Two important employee characteristics to look for in prospective candidates are values and behaviours. These two characteristics are often the most difficult to discern.
One reason for this is that many organisations have not succinctly and accurately identified their desired corporate values, and without knowing what exactly is desired it becomes extremely difficult to identify desired values and behaviours in others. Some organisations have wonderful motherhood values statements adorning their corporate walls but these may not readily translate into corresponding desired behaviours.
With the values and habits clearly enunciated, the task of hiring people with compatible and aligned values systems becomes more definite and less reliant on chance.
An effective strategic HR plan will predict the right numbers and mix of staff required to respond to the business challenges of the future, as well as the right timing etc. There is no magic formula that will suit all organisations when it comes to workforce profiles. Each organisation needs to examine its unique needs and identify the most appropriate workforce profile needed for future success.
Replacement activities can be very costly. Most of these costs are incurred when we source replacement staff from the external labour market. But is this the right source? We can minimise our costs greatly by first looking internally for suitable replacements. However, we must allow internal replacement to be an exercise in serendipity. What is required is a combined strategy of career development and succession planning.
Based on clearly identified future staffing needs - numbers, mix and time - we can develop a template by which we can ascertain our current capabilities. We can then, with confidence, design an organisation development strategy that will ensure our ability to respond immediately to unexpected staffing shortages. Internal recruitment is quicker, more responsive and cheaper than external recruitment. Internal recruitment also has a higher degree of accuracy when predicting the performance of successful candidates and their compatibility with the workplace culture.
Making it happen
The following will help to improve both effectiveness and efficiency of your replacement activities:
- Know what you need and when you need it
- Adopt a strategic approach to all your HR activities, not just recruitment and selection. Strategic planning ability should be a core competency for all managers
- Adopt a project management approach to recruitment and selection. Do not confine project management skills to working with non-human resources only. Project management offers a discipline to question what we are doing and why we are doing it, and to identify measurable outcomes. Project management ability should be a core competency for all managers
- Make line managers totally responsible for all selection decisions
- HR staff should act as internal consultants advising and assisting line managers with their HR responsibilities
- Train all managers in a wide variety of effective recruitment and selection methods
- Track all new appointments to evaluate the effectiveness of the selection methods used so that only highly predictive selection methods are used in the future
- Develop benchmarks by which you can evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of your recruitment and selection processes. Build quality into your processes
- Develop an integrated career development and succession planning model and integrate it with the performance management system
- Analyse and review all positions at least yearly and whenever they fall vacant
- Accurately reflect the position description in advertising
- Be professional and respectful. Treat all candidates as if they have more power than you do - because they have! Every candidate has the potential to satisfy a strategic corporate need. Candidates donate their time for free just because you have a need, and with no guarantee of a reward for doing so. They even come to your offices in their own time and at their own expense. And yet some organisations do not have the good manners or professionalism to thank the candidate for offering to help. Some do not even let the unsuccessful candidates know the outcome of their aplication and/or refuse to answer questions about the reasons for not being successful.
Why would a manager or HR representative not inform a candidate of the reasons for not being successful? Perhaps it is because they cannot justify their decision to reject a particular candidate. If they cannot justify their reasons to unsuccessful candidates can they truly be confident that they have actually chosen the right candidate?
Don't leave such an important and expensive HR process to chance. Recruitment and selection processes can be imprved upon immensely with little or no expenditure. In fact, the potential exists to reduce costs. We also can ensure that we always have the people we not only deserve, but also want.