In the last blog, we covered creating an excellent staff experience to attract new staff and keep the ones you have. But desperation and compromise in hiring will eventually kill that StaffX that you’ve worked so hard to create.
Desperation in Hiring
In consulting our various clients, we’ve repeatedly heard about a current situation—great staff is difficult to find for various reasons. A company will set standards for its personnel. They’ll not only expect their existing team to meet these standards, but they’ll also measure new applicants against these standards.
As long as the company keeps to those standards as regards both existing staff and new hires, they can maintain a great team, and therefore a great StaffX. The problem is that because decent personnel can be challenging to find and hire, companies can start to become desperate. When desperation sets in, if the company executives and HR cave into the anxiety and don’t hold fast to their standards, the first thing that can happen is that they begin hiring people that don’t measure up.
Blending the Bad with the Good
Now, what happens as these people are integrated with your team? Well, what happens when you blend substandard ingredients into an excellent meal you’re trying to create? The standard of that meal is going to be lowered. Everyone will taste it and wonder what went wrong.
Just like substandard ingredients will lower the quality of a dinner you’re attempting to cook, subpar staff that doesn’t measure up to your original standards are going to influence the remainder of your team.
Ways of Influence
The first place that influence will happen will be with your product or service. A particular person you hired, who doesn’t subscribe to your high standards, delivers products or services to customers that leave those customers dissatisfied. That’s a great way to lose customers. And unfortunately, you may not know exactly where the quality is being relaxed, as you’ve had a team you could previously count on.
The second way that substandard personnel can influence your team can remain much more hidden—and that is, they can drag down the standards of employees you counted on in the past. For example, one of your good staff could be having a bad day. The lousy mood makes them vulnerable, and one of the substandard personnel you’ve recently hired talks them into leaving early on a Friday because “everybody’s doing it,” with important unfinished tasks incomplete and customers with urgent needs unserviced. Your good employee has just taken a substantial step down.
Don’t Do It
The moral: don’t become so desperate that you compromise your hiring standards. Stick to them! Your standards are what make you a great company.
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