Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Managing A Great Culture Starts With Hiring

The simple truth is that if you don't have a steady stream of the industry's best knocking down your door to come work for you, it could be argued that you don't have an outstanding culture - at least not the best in your industry.  Because, if you did have the best culture, hired only the best, had the best opportunities for advancement, the best perks and pay, the best managers and the best environment, you would have the best of the best wanting to come work there. So, by simple default, if you have to place ads to get new workers, your culture is NOT the best it could be.

Who responds to "Now Hiring" signs and ads anyway? The talentless? The unhappy? The low-performers? The available? Maybe, on occasion, you might get a gem but you have to sift through all of the other resumes to find them.

You see, high-performers, if they were unhappy with the company they currently worked for, would simply do something about it. High-performers would start to knock on doors before the jobs became available. They would be making contact with HR managers or other contacts in your organization and would let it be known that they were looking. They would show initiative.

That's why "Now Hiring" signs and ads are a big mistake: they attract those who don't have any initiative which forces your HR department to sift through the trash resumes to see if there's anything worth keeping. 

But it's not just the HR manager's job to find good people and recruit them. Every manager, every supervisor, every senior executive and every employee should be on the lookout for good people. When you build a Culture of Excellence, the attitudes of your people change. They stop being competitive and territorial with each other and they commit to work together better. That means, recruiting and building a strong culture becomes everyone's responsibility - a responsibility that every high-performer would welcome given the chance.

So ask yourself, do you have a Human Resource/Talent Management department that attracts, recruits and manages high-performers? Or do you have a "now hiring" department that lazily does what every other mediocre organization does and only attracts the mediocre and available?
--
Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™


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