Right Bus, Wrong Passengers?
Job Benchmarking
We see layoffs in the news every day. The principle of supply and demand says that companies with available positions are finding the right talent to fill the jobs more easily now than ever. Not according to many of my clients! Finding good talent is still a top problem!
According to the Aberdeen Group, in a recent annual survey of executives, “Talent Planning” now rates second on a list of 10 most concerning business issues.
In the real world, higher unemployment does not equate to more available matching talent for job openings.
Research recently released by Target Training International, Ltd. disclosed that approximately half of job seekers are already employed. (As I was reading the statistics, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them might be employed by some of my clients!)
More aware than ever of the tremendous cost of a wrong hire, (one resulting in a negative, disengaged or unproductive employee, or ending in termination) companies are being more careful about their hiring process. By now, most employers are smart enough not to treat hiring in a casual fashion (“Let’s hire Joe. I know him from college; we played basketball together. I’m sure we can find a position for him”). Unfortunately many employers’ hiring process consists of only interviews, which is proven to work only 14% of the time. A company can increase success by checking references and doing background/drug/credit checks, but anywhere from 20% to 50% of hires still end in failure. Why? Because we’re human, and we have our biases. Our natural instinct is to hire people we like. We rationalize our decision by thinking that the candidate we like best will do the best job. Error in thinking. (Sorry, I know I’m stepping on some toes).
Here is the guiding principle to follow: Hire the person to the job, don’t try to tailor the job to fit the person. There are very few exceptions to this rule.
To benchmark any job, we should listen to only one voice – how the job should be done.
Job benchmarking provides clarity and awareness about the job, and eliminates bias in the hiring, and /or managing process.
According to Target Training International, Ltd, every benchmark should answer these questions:
- What is the purpose and the objective of the position: (why does the job exist)?
- How does this job affect the delivery of a service or product you sell to your customer?
- How does the effectiveness and efficiency of this position affect the bottom line of this company?
- How does staying abreast of industry or job related knowledge impact the success of this position?
Basically, a good job benchmark will answer this question: “If the job could talk, what would it say about itself?”
The process itself is usually completed by a team of key stakeholders and a consultant who is trained in job benchmarking and has proven, up-to-date, validated assessment tools for completing the process. The benchmarking tools will need to identify, prioritize and calibrate performance criteria: (The behaviors a superb performer will need to bring to the job, the values that will motivate a person to do the job, and the mastery of which personal skills the person needs to be successful at the job). Once you have measured the requirements of the job, you create a complete system for comparing talent to the position to create the best job fit. The assessments alone should be approximately 30% of the selection process. A good behavioral-based interview, subsequent interviews, background and reference checks, along with complete resume material review, will make up the rest of the selection process.
Adding benchmarking to a good screening and interviewing process will return your investment anywhere from 3 to 15 times, depending on the salary and benefits of the job, along with the other investments you plan to make in the employee.
Your next step is to coach to the benchmark for fast and easy “on-boarding”.
There are reasons other than selection and on-boarding to use benchmarking.
Three other reasons are:
1. Re-structuring or re-creating a job
- Improving an employee’s results
- Creating a brand new position
(Benchmarking allows you to change people out of a position they are not suited for, but still keep them in the company if they are a valuable employee, decreasing the waste of low performance or disengagement.)
Sound like a lot of work? Not really. Once you’ve gone through the process once, you will most likely decide to benchmark every position in the company, one at a time.
Your investment in the process will be between 5 and 10K depending on the position and about 3 hours of time for each key stakeholder in the position.
Compared to the cost of a bad hire (anywhere from one to six times the annual salary of the job in hard costs, plus soft costs of wasted energy, morale, and productivity) it is a wise investment to benchmark your jobs.
Copyright 2009 Julia Marrocco All rights reserved
Julia Marrocco is an executive performance coach, and certified professional behavior analyst from Portland, Oregon. She is a member of both the Institute of Management Consultants and the International Coach Federation. She can be reached by email julia@mentaliron.com or by telephone 503-750-3950.
