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Bad Habit Hiring: Hiring For All The Wrong Reasons
It’s time for smarter resource allocation, common sense hiring, and talent management
Graham Peelle
July 08, 2024
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Core Leadership Development Areas:
Self Reflection & Awareness: Looking inside for what’s holding you back
Leadership Operating System - How to lead with the 4 E’s: empowerment, empathy, efficiency, and effectiveness
Framework Development: Leadership Foundations - Performance Operations Culture, with a people centered approach
Performance Management - Measuring what matters with visibility and focus
Welcome to “Executive Summary: The Dynamic Leader”
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Bad Habit Hiring: Hiring For All The Wrong Reasons
It’s time for smarter resource allocation, common sense hiring, and talent management
Opening Remarks
Resource allocation requires the same attention as capital allocation: Over-hiring, layoffs, and redeployment continue to be areas where companies struggle. Layoffs are the worst sign that you as an organization or leader have a gap in your forecasting and touch on the market. In some cases it means forecasting is non-existent, is based on financial procedures alone, or is tied to goals.
Fear in forecasting is a sign of leadership pushing the pressures it has down on its people, versus owning it. And if the excuse is using layoffs to right size, it will catch-up, if you continuously practice this, as it is when you think about it, a lazy way to execute management of a business (choosing not to actually manager performance on an ongoing basis, rather laying people off in a cowardly manner instead).
10x-Exec: Big Idea
You are your biggest limiting factor. The ceiling you have is one you have placed on yourself, or you have chosen to work under. It doesn’t have to be this way.
If you’re struggling with retention, hiring, layoffs, this all comes down to Integrated Talent. This isn’t a management, interviewing, generational, market, people issue, inflation, and in most cases, it’s not even a pay issue. It’s a you problem, because it’s your show. Whether you run the company, or a team, your group is your show, and that doesn’t make you the king or queen, it makes you responsible for the behaviors, actions, and performance of the team. Your team is a reflection of you.
If you’re struggling with Integrated Talent, it’s time to find the recipe to right the ship. The talent challenges will catch up with you if you don’t address them sooner than later.
No Limit Leadership Lecture
Over hiring
Hitting hiring numbers is essential to driving business, except for when that becomes your focus because you have a talent problem. If you’re struggling with forecasting and hiring to that forecast, scaling up, and down, there is an approach that will make your life easier. Remove your production forecast from a 1:X correlation of hires/growth in volume. It’s a bad habit anyway, to hire because it got busy.
As a business leader, the last thing you want, is the win with getting new business, yet negating that positive outcome with higher labor costs. Yes, sometimes, especially in the short term, more business, often means more team members, at least in our current mindset many of work, think, and operate within now.
What if we took the option to hire new team members off the table?
That frame alone, changes your approach and mindset, and you can go deeper to assess and determine what is truly needed.
Over hiring should be part of business operations, not a situation that impacts your firm, your people, or your reputation so deeply it becomes a traumatic event. If you over hire, your first instinct should be to find a home internally for your associates that are displaced, and last resort, external placement.
What if we held ourselves to helping each team member find a new role, paying them until they do, or managing layoffs in a more human way.
What if we created new opportunities for displaced team members to drive revenue?
And for those who are concerned about AI and the impacts of that nature: The way we are laying off people in Corporate America, is going to drive AI replacement of people to increase, as more laborers will exit, change industries, or stay away from your company. Eventually, karma will catch up with those who don’t learn, or care to learn from the past. Companies will also get burn out on the churn with people and replace as much as possible with AI.
Business Case for Great Leadership
Headcount Debacle
Once you start prioritizing managing strictly to a financial target based on headcount, you’re going down the dark path as a leader. Revenue/Headcount is one measure, out of many, but it’s not the measure to hang your hat on for your future. It may help show how efficient you are at this moment, but it does not show you’re doing this the right way.
Companies often hire based on emotion, media attention, feel good vibes about growth, chasing government incentives, VC investment, and yet terminate on pure numbers. Hiring is for emotion, terminating is about business results. Over the last twenty years I have personally seen companies over hire, and witnessed industries like Big Tech, also over hiring.
With former employers or leaders, the reasons for over hiring follow a few core characteristics:
Lack of innovation
Lack of planning
Forecasting for finance and goals, not business operations reasons
Hiring becomes a habit as the solution, not a sustainable solution
Hiring so many people increases odds there is limited career growth
Over hiring is holding yourself back on company 10x growth. Hiring for sudden or incremental production or work volume spikes at a rate of 1:1 rate, is short-term thinking and typically brings short-term results. Hiring at the same rate of growth is a dangerous game. The impact of over hiring and poor planning with hiring, kills your credibility with talent in the market, and can have an even bigger impact on your survivors in the short term, causing you to lose more great talent.
Redeployment is a better way
Redeployment is often where the magic is - internal redeployment done well, is a game changer for larger organizations where it can be a challenge. (Often hiring for the same people in other groups, but cross-divisional communication can be limited, terminating, and rehiring the same level and skills).
The associates walking out the door will either be a company’s biggest advocate, or not. Very limited middle ground there.
And consider this- these individuals leaving, especially with mid to high ratings, were the biggest “asset” yesterday, with the knowledge, secret sauce, relationships, and ability to perform, execute, and get results. It’s either “human capital” as an asset, it’s not…
So if we’re allowing our assets to go out into the market, we’re giving other organizations, in many cases, competitors, a significant share of our Top 50% talent. Let that sink in. Source, hire, train, and hand off to your competitor, or send out a great professional who doesn’t support your brand any longer. The value of talent matters until it…doesn’t.
Hitting hiring numbers is essential to driving business, except for when that becomes your focus when you have a talent problem. If you’re struggling with forecasting and hiring to that forecast, scaling up, and down, there is an approach that will make your life easier. Remove your production forecast from a 1:X correlation of hires/growth in volume. It’s a bad habit anyway, to hire because it got busy.
As a business leader, the last thing you want, is the win with getting new business, yet negating that positive outcome with more labor cost. Yes, sometimes, especially in the short term, more business often means more team members, at least with this we think and operate now.
What if we took the option to hire new team members off the table?
That frame alone, changes your approach and mindset, and you can go deeper to assess and determine what is truly needed.
Over hiring should never impact your firm either the cost of people or your reputation. If you over hire, your first instinct should be to find a home internally for your associates that are displaced, and last resort, external placement.
What if we held ourselves to helping each team member find a new role, paying them until they do, or managing layoffs in a more human way.
What if we created new opportunities for displaced team members to drive revenue?
The way we are laying off people in Corporate America, is going to drive AI replacement of people to increase, as more laborers will exit, change industries, or stay away from your company. Eventually, karma will catch up with those who don’t learn, or care to learn from the past.
Closing Bell
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Hopefully, this added a little value to your business or your career. Thank you for reading. Please repost or share with someone who may benefit from this edition.
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Core Topic Areas:
People
Integrated Talent/Workforce Strategy: Talent Attraction, Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, Retention, and Optimization (Forecasting & Staffing)
Associate Relations - Proactive Employee Care and engagement: appreciate, listen, respond, communicate, and resource
Integration: People, Process, and Technology
Organizational Strategy
Strategy & Scaling - Vision to Growth
Restructuring & Turnaround - Stabilization & Mitigation
People & Profitability - Operational Efficiency, Growth Drivers, and Cost Reduction
Leadership
Leadership Foundations - Performance Operations Culture, with a people centered approach
Leadership Operating System - How to lead with the 4 E’s: empowerment, empathy, efficiency, and effectiveness
Performance Management - Measuring what matters with visibility and focus
Strategic Partnership Development
UK/EU launching to US market, US company operating in UK/EU
Strategic Partnership Development
Solutions - establishing creative ways to get thing done
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Community and collaboration with efficient and meaningful connection
Personal development and growth fostering a positive learning environment
Career/job search support helping network to find the best opportunities
Empowering Leaders & Organizations to Unlock Greatness through Scaling —> People | Process | Technology
Accelerating value creation and efficiency
Challenging the status quo
Driving the Performance Operations Culture
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Climb Higher | Raise Your^ROI
For additional content, check out articles on Medium.
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