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Too often companies fall into the trap of treating people as secondary to a product instead of seeing that without people there would be no product. For small and medium-sized businesses, it’s especially easy to lose touch with employees when the focus is on automation, measurement, and gross profit as they grow. But remember, if an organization grows to 2000 people, it’s the first 20 who tend to establish and perpetuate the culture. So the question becomes: what kind of culture do you want to create initially?
To get the best out of people – and for employees to get the best out of the company – leaders must view the employer-employee relationship as a mutual partnership. So, we need to screen for cultural fit to always build on that sense of community and belonging. One of my former CEOs summed it up best when he told me, “I want you to help me create an environment where the weekend gets in the way.” He meant a workplace where people were so satisfied in their jobs that finishing work on Friday felt like they were being taken away from what they love.
Related: How to Build a Strong Culture with a Remote Team
Our people are more than a “cost”
The idea of taking a community-focused approach to running a business crystallized in one of my first management jobs, where I was responsible for the call centers of a large healthcare company. The people who called had real, pressing problems: they were sick, had an emergency, or needed an appointment. But we had become so data-driven – focused on metrics like call handling times and calls per hour – that we had forgotten the human cost of these exchanges.
My approach has always been for management teams to be open to empathetic dialogue if one of our reps or nurses had difficulty accessing their data. We needed to give patients some leeway to tell their stories rather than just cutting them out. It was a learning experience because I learned to look at the data behind the data, in other words the human dimension of business. However, my learning was far from over.
Related: What happened to the workplace? How to make it more human
Determining the root causes of attrition
I’ve seen the link between many resignations within an organization and hiring managers who treat people like a commodity. After doing a root cause analysis, I found that the prevailing mentality is, “If someone doesn’t like it here, they should be happy just to have a job.”
That was the exact opposite of the culture I wanted to lead. If you’re experiencing a high turnover or churn rate, there are two proven ways to evaluate why people are leaving. Either way, never be afraid to hear the truth about your organization because that’s where the solutions lie:
- Employee surveys: Look for trends in direct feedback. If several departments are losing staff, the problem may be due to the culture of the entire organization. If the same things are mentioned consistently across a department, the issue is likely centralized. Watch out for data points that cluster around an outlier for the underlying issues.
- Outgoing interviews: I ask people, “If you ever come back, what would you like to see us improve or implement as an employer?” Leaders still need a good filter to know when people are just blowing off steam, but this data will reveal whether you’re selecting the right people, posting in the right areas, or being in too much of a rush to put warm bodies in place.
Related: 7 Lessons CEOs and Hiring Managers Learn from Exit Interviews
How to change hiring practices
The overall theme of changing hiring practices to create workplace community is to only choose people who have the right skills and fit your team and culture. To get all leaders to share this emphasis, here are five practices to follow:
- Agree on the type of culture you want because it will influence your choices. If you have a very collaborative organization, a more authoritarian or hierarchical leadership style is not suitable.
- Prioritize candidate profile over demographics. This approach relies almost without name, face or gender to focus on cultural adaptation. Help create a diverse, inclusive and thriving workplace community.
- Involve hiring managers in candidate selection. There may be a temptation to select the most experienced person, but any red flags should be included in the scorecard.
- Set realistic time expectations. In companies that are always innovating, hiring is sometimes rushed. Instead of hiring 20 different personalities, try hiring five who have the right profile and build from there. If it takes 45 or 90 days to find the right person, that’s a long time.
- Build your workforce through employee referrals. People tend to refer to people with similar values so that your community can build from within.
Related: 10 Strategies for Hiring and Retaining New Employees
Create a true partnership
There are two other points to consider, both of which will come up during the interview: treating the hiring process as a two-way evaluation and giving people time to decide. As vice president of human resources, I still interview, and this is what I tell candidates: “I fully understand that you are interviewing us as much as we are interviewing you. And you have the right to say ‘no’ if that’s not the fit.” right because it’s a partnership: you will hold me accountable for everything I say and I will hold you accountable for everything you say.
The community is built on this foundation of transparency, mutual trust and accountability. After three decades in the HR industry, my message to business leaders as we all become more and more automated is this: Never forget who got us here. By giving someone time to accept or decline an offer, we’re really giving that person the space to feel like they’re part of something bigger, rather than feeling lucky just to get a paycheck.