I haven’t yet met the business owner who gets excited about writing an in-depth job description. Go figure! The most frequent excuse is that they don’t see the value in spending much time on it.

The job description is your starting point when hiring and, later, in managing the employee. How [...]]]> Why GOOD job descriptions will save you money

I haven’t yet met the business owner who gets excited about writing an in-depth job description. Go figure! The most frequent excuse is that they don’t see the value in spending much time on it.

The job description is your starting point when hiring and, later, in managing the employee. How do you know specifically which skills, experience, and education the job requires? Many people start interviewing with only a mental snapshot of who they need instead of really thinking about it. A generalization isn’t going to result in a good hire.

Did you know that replacing a bad hire costs you somewhere between 1 to 3 times the annual salary of that person. No, I didn’t just make that up. Think about it. Even if you’re able to replace someone as inexpensively as possible, you still have a lot of expense in money or in the time of everyone involved.

Where you’re really throwing your money away is on the less obvious costs: your time (and others’) when interviewing, loss of productivity throughout the company, cost of training (whether in time or money), and it just goes on and on. Since so many companies have reduced the number of employees on hand, people are busier than ever. This means you may be adding responsibility onto the shoulders of employees who don’t want it or have time for it. As a result, your replacement costs will increase the longer it takes the new employee to get up to full productivity. Now double those costs… you went through the same thing with the employee you’re replacing, didn’t you?

How can an in-depth job description change this pattern? The simple answer is that you’ll make a much better hire and, therefore, have less need to replace that person down the road. A good hire isn’t just about what you’re getting; it’s also about what you provide that satisfies the employee’s needs. If neither of you have a good idea of how well the person fits the job that needs to be done, either of you could end up wanting to end that relationship.

If you only look at the surface of a job’s responsibilities, you’ll miss the background needed to accomplish the duties. For instance, a call center employee typically needs to be on the phone non-stop and, often, work in a small enclosed cube space. A receptionist needs to be able to deal with unruly visitors and to understand and convey messages clearly. A scientist needs to be able help you get a product on the market. Can you articulate the actual skills each of these need?

If it’s done right, the job description can survive ISO certification, a discrimination lawsuit, and an employee who wants to believe that what you’ve asked them to do “isn’t their job.”

Have you ever done the math in regards to your hiring practices? How many times have you thought you made the right hiring decision … only to find out that your new employee doesn’t know half as much as you thought?

The [...]]]> Please join us for a free webinar: "Discover What Small Businesses Must Know BEFORE Hiring"

Have you ever done the math in regards to your hiring practices? How many times have you thought you made the right hiring decision … only to find out that your new employee doesn’t know half as much as you thought?

The whole process of expanding your business can be daunting if you don’t have a plan. Since we know that hiring employees can be a valid option to help grow a company, why do so many business owners procrastinate? Could it be that it’s simply because you see hours, even days of effort ahead of you before any relief comes your way?

Of course, there’s also the fear involved in making a bad hire. And, yes, you can count of many more hours of effort managing that bad hire. Even worse, though, are those of you who spend an inordinate amount of time trying to salvage that bad hire because you just don’t want to go through the recruiting process again.

It’s best to do things right … right from the beginning. You’ll save time and money once you discover how to plan and prepare for a new hire. Developing an easy-to-follow system will take away the headaches and worry about growing your business with employees. As you may have already found out, it’s better to spend a little more time before hiring than a lot of time later on trying to fix a hiring mistake!

This webinar will cover:

• Determining the right solution to help your business grow
  
• Justifying the business need for additional employees and the options available to handle that need
  
• Creating a job description that makes it easy to determine which candidate is the best candidate and protects your company
  
• Pre-employment testing … when, why, and how
  

Register NOW!

HR Jungle’s monthly webinars each cover a specific HR topic directed toward the small business owner, with C.J. Westrick SPHR presenting.

Title:  DISCOVER WHAT SMALL BUSINESSES MUST KNOW BEFORE HIRING
Date:  Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Time:  8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PDT

Retention can be difficult in a small company because you have fewer options and resources than large companies. There will always be [...]]]> How many employees have you lost to a competitor? Did you ever ask for a detailed explanation of why an employee was leaving? What if you could have prevented good employees from jumping ship?

Retention can be difficult in a small company because you have fewer options and resources than large companies. There will always be some very good reasons why employees leave, such as going back to school, a promotion you were unable to offer, their spouse is being relocated, etc. However, there are many times when the reason an employee is leaving was something you could have prevented.

A bad manager or supervisor is one of the top reasons people leave their jobs. This can be avoided by making sure you are properly training people who manage employees. Many people are promoted into supervisory positions based on technical skills and no training is provided in people skills. If you aren’t making sure you have on-going supervisory training then you are just one more non-responsive person in the mangement line that makes an employee shrug and look for work elsewhere.

While your company may be too small to have much to offer in promotions or moves to other departments, you do have options. When a good employee starts to become bored or sees nowhere else to go in the company, they will look outside. That’s where you need to look … outside the box. Think of ways to challenge that employee. Could they become a mentor to new employees? Could they be put in charge of training for their area? Could they be cross-trained to expand their skills? Could they write a procedures manual for their department? These are often assignments that are worked on around the employee’s normal work.

Most of all, ask for details when someone resigns. Studies show it’s rarely just about money (assuming you are paying a fair wage). Sometimes you’ll get a more honest answer by having a third party (like a consultant) do the exit interview or mail a questionnaire (with a stamped return envelope) to the employee a day after they’ve left.

Once you have those answers, take them to heart and explore what your company can or should do differently so you don’t spend all your time and money replacing and training people. On the other hand, don’t waste your time if you aren’t ready to hear some hard truths and willing to make changes.

When productivity goes down, your costs go up. So, the real question ends up being “Where do you want to invest money to make more money?” One [...]]]> What happens when an employee is worried about a sick child, has problems with finances, is constantly fighting with a spouse or has health issues? The employee’s productivity goes down.

When productivity goes down, your costs go up. So, the real question ends up being “Where do you want to invest money to make more money?”
One choice would be to replace that troubled employee. Not much of a choice though because everyone comes with his or her own set of personal issues. You can’t tell (and certainly can’t ask) what the problems are for each employee or job candidate, so you won’t know if the replacement has fewer issues than your employee.

Another choice would be to put pressure on your employee to bring up productivity. This isn’t a totally bad idea but you need to recognize the difference between a temporary personal issue and a lack of effort. If your employee has been on the job for a long time, you have a good idea of his or her normal output. That’s a great place to begin the discussions. Of course, now the employee’s drop in productivity has affected your productivity because you need to deal with the issue.

You, personally, cannot do all that much to help an employee with problems outside of the work environment. And, frankly, you shouldn’t even be trying because it can be detrimental to learn too much about an employee’s personal issues. This knowledge can come back later on to bite you. In addition, you aren’t trained to provide professional help of this sort and may offer advice that turns out badly for the employee. Again, this is something that can come back and bite you.

The business world has known for a long time that personal issues do affect an employee’s productivity. The answer for most businesses is found in their benefit package.

Good health insurance takes away the worry about whether or not to take a sick child to the doctor. Employee assistance programs (EAPs) can provide easy access to legal, financial, family counseling, and other professional services to help alleviate an employee’s troubles. Providing a 401(k) plan helps employees save toward their retirement. We can’t tell employees what to do once they leave work, but we can provide benefits that allow them to help themselves more easily.

I just read a newspaper article which mentioned that today, more than ever before, employees are leaving jobs and companies they love to go to companies with better benefit packages. This wasn’t a surprise to me. Many years ago when I was hiring a national sales force for a small company I was made aware of the difference a benefit package could make. A sales candidate asked me if we were going to pay him the $3,000 difference it would cost him for family insurance coverage.

Your employees and candidates are doing the same math and are recognizing the net worth of a total compensation package. If your employee has a family, it can cost them hundreds of dollars every month to have basic health insurance, even with a group insurance policy. Some employees will waive insurance simply because they can’t afford their share of the cost.

We are in a crunch these days because companies find it equally difficult to spend thousands or even hundreds of thousands on health insurance and other benefits. Small companies have it harder because you don’t have the number of employees needed to get discounts from carriers.

Regardless of which benefits you offer, make sure you do a good selling job on the value the employee receives. I like to make up a sheet that shows the total premium cost of any benefit, followed by the amount the company pays and then the “small” amount the employee contributes. Put it into perspective for them. They may think $200 is a lot of money but when they see the total cost was $1,000 it makes them more appreciative.

Although a good benefit package can be expensive, today it can also make you an “employer of choice.” This means that candidates seek you out. The company with the best benefits can win. Not only will you get the best employees but they will stay more productive because your benefit package fulfills their needs.

Most small companies worry about the fact that they have fewer growth opportunities for [...]]]> When the labor market fluctuates, as it always does, you need to be prepared. You can be recruiting and hiring the best job candidates with a few internal changes that will give you the hiring edge, no matter how competitive the market.

Most small companies worry about the fact that they have fewer growth opportunities for employees or that their total compensation package is much less than the competition. If this has been your experience or the only way you’ve tried to compete for candidates, you need to think outside the box.

Small companies actually have a few major advantages over large companies. This article will focus on the ability to make changes quickly.

What kinds of changes are needed to win at recruiting? Simply, speed up every step in your recruiting process. However, fast does not mean sloppy. Fast means beating your competition to the offer letter.

This process won’t stand a chance unless you first obtain top management’s agreement that changes are needed to improve your recruiting record and approval for the new process. Everyone in your company needs to know the goal is to hire well, but as quickly as possible.

Centralize your recruiting process. This means one person is the hub for all recruiting activity. If you have an HR (human resources) person on staff, this is the most appropriate person. Otherwise, select someone who is organized and can maintain confidentiality. For this article, this person will just be called “HR.”

Create a simple chart that lists each opening, job code (a unique alphanumeric code that identifies this opening), date of opening, hiring manager, advertising used, candidates interviewed, and current status. Start by making things simpler by ensuring all job listings and advertisements use the job code in the “Attn” line. This makes it fast and easy to know which job openings and resumes go together. 

All resumes come to HR for re-distribution to the hiring manager. I prefer to log in resumes, but that’s for another article. The hiring manager must review the resumes within 24 hours of receipt. The hiring manager must then provide HR with a list of resumes being kept for further review and returns to HR resumes that are not in the running. 

The hiring manager (or HR) conducts initial phone interviews to determine whether or not the candidate should be brought in for face-to-face interviews. No interviews should be scheduled until you have made all the phone calls and have chosen the most likely two or three candidates.

Let me tell you about “serial interviewing.” This is my own term for scheduling back-to-back interviews for a candidate. Again, it’s important that the management team recognizes the need to be available for interviews. I like to schedule four or five interviews for each candidate, but they all happen in the same morning or afternoon. Frankly, I leave the candidate in the dark about who they will be meeting. I have found it easier to just tell them to schedule about four hours if everyone is available.

The escape clause there was “if everyone is available.” Actually, you make sure they’re available when setting up the schedule. However, the escape clause gives you the opportunity to stop the interview process at any time without difficulty or embarrassment. Part of this whole process is not to waste anyone’s time, your employees’ or the candidate’s.

You save your employees’ time by not making them go through an interview if the candidate is not viable. You save the candidate’s time by not making them come to your office three or four times for interviews.

The first interviewer is the hiring manager. If the manager does not feel the candidate is truly a possible hire, the interview process is stopped so no one wastes time. If the manager finishes interviewing a candidate and still feels they may be a good choice, the process continues. As soon as the hiring manager is free s/he has a quick meeting with the other interviewers to let them know they are still scheduled. The hiring manager may also express areas where other interviewers should explore a little more deeply. 

This serial interviewing session is the only time you bring in the candidate except under special circumstances, so make sure all your questions have been asked.

After all the interviews are done, the candidate goes home with a promise that you’ll contact him/her. All the interviewers come together for a meeting to share insights and feelings about the candidate. Although the consensus of the interviewers is not the final deciding vote about hiring this candidate, it is always interesting to hear the different things each interviewer has discovered.

All candidates should be interviewed as soon as possible after receipt of their resumes, usually within four or five days. The sooner, the better.

As soon as you find a candidate you like, keep moving forward. Do your reference checking while waiting for the background investigation to be completed. And a side note here … if you’re using a background check company that doesn’t or can’t return the report within 2-3 days, find another company. 

If you have trouble getting the references to return your calls, put it back on the candidate to give you more references or arrange for the callbacks. Also, use the time to start putting together an offer. By the time you receive the background check, you should have all the pieces together to make the offer.

This whole process can be completed in about one week from receipt of the resume, but should definitely not take longer than two weeks.

If you are really trying to stay ahead of the competition, your timing for this whole process is critical. Why? Because large companies often take at least a month before an offer is made and frequently take a month before they even make first contact with a candidate.

Moving with speed can make the candidate feel like you’re excited about hiring them. Plus, you have a good chance of having them on your payroll before your competitors have even tried to interview them.

When it’s hard to find qualified candidates, you don’t want to lose them merely because someone else was faster than you. Take advantage of your ability to move quickly … it works surprisingly well.

That may sound strange, but I’ve seen it happen several times.

You strive to hire people who are energetic, bright, and skilled. Everything works out great for a year or two and you’re patting [...]]]> Is it possible for your employees to be too good for your company? Definitely. Especially when you have a small company.

That may sound strange, but I’ve seen it happen several times.

You strive to hire people who are energetic, bright, and skilled. Everything works out great for a year or two and you’re patting yourself on the back about your brilliant recruiting abilities. In fact, you’ve already promoted this person once and she’s ready for even more challenges.

Many companies will choose to create a new position for this stellar employee so they won’t lose her. But it’s a mistake you’ll pay for down the road. I can tell you that it’s very hard to clean up a company full of employees with strange, made-up titles and inflated salaries. 

Don’t promote promising employees into titles that can’t be sustained outside of your company. You aren’t doing anyone a favor by making them a senior manager with only the responsibilities of a supervisor. The title and level of responsibility should match up, both in your company and others.

Your first responsibility is to your company. Ask yourself what positions are absolutely needed for maximum efficiency and production. If your best employees fit into any of those roles, great … promote them. But don’t make up roles just to placate your employees.

Small companies don’t have the quantity of departments and positions that will allow much internal movement. Fighting that fact will only disrupt your company and lower employee morale due to perceived favoritism. 

The best way to manage your stellar employee and extend the length of her employment is to find new challenges for her. Give her special projects that don’t belong to someone else. Have her help create training for others or giving the training. Provide cross-training. Give her the task of coming up with ideas for expanding her position. Be imaginative.

If you are doing your job well, you need to be prepared to offer career advice that may take your best employees beyond your company. Sometimes, moving on is the only alternative for a good employee’s personal and career growth.

When an employee’s work for you becomes routine for them, he will often start thinking [...]]]> Large or small, companies can have a difficult time keeping employees engaged. “Engaged” is a term used to describe employees who are still motivated about their work and excited about the possibilities of your company and your products or services.

When an employee’s work for you becomes routine for them, he will often start thinking of his position as just another job for just another company. Suddenly, “the grass is always greener” comes into play and your employee starts seeing better possibilities outside of your company.

We all remember the excitement of finding a great new job: the potential of what the future may bring, the challenge of learning new tasks or roles, and the opportunity to meet new and interesting people. Even knowing that this excitement rarely lasts long before it, too, becomes routine doesn’t stop people from changing jobs.

Retention of your employees requires your attention and time. If you’ve done much hiring, you already know that recruiting takes much more time and money than retention. Turnover can be disastrous to your employees’ morale, your company’s knowledge base, your budget, and your production schedule. But how do you re-engage your employees in an effort to stop or prevent turnover?

There are at least as many ways as there are people suggesting them. One method I’ve found that works well is what we’ll call “Discovery Days.” 

Discovery Days evolved after hearing feedback during managers’ meetings. The managers complained about the lack of shared knowledge between departments. What I discovered wasn’t unusual. As small companies grow, it’s easy for each department (or employee) to become so involved in meeting deadlines or doing the job that the big picture is lost.

Knowing why you are doing a task or job helps keep it interesting. You are no longer standing on a production line watching for a below-standard product to roll by. You are the last line of defense for the company, ensuring that customers will receive an above-standard product that cures their problem. The only way your employee is going to understand their role in the bigger picture is if you explain it.

Discovery Days is possible whether you have multiple departments or just multiple employees. The concept is rather simple; talking management into participating can take a little more effort.

Each department head prepares a presentation about what the department does for the company, how they do it, status of current projects, and projects in the pipeline. The presentation itself should take between 30-45 minutes and time is allowed for a question and answer period after the presentation. Scheduling an hour usually works well. 

Depending upon the ability of your employees to stop working to attend, each presentation should be given at least twice. Schedule the presentations so they fall on different days and times to ensure everyone in the company has the opportunity to attend. For example, schedule a Tuesday afternoon one week and Wednesday morning the next. Talk with front-line managers to find out when would be most convenient for their employees. If you make it hard for your employees to attend, Discovery Days becomes a negative instead of a positive.

You can schedule a series of presentations so one department presents over a two-week period, the next department over the following two-week period, and so forth until all departments have presented. That’s the pattern I followed the first time I did Discovery Days. The advantage was that all the department heads were working on presentations at the same time so it was easier to meet deadlines. It may also be easier to work a series into your slow period each year.

The downside of a series is that it’s difficult to do it more than once each year, so a long time goes by before it begins again. A better schedule is one that happens more frequently so employees are constantly reminded of the company’s goals and vision.

Setting up Discovery Days so one department presents each quarter gives you an on-going re-engagement plan. A quarterly presentation also makes it easier to have all employees attend each department’s presentation because they only attend one meeting every three months. However, you still want to have more than one presentation scheduled for each department so production doesn’t stop because everyone went to the presentation at the same time.

How does this work if you are smaller and don’t have specific departments? Your Discovery Days will be simpler but still hold value. Even if you only have a few employees, you’ll want to make sure they understand what your company is doing, trying to do, and what you hope to do in the future. Connect their jobs to your current and future goals and projects. Explain how the widget they help build helps the company and helps the company’s customers.

Success relies on several factors. First and foremost, it is critical that senior management agrees to make the presentations and understands the value these add to the retention and engagement of all employees. Next, make sure all supervisory personnel also understands what you are doing and why. You want the anticipation for these presentations to build and create excitement and interest.

The meetings cannot be mandatory or they will lose value. It is management’s job to encourage employees to attend and arrange attendance to ensure normal production continues. In addition, you must schedule these during work hours and pay your employees for the time they spend at these presentations. Although you could schedule these during lunch hours, it’s not really the message you want to send … that you don’t feel these are important enough to take work time for them.

You will probably find, as I did, that the first meeting will have the lowest attendance because employees don’t really know what to expect. Once word-of-mouth gets out, the meetings are well-attended if you are presenting interesting information. I have found that employees become, once again, highly motivated when they are reminded of what the company is striving to achieve and how all the pieces fit together.

I’m a huge proponent of background checks. However, I’m going to focus on just one aspect [...]]]> You’ve found the perfect candidate for that job opening. This person is great: a personality that will fit in with your other employees, the technical skills you need, and they’ve even worked at a couple of your competitors. Or not.

I’m a huge proponent of background checks. However, I’m going to focus on just one aspect of a background check for this article: employment history. Why is this so important? Because, in my experience, you tend to believe the written word. In this case, that’s often the employment application. Just because your candidate signed the application swearing what they wrote is the truth, it doesn’t necessarily make it so. I know that may sound cynical but it doesn’t make it any less true.

I used to rely on hiring managers to call a candidate’s previous employers to confirm employment history. However, one particularly busy manager didn’t bother and it ended up costing the company over $30,000 in legal fees a few years later. Live and learn. This particular case, which got much more complicated by the time it was over, was the primary reason I started conducting background investigations years before most companies were doing them. It’s also the reason I will pay a few dollars more to include the employment history on the background checks I order. Oh, in that case I mentioned, it turned out the candidate omitted a job with one of our competitors … a hire that ended up costing them a lot of money.

An article I read mentioned the most common lies on resumes were about the candidate’s education, title, compensation, reason for leaving, and accomplishments. Why would a candidate lie to you about the title and compensation they had? Nearly every time it will be because they want to pump up their old position so you will feel obligated to improve on what they had. It works, too. Rarely does a manager come to me without putting in a plug for a "nice bump" in the previous salary so the candidate will be more inclined to take our offer.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make a nice offer. But how would you feel about increasing your budget to give them that extra bump … only to discover they had inflated their previous earnings? Not only are you upset about paying more for the position than you planned, but you have just discovered this person is a liar. After swearing it was the truth. CEOs I’ve worked with know this is the line in the sand with me. If I find a candidate has lied on the application, they are not hired (or immediately fired). It doesn’t matter if they are a vice president or a file clerk. If they lie to you to get the job, what will they do to you once they have the job?

It’s an integrity and ethical issue only you can define. If you hire that person even knowing there are lies on the application, you have also just made it extremely difficult to do anything about the next applicant that lies. Remember your practices, whatever they are, need to be consistent. You need to decide what constitutes your line in the sand.

The title, dates of employment, and base salary are three things most HR departments will give out. (Release of any compensation information requires pre-approval from the employee.) However, as more companies are ending up in court for releasing information that may have had a negative effect on the employee’s ability to become employed by others, it’s becoming harder to get even this information. It seems that companies specializing in background investigations are able to more easily obtain this information.

If you decide to check employment history yourself, make sure you are very consistent with your methods. You can’t let one slide just because the other company doesn’t immediate provide you the information. Find a way to get the confirmation you need to keep moving forward with your recruiting process. I find that, for the time spent making the calls or faxing permissions, it’s less costly to me to have it done as part of the whole background investigation.

Oh, by the way, that problem candidate/employee we had? We found out a year after termination that the employee was still listing us as a current employer. Then, ironically, it turns out that a few years later this same person applied to a different company with which I was working. The resume completely omitted the three years’ employment with my other company. It was the same trap and I pitied whoever hired this person next without confirming employment history!

But your employees aren’t your competition, you say? True. [...]]]> When you think about your competitors, what goes on in your mind? Do you think about besting their advertising or prices? Do you think about that competitive analysis you did when trying to determine whether your business would be viable? Or do you think about your employees?

But your employees aren’t your competition, you say? True. But the companies that used to employ them are … they are your competition for skilled employees. Just because another company is not in your industry or niche doesn’t mean they aren’t your competitor for whatever talent is in your local job market.

As an employer and supervisor, you need to keep your mind open to the possibilities of cross-industry job skills. There is a lack of this type of thinking in most companies and it lessens your ability to recruit a well-rounded team. The best way to broaden your recruiting options is to give serious thought as to exactly which skills are needed for the job. Then ask yourself if those skills are only used in your particular industry or niche. The answer, if you’re honest, is usually no.

If you’re hiring a brain surgeon, then the market will be limited to a specific niche. However, if you’re recruiting accounting, HR, clerical, or marketing positions, it’s easier to see that the basic job skills can easily adapt to any industry. Electrical engineers, software engineers, and other technical positions can also adapt with a learning curve.

Learning about a new industry can make the initial few months of a new job a little harder but, if you’ve hired a good worker with strong skills, it’s certainly an easy way to widen the circle of candidates for your open positions. Keep in mind that even you started out without knowing much about your industry and had to learn what you now know.

I’m not advising that you hire everyone from other industries. There is a lot to be said for having strong industry knowledge within your company. However, as long as that knowledge is available and shared, don’t restrict yourself from hiring skilled employees in other industries.