Where to find good employees.

As a business coach, I get asked a lot of questions: "How do I work less" "How do I make more money" "How do I...".  At some point in the conversation, the business owner/manager will say to me "I can't find any good employees. Can you help me" My response is always a variation of the same answer: "Where are you looking?" The answer is usually "everywhere" If your answer is everywhere then you are really looking nowhere at all.

The numbers are startling. In most markets, the unemployment rate is well below 5%, which economist will tell you is "full employment". All that really means is that everyone that is looking for a job has one.  With that in mind, how can you attract the best talent and not overspend? There is a formula that you can use to help and it has a lot of steps, but the most critical step revolves around one idea: Employee Retention.

The fact is that one of the largest drains on any organization's cash reserves is employee turnover.  Very seldom is it properly accounted for on a company's balance sheet. It is a hard number to wrap your head around. It is truly an "unseen cost", but yet employers often keep making the same mistakes over and over again when it comes to employee relations. What steps can you take to make sure that you are retaining your best people?

There are three things that you can do today to help find, hire, and retain good employees:

• Realize that, in some cases, it is better to not hire than hire. Accept that fact that "nobody" is preferable to the wrong "anybody".
• Give some thought and energy to your hiring practices. Define what the "ideal" employee is for your organization. Go back and look at successful employees that have moved on to other opportunities. What made them "successful"?  Hint: A "successful" person in one organization is not necessarily successful in all organizations. Make sure your criteria fits you.
• Good employees are made not born. Every good employee learned good habits from someone. What are you doing to teach them? To help them grow? Every bad employee learned those habits too. Ask yourself if the person is salvageable. If employee is truly motivated to get better, that maybe something you can work with. If not, move on as quickly as you can, but ask yourself what you can do differently next time.