Just witnessed a focus group concerned with “Good Corporate Citizenship.”
It seems that in the past 25 years, corporations have reduced Human Resources to a transactional and legal compliance activity. Hiring decisions are made at the lowest, least expensive level possible. Virtually no attempt is made to assess basic intelligence, enthusiasm for the task, motivation or integrity. It has become a simple matter of matching the job knowledge with previous job knowledge. But, when purchasing shares in a mutual fund, we always heed the warning “past performance does not guarantee future performance.”
When treating people like interchangeable parts, or at best like cattle, it is no wonder that employees are no longer loyal to their employers. This phenomena has created significant social consequences. For example, it has increased the average commuting distance, choking the roads and wasting energy. Employees are reluctant to relocate and live near where they work – knowing that in most cases the chance of them losing their job at some point in the future is relatively high. Low employee morale and apathy has reduced productivity. The cost of recruiting, and the cost of making a hiring mistake are substantial.
A bank president gave me this example. He said: "You have a job that needs to be filled (position A). You have an employee (employee B) who is a long term, loyal employee and knows 80% of the job. The company, in it’s desire to be efficient, chooses to pay a recruiter to find a new employee rather than spend the time and resources to teach him/her (employee B) the remaining 20%. The recruiter delivers the new person who claims to know the job 100%, but in fact knows only 85%%. Employee B, who knew 80% becomes disgruntled and quits to take a job with a competitor, convincing them on the interview that s/he knows 100%. It takes the competitor 6 months to figure out that they made a hiring mistake, but in this 6 months the employee learns the remaining 15% and now knows 95% of what is needed." What a stupid, wasteful system.
It is time for the pendulum to swing back the other way, and have corporations treat people with a long term perspective. Motivation comes in many forms. An employee who is smart, enthusiastic, loyal, protective of the company, excited about doing the work, has feelings of pride in accomplishment, is cooperative, and has a positive attitude toward learning will be much more productive than someone who has all of the required job knowledge but feels like an outsider who may be expendable. But attempts at measuring these personal characteristics are seldom made. It requires a higher level of experience and education on the part of the recruiter – which makes it more expensive. This “penny wise” and “pound foolish” mentality is hurting us, and it is time to try something new.
