It is a common phrase that ninety percent of people are misfit in their job. Each job requires a unique set of motivations, competencies, and talents. Most organizations today have to deal with non productive staff and have to spend a good amount of resources on trying to make them productive. While hiring people for any role our main focus is usually on their qualifications and past experience. But when selecting a person for the organization, try to understand the likes and dislikes of the person which can give us a good insight in the candidate’s area of interest. Let’s say we are making an orchestra, we will hire people who are reasonably good with their respective instruments but if we look deeper into the psychology and interest of the person we may find that a person who is good with guitar could be an exceptional singer but due to lack of opportunity he was never able to sing. So, instead of making a good orchestra of musicians based on their respective skills we would be able to create a fantastic group of musicians interested in their respective roles, which would create a great orchestra. Hence, we would be able to create a team where, people do what they love and love what they do.
I know of a person who is very articulate and can communicate exceptionally well. Where ever he went go for a job interview the companies offered him sales job but he was more interested in marketing and brand management. Since he needed the job he took the role of a sales person and eventually failed in it. So he left the corporate world all together. Few of his friends suggested him because it also to try training requires good communication skills. Now, he is a well a sought after and well respected trainer. The lesson is all those companies which offered him sales job, if they had tried to understand his psychology and interest could have made him an asset in marketing or training rather than a liability in sales.
For the existing team, we can create an environment in our organization where there is inter-departmental role swapping. We can give the option to our staff that they can temporarily swap their department within their current designation. This would help the employee and us to see if a person can perform better in a different department. Also this temporary swapping will motivate people to learn more and understand the other department. In case the person after swapping does not find much interest in the work of other department they will still learn to respect the department where they had spent time. At the least this kind of an experiment would help us create an organization where employees will understand and respect other people and departments. This in turn would create a cordial inter-departmental relationship.
Another common mistake made by many organizations is hiring hundred asses rather than ten horses. For some reason we believe that having more people in the organization at lower cost will be better for us. Please understand that hiring people for the organization is also a major investment. If we calculate that instead of hiring many unskilled employees at a lower cost and spending huge money on them, we would be able to save by hiring few experts at a bit higher cost and will be still spending much lower than we would be spending on hiring unprofessional employees. In addition, the productivity of these few highly paid professionals would be more than the results of the unskilled staff. So by spending a little more on hiring the right person we would be able to increase our profits manifold.