics
necessary for success, we will continue to produce workers who
have learned the skills but cannot perform at a high level, will
not enjoy the work, will not remain on the job over time, and
who will not produce profits.
Pigs,
by the way, may never be good fliers...but they can run quite
well. Train your pigs to run, and send eagles to your flight schools.
In both cases, you can produce top performers, and your profits
will reflect your good business practices!
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BUILD
YOUR RETENTION LIBRARY—A WEALTH OF IDEAS
In a salute to the importance of the topic of employee retention,
you can find shelves of recent books on approaches to this challenge.
Three of the best are reviewed briefly here. All contain practical
ideas and tools to apply to your unique opportunities and goals:
"Keeping
the People Who Keep You in Business" (Leigh Braham) —
Provides a very specific and complete set of retention practices,
organized around attracting, selecting, integrating, and coaching
your people. He offers real examples of these principles at work,
and points out that “reducing turnover takes commitment.”
Common sense ideas are presented in a practical and inspiring
manner.
"Keeping
Good People" (Roger E. Herman) —
A noted futurist with several major and accurate predictions of
workforce trends to his credit, Herman believes job changing will
continue to increase throughout the workforce, and businesses
must counter the trend, if they wish to retain their best people.
The author
identifies five principal reasons why employees leave their jobs.
He offers nearly 200 practical ways to head off turnover.
"Here
Today, Here Tomorrow" (Gregory P. Smith) —
Well-written and easy to read, Smith’s approach is practical
and understandable. Some of his ideas may sound foolish, and some
may seem prohibitively expensive. But he offers evidence that
they work and are ultimately cost-effective.
Add these
books to your resource base. Use assessments to select, match,
and improve your decisions and better retention can be your reward!
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STRATEGIC
HIRING SYSTEM PAYS OFF IN RESERVATIONS CALL CENTER
A major hotel management firm operates a reservations call center
with a primary mission of customer service, and a secondary sales
function. The call center experiences wide seasonal workload fluctuations,
and has traditionally begun a major round of hiring each winter.
Both performance and turnover have presented challenges in this
environment. In 2003, reservations agents hired in the winter
campaign had only a 27 percent chance of remaining on the job
beyond June 30. This required additional and continued hiring
efforts through the spring and summer seasons—times of year
that present additional hiring challenges in their employment
market.
In midwinter,
by contrast, the company had an abundance of applicants for their
open positions.
The challenge:
Design and implement a strategic hiring system, with the goal
of increasing retention and reducing the necessity of additional
hiring through the spring and summer.
The chosen
system was a two-stage strategic system beginning with a low-cost
honesty-integrity measure (the Step One Survey, or SOS). Once
a candidate was screened into the finalist pool, a targeted job-fit
measure was used to predict the probability of success (the Customer
Service Perspective, or CSP).
Because
the company enjoyed a large applicant pool for the available openings
(roughly 10 applicants were screened for each person hired), they
chose a relatively high criterion for the SOS scores, seeking
to consider only the top 35 percent for inclusion in the finalist
pool.
For the
job fit analysis of the finalists, call center managers chose
five Top Performers, and a success pattern was constructed, using
the Customer Service Perspective assessment. (for details of this
analysis, see Vol. 1 Issue #6 of this newsletter.) Finalists took
the CSP, and were matched to the Top Performer pattern. Candidates
who matched at less than the 70 percent level were not considered
further for employment. Scores of 70 percent or better included
the finalist in the interview process, using the CSP interview
guide in the decision process.
Results
of this process are summarized in the graph below. Overall, retention
beyond June 30 increased from 27 percent to 58 percent with use
of the strategic hiring system. Results were even more striking
in the area of involuntary terminations; a reduction from 31 percent
to only 17 percent involuntarily terminated in the study period.
As shown in the chart below, the program has proved to be very
cost-effective.
Costs and Benefits:
Prior to implementation of the system, the employer had estimated
the cost per turnover in the reservations center at $4,500. Using
this estimate, and the actual cost of use of the assessments,
the return on investment of the entire program (including preliminary
pattern-building and analysis) was better than $5.45 returned
for every dollar invested. Given the even higher costs associated
with firings, the true ROI was probably much higher.
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