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HEAD OFF TURNOVER AT THE SELECTION PASS
Existing employees can be the greatest source of information about the turnover within the organization. By analyzing the personality traits that currently exist among high performers, you can draw a clearer picture of the types of candidates to select for all job openings.
You have spent untold hours searching through 100 resumes, called 20 candidates, extensively interviewed five applicants, and finally found one who met your expectations. Total investment in time, travel expenses and recruiting expenses to hire one person: $25,000 to $50,000. Two years later, the person leaves and you start all over again. What went wrong? How can you eliminate, or at least reduce, turnover?
Turnover is a complicated issue with many interesting twists and turns. On one hand, high turnover is good if you are making a significant change in organizational direction and your current employees don't have the right skills to take you there. On the other hand, turnover is bad when you lose intellectual capital and a sense of community. Some turnover is inevitable, but the right amount of turnover depends on the needs of each organization.
For the purposes of this article, we'll assume that your organization is stable, your wages and benefits are competitive, your management is competent, your working conditions are acceptable, and your people have the right job skills.
In this kind of environment, managing for results during periods of high turnover is like trying to win a road race while stopping to change tires every 10 miles: practically impossible. And, just as the race car solution starts with the kind of tires selected, the turnover solution starts with the kind of people selected.
No organization knowingly hires employees who intend to quit, but separating truth from fiction during the selection process is an enormous challenge. Experienced managers already know why employees terminate- they just have trouble measuring it. Just look at their tool kit. Although it is still the most prevalent selection tool in practice, the pre-employment interview is only 1% accurate. Managers who normally demand detailed cost justifications for purchasing office equipment pride themselves on hiring people based on first impressions. Furthermore, many of the so-called 'tests' used for selection have absolutely no documented relationship with either turnover or job performance. It is no wonder the average probability of hiring a high producer holds constant at 50/50: Stone Age tools produce Stone Age results.
The results of mis-measurement in the selection stage are disastrous. The numbers should not shock you. Look at sales. Do 20% of your salespeople produce 80% of the business? Now, think about the managers you have worked for. Have more than 20% been truly competent? How often have you seen people change behavior based on attendance at a training program? Don't you think it is amazing to consider that organizations usually have a more rigorous set of technical specifications for purchasing a $6,000 computer than for selecting a $75,000 employee?
FINDING JOB SUCCESS PATTERNS
Most people are not terminated because they are technically incompetent-it is because they didn't 'fit' the culture, couldn't get along with people, or wouldn't do the work---'hired on skills, fired on fit.' Technical skills are easy to measure, but they don't cover the full story. Developing a set of people specifications requires an understanding of the traits associated with both performance and turnover. Some people would call these personality traits and others would call them motivations. I like to call them MIAs- motivations, interests and attitudes. Whatever you call them, your turnover ratio will depend largely on your ability to measure MIAs during the selection process. Of course, this kind of measurement is easier said than done.
Would you be surprised if I said that people would say or do almost anything to get a job? Would you be surprised if I said people have even fibbed a little during an interview? Would you be surprised if I said personal references are not always honest? Finding traits associated with high job performance and low turnover takes a special test, a special process to build a unique answer key and some special scoring tools.
Yes, I know there are plenty of tests around, but have you noticed that job-fit tests tend to fall into two categories? There are the basic communication models used in training and the broad-based general descriptions of personality that some professor (who never worked in a business) put together. Seldom are these designs intended to predict performance or turnover on the job. Trying to take a generic trait like creative, intuitive, wooer, extraverted or supportive, and using it to predict job performance and turnover can be pure guesswork. No matter how much fun it might be to play amateur psychologist, employers are not in the analysis business. They only want to know if an applicant can do the job and will stay on the job! Period.
Fortunately, there are more than 25 years of solid research where personality, turnover and job performance information can be found. If you take the time to read through all the studies, you can eventually learn which personality factors relate to performance and turnover and which factors do not. The critical factors can be reduced to just 10 areas:
An interest in problem solving
Behavioral impulsiveness
Interest in generating new ideas
Social expressiveness
Personal inflexibility
Need for perfection
Amount of self-centeredness
Degree of rule following
Willingness to work in teams
Attitude toward work
Knowing these 10 factors is only the beginning. You must understand how the factors combine to affect each element of performance. To do that, you need to do some homework. To start, you need: a clear description of each job task that contributes to performance (for example, resolving customer problems, supporting the organization, coaching employees, etc.). Performance ratings on each job task from people already in the job. Scores on each MIA factor from people already performing the job.
Special pattern-recognition software to analyze the data.
It works like this: The greatest source of information about turnover in your organization can be gathered from the people who work for you. Take, for example, programmers. Break the programming job into 15 or so measurable tasks. Next, ask the programmers to complete a test that measures their MIAs. OK, you are done with the programmers. Now, it is the manager's turn. Ask managers to rate each programmer's performance on each of the 15 measurable tasks (use a three-point behaviorally based anchor to assure accuracy). Finally, use pattern recognition software that can figure out which factors are associated with each performance rating for each task.
You need to use this kind of software because it works like your brain. Your brain takes data from past experience, then 'cooks' and 'simmers' until it finds and stores patterns. When presented with a new piece of information, it 'plugs' the new data into the stored pattern and predicts the outcome. In a practical sense, some people call this 'business savvy' or 'expertise.' Just as your brain learns from past experience, pattern recognition software cooks and simmers your current performance date until it finds and stores patterns between factor scores and manager performance ratings.
Now you have a scientific model of performance that is based on real MIAs and real performance ratings. When new candidates apply for the programmer job, you 'plug' their MIA test scores into your 'performance pattern' and predict performance ratings in areas like teamwork, interpersonal support, organizational fit, cooperation, interest in learning new information. The predictions will be unique to your culture, unique to each position and are virtually impossible to fake.
It is very important to note that MIAs have almost nothing to do with actual ability (i.e. the 'can do'). MIAs are the hidden motivations, interests and attitudes that drive a people's willingness to use their skills (i.e. 'will do'). It would be a serious intellectual 'leap' to go from saying you liked to solve problems to actually being able to solve problems.
When one organization's salespeople were rated for strategic ability, the relevant MIA factors included problem solving, idea generation, flexibility and expressiveness. For managers, the same task was affected by rule following, teamwork, perfectionism and impulsiveness. Low key persuasiveness among managers was associated with idea generation, rule following, teamwork and expressiveness. Among salespeople, the factors included problem solving, teamwork and impulsiveness. Learning ability for managers was associated with flexibility, teamwork and perfectionism, while salespeople's learning ability was driven by rule following, flexibility and teamwork.
How do you head off turnover during the selection process?
Measure the candidate's hidden motivations, interests and attitudes to assess their potential for performance and turnover.
Recognize that one set of MIA factors does not apply to all jobs any more than a single shoe size fits all people.
Understand how different personality factors combine to produce different performance and turnover ratings depending on the task.
Be prepared to use vastly different MIAs for different organizations, jobs and tasks.
Avoid using tests that measure the wrong things.
Use your unique MIA profiles to predict job fit, cultural fit and task fit.
Employment Management, Fall 1999, R. Wendell Williams, Ph.D.
Achievement Tec, January 10, 2000
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