Why you should take your time hiring new employees.
Don’t make the mistake of hiring fast and firing slow.
There are many articles about the advantages of “hiring slow and firing fast,” but many companies do the exact opposite. During my career, I’ve seen managers hire employees as fast as possible to fill open positions. Usually, these employers were looking at only the short-term needs of their company. They had a sudden opening to fill or a project which needed to be done right away. By only addressing only the immediate requirement, you might be hiring an employee that meets your immediate needs but wasn’t a good fit long-term fit for your company. The notion that anyone is better than no one doesn’t always work out in the company’s favour.
Once you have the employee, it can be challenging to let them go. You hire someone for an immediate need, but they don’t fit with your company – you then hold onto them because replacing them is difficult, confronting, expensive or embarrassing.
- Reluctance to fire the employees because there is a big job coming up that the company is sure to get, and the employee will be needed for that project.
- The cost of replacing the employee is too high, i.e. recruitment agency and training costs.
- The difficulty of finding the right person for the job.
- Not wanting to admit that hiring the employee in the first place was a mistake.
Not firing employees when they don’t work out for your company can be as big a mistake as not taking the time to hire the right employee in the first place.
The Harvard Business Review has an excellent article on “Hire Slow and Fire Fast” at the link below. https://hbr.org/2014/03/hire-slow-fire-fast
Contact Arbutus Management Consulting to help you find how a Fractional CFO can help your business – patrickh@arbutusmc.com or +1-403-404-6791.
Image curtesy:
<a href="https://www.vecteezy.com/free-photos/business">Business Stock photos by Vecteezy</a>
