Who Is Working For You?

Is each member of your team hardwired for their role? Do you have creative people occupying analytical jobs? Is turnover killing your margins? Is it even worth asking these questions? Your bottom line holds the answer.

We have written many times at eRep about the phenomena of individuals finding themselves in careers almost by random chance. Their career track has been a series of chance events and connections and circumstances, few of which were 100% deliberate. Like a Talking Heads song, they ask themselves, "Well, how did I get here?"

As a business leader, you might want to ask yourself these questions:

• How did you fill out your team?
• Was it a series of hires based on recommendations from others?
• Did you fill a role based on a golf game or place someone based on a referral from a friend of a friend?
• Have you ever hired a new employee based on a gut feeling?

If any of these questions ring true, you probably don't have an accurate answer to the titular question, "Who is working for you?"

Most business leaders fill their team based on a combination of methods, with referrals from trusted colleagues, existing employees, or personal acquaintances being most common.

Posting listings to job boards like Indeed™ and ZipRecruiter™ is an important practice, but despite the value of their sheer volume of exposure to potential candidates, they are an incomplete solution when used by themselves because they don't pre-screen candidates at an adequate level (or at all).

All these points highlight the fact that your hiring process is most likely lacking a crucial component: accuracy.

When we ask, "Who is working for you?" we're not talking about background checks (although those are certainly useful in some industries and occupations). This question gets to the heart of the psychometric alignment between each of your team members and the needs of their role.

Ask yourself this question: Is every member of your team psychometrically aligned to the duties and hardwired requirements of their role?

If not, you are leaving some serious productivity gains on the table. But wait, it gets worse. You are also wasting hard dollars on the shockingly high sunk costs of employee turnover. Every time you have to replace a member of your team, you are losing money in admin costs, you are giving up money in productivity losses (not just for that position but also in the staff that has to cover their load), and you are bleeding money with the immediate expenses to hire a replacement.

If you lose an employee over low pay, you'll spend substantially more hiring their replacement than it would have cost to pay them fairly in the first place.

What's the solution? How do you get to know who's working for you?

These questions have a very straightforward solution. This solution helps you get the most out of the team you already have, it often has a short ROI period, and it typically costs less than the expense of replacing just a single employee.

What is it?

The solution involves three easy steps:

1. Have everyone in your organization complete the Core Values Index™ psychometric assessment.
2. Conduct a CVI Foundations Course for your executive and supervisory teams if you have a large organization, or every employee if it's a small- or medium-sized business.
3. Engage Top Performer Profiles™ for key positions, especially those with traditionally high turnover, and use eRep's integrated talent acquisition platform for all new hires.

These three steps are what separate businesses that consistently crush it with rock star teams versus those who insist on lamenting, "People just don't want to work anymore."

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