Who is the Weakest Link?

By Peta Horn

It has become apparent within the workplace that we are playing a game of solitaire. Business leaders try to match the best people with the jobs available. In the current marketplace where there is an excess demand for work and an oversupply of Candidates what is the most effective and affordable method of closing vacancies?

It is that time of year where companies have begun to shuffle their decks. When you call a company, the person you were dealing with last year has been replaced and moved on. Following their movement, it is evident they have replaced their role in a similar but new company. Worse still, is the scenario where you have dealt with an incompetent person in one company, only to find they have moved to another company you are dealing with. Much like shuffling a deck of cards and getting the luck of the draw.

Customer service and competence are two critical success factors for all organisations. The deal breakers of repeat business. There is nothing more frustrating right now than dealing with call agents or even front-line staff who are clearly ill equipped to do their work.

South Africa has been criticized for having onerous compliance regulations. It is argued that human resources in South Africa is fraught with administrative bureaucracy. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I wonder if by streamlining the processes to filling vacancies we are cutting corners and costing lives.

So human resources value chain begins with for all too important process of recruitment and selection. How is it I wonder that in all these years, our academic and occupationally directed training and education of human resource practitioners has failed to address the important fact of ensuring that the right candidate is matched for the job.

It is not rocket-science! If you do not make the right selection, it is going to cost you three years down the line. Three years being the typical length of probation or on-boarding in South African organisations. And three years is often the time frame it takes for a person to decide whether they are going to “hop” or not.

My logic states that why not ensure that your selection process includes more scientific methods of matching a person to a vacant position? Psychometric testing has been around longer than I've been alive yet only a small percentage of companies perceive this form of assessment as necessary and ultimately a cost benefit.

Even if companies are not spending the money on reputable assessments, they should at least have a standardized form of assessing entry competence and potential. Recruitment should be viewed as an important strategic process. It is after all the first domino that will fall to knock over all the others within the succession of the HR value chain. Many HR officers are ill equipped and undervalued in their role in talent management. As a countermeasure, companies often enlist the services of recruitment agencies who are not well screened and are often in it for the commission.

I had the fortunate experience of attending a corporate meeting where it was clearly evident that employees had been hired based on favouritism. Most of the employees were supermodel types (in the case of the females) or mega rugby fans (in the case of the males). The irony of the situation was that I had been consulted to provide expertise in this company’s diversity and inclusion policy! The senior HR manager in this process was transparent and unashamedly stated that they did have a selection process which was based on management interviews and boiled down to their gut feel about the candidates.

While I do support the fact that managers and leaders do you need to trust their instincts, when it comes to selecting employees for a long term sustainable and competitive future, you cannot just go with your gut!

The sad reality is that on doing many of my skills audits within organisations I have discovered that What organisations perceive training to solve could quite easily have been and should have been addressed at recruitment and selection. Not at all talent management issues can be solved through training and development alone. Ensuring employee engagement and high performance begins with recruitment. Ensuring that the right competence is selected for each job.

This is not a simple matter of writing a job spec. Posting an advert on LinkedIn and screening the plethora of applicants and then interviewing a handful and lastly cherry picking your favourites. It starts with the executive’s responsibility of defining what competency is required for the deliverables of their organisation. The managers and leaders of the jobs in an organisation no best what competence looks like. They are responsible for ensuring this is recorded and maintained in order to drive the strategic objectives of the company. There is no excuse. If you know your business, then you know what you need. If you know what you need then get close to and partner with your HR practitioners to ensure the reliability and objectivity of the recruitment process.

In order to navigate this mine field and to achieve return on investment – psychometric and recruitment or competency assessments are required. In the long run it will save the company the pain of replacing employees. “Goodbye You’re the weakest link!”