Foiling Disengagement Through Best Recruitment Practices
Companies across the globe are experiencing the ailment and angst of employee disengagement. This ailment manifests in loss of employee productivity, customer base and profitability. Research carried out by Hay Group reveals that companies with high engagement score have revenue levels 4.5 times higher than those having less score. For these reasons, measures to arrest the devil of disengagement are taking top most priority in the boardroom discussions and huge funds are allocated for making things better.
Harvard Business Review (March 2018) highlighted that companies have been spending over $720 million each year on employee engagement and this amount was projected to rise to over $ 1.5 billion in coming years. However, despite concrete measures taken, meeting desired objective in this field is still a far cry. Gallup’s recent survey revealed that only 13% employees worldwide were engaged at work. Even for developed nation like US it’s mere 34%. This calls for looking deep into approach adopted by companies to seize the devil of disengagement and take remedial measures to soar engagement graph index.
Measures like creating special engagement cell, making employee friendly HR policy, reward and recognition programs, employees career progression and learning and development plans, family connect events, celebrations, outbound and get-togethers, framing grievance redressal forum, skip level meetings, coffee with the CEO and improving overall work culture of organization have always been part of most organizations employee engagement agenda. These interventions, despite their glamour and fanfare, have failed by and large to deliver. So, what do we do?
Quite often simple and commonplace solutions are overlooked in this overhyped world. No wonder, one aspect which most of the companies miss is practicing robust and scientific recruitment method to prevent entry of prospective disengaged employees in the system. Research has proven that engagement always starts with the conscious and mindful acquisition of right talent into the body fabric of the organization. To avert inflow of disengaged workforce in the system, organizations should focus on gatekeeping and ascertain that only right talent is recruited and enters the system. This can be achieved by evaluating candidates on three parameters: ‘interest’ fit, ‘organizational’ fit and ‘job’. Details of these fitments are mentioned below.
1. Interest Fit
‘Interest’ fit seeks to check whether the candidate would genuinely enjoy the job he has applied for or not. A mechanical engineer after striving hard to crack JEE and spending years in the college before getting the degree would obviously be interested in job related to his field. But if for some reasons (like lack of right job opportunity or financial challenges at home) he has applied for marketing or MIS executive job and gets selected, his interest level in that job would not be so high. Also, an MBA Marketing student may actually be interested in some other career viz. photography but due to extraneous compulsions might have opted for MBA in Marketing. In such circumstances, he may not exhibit great interest in job related to his MBA Marketing qualifications. Further a candidate may be interested only in flexi working hours or work near his home but if he is offered a 9 to 6 job or job far from his/he home location and he accepts the same for some other constraints, he would apparently work half-heartedly. Work fills large part of one’s life. Such employees who didn’t get job of their choice and opted for other work by doing compromise with their inner soul’s voice would definitely remain disengaged and less productive while on job. They would always be in search of job of their choice and put their retention at stake for HR Managers.
Gallup Studies highlight that ‘high performers are always in role where the expectations of the job align well with their innate talents and interests’. Recruiters should give utmost heed on understanding that whether the candidate is sincerely interested in the given job or not before accepting his candidature. Genuinely interested candidates, post joining, are bound to fall in love with the job assigned to them. They would experience emotional connect and pleasure in the job which would lead to perfection, innovation and productivity increase and finally mounting the level of their engagement with the organization. Hence finding level of ‘interest fit’ becomes imperative for recruiters while selecting candidates.
2. Organization’ Fit
When an employee’s personal and professional values and beliefs align with and complement those of the company’s it’s referred as ‘organizational fit’. Different companies have different values and so is the case with different individuals working in it or job seekers aspiring to work in it. If value system of an individual which comprise of his philosophy of life, ideals, belief system and preferences doesn’t match with that of organization, he would constantly experience an element of discomfort. This would lead to job discontentment, productivity loss, lower quality deliverables, creation of negative work environment and at times even psychological disorders and give stimuli to employee disengagement in the system. A leading psychiatrist opined “Values are our personal guiding principles and linked to our inner feelings. Hence working against it for long can cause antipathy towards the job, outsized stress and inability to showcase potential”. May be for this reason that most companies have value adherence as a basic component of annual performance evaluation.
Hence ensuring organizational fit becomes a matter of umpteen importance to prevent entry of prospective disengaged employees in the system and aid in prevalence of desired engagement level in the environment. Since values and beliefs are intrinsic part of competency iceberg, measuring it is in one’s candidature would be a time taking and not so easy task but to ensure maintenance of organizational fit resources in the system following it becomes critical for recruiters.
3. Job Fit
If a candidate’s qualification, work experience, job knowledge, intellect, skills, health and personality traits match requirements of the job, his candidature is termed as ‘job fit’. It is ensuring that desirable and essential criteria of job matches with competency level of the candidate. A job fit employee will exhibit high level of productivity as he can complete assigned task much speedily and accurately than the one who is not qualified or skilled for carrying out that task. For example, qualified techno-savvy tax accountant can compute employees’ tax deduction much faster and with greater accuracy than a simple B.Com or a qualified and experienced Customer Service Associate will resolve customers’ queries in a much better way than the one who doesn’t possess these experiences and qualities. Success always demands high level of competence. Also, happiness comes only after achieving desired level of competence in the desired field. Such ‘job fit’ workforce, by virtue of their competence, are always willing to take up new and challenging assignments, prove their worth for the organization and keep moving up on hierarchy ladder. They capitalize all career opportunities coming within the organization. Arun Kumar, Senior journalist of The Hindustan Times rightly said “job fit is linked to boost in level of commitment, increase in employee satisfaction and reduce turnover”. Thus, the very element of disengagement doesn’t touch such employees. For this reason while selecting a candidate, giving heed on ensuring desired level of ‘job fit’ gives guarantee of wanted engagement level in the organization. Good thing is that most of the companies are already using it though not in a scientific way.
Summing Up
Giving due heed on above mentioned fitment criteria will definitely preclude the entry of disengaged workforce in an organization and this in turn will contribute to increase in engagement level in the system. However, judging a candidate on these parameters is not so easy especially ones which are hidden in nature viz. some aspect of ‘interest’ fit and ‘organization’ fit. But today we have enough recruitment tools and methods available for the same though with their own limitations. Degree of accuracy of these tools may be a matter of debate but their ability to judge has been acknowledge by majority in the industry.
Making these criteria as part of candidate evaluation process require significant shift in recruitment model adopted by organizations, training recruiters to get used to the same and of course considerable investment. However, keeping up with best recruitment practices is good in all spheres and in this new era of management and stiff competitive economy where level of employee engagement determines organizations reputation and profitability; this becomes all more important. It’s critical for any organization to incorporate these selection criteria and prioritize foiling disengagement in the system.