There is no decision more important than who you hire for
your business.  The right people will make you money.  The
wrong people always cost you money.

When you think about it, there is only one reason to hire a
new employee; to improve your productivity and make you
more profitable.  Unfortunately, studies have shown only 16
percent of employees actually make us money.

This is why it is so important to “actively” recruit until
you have at least five qualified candidates, use all
available resources to narrow you choice down to at least
two finalists and hire the one with the best “Job Match.”
If you don’t, you’ll most likely end up with an unreliable,
unmotivated, unproductive “workplace survivor” that will
limit your business growth, or a “mis-hire” that can kill
your business.

Anything less than a TOP Performer in every position causes
mediocrity.  Mediocrity leads to stagnant sales, poor
productivity and the inability to accomplish your goals.

So how can hiring just one wrong person kill your business?
Here are the three most obvious Business Killers:

1.  High Payroll Costs – Whether people quit or are
terminated, to recruit, rehire, retrain, etc. turnover will
cost you around $10K for an entry level position and up to
$150K for a sales or management position.  Lower your
payroll costs by hiring the right people the first time

2.  Theft – More than one third of businesses that declared
bankruptcy last year were “stolen out of business”… by
their employees.  More than half of employee theft (time,
resources, merchandise, etc.), is committed by managers and
supervisors.

3.  Lawsuits – One of three businesses will be sued this
year on an employment issue.  You can be held liable for
your employee’s actions whether they are on the job or not.

These business killers have been known to creep up on an
unsuspecting small business owner and kill a business in
months and even days.  Luckily the effects of a wrong
hiring decision are not always this drastic.

Sometimes the effects of a mis-hire can linger for years as
they maim (rather than kill) your business.  Holding you
back from your productivity goals and revenue potential.

Here are the five most common, costly and on-going Revenue
Robbers:

1.  Conflict – How much of your time is spent trying to get
employees to communicate more effectively, work better with
one another, improve teamwork, etc.?  You don’t have to
“babysit” when you hire the right people the first time.

2.  Poor Productivity – This is the number one business
issue today and has been for seven years now.  Before then
it was “Finding & Hiring Good People;” which is now number
two.  Your best people are internally motivated and need to
be cloned so you can solve both of these problems.

3.  Errors – Some people have the competencies to be
trained quickly, continue processing new information and
multi-task.  Other don’t… and have continued to create the
costly errors that their teammates are forced to solve.

4.  Lost Customers & Sales – You know when you’re business
is experiencing conflict, apathy, low motivation and
errors.  So do your customers; and they won’t put up with
it.  If you really care about the customers that keep you
in business, stop hiring the wrong people and stop losing
clients to your competitors.

5.  Lowered Expectations – This is the most costly effect
of the wrong people.  They have killed your dreams of
becoming the most respected, productive and profitable
business in your market and has you’re behaving like a
“Market Survivor” instead of a Market Leader.  It is time
to once again raise the standards and expectations you have
for YOUR business, workforce and life.

—————————————————-
Grant D. Robinson is the President of People Values and the
Author of the Market Leadership System.  To improve your
“Hiring Success Rate” of TOP Performing Employees, watch a
free, 5-minute, on-line video at:
http://www.peoplevalues.com

This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Business, Employees, Human Resources, Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.