Hire to Fire, Hire to Tire, Hire to Inspire

Help me escape this feelin' of insecurity

I need you so much but I don't think you really need me

But if we all stand up in the name of love

And state the case of what we're dreamin' of

I've got to say I only dream of you

But like a thief in the night

You took away the love that I knew

Relight my fire

Your love is my only desire

Relight my fire

Cause I need your love. (Dan Hartman)

No I am not saying that layoffs should never happen. They are part and parcel of a company’s evolution as it navigates various PESTEL factors externally and finds its optimum soul and structure internally. Nevertheless, companies that are incapable still to manage their own growth often exhibit traits of what I call Hire to Fire. On surface, they signal growth – by getting on a hiring spree and hiring people left, right and centre. But at a deeper level, the company has no idea whether the growth its experiencing, or it thinks its experiencing – is sustainable in the long run or not – justifying whether the new roles created and recruited for will be needed or necessary in the very near future. When the reality dawns soon enough, many roles are found to be superfluous and as a cost cutting measure, the first knee-jerk reaction is almost always starting with a ‘firing’ ritual by laying people off. The running total of layoffs for 2023 based on full months to date is 224,503, according to Layoffs.fyi.

The other scenario is somewhat at the other extreme – Hire to Tire. Often displayed by new companies, at their early stages of evolution where attempts are made to get more done with the same people or same roles. Understandably, this is also part of the company’s evolution, but sometimes even when companies grow up, old habits die hard. Which means that even though they reach a stage where roles can be specialized to achieve better results, they continue to overwork and overstretch existing staff in order to save cost on hiring new people with new skill set. As a result, high burnouts and high churn can be natural consequences of this scenario if not addressed in time. The average employee turnover rate for all U.S. industries in 2019 was 58%. The voluntary turnover rate among software developers is approximately 20-40%.

Finally, the sweet spot to obtain after above trial and terrors is what I call Hire to Inspire. Its this open-minded approach to recruiting where we make all attempts upfront to create the enabling environment for new staff to inspire the company’s existing culture without fearing any backlash or inertia from the existing colleagues or from the corporate clergy. It is this approach where the company openly and gleefully accepts the fact that they are hiring new staff with new skills, experience and expertise simply because they know they don’t have it and they are thankful for the interest shown by candidates in their company to ‘contribute’. It is this humble mindset that may allow newly recruited staff to feel inspired enough to feel empowered enough to try out innovative thoughts and processes compelling enough to actually get implemented by the organization. Inspiration-->Innovation-->Implementation.

On the other hand, the candidate needs to have the receptive open mind to also get inspired by the company, its values and all the good things its trying to do to staff, society and to the planet as a whole. Inspiration should be a reciprocal act.

You can hear me going on a rantling (rant plus rambling) of some sort in my podcast on this topic. Click below to listen in and let me grow with what you think. [Audio only]

50 Shades of Greyd Leadersheep is a series of podcasts, blogposts & speeches on unconventional leadership wisdom & questions that Leaders don't want you to know or ask...at least for now.

Like my LinkedIn profile, thoughts shared through my articles, blogposts and public speaking are my individual views only and don't represent any organisation I am/was associated with at present or in the past, unless specifically mentioned.

The quote used in the beginning is from Daniel Earl Hartman (December 8, 1950 – March 22, 1994) who was an American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter and original frontman for several bands. He was no Leadership coach or guru and would have had no idea why and how his song lyrics could be remotely linked to an article like this.

Did you notice in our lives the list of disclaimers keep getting longer?