Let me start off by saying this is not about paying employees less for what they do as I believe firmly that a “workman is worthy of his wages” and people should be paid according to what the going pay scale is in the area that they live in, and for the job duties that they are employed to do, that is just good practice management. Now with that said, what I want to talk about is that you cannot make an employee a great one, just by paying them a great salary. Jim Collins the author of the best seller Good to Great states that “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.” Each person chooses how they will do their job, either unsatisfactory, satisfactory, good or great, it is their choice. One of the driving factors of whether a person becomes a great employee is if they are the right person for the job they have been hired to do. Many times employers will hire someone without really taking the time to search for the right fit because they are in desperate need to have a warm body fill the spot so they don’t fall behind. But in the long run hiring the wrong person causes even a bigger set back and a more costly one. Time spent looking for just the right person to fill a position is time well spent once you find them. As a business owner you need to know exactly what the job position entails that you are offering and as a prospective candidate if you cannot get satisfactory details of the position then I would hesitate to take the job, as there is nothing worse than having to quit or let someone go after a couple of weeks when it all could have been prevented in the first place by having a detailed job description presented. The whole purpose,as you know, is to find the perfect fit and that really is about finding the person who can work with your existing team and is excited about what they will be doing. Last year we needed to hire a front office assistant, this would be a frontline staff member who our patients would come in contact with. It was very important that we find someone with a great personality and the ability to handle people well. After interviewing multiple experienced, well-qualified office assistants we ended up hiring someone just out of school with no experience at all. Why, because of the raving reviews her instructors gave about her. They went on about her willingness to help others, stepping up and doing things without being asked and that she was the most friendly, warm and sincere student that they had seen in a long time and they felt she had excellent work ethics even though she had never worked before. During our many interviews with this candidate her genuineness and excitement to work with us shined through. Her smile and laughter is the contagious kind and her work ethics have proven to be impeccable. She is the right fit for our office and it was worth taking the time and several interviews with her in order for us to make sure she was the right one for our team. We also had her interview with all of the staff members to make sure they agreed with the decision, as they will have to be working together and many times they pick up on things that the manager or business owner do not. When all is said and done the team as a whole needs to fit together and work together like they were meant to be together along and you cannot pay for that to happen. It is finding the right people to work together as a team that will make a business good from good to great!
“People are your most important asset, turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.” ~ Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great
9/27/12
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