The Problem

People are becoming a rare resource. There is a labor shortage coming and no one seems to see the handwriting on the wall. The shortage has already begun to show a dramatic strain on growth for many companies with bottom line implications.

Research conducted by McKendrick & Associates for Olsten, reported in USA Today last year, revealed that nearly 60% of executives in the U.S. expect their organizations to be understaffed. Business managers are scrambling today and are ill-prepared for the even greater impact this shortage will have in the next five to ten years. Between 1996 and 2006, the percentage of workers between the ages 25-34 will shrink 9% and those between 35-44 by 3%. Where will the talent come from?

Mergers and acquisitions, accompanied by downsizing and rightsizing, has been the largest single factor contributing to the "growth" of organizations in many industries during the last two decades. These same industries now are completely readjusting their growth paradigms as consolidation has maximized profits but squeezed productivity.

With the explosion of technology and quantum growth of information, growth by traditional methods is going to be much harder to achieve in the future. Companies will have to learn to grow "organically" rather than through purchase. They will have to grow through people, rather than through companies and existing distribution channels.

Most companies continue to operate with a standardized recruiting process. The traditional hiring process normally includes screening through resumes, conducting interviews, reference checking and then the normal "in-house" processing. The problem is this system simply no longer meets the demands of today’s labor market.

Human Resource departments acted as if there would always be more workers than needed. The whole process was a process of elimination. Studies conducted at Michigan State and the University of Iowa (1984) as well as by Tepp/Jackson/Rothstein (1991), however, illustrate that this traditional interview-hire process has a job performance predictive validity factor of .14 to .15 (with zero equaling the toss of a coin). The vast majority of companies continue to rely on this process alone. You’ve heard it said over and over "I still go with my ‘gut’ reaction." It’s no wonder that turnover continues to be the greatest challenge facing Corporate America today. Skilled individuals will continue to have the upper hand for many years to come.

Diagnosis

How do you find the talent you need to make your business a success? Every person you hire has talent. The question is how do you make sure their talents are the ones you need? Can their talents and abilities fill the requirements and responsibilities outlined in their job description? How well will they contribute to helping you remain competitive in your market? Can this person sustain his or her performance without excess stress? How will you find the people so driven that getting up in the morning does not turn stomachs and cause chest pains?

People build their lives around habits that eventually become their "Life Themes". These themes are a direct result of their natural behavioral style (how they behave), their attitudes and values (why they behave the way they do) and their motivations (the catalyst or fuel behind their attitudes/values).

Life Themes are the natural attributes you would recognize in a person you know. It may be the attributes you come to love or hate – but it is the theme the person has developed that motivates their behavior and survival skills. If you develop an understanding of these styles and unique behaviors, you will be able to recognize the behavior, attitudes/values and motivations that make up those "themes."

Today, it is possible to place the right person in the right position – almost every time! Your organization can do this by identifying the life themes appropriate for successful job performance through the right screen to empirically measure specific themes and compatibilities.

No system is fool proof, but let me give you a quote from one of my most recent clients: "I am happy to report that our completion of applicants through all phases of training and on the floor has gone from an average of only 15% to 85%. This can be directly attributed to your process."

By developing a thematic approach, using behavior, attitudes/values or motivations, you can clearly define what you need in a position and recruit the right person to fill that position.

Prescription

Establishing life theme models for each and every position requires a relatively minimum investment of time. You need to follow a simple survey and benchmarking process that includes people who have been successful in specific positions you want to fill.

For example. You are running a call center and need to hire customer service representatives. The first step is to identify who takes the best care of your customers in the least amount of time. Interview them and measure their behavior, their attitudes/values and/or their motivational life themes. Using these results, as well as all other pertinent information, you create a benchmark by which to gauge future hires.

Consider the case of the individual I quoted earlier in this article. His call center was experiencing turnover at over a 400% plus rate. This is not unusual for many call centers. Because of this industry’s rapid growth, they felt they needed to hire anyone who could pass a drug test. The company was profitable, but they knew there was still a lot of money being left on the table due to turnover.

The challenge was clear: Reduce turnover, improve performance and the bottom line increases! The challenge was: How does a company do that when working with minimum wage personnel? The answer is to find the right talent.

Talent? Isn’t this company competing with every fast food restaurant and retail store in the world for semi-skilled entry wage employees? You bet they were, but not any more. Today they are hiring by life themes.

This Miami based organization developed a life theme model that identified the specific job themes needed to serve their unique customer base. Each aspect of the job description was analyzed and the corresponding motivation was isolated. Specific for this company was patience and courtesy. Translated into our motivational language, the motivational skill needed was "learned maintenance" with little or no "self sabotage" in their makeup.

Every business can achieve the same success. First you must develop a methodical approach to job theme creation. All task and behavioral aspects of the position must be analyzed before you can evaluate what qualities an individual must possess to perform the job successfully. In my profession we call this a "Work Environment Study" or "Task Analysis."

These work position studies are performed by analyzing job descriptions and talking with people who actually perform the work, as well as their supervisors. Warning: this should not conducted in the traditional subjective manner. The study must be conducted according to the theme most relevant to your need – the behavior, attitudes/values and/or the motivations.

Many Human Resource Professionals have been certified or schooled in the administration and interpretation of tools that will simplify and assist you in this process. These Professionals will be invaluable in helping develop the thematic process. There are myriad’s of tools out there such as DISC, Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values™ , Myers-Briggs, Quality of Motivation Questionnaire and more. – 30,000 of them alone in "Tests in Print".

The life theme analysis is a seven-step process. Here’s how it works:

1. Define the position with a complete list of responsibilities. In this case I will give you a sample question you might ask yourself. Present an example of one characteristic or competency a call center employee might need to fill the position. The examples will be in a sub scale of a "behavioral-based" profile.

Questions:

1. Once trained on product knowledge will this person have the ability to communicate our product and service with the customer?
2. Will this person have the ability to go through each of the fifteen steps necessary to complete the job?

Characteristics needed:

1. A strong ability to influence and please the customer
2. An ability and desire to pay attention to details with a task orientation
2. Isolate your best performers, preferably empirically. If you have statistics or computer generated analysis of specific performance issues, begin by referring to them. Always try to find a way to look at the job in an unbiased manner. If you cannot, it would be better to use a consultant that will compile the information objectively. Bias can ruin all efforts to complete this process accurately.

For example, many call center’s QA departments evaluate their CSR’s by their ability to activate a job #, verify an account, troubleshoot the problem or something as simple as following a script in a specified period of time. Each of those factors can be recorded and analyzed. The results can be tabulated and an efficiency rating given.

Those employees who fall into the category of best performers will then be used to interview and complete the surveys, which provide information on their behavior, attitudes/values and/or motivations. Once established, they will serve as the foundation for completing the life theme process.

3. Interview your top performers and a few supervisors to complete Work Environment Studies and/or Task Analysis for the job descriptions. This process will provide you with information you will not obtain from the assessments. Your group may be very good at many of the skills necessary to complete the task, but they may also be weak in some critical areas. Managers often tend to hire in their own likeness, thereby shortchanging some aspects of the job.

Each individual should be asked to provide their perspective about what behavior, attitudes/values and/or motivations are needed for each aspect of the job description. Each person will give you his or her own perspective. Compile the results and merge them. Identify the consistencies through comparison and contrast. Compile your averages and present them.

For example, one call center employee may feel that it takes a high level of intelligence to solve customer’s problems while another employee feels that the person should simply know how to use a reference manual to find the solution. Both, however, agree that the employee must be clear and concise with their answers.

4. Establish hiring benchmarks based on analysis of top performers.

Take the results gathered from the assessment of the top performers and the information you have gathered from the work environment studies or task analysis and compare them.

What do you see? Are the behaviors, attitudes/values or motivations necessary to perform the job similar or divergent? What is the same, what is different? Are the areas that have gaps responsible for the lack of performance by your group? If the gaps were close, will the organization benefit from improved productivity and lower turnover?

In our call center case study, we noticed that there was not enough tolerance of the customer and a lack of task persistence with the high turnover group. We established and benchmarked a theme with the higher standard. When the higher standard was met, the turnover decreased dramatically.

5. Develop appropriate questioning for screening process based on behavioral, psychological and motivational needs of the job descriptions and the behavioral traits necessary for successful task completion.

Sit down with your HR Professional and use their expertise in this area. Their knowledge on what kind of questions can and cannot be asked will be invaluable. Make sure your questions are theme oriented, rather than information inquiries for past work experience.

Individuals with call center experience proved no guarantee for success with my recent study. We found that if the individual had a life theme associated with caring about others and an intense desire to do a good job, they had a better than average chance for success.

6. Develop a career path or outline. Very few people will accept a position, regardless of the pay, if they do not know what the future holds for them. People, for the most part are highly resistant to change, unless you prepare them for that change.

In the call center study the old employees did feel they could rise above $8.00 per hour. Through the development and publication of an "advancement chart" we were able to provide a competitive atmosphere for improved performance. When people saw where they could go and how much more they could make their attitudes changed.

7. Assist in the development of a recognition/incentive plan.

I don’t have to tell most of you about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Love and esteem are the top two – NOT MONEY! When perfect attendance provided weekly opportunities for a color television, attendance improved. You get the idea. Matching rewards and/or recognition to the specific needs of your top performers is not only the smart way, but also the profitable way.

Thematic hiring may not cut your turnover 70% as it did in my client’s case, but it will have a dramatic effect on your employee’s performance. Think about it – don’t you perform better when you ENJOY what you’re doing? You and your employees possess unique behaviors. That behavior has given you special life themes. Use those themes to have fun when you work. Who knows, you may even want to ‘whistle’ while you work!

Chuck Coker

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