Hiring a bad apple has the potential to wreak substantial damage to your business. Research by Harvard Business School revealed recently that ‘toxic’ workers impact business performance to a much greater degree than ‘superstar’ employees. Albeit negatively than positively.
You can easily identify toxic workers. These are the people who your other staff doesn’t want to work beside, the ones who may be cited as the reason for people leaving your business, and who your clients and customers just don’t get on with.
But how can you ensure you don’t make hiring and employing them in the first place? Because Harvard’s research also reveals they traditionally perform very well at interviews.
Here are a few tips to consider if you want to avoid hiring bad employees for your small business.
Delve deep before you decide about hiring
Consider using psychometric testing at the interview stage before hiring. This reveals more about a candidate than you will ever learn from a series of rehearsed answers.
Test for communication, maths, and problem solving as these are the skill sets they will use day-to-day. Also, analyze their personality to see how they react to certain situations and within a team environment. Will they balance the personalities already working for you? Or rub them up the wrong way?
Additionally, if a person has a reference or two on their CV, phone them up and make sure you ask how much they pitched in and helped the group and what their relationships were like with colleagues.
It pays to be careful when you hiring
Once you select your new employee, it is good to know them better. You can do this by doing a personality test, interviewing them, asking questions about their lives, and talking to them. But, also you can use temporary contracts that will help you know them better and determine whether you will be able to work with them.
We introduced temporary contracts for new starters, as a way of letting the business and the new recruit get to know each other. This gives you time to size up your new staff member, analyze how they are fitting in and get feedback from your team. They should be trying extra hard to stand out, in order to land the carrot of a permanent contract that you are dangling in front of them.
We know that the business world is competitive, and you need to be prepared for that. The best way to do that is to introduce a policy of temporary contracts for new employees. This lets your business and new employee get to know each other so that you can see how they perform and if they will fit into your team. You need to find out about your new employee’s strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, and anything else that might help you make a good decision. You don’t want to hire someone who will not fit into your team, and you don’t want to work with someone who doesn’t have the same standards as you.
Probation pays
If temp to perm doesn’t fit with your business, all new starts should have a probation period (typically three months) built into contracts. Introduce a minimum of six months probation before hiring.
A probation period means you can let the person go at any time with few associated costs or harm to your business. If you do end someone’s employment during probation, always conduct an exit interview. The purpose of this is to discuss why the relationship hasn’t worked, allowing them to hopefully learn for their next job. If there have been disciplinary issues, ensure you’re calm and stick to the facts. It’s an unpleasant conversation, but one you must face like a boss.
Employ fresh from uni
Finally, a good way of avoiding bad apple syndrome is to hire graduates, ‘untainted’ by bad habits elsewhere.
This requires, however, that your business is able to train and develop staff and mold them to meet the requirements you demand.
