Employee Selection: Enhancing Organizational Quality begins with talented employees and management.  They offer greater capacity and potential.

Upgrading Your Employee Selection Criteria is critical to transformational growth. Employees are an asset. Like a stock, fund, or other security they appreciate in value or decline in value. With superior guidance some employees appreciate at a faster rate. Under poor or lack of guidance, some employees lose value at a faster rate.

The customer relationship is a result. Management and employees determine the customer relationship. Satisfied customers expect quality, service, and value. They expect a quality relationship when times are good. They expect a quality relationship when times are less than satisfactory.

Simply, customers expect results. They expect and trust that their challenges will be solved. Superior customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty is a result of total organizational quality.

In my view, there are three criteria that are most valuable in selecting employees who best achieve this result. In a new world of digital selection algorithms and AI, it’s quality management and employees who create competitive advantage.

Let’s discuss each one.

Selecting for Employee Honor

Customer perception is based on trust. Customers better trust suppliers and employees who are honorable and perform to expectations.

Employee honor can be determined if it’s a first priority. Then we ask questions to validate how honor has played a role in the candidates career and life. The fact is the without honor, no level of employee training, supervision, or counseling will change behavior. People are what they are. They might change temporarily, but eventually most return to their original behavior.

Those employees with an absence of consistent honor tend to violate the vision, mission, and core values of the organization. They will consume vast quantities of management time who will attempt to correct poor behavior. And unfortunately, these individuals influence other employees. There is a tremendous financial liability to this occurrence.

Honor is demonstrated by prior performance and deeds. How has the applicant applied themselves in their prior jobs and society? What history does the applicant provide to support this? Letters of recommendation, service records, or school achievements. If the employee is vague or provides limited responses, it should be a red flag indicator.

Honor and trust go hand in hand in every organization. Its communicated at every level externally and internally.

Statistically, employee and customer attrition validates employee and organizational trust. They are a reflection of one another. The fact is customers most often leave a supplier because of business practices rather than price. Price is merely an excuse for lack of trust of the employee or organization.

Selecting for Self-Management Abilities

What’s the ratio of management to employees in your organization? Some organizations might have 6-8 employees reporting to a manager. Others might have 10-14. The ratio is determined by the self-management capacity of employees.

Quality, service, and value is a result. Each are determined by the Cornerstones of leadership, culture, strategy, and communication. Self-managed employee’s don’t require a manager standing over them. They consistently complete their job description at a 100% level.

For many self-managed employees, they do not want to be a manager. They are honorable. They just want to complete their job and are proud of their accomplishments.

Self-managed employees are generally consistent performers.”- Paul Fournier

The most successful managers are great at identifying and cultivating employees with self-management skills. That’s why they might have 10-14 assigned employees rather than a lower number. These managers facilitate the success of their self-managed employees. The result is a healthy and productive culture. They are able to focus on opportunities rather than function as task-based managers.

Whether the department is production, distribution, customer service, or sales; senior management can review objective achievement. They can measure performance and cultural health through 360 Organizational Assessments.

Selecting for Merit

Performance is a great teacher. Whether you’re in a plant, customer service, or in front of the customer, achieving company and customer expectations is the job description. Experience comes from working with other management or employees. Then consistently achieving assigned objectives. High performers fully support the company vision, mission, and core values.

When management or employees fail to follow company business practices or cut corners to achieve objectives they influence organization quality. They diminish their performance merit.

In my view, advanced education provides knowledge. It does not assure honor, sound judgement and communication skills. Advanced education affords perspective or specific skills. There’s a significant group of people who confuse education with merit. They are not the same.

If you are seeking to upgrade your team, look for team fit. How will the candidate interact and engage with the team?

Whether you are selecting candidates for management or workforce, the question becomes; Will this candidate effectively and consistently achieve their objectives? Will they consistently support the vision, mission, and core values of the company?

Summary

Transformational growth is dependent on high performance management and employees. They are constantly in pursuit of superior customer relationships. The result is predictable and sustainable EBIT. When teams are trapped in tactics rather than strategy, the outcome seldom changes.

The Cornerstone Approach applies honor, self-management, and merit to new employee recruitment, onboarding, and training. It also works to help existing employees become both productive and accountable.

The fact is, when you have a team of highly capable individuals one can accomplish nearly anything.

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