Hiring wrong employees

Hiring wrong employees can cost a company severely both on time and productivity. Hiring wrong employees will be a burden to the concern in the long run affecting the profitability.

So have you decided to hire a new employee? It involves advertising the role, identifying the right-fit candidates, carrying out interviews and then making your final selection. Having been impressed by a candidate during the hiring process, you offer them the job position and then look forward to seeing them with your team.

However, not too long after they join, it becomes clear there is a problem – you made a bad hire. Then, some consistent patterns start developing. For example, your new hire misses deadlines, falls out with colleagues, ignores the firm’s values and mission, and only does the bare minimum at work. Then you will think back to when you meet them in the interview day and what hints might have appeared that perhaps you didn’t notice or ignored.

Why it’s essential to recruit the best

Your business loses more time, money and effort by hiring, and training the wrong people. You must also deal with all the havoc that the “wrong” employee creates. You may lose the business when that individual associates with customers. The expense you incur when you have to redo procedures that were handled ineptly and the pressures on other people who must pick up the slack. But the damage a bad hire can create doesn’t end there.

Consider the hassle and expense that you face when you have to cut your impairments and replace this “wrong” hire. It’s more difficult for the employer and team to accommodate a poor performer than it is to invest in recruiting quality candidates.

The wisest recruiting advice put in the time and effort on the front end is to ensure you have the best available pool of candidates for every job opening. And ascertain whether you have good procedures in place for assessing candidates.

The cost of a bad hire

A wrong hire may be unavoidable; sometimes, candidates can have excellent CVs and interview brilliantly but may not be apt for the job role. Nonetheless, a mistake can cause severe problems for the company. Here are the three consequences your firm may encounter:

Three consequences your firm may encounter

• Lost productivity

If you hire a wrong candidate, and the employee can’t do their tasks effectively, it means you have wasted time. The company may be spending the same amount of resources in the staff member but seeing significantly less output in return. Over some time, it can have a real impact on results and your team’s overall performance.

When encountered with a struggling colleague, other employees may start other duties which aren’t really in their job description. It not only impacts their productivity and performance at work but their ability to keep appointments, hit targets and maintain standards.

• Lower staff morale

If a wrong hire is working at below capacity due to a lack of skills or motivation, it can quickly have a knock-on effect on the remaining employees. One of the first things to take a hit, maybe staff morale. If you continuously ask your team to do more to cover for their struggling colleague, yet still receive the same salary, it can lead to tension followed by potential conflicts.

A lousy employee who has a negative attitude towards work can have a knock-on impact on staff morale. If they are unable to cope up seamlessly into existing teams and get on with their colleagues. It can surely ruin the positive atmosphere in the office. It potentially affects how much employees relish doing their jobs, and the likelihood they will stay with the company for the long term.

• Monetary costs of finding a replacement

It costs money to hire employees and replace them. Organisations need to generate job descriptions, advertise roles, read through CVs and carry out interviews. All the while, they may be running short-staffed due to a lack of capacity in the company. Even after the new employee joins a firm, there is onboarding expense to consider, plus the fact that the recruit may not be as productive as the expertise person they replaced.

So, to overcome a wrong hiring mistake, it may be necessary to reallocate people and resources, invest in further training or the most serious instances, let the person go. Even then, there are further expenses to be acquired, in terms of re-recruiting for the position. Mostly you are back to square one, with a job post still to fill.

Hiring the right person

There is no doubt that poor hiring decisions can have long-term consequences for organisations and fixing a poor performing employee can take some time to set right. If you do end up with an inept employee, it’s essential to address the situation.

Organisations must take all reasonable steps to evade making hiring mistakes. Using a recruitment agency can help diminish the risks involved with bringing a wrong employee onboard. They use their knowledge of industry sectors, client requirements and candidate capabilities to help select the right candidate.