TPC Blog

If you’ve onboarded enough new employees, you’ve undoubtedly had that nagging suspicion that on at least a few occasions you’ve made a mistake. The new hires don’t seem to be as experienced as they claimed to be. They slow down production or create problems with clients or just don’t seem to mesh with company culture.

It’s a common challenge. A CareerBuilder survey suggests that more than 40 percent of companies surveyed had spent at least $25,000 on a bad hire in the past year, and 25 percent reported that such poor hires had cost their companies more than $50,000. So you’re not alone.

The good news is that The Payroll Company can help you make some easy improvements in your hiring process that can save time and money, raise the morale of your workforce and upgrade your team’s output.

The Cost of a Bad Hiring Process

First, let’s take a closer look at some of the issues that may arise for not following an effective hiring process. You’re probably familiar with several of these.

1. Recruitment advertising fees stack up

Chances are, you’ve used such job boards as Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Monster or countless others. There’s a cost to advertise on such sites, and you’ll pay it every time you need a new worker to replace the bad hires.

2. Team performance is negatively impacted

Every hour that a poorly positioned employee puts into the job expands the opportunity for poor overall performance and costly errors.

3. Projects suffer

There’s a reason deadlines are given for most work assignments. It’s because others—whether team members or clients—are relying on the on-time and error-free work of each worker.

4. Your employer brand is negatively impacted

Your employer brand is your company’s reputation as a preferred workplace. When morale falls due to a poor performer or your company is bad-mouthed by the new hire you must terminate, word gets out. Your company takes an unfair hit in the eyes of those looking for jobs.

5. Customers are lost

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. When employee performance fails to meet the expectations of your valued customers or clients, the problem can eventually affect your bottom line. Something must be done, and fast.

Valuable time and expense are tied up looking for replacements. So now you begin the process of recruiting, hiring, and onboarding all over again. You’re hoping for better results this time. Even if the next hire does work much better, productivity will suffer in the short term until the new workers get acclimated.

So How Do We Improve the Hiring Process?

Here are a few key hiring and onboarding tips that can garner dramatic results.

1. Write better job descriptions

Think again about the way you describe the opportunity. New hires can feel lost and even cheated if they find that the responsibilities don’t mesh with their skills or the reality of the job or workplace aren’t as described. A well-written job description can improve the quality of applicants every time you post.

2. Standardize the interview process

It can be like comparing apples to oranges if every applicant is interviewed by different individuals or different interview processes are followed. More than one in five of the respondents to the above-mentioned CareerBuilder survey admitted they lacked the skills to interview and hire effectively. Your investment in interview training will be well spent.

3. Optimize your onboarding and training

Fear, confusion, frustration, and resentment are not the emotions you want felt in your workplace. And yet those negative emotions can be weighing down new workers if they’re not properly trained or onboarded. Research conducted by Brandon Hall Group showed that strong onboarding processes improve new-hire retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent.

A good hire can have an extremely positive impact on your company’s future. But a bad hire, or, worse yet, several of them over a period of time, can hurt your company’s finances, culture and reputation.

By improving your recruiting, hiring and onboarding practices, dramatic changes can be made to individual and group performance, the work satisfaction of the entire team and bottom-line results. Contact TPC for expert guidance.