Your values are one of the most critical, foundational anchors of your business. Your values shouldn’t collect dust on the wall; they are a tool that must be put into the hands of your employees and used every single day. We believe that, and the proof of how foundational they are is revealed in your hiring practices. By using your values to bring in (and turn away) potential employees, you’ll be doing so much for the efficiency and future of your company.
According to the Harvard Business Review, 80 percent of employee turnover is due to poor hiring decisions. And, the average cost of employee turnover to the average company is $30,000. It’s one of the most crippling managerial mistakes you can make, but companies are making these mistakes continually, every single day. It’s because they don’t know what they’re looking for in an employee. Nine times out of ten, it’s not the employee’s fault they’re a bad fit for the company—it’s something that should have been uncovered in your hiring process.
So, today I’m going to dive headfirst into the benefits of a value-based hiring process. I don’t want any business leader or HR manager to have to deal with unnecessary turnover and, more importantly, I want business leaders to see the fruits of hiring done right. It’s a beautiful thing.
Scale Your Business
One of the key pillars of our OVRFLO program at AM is based on getting your team on the same page. Once everyone is heading in the right direction, your business begins to head in the right direction. It’s as simple as that. And, if you’re building your organization’s core values into your hiring process, you’re setting yourself up for success in the future.
I’ve talked about this before, but when your business is small, it’s easy to cast a vision to your team and remind them why they show up to work every day. But, it becomes infinitely more difficult as your company continues to grow. You’re not involved in every interview and you’re depending on others to relay your vision. It’s like a complicated game of telephone. By establishing value-based hiring practices, you can bake this vision casting into your process, knowing that every new employee is hearing it.
Streamline Your Process
The hiring process can be time-consuming and challenging. It takes several steps—applications, interviews, second-round interviews, and internal meetings—and you need to streamline this process as much as possible. The beauty of building a value-based hiring process is that your team can know and trust what these applicants have already been through.
Think of it this way. If Jill, your HR manager, is vetting someone based on her gut and how she generally “feels” about this person, you really can’t know what the vetting process has looked like when the candidate gets to you. But, if Jill is vetting someone based on a personality profile for the role, core values fit, and how those two align, then you can skip past your vetting because it shouldn’t be any different than what Jill found. It’s repeatable. By taking the personal preference and guesswork out of your hiring process, you can make every interview more streamlined and honest.
Build Confidence
The result of this streamlining process is ultimately confidence. Hiring new employees isn’t something that you can master right away—like so many other things, it’s a skill that grows over time as you begin to fully understand and live out your company’s values. The entire point of building a value-based hiring process is to remove any doubt and questions.
Think of your hiring process as a funnel. You start out wide, bringing in applications, and then start narrowing down throughout the process. Since you’ve already streamlined your hiring process, you know what to ask and what not to ask in interviews, and you can become more detailed in your questions. At the bottom of the funnel, you’re asking such specific and pointed questions that there will be little to no doubt by the end if you’re hiring the right person.
This makes the process repeatable. It’s as if the hired or rejected candidates are the test group for future candidates. By repeating the same value-based processes over and over again, seeing who fits and who doesn’t, then you can get better and better with every new application.
Right People — Right Seats
I’ve detailed this topic a bit more in another article, but when you apply value-based hiring practices, you’re not only able to bring in the right candidates, but also the right candidates in the right role. The distinction is key.
Depending on your personality, it may be easy for you to identify agreeable people who share your organization’s core values. Or, it may be easy for you to identify people who are proficient at their job. But, the key is you need to be able to identify both and that can be very difficult. When you integrate your company’s values into the process, you can know who to involve in these conversations with new candidates to select the right people for the right jobs.
If you’re ready to learn more about value-based hiring practices, please reach out to our team. We’ll help you set a foundation first, to identify your business’ purpose and core values, so we can then apply it to how you bring in the right team members. It’s one of the most important parts of your organization’s success and it deserves to be treated as such. Together, we can implement practices and techniques that will bring in the right people for the right job more quickly and more consistently.
