How to Improve Profitability and Employee Productivity Statistics - By: Annette Estes

The best advice successful leaders, CEOs, and business experts have ever given is the importance of hiring the right people for every job in your company.

Ole Miss Athletic Director Pete Boone advises, "If you're going to be successful in any venture, no matter what it is, you better hire the best people possible. Whatever it takes to hire them, you're either going to be a player or not."

In spite of the fact the news media makes us believe everyone is in danger of losing their jobs these days, there are companies that are hiring - and striving to keep their best people.

Here are seven things a company should know in order to reduce employee turnover by hiring, developing, and retaining the right employees for every job in the company. These steps make employee engagement more of a science than an art.

EMPLOYEE ACCOUNTABILITY

What are the Key Accountabilities required by the job? You notice I say what does the job itself require, not what the manager or the people doing the job think it requires.

A Key Accountability is something the person in the job must do on a daily basis for the position to exist. You need to know what the Key Accountabilities are for each job and rank them according to their importance in getting the job right.

JOB BEHAVIORS

What behaviors are required by the job for superior performance? If the job could talk, it would say, "I need to be done this way to be done right." Not the way it's being done now or how the employee would like to do the job - but how it should be done for maximum success.

JOB MOTIVATORS

What attitudes and motivators are required by the job for superior performance? What values does the job reward? For example, if the job calls for someone with a strong humanitarian attitude - someone who puts other's needs above their own - then only a person with that value will be happy in the job and do it the way it should be done.

EMPLOYEES' BEHAVIORAL STYLES

Next, you need to know the behavioral styles of the people in the job to determine if each matches the behavior required by the job. Those who match the job's behavioral requirements will do the job as it should be done and have a higher level of job satisfaction and employee morale.

EMPLOYEES' ATTITUDES AND MOTIVATORS

You also need to know what motivates your employees and match them to the job motivators. When a job rewards certain values, the people who have those values will fit the job, be energized by their work, and perform much better than those who have to force themselves to be motivated to do what the job requires. You must know your employees� motivators in order to increase employee morale and reduce employee conflict.

JOB APPLICANTS' BEHAVIORS AND MOTIVATORS

You need to know your applicants' behavioral styles and attitudes and match them to the job. There's no other way to know for sure that people will be superior performers in a particular position before hiring them. Hire only those whose behavioral styles and motivators match those of the job itself. This is the most powerful employee background check you can have if hiring top talent is important to you. You also need an assessment that will give your specific questions to ask a potential employee.

WAYS TO MOTIVATE EMPLOYEES

In order to retain the best people, managers must have a "people manual" composed of assessments that will tell them exactly how to motivate, manage, and communicate effectively with each individual person who reports to them. Assessments take all the guesswork out of hiring and developing top talent and make employee empowerment a crucial part of your retention process.

Once you take these seven steps, you need a performance review process that includes employee evaluations based on the job's Key Accountabilities, Behaviors, and Attitudes.

How do you accomplish these steps? First you benchmark the job itself, not the people in the job. That takes all the bias, personality contests, and non job-related elements out of the hiring and managing process.

Once the job benchmark is complete, then assess your employees and applicants for a comparison to the job assessments.

Of course, this all depends upon whether you want to be a good company or a great company. Author Jim Collins says in his book, Good to Great, "People are not your most important asset, the RIGHT people are."

There's no better way to get and keep the right people, than to take these seven steps to achieve greatness.

About the Author

Job benchmarking is the solution to improve profitability by hiring and retaining the right people. Annette Estes is a Certified Professional Behavioral and Values Analyst and author of the award-winning ebook, Why Can't You See it My Way? Resolving Values Conflicts at Work and Home. -2009 Annette Estes

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