Employment absorption

Recently, one of my employees has left. The hiring process was successful. He fit. He contributed the company and the company contributed him. He left as he received a better opportunity elsewhere, managing a staff.

I am sorry and a bit sad. He could have developed and achieve professional success in our company. Life continues on. We will continue developing with the others.
I could have let go and say that always there will be better opportunities, no matter what we give or do. That is correct. But one must not stop there. That is an easy way out. Every process of changing place of work includes two sub-parts: Part of leaving the existing and part of entering something new.

No doubt, that leaving us, in this situation, was a result of not good enough absorption. You may ask how long did this employee work in the company? Indeed, this is a fair question. He was with us nine months. So long? How much does it take to take someone new in and teach him or her the job?

That is the topic I wanted to discuss and share: Employee absorption.
Hiring a knowledge worker and teaching the job takes a year, at least.

Why?
Because nowadays, most jobs differ from organization to organization. Think about the knowledge workers in your organization, or even better, think about yourself. Try to remember what you did before, and before, and how different it is from your current position. This is the era of knowledge: Processes of work are roughly defined; the knowledge toolbox, with professional, organizational and market defined aspects, are those who make the job what it is. And these change rapidly.
That is why employment absorption takes time. That is why employment absorption is not a trivial process.

The best way to learn, as researches have discovered, is by experience. But this process is expensive, risky and not satisfactory by itself. Expensive- because if performed in a radical way, it does not take existing knowledge into consideration; risky- because of the performance results, in the apprenticeship period; and not satisfactory by itself, as different people learn differently. Every person needs a different mix of: learning from ideas and concepts, learning from case studies, learning from seeing others (reflection) and learning from doing (See Kolb- "Experience as the source of Learning and Development").

The way a new employee has to be taught includes training; both general unified training, with which we start, combined with personal training, catching a more significant role later on. The general training gives the essential foundations of knowledge, necessary for better understanding of the job. The personal training fills in the specific absences, but more important than that, it is tailored to the learning style of the person to be trained.

Some points to emphasis on:

1. Expectations of the new employee have to be adjusted, so he or she understand that it takes at least a year until the job is understood thoroughly, and one can step forward.
2. The manager's responsibility is to analyze what the worker does not know that he does not know (that is the tricky type of knowledge). This is not a one time analysis, rather a routine. Practically, it is recommended to set training meetings in which, through open conversation, professional topics are revealed and dealt with.
3. Stepwise loading of tasks. The sooner we appoint diverse tasks, the more time it will take to adjust. Tasks? Yes; loading? All right; but diverse? Stepwise. Otherwise, the absorption process will turn out to be longer. This may sound trivial, but if we rethink the issue, and remember it as a 1 year process, it is less trivial.

And the last tip, maybe, the most important: There are no shortcuts. I knew about all the points above, and usually, that is the way I manage. Yet, I made a mistake. I forgot (or chose to forget) that there are no exceptions and no shortcuts.

I paid the price.

Yours,

Moria.

Hiring people to work

Hiring people, like any other management process, is not new, whatsoever. Today we read many articles discussing the matter, as we are again in a growing environment and companies are hiring a lot. I personally, as much as I hate bureaucracy and always look for the short and practical way to do things, feel that I myself am part of turning the hiring process in my company to being complicated and not so simple at all. Why? As everyone else, I am afraid of a hiring process that is not successful enough. First of all, I see the employee that may be asked to leave. Setting off an employee is always a very unpleasant situation. Companies should not hold people who do not fit in; but we always have to do everything we can to avoid taking people and replacing them. Every time we fire someone, I believe, we leave a scar in his or her heart. I admit that I have fired several people in the past years. When I do so, I try doing it while leaving the employee with their dignity and I try learning a lesson from each episode, in order to make the chances of the next time I'll have to stand in a similar situation, smaller.
Beside the personal sadness, firing people in order to replace them with others is a business loss. It also is a personal loss for the people left in the organization. We encourage our employees to develop an informal relationship one with another. Some of us (like me) call it "family value"; others use different superlatives. Good inter relations develop into good working environments and trust. Trust enables sharing and knowledge development, besides it giving each one of us as a worker a good feeling when we enter the office every morning.
The bottom line- We hire not to fire. Indeed simple. So why to write on it? And what is new looking in a knowledge perspective?
Looking in a knowledge perspective can give us some points to emphasis on:
In an era of knowledge, a worker has to learn a lot during his or her stay in the organization along the years. Sometime, the amount of learning exceeds the practice with which the employee arrived. The ability and desire of the candidates to learn are not less important than their professional experience.
In an era of knowledge it is important not only to know, but to be able to teach others and learn from them. It is not enough to learn from books and from the Internet. The ability to work with others, teach them and learn from them is essential to choosing the right people.
In an era of knowledge the workers choose the place they work in, not less than the organization chooses them. Adequacy between the organization's values (the real ones, not those on the office walls) and the personal values of the worker, will aid contribution of the worker to company's goals in the future. We have to remember that people do not stay for money only. There always will be someone somewhere else that will offer more. Employees want to feel that they are achieving their goals and working the "right" way; Organizations have to have the same feeling regarding the employees working for them: The managers have to have the feeling that each employee is part of the progress of the whole. A personal conversation with the candidate can be the way to test the adequacy. A conversation about goals and wishes; a conversation about what the employee likes to do in his or her free time and what make them happy. Such a conversation should not be held by the HR department. Organizations are built from smaller groups, each with its sub-values and ways of doing things. A conversation held with HR, seems too theoretical. It is better that the manager of the group will hold such a conversation and personally take such a decision.
Yes, there are other points that can help, but I tried to put down in this list the major ones: Learning ability, sharing ability and value adequacy.

Did I fall when hiring people? I sure did. But, I improved. And I'm still working on it.
I would appreciate hearing from your experience too, especially from the knowledge perspective.
Yours,
Moria.