Target: Recruit the best. But are you hiring into your existing culture?

Hiring Talented People

Organisations are focused on talent, more now than ever before. Retaining talented people is hard enough but recruiting the right person for the job, in what many say is a reducing talent pool, is only getting harder. Talented people can be defined as being professionally qualified to do the job and are

 

1. Able to be strategic and operational
2. Adaptive to change
3. Able to inspire and motivate

 

Hiring inside the box

Many organisations simply do not have an effective strategic process in place to assess an applicant’s personality that will fit in with the organisation’s culture. It can even be suggested that they guess on who will be the right fit. However, it’s only when companies are asked what the existing culture of the organisation is that things really start to get interesting. One HR director has said "it's clear and our values are on the website... but we're not as open minded to change as it states..." and therein lies the start of a problem. 

So why not ask yourself the question – what is our culture and where is the evidence? 

When I ask that simple question, most C-Suites will start with a belief something like the picture below:

 

 

We all know an engaged employee is more productive and we like to believe we can see a clear line of sight from an employee’s personal meaning to the organisational purpose – a nice, compact aligned and engaged organisation. So it’s not surprising we like to see something like a perfectly formed, strong office building and no matter which floor you’re on, you’re part of the structure (culture). 

Reality, however, has a habit of proving our beliefs to be different from our perception. In most cases, we never really achieve engaged teams or departments that are perfectly aligned with the combined culture. Instead we put up with the differences and rarely address or fix them, believing maybe that the differences are not that ‘big’ or important. (That status quo continues despite knowing an engaged organisation is more productive… and happy). 

So the reality is we get the following picture evolving. 

 

 

The perfect cultural alignment shifts and the building blocks start to look unstable as departments develop their own cultures. Some leaders, heads or managers are more imposing and influential than others and hence it’s not surprising departments move away from the core culture. If allowed to continue this will create long term disengagement and lower productivity. What we know, as it’s regularly reported is that some 50% of available time is non-productive, a fact most C-suite leaders will tell me when asked. 

So perhaps the first question to ask is which picture fits your organisation? The right, or the left? How aligned are each of your leaders, managers, heads and employees? When we hire for a department on the left are we hiring inside their box?

 

Hiring outside the box?

If you’re hiring the best people, e.g. the most talented available whilst assuming the picture on the right, will the new hire stay when they find out the reality is the picture on the left? 

 

Some questions to consider for your organisation:

• With 83% of UK employees (87% Globally) regularly reported as being disengaged (Gallup Engagement Statistics) , how do you compare?
• Is the best talented person the right choice for your organisation? 
• Will the best person fit in with the culture or not? 
• Is this old saying “People leave managers not organisations” still true? 

We can easily forget that it is people that create the culture of the organisation. 

You can check your organisations culture here and see the missed opportunities and lost performance from a dysfunctional or misaligned culture.

As ever you have a choice, what’s your next step? Will you take it?

 

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About Mind Fit

Our clients experience a paradigm and permanent improvement in personal and business performance by developing 'Can- Do' attitudes 

and winning minds. Mind fit people are: able to think flexibly and appropriately; emotionally competent and resilient; driven with a real sense of purpose; able to connect meaningfully with others. 

• Connect with Neville Gaunt and Mind Fit on LinkedIn.
• Visit the Mind Fit website.
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