The Impact of a Bad Hire
A hiring mistake (generally considered a new employee who leaves the workplace within one calendar year), can come with a high price tag. It’s no surprise that if the hiring process is expensive, most managers would rather not pay that bill more than once within the same year. The cost involved in publishing a job post, deploying recruiters, holding screening interviews, transporting candidates to the office for face-to-face interviews, and onboarding the chosen candidate can increase quickly. But even with this big total in hand, the costs keep piling up. Here’s how.
Weak hires take without giving anything back (financially).
Training a new employee usually takes a few weeks or months, and during this time, the “trainee” is expected to absorb new information without contributing to the bottom line. This early chapter is dedicated to shadowing others, sitting in on meetings, making expensive (but necessary and educational) mistakes, and taking training courses. During this period, the employee gains skills and the employer “loses” money. With an effective employee, this is certainly not a loss—it’s an investment. But if the employee fails and leaves too soon, he takes the investment with him before he’s had a chance to pay it back.
Weak hires can damage client relationships.
The expensive, educational mistakes described above often involve client relationships. Which is to say, new employees sometimes fumble, miscommunicate, overpromise, make false assumptions or misread information when they deal with clients. This is part of the learning process, and it’s essential—but if these missteps hurt a client relationship and the employee flees the scene, she is replaced by another awkward newbie and the cycle repeats … to nobody’s benefit.
Weak hires fray the social fabric.
Cohesive, well-functioning teams usually don’t achieve their success and unity by magic. Real team cohesion and trust require plenty of trial and error, and this means one important thing: time. To really know, trust, understand, and like each other, teams benefit from long relationships and long adjustment periods. If partnerships are cut short by frequent turnover and hiring mistakes, it’s like putting away the oil can and pouring sand in the gears instead.
Weak hires can impact the company’s reputation.
When new hires leave quickly, the company’s reputation suffers on two fronts. First, clients and customers spend too much time interacting with new, uninformed and unseasoned workers. And second, a stream of people flows out the revolving door and back into the world with unpleasant memories of their brief time on board. Employees don’t enjoy being hired and then quickly dismissed, and word spreads fast if your workplace is associated with incompetence, confusing expectations, toxicity, low pay, poor training or poor treatment of new employees.
Don’t let this happen! Protect your bottom line by hiring quickly but carefully. Turn to the team at Extension for help and guidance.