Is your business sluggish? Does it feel like you’re losing focus? It’s very possible that that your business has the flu. While taking on staff can propel your company forward, poor hiring decisions impact your business in the same way that the flu impacts your body. Whenever you have the flu, you are not usual yourself. Here’s seven ways that bad recruitment outcomes can feel like your business has the flu.
1) You get sluggish. Think about the blah feeling you get when you’ve got the flu. Things that you would normally without missing a heartbeat now can take you the whole morning. Poor recruitment decisions and the unnecessary work they create sap all your business’ energy. Projects take longer to be implemented. Jobs that should be done once, have to be redone. And worst of all, at the end of the day you look back and realise how little you got done. Blah.
2) You lose focus. It’s really hard to concentrate when you have the flu. One thousand thoughts go through your head, but you can’t focus on any one thing.
In same way, when you’re dealing with the drama of a bad hire it’s next to impossible to be focused on the things that matter in your business, and it feels like everything is happening but you’re not getting anything done. It’s horrible.
3) You hurt all over. The flu always brings that all-over pain. Your shoulders feel tense and your neck gets stiff. Your back is tight and sore and your head starts throbbing. There’s pain everywhere. Poor recruitment outcomes can do exactly the same to your business. As the manager you have to deal with performance issues, other managers complain because their deadlines are impacted, there’s tension in your team because they have to carry a lot more of the load, and customers are unhappy because they are not getting the service they want. There’s pain everywhere.
4) You don’t look good. Have you ever been really sick and seeing yourself in the mirror said “hey good looking”? No, me either. That’s because when you’re sick you don’t look your best. In your organisation, the wrong hiring decisions totally impact your brand. Having employees that don’t fit or get your business culture representing you can send out the completely wrong message. Similarly, when you’re having to re-recruit “oh look, Bill is recruiting…again.”
5) You scare people away. I’m sure you’ve seen that uncomfortable “I’m trying not to breathe your germs as I ever-so-slightly lean away” look that people get when they’re talking with someone who is sick. That’s because people can tell when you’ve got a cold, and they want to stay away from you.
That’s exactly the same for your business. The wrong recruitment decisions, especially for client facing roles, impact your customer experience. To a client, poor service, delays in delivery and unnecessary mistakes feel like your business is coughing all over them, and it makes them recoil back.
6) You have to pay for expensive fix-its. The trip to the pharmacy is no fun when you’re sick. Since you hurt all over, are fuzzy headed and desperate for a solution, you pay whatever the pharmacist says to you – no questions asked. You get the throat lozenges with lemon, the nose clearer, the cold and flu tablets, the echinacea and garlic tablets, the vitamin c and the pain killers. A whole lot of cash spent, only because you have the flu.
Trying to fix recruitment problems is outrageously expensive. Most of us are aware of the direct recruitment costs, like putting up an ad or paying a agency, but even though that can be expensive, that’s just the start of it. Add to that, your time, your team’s overtime, temps you might have to hire to fill the gaps, the impact on campaigns and projects, wages during training periods, reduced productivity, and the list goes on.
7) You are vulnerable to making mistakes. Have you ever broken or spilled something by accident when you’ve been sick? It’s so much easier to make mistakes when you’ve got the flu. When you’ve been dealing with the impacts of poor hiring decisions you get desperate for a solution, and unfortunately this can make you vulnerable to making mistakes that you would not normally make.
Mistakes with projects and campaigns because you’ve had less time to focus on them. Mistakes with your good people because you are carrying so much more stress and they are too. And worse of all, mistakes in rehiring. When you are desperate to get a solution, it’s really easy to go for a quick fix, but unless you get lucky, all you are doing is catching the flu again.
Don’t soldier on, get your business fighting fit by getting the right support and making the right recruitment decisions.
– Lucas
Do you have a horror recruitment story? Share it in the comments below!