Superhero and Supervillain comic book action stories have been all the rage lately on the big screen. Young and old alike seem to love them, and Hollywood keeps creating them: The Avengers, Batman, Spiderman, Man of Steel, and now Superwoman. We unite to adore the superheroes, and we share a disdain for the supervillains - - their evil is pure, motives obvious, and downfall inevitable.
In today's workforce practices, every employer has the opportunity to write a unique storyline of superheroes and supervillains, and depending on how you craft your story, you may or may not have a box office/business hit on your hands. Factors such as recruitment processes, onboarding, and turnover can either positively distinguish your business, or plague it. One thing to keep in mind, supervillains can be masked as something seemingly positive like perceived best practices or even company culture, but times change. What made sense in the 1980s or the 1990s, or even 2010 won't cut it now, and the impact on your profits can occur very quickly. In this blog, let's examine some supervillains and then in future posts we will take a deeper dive into each of them.
Who are the Supervillains?
Supervillain #1: a Reactive Recruitment process. What exactly is a reactive recruitment process? Well, it's one that lacks strategy around recruiting new talent beyond, Hey Magnus, Jose in IT just quit can you find us a new database administrator, oh also, we need someone yesterday. Seriously? Magnus is either an overworked internal recruiter, your lead HR person (who right now is trying to work through the ACA, the new exempt employee guidelines, as well as 97 other priorities), or worse someone who was just given the task at the last minute just because no one else was available. In a tight labor market like today, this a dangerous scenario. Having a proactive recruitment strategy and plan is critical to staying competitive.
Supervillain #2 - a Dysfunctional On-Boarding Process. When the labor market is tight people have choices. Your candidate and new employee experience is vital to attract and retain talent. Do you embrace technologies that enable candidates to apply through their phone or tablet? How quickly do you respond to candidate inquiries? Are you clear in your expectations prior to the job offer? Do you tell your good story about why someone would want to work for you? If you have challenges with any of this, it's likely that your onboarding process is keeping you from competing for top talent. Not embracing current technologies and proactively designing a good experience for onboarding can be like a Superhero not using their powers. Be intentional about the things that will impact a person's decision about accepting your job and getting started with your company.
Supervillain #3 - Turnover. This is the most destructive of the Supervillains, and often it's a result of the other two supervillains. All the time and money you spend on recruiting and training are wasted, gone, and vaporized. If your employee was customer-facing, critical relationships can suffer. Whether you are a small organization or large one, turnover, especially high turnover is damaging to not just your profits, but likely your team morale, your competitiveness, and any momentum you are trying to build. Sometimes the roots of turnover in your organization are deep, and sometimes not. But getting to the root cause is critical.
It's Time to Become Superheroes
So let's do battle with these Supervillains together and try to rewrite the characters as Superheroes for your business.
