You have an empty role that desperately needs to be filled. Maybe it’s replacing someone you lost through the recession or the Turnover Tsunami (which may not even exist). Maybe your company is enjoying growth, but not the growing pains that come with it.
The problem is that you can’t seem to get anyone to take the job. The scant few candidates that have responded to your job posts aren’t showing up for interviews. If you do finally get them through the interview process, they aren’t accepting the offers you’re making or are ghosting you before you can get their butt in a seat. Even worse are the ones that DO come on board one minute only to tell you they’ve accepted a better offer the next minute.
What the heck is going on here? There is no short answer to that question. Several factors could be contributing to your frustrations. One of those factors you’ll want to eliminate is the impact of a poorly performing performance management system.
I know it may seem odd to talk about performance management as part of the recruiting process. After all, you can’t manage that candidate's performance right now. That feels like putting the cart before the horse, right? Not necessarily.
Here are 3 ways your Performance Management could be wrecking your Recruiting efforts
Wrecking Ball 1: It’s keeping the bad ones… and making them worse.
Dealing with performance issues is always a challenge. From routinely bringing down the morale of the company to productivity issues, things only get worse the longer they’re left to linger. That’s going to send your GOOD employees running for the door. All those empty seats will have to be filled, piling more onto your recruiter’s already daunting tasks.
The Performance Management Solution: Ideally, a manager will have already brought up the concerns to the problematic employee. If improvement hasn’t been made QUICKLY, then it’s time to have a more formalized conversation. That is a step we call Job Threatening in the Catalytic Coaching process. It’s meant to ensure a focused discussion that gets to a resolution within a reasonable time. We’re talking days or weeks, not months or years. To protect the company and remain fair across the board to all employees, this process should be well documented.
Wrecking Ball 2: It’s giving you a bad reputation.
Nothing spreads faster than bad news and the Internet has made the gossip go even further than ever before. When your employees feel slighted by a review, stuck in a dead end career, or that their manager is unresponsive, they’re going to talk about it. That talk is searchable and the high quality candidates will find it! You may be one Google search away from losing out on the talent you want most.
The Performance Management Solution: Remember the Employee Iceberg. The people you hire want to feel like you value them as more than just a pair of hands to do a job. They want to know you’re as invested in their success as they are and you should be. When they’re successful and happy, they’ll stay with the company longer and be more motivated to take the best care of your customers. With Catalytic Coaching, that’s done at the beginning of the performance management process in the Employee Input meeting. The insight they give to their managers in that meeting can then be incorporated in Focus Areas to create a plan that wins for both the employee and the company. While bad news just seems to be juicier, good news will spread too. Coaching will cultivate that good news.
Wrecking Ball 3: It’s just not something people are willing to put themselves through anymore.
After enduring performance reviews throughout their career, many folks are fed up. They hate how they’ve been treated in the past by these systems, don’t see any value in them, and refuse to be battered by it moving forward. Many candidates have gotten savvy enough to ask about your performance management system during the interview process or will figure it out soon after accepting a job offer. You’d be surprised by the number of people that have left a job after a nasty review experience. I did and I won’t willingly go through that again. And I’m not alone.
The Performance Management Solution: Ditch those tainted old reviews for something that’s more employee centric. That’s what Sekisui Kydex did and it paid back in a major way. When a multinational competitor built a brand new facility right up the road from them AND put a billboard on their corner offering a higher wage, President and COO Ronn Cort prepared for the worst. But to Ronn’s surprise, they didn’t lose a single employee!!! Some of them had gone for interviews, but they all came back. When asked why, they said that the other company didn’t care about them as a person or their careers. Catalytic Coaching had brought that to Sekisui Kydex’s culture and employees weren’t willing to give it up.
Not only can coaching help you keep your people, but it’ll attract the high quality candidates that you want from the job market. It sends a clear message that you don’t just see them as another pair of hands or another butt in a seat. You see them as a whole person that is valued for their talent and potential.
“Take Care Of Your Employees And They'll Take Care Of Your Business,” ~Richard Branson, Founder Of The Virgin Group.
Talented candidates will notice when you’re taking care of your employees and have a thriving company culture. Give yourself the advantage in the job market by leveraging coaching for your performance management.
Curious about where to start? Talk to a certified Coach2 today about what Catalytic Coaching can do for your company and how to implement the process.
Jessica Bowers first joined the Catalytic Coaching team in 2016 and has been supporting performance management for small and mid-sized companies across every industry throughout the United States and Canada ever since.
She’s graduated from Kennesaw State University in 2009 with a Bachelor’s of Sociology with a concentration in Organizational and Social Change. Jessica earned her Coach2 certification in 2017.
Jessica is currently a Catalytic Coaching product expert, Director of Sales and Marketing, and trainer for implementations and the virtual Mastery Program.
