Hiding in Plain Sight - Part I
With any new business, all aspects of the business start out on a small scale, including the number of employees. Unfunded self-starter businesses usually start out with only the owner representing the business, until the demand requires the business to hire. Even funded businesses that have budgeted a team of employees into their start-up capital, start out with a team that is relatively small in comparison to the number it will grow into. As the business grows, so will the number of employees required to keep the business moving forward, and the necessity for “your way” to become the standard “company way”.
Regardless of what size your business classifies itself - start-up, SMB (small to medium business), corporation, national, or global - at a certain point in the journey of your business, you, the owner, will find yourself involved with the day to day operations less and less. As you continue to hire and delegate, you will free yourself and other members of leadership up to focus on continuous improvement and development. While this natural evolution of roles and responsibilities is a healthy sign of organic growth within your business, it also marks a turning point in the way your business must operate for the people executing the day to day operations. Without your daily engagement with these team members, the business will require a set of foundational standards for the leadership team to follow in your image. If your leadership team is not provided with these foundational standards, it can become all too easy for talented candidates and employees to hide in plain sight.
These foundational standards should start at the beginning of the employee lifecycle; hiring. By the time a business reaches this point in the journey of hiring a team, the core of the business should be well-defined and established. One of those crucial core business components includes the core values of the business. The core values of a business should define what the business stands for, internally and externally; essentially what employees and customers alike can expect from the business from the highest level. For example, one such core value may be, “We pride ourselves on innovation and collaboration”, or, “We are here to exceed your expectations”. Determining and honoring the core values of your business is a critical piece of the customer and employee culture you are building.In the hiring process, these core values play a big role in determining a cultural match between the business and the candidate. Interview questions should be crafted around these core values. Asking simple open-ended questions relating to these core values will provide a wealth of insights surrounding the candidate’s personal and professional values, and how their values align with those of the business.
For example, if we reference the core value example from earlier, “We pride ourselves on innovation and collaboration”, asking related open-ended questions will illuminate how the candidate stacks up. Questions could be direct, “How do you find working in a collaborative/innovative environment?”, or more narrative in nature, “Can you tell me of a time you collaborated on a project? What was your experience like? What was the end result of the project?”.The candidate’s body language, facial expressions, eye focus, speech pattern, and the actual verbal response are all facets of a measurable response. If the candidate actually enjoys working in an innovative/collaborative environment, their body language will likely become more animated, facial expressions should all reflect an upward movement of muscles, eye focus should be on the interviewer or to the left, and their speech pattern may increase in speed and volume due to excitement. Alternatively, if the candidate prefers a more structured and individual work environment, their body language may become more closed off, facial expressions would reflect a downward movement of muscles, eye focus will likely be towards the floor or to the right, and their speech pattern may decrease in speed and volume due to discomfort. Of course, their verbal answer is also a piece of the data points available to analyze for a match. Utilizing the core values of your business as critical hiring components ensures the ability to maintain a culturally sound ethos for your business, and identify those prime candidates that may otherwise be hiding in plain sight.
The core values of your business play another role in your employee lifecycle; recognition. Many businesses have defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for all roles, and these KPIs usually serve as the primary source of employee recognition. For instance, if a sales representative exceeds their revenue goal for the quarter, they would receive some form of public recognition and/or reward. While this employee has likely earned their recognition, relying solely on numerical based data to recognize employees will ostracize some of your most dedicated, consistent, and talented employees. Because KPIs are measurable performance goals that directly affect the business’ high level revenue goals, these indicators are number driven by design. So, while the sales representative that exceeded their revenue goal for the quarter gets recognized, the sales representative that consistently meets their revenue goal and…innovated a new automation for the entire sales team that increased productivity 23%...collaborated on a cross-departmental project that yielded the business $80,000 in annual savings…embodied any one of the core values of your business…go unnoticed and unrecognized. This can lead to devastating consequences including, but not limited to, the sales representative willfully terminating their position and going elsewhere, displaying a lack of enthusiasm to help the team, or decreasing their overall productivity.
KPIs are useful data points to utilize for employee recognition, but do not provide the full picture of an employee’s contribution to the business. Utilizing a combination of financial driven KPIs and the embodiment of the core values of your business will ensure the ability to recognize and reward employees that are both visible and hiding in plain sight.
Top performers and hidden talents are often overlooked for their consistency and alternative contributions. By weaving the core values of your business into the core of your business, you will illuminate and elevate the employees that operate with what’s best for the business at the forefront of every decision and action. In Part II, we will introduce how to identify missed opportunities for employees through people analysis.
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