If you have ever made a poor hiring decision, you have felt the monetary hurt associated with it, but have you ever looked beyond that symptom to see the other effects on your company’s health? The dollar figures are enough to make you cringe but the effect on your customers, your internal staff, and your potential employees will have you crying for the nurse!
Symptom Number 1: Your Customers Feel the Pain
Let’s say you have made a hire, they absorb enough product information to make it past the onboarding phase and are now interfacing with customers, but they don’t have the attitude and values necessary for a service role. They can answer customers’ questions but do not do so with the true desire to assist and to make someone’s life easier or more productive. Even worse, if a customer calls with an issue, they show little empathy and willingness to resolve the situation. According to The Society for Human Resource Management “When people are in a role in customer service for the wrong reasons, no training in the world will compensate for their lack of connection to the work itself.”
Even if you realize this mistake, the resolution of the issue involves a changeover in your company representative for the customer and therefore inconsistent service and loss of knowledge on the case. Your customers feel the pain of a bad hire even after the individual has been replaced.
Symptom Number 2: The Virus Spreads Throughout Your Staff
Whether it is a negative attitude, a poor work ethic, or simply underperformance, a bad virus can spread quickly. Your employees who have to work alongside this bad hire are the ones who take the brunt of the pain. If you have ever come into the office one morning to a grumpy, angry or miserable colleague, you understand the feeling.
Even if this new hire is as cheery as can be, slowed or ineffective work will create frustration for those relying on it and often lead to an increased burden on them as well. If one can’t do the job, someone else has to do it for them, and they sure aren’t going to be happy about it.
Symptom Number 3: Potential Candidates Fear Contagion
If your customers aren’t happy and neither are your employees, the sickness will spread across social media, review sites, and word of mouth. When your company is flagged as a source of contagion, any great talent is going to take the long way home just to avoid crossing your path.
Forbes says it well: “The negative impact that a bad hire can have on your employer brand can be extremely detrimental and difficult to remediate.” (Forbes Article)
You have bled money, suffered customer loss, and the illness keeps spreading. Are you ready for the cure?
Get the cure for bad hires!