This Article Was Written by a Human, Not an AI

It's time for some hard truths — and their solution.

If you are a business leader, what is your most important resource? Here's a hint: What would happen to your company if every employee and member of your team quit?

It's a cliche that also happens to be 100% true: People are your greatest resource.

Here's another truth: people are not resources. They are not commodities to be obtained, consumed and used, discarded and then replaced. They are not just warm bodies keeping seats warm. If that's your operational philosophy, suture self. Your more humanity-minded (and likely more profitable) competitors hope you maintain that attitude.

Unskilled Labor

There is no such thing as unskilled labor.

If any random person could walk in off the street and perform the duties of a role without so much as a "This goes here, that goes there" explanation, and do so at a productivity level that positively contributed to your revenue goals, then that is unskilled labor.

But that role doesn't exist.

Even roles that don't require formal education or training are not unskilled. The individual must be shown the ropes about what goes where and when — and why — especially if you want employees who care about doing a good job.

Warm Bodies

If all you're doing is hiring warm bodies without regard to suitability to the role, you are missing out on productivity and culture gains that are literally costing you money in lost opportunity.

If you hire an employee who is psychometrically aligned to their role (as defined by their Core Values Index™ scores and the role's Top Performer Profile™ score), they are likely to be 200% more productive and experience 50% or less turnover compared to their unaligned peers.

Flip that around and you can easily see that every unaligned employee is costing you money in the form of lower productivity and higher hiring costs.

NOTE: Employment industry data shows that it costs an average of $5,000 in sunk expenses — money spent without benefit — every time you have to hire someone new. It will cost you even more if you try to avoid those hiring costs by keeping unmotivated staff in their current position.

The Power of Motivation

Are you any good at tasks you don't enjoy? You might be, but doesn't it require a lot of effort and energy that you'd be better off spending on something else?

It's an effective leadership strategy to delegate tasks that aren't within your wheelhouse.

If writing isn't your forte or your passion, for example, you delegate that responsibility to people who excel at it and even write for fun on their days off.

Contrarily, you will consciously and unconsciously seek areas of expertise and responsibility that are firmly within your wheelhouse. Why? Because you enjoy it and are likely better at it than your peers. You are likely better at it than your peers specifically because you enjoy it.

Think about the people on your team. What would be the impact if any given member of your staff was replaced by someone who was equally qualified to do the job but was unmotivated to be there?

Would they be productive? Would they maintain high company loyalty and stick around for the long haul? Would employees who are innately unmotivated and psychometrically misaligned to their role be the rockstars on your team? Probably not.

Build Your Team of Rockstars

When you fill out a team with people who are passionate about what they do, they are far more likely to become rockstars in their role.

It is a psychological fact that someone who enjoys what they do is more likely to achieve excellence in their role than someone who doesn't enjoy it.

How do you build a team where every member is a rockstar in their role?

You hire smartly by putting the right people into the right seats.

How do you hire smartly?

You measure the ideal psychometric profile of each role using a Top Performer Profile, and then compare the individual Core Values Index psychometric profiles of candidates (and existing employees) to that TPP score.

This is a data-centric way to ensure those you consider for a role are psychometrically aligned to it. This means you are picking people who are innately hardwired to be passionate about what they do.

NOTE: Hiring with the CVI and a TPP is also a good way to reduce or even eliminate some forms of unconscious bias in the hiring process, improving diversity, equity and inclusion along the way. That's a very good thing.

It is by filling each role with someone psychometrically inclined to be a rockstar in that position that you organically build a culture that not only attracts new recruits, it also helps retain the amazing team you've already assembled.

By the way, this article was written not by an AI but by a living, breathing human being who is very passionate about what they do.

Core Values Index™ and CVI™ are trademarks of Taylor Protocols, Inc.