Key to a successful business is having the right talent in the right places, empowered to make your business succeed. Finding and keeping a successful HR executive is key to all human resource staffing success, which in turns determines how everything else in the company related to employees turns out. Yet many companies find themselves struggling in their HR executive search, and some are perpetually disastistifed with any HR executive they do find. While it’s normal to occasionally make a bad hire, something is out of whack if all the hires seem poor.
A recent Robert Half survey found that 36% of executives believed that poor skills matching was to blame for most failed fires, and 30% blamed unclear performance objectives. These answers reveal something important about company self-awareness: that the problem could be with you rather than with the hires. If your company is experiencing chronic turnover, there could be a systems problem at work rather than a people problem.
Don’t Keep Repeating the Same Mistakes
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This quote is frequently and erroneously attributed to Einstein (it first appears in print in the book Sudden Death but is likely an older saying that that. However, it does apply in some situations. A company that is struggling to find and keep good talent should consider pausing all hires and getting to the root of the problem, starting with the human resources department and the right HR executive. It may be necessary to consult with human resources executive search firms, but get this right and the other pieces of the puzzle might just fall into place.
Update Your Business Model
It’s also important to consider your business strategey and whether it may be outdated. The world is changing, and fast, and sometimes different skills are needed to succeed today than were needed a decade ago, and many jobs, like that of an HR executive, are exponentially more complex than they used to be. The old job descriptions and the old salaries may not be attracting the right people anymore. The job market might have changed aorund you while you weren’t looking, and you need an executive staffing agency that can help you find the right HR executive to turn things around.
Foment Change Yourself
Are you being the change you want to see? Many times, senior management hires someone to come and shake things up, only to disappear just when those new people need them most. If the new people have to build trust and consensus among an already overworked and underrewarded team, they will struggle without management that paves the way and encourages changes and debates that will improve the company. Hire change agents, and then accept that their very job descriptions require them to cause a bit more chaos than you might prefer, at least in the short term. Facilitiate, don’t curtail, their ability to bring about change.
Don’t Create An Environment That Holds People Back
If you find your new hires standing around and not doing much, consider if you might be stifling them with too many rules, or by refusing to take any blame or share any credit. If a new HR executive finds he or she is going to should the blame alone for every error, they will not be incentivized to take any risks. And if your desire to mitigate legal risk means that the employee handbook requires a small handtruck to cart from floor to floor, you’re likely repelling the people you need to make change happen.
If you’re not seeing the results you want; if you’re losing valauble talent constantly; if you hire promising people only to find them paralzyed and underperforming, the problem might be systemic to your hiring and business model. Find an executive staffing agency that can help you aquire the right HR executive, and then empower them make change happen.
