Dive Brief:
- Managers spend up to a full day a week coaching underperforming employees, according to a new Robert Half survey. CFOs in the survey estimated that addressing subpar workers' performance consumes more than 10 hours of a 40 hour week.
- When asked how hiring mistakes affect their team's morale, 44% said greatly, 47% said somewhat and 9% said not at all. Paul McDonald, Robert Half's senior executive director, said that considerable time and money is lost on bad hires, fixing their mistakes and dealing with the negative effects on morale and productivity.
- McDonald also said that a bad hire could mean that your hiring process is flawed. Robert Half recommends that employers use a multi-pronged hiring approach that includes tapping into a network of referrals and working with a recruiter; hiring for company fit, not just for skills; offering higher pay to highly skilled job seekers; and doing reference checks.
Dive Insight:
The Robert Half survey quantifies what many managers already know: they can spend an excessive amount of time coaching underperformers and trying to get them up to speed. Employers are consistently trying to reduce time-to-hire, especially in a tight labor market; the longer a position stays open, the costlier it is in both money and productivity. But employers can't afford to make a bad hire, either. The dollar cost of replacing an employee who earns $45,000 can be upwards of $15,000, or 33% of an employee's salary.
Getting candidate referrals from current employees or from people in professional networks can minimize the chances of making a bad hire. People who know a candidate's skills, work ethic and company fit are more likely to refer the best candidates, and can also cut down on the sourcing time for harried recruiters.
Reference checks and even background checks can help for certain positions. They can reveal potential concerns in a candidate's past performance or behavior that aren't detectable in an interview, but employers must be careful to remain compliant with state, local and federal law when using them — a tall order these days. Regardless of technique used, however, employers will likely feel the pressure to hire good workers quickly increase, especially as unemployment remains low.