Bad hiring decision and its effect on Business

Problem of hiring a wrong people is that may be you end up having to live with them, fix them, or fire them. All these three options are bad options.

It is difficult to recognize bad hires. A Seeker may look good on paper, but necessarily may not be the correct person for the job. At times the bad hires are not recognized for months or years. The indication sign of the bad hire can be delicate as well as painful. Many a times we see internal job movements from one department to another based on the request from the new supervisor and the main reason for this is Poor performance, Quality issues, complaints, over time required and so on. Or in the worst case you might lose an important client, or may be a loss of big account or may lose a valuable colleague for mishandling them.

Recruitment is a most critical activity for any organization. The bad recruitment can lead to several negative impact on Business as listed below.

Reduced Productivity:

 The number of queries closed by a low performing associate during the query management activity would be purely based on his knowledge of Query management processes and guidance, effective query wording and appropriate query closer based on the query response from the site is critical and may vary from associate to associate.

An example of a voice based customer care executives attending the customer calls with appropriate resolution, a candidate with poor communication may end closing the call without satisfactory resolution.

Decrease in revenue:

The number of calls attended by an associate would directly impact thon the revenue in a billing system where charges are  based on number of units processed. A good performer would action more number of calls than an average or a low performer. There could be revenue lose, as the low performer would need time in understanding the process and concepts related to the activity without much of a productive output. A candidate with poor grasping may have to be trained repeatedly and this would be a cost to the company. There can be other negative revenue impact like product development and poor customer services. 

Lower Utilization:

 A below average performer would utilize his time in training, the candidate would be more dependent on the others for clarifications and guidance ultimately loosing productivity hours.

Poor Quality:

An below average performer or a bad candidate struggles to take calls independently due to lack of process knowledge, smartness to handle the customer questions etc. Thus ends up closing the call inappropriately or poor quality resolution which has direct impact on the customer service and satisfaction.

Low performer data reviewer with poor knowledge of process and general rules of data review ends up in closing the queries incorrectly leading to the Quality issues. The reduce quality of the data delivered to the client would raise several questions on the entire process of data reconciliation.

Bad candidate experience will reduce future assignments: Due to low productivity and Quality of the bad candidates the entire process of data review may have to be re-processed eventually, increasing the work load on other good performing associates.

Some of the other impacts on bad hiring

Morale of the Employee:

 In one of the survey conducted on hiring, 95% of the employees conveyed that the bad hiring negatively impacted the workplace morale. In an organization or a department, the negativity of the bad employee may quickly spread across the other employees thus impacting valuable morale as well. If there are substandard employee on payroll and don't do anything about it, then this can easily demoralize the engaged employees.

Efforts to be spent on supervision of Bad associate:

 The bad candidates spreading the negativity on the floor would need additional supervision on their behavior, quality and productivity of their work.

Customer service:

While the client relationships should be strong enough to withstand the work delivered by bad hires, it may give an impression that the business/process is unstable due to poor performance.

Indirect impacts such as:

A.    Supervisor time spent interviewing/managing.

B.     Damage to customer relationships.

C.    Lost productivity.

D.    Co-worker and manager time spent training.

E.     Impact on employee morale.

A. Supervisor time spent interviewing/managing:  It is the time spent on (evaluating) having a close eye on the employee's and managing them once they are on board. Instead the same time could have been utilized mentoring the old employees or performing some relevant tasks.

B. Damage to customer relationship: It means because of the Quality issue from the employee it effects in losing the contract from the customer and also future opportunities.

C. Lost Productivity:  It is nothing but the bad performance caused by negligence management of time by a bad hire, time invested by other employees to work with the bad hire and also time spent searching for and interviewing a replacement hire.

D. Co-worker and manager time spent training:  It means that instead of spending the time and money on the bad hire it could have been invested in some other good cause.

E. Impact on Employee Morale:  It says hiring a bad employee may result in negative impacts on other employees once the bad employee is terminated such as questions may raise on management decision making skills and also on job security it also increases the responsibilities of the experienced employee. 

Steps to avoid Bad hiring:

Hire through references:

This is one of the most easy way to hire a valuable candidates that can be obtained through the references of the existing good associates working in the organizations. Try to check the references, especially the professional references.

Provide opportunities to the existing good candidates:

 Try and groom the existing employees, make them  ready to accept any role and responsibilities, this will also keep the employees engaged and motivated.

Give enough time to the entire process of hiring:

 Do not rush and close the recruitment process, give enough time, list down the activities to be managed during the recruitment, define the standard guidance follow the protocol, understand the requirement, follow the do's and don'ts give enough time to the technical rounds, choose the interviewer panels carefully.

In order to create a dream company it is very critical to have the strong the foundation and happy employees, create an environment of healthy competition, appreciate and encourage the associate's contributions and keep them motivated. By following some of the best practices you can hire a right candidates and make the successful work culture.