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Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal • August 25-31, 2003
To build a great company, get the right people on the bus
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By Kevin Flemming, CSP
Kevin Flemming is president of Integrity Personnel, Inc., a Lehigh Valley-based staffing and recruiting firm. He writes about staffing issues for small and medium-sized employers. His column, "Talent Search," appears in the Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal every third week of the month.
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While catching up on my summer reading, I came across a pearl of wisdom that should help those companies working hard to find good employees amidst the mountains of resumes left at their doors. Ironically, a period of high unemployment can make it difficult to identify the people who best fit our job requirements (let alone our corporate cultures) because the supply of available candidates is too large. It takes more time and money to effectively review the high volume of applicants that our recruiting activities produce.
The idea that I’m about to share with you reveals how high performing companies choose the best people to work in their businesses. As with most great ideas, the concept is quite simple but the implementation is so difficult that very few organizations can make it work.
A valid concept
In his book, “Good to Great “ Jim Collins presents a series of common characteristics shared among great companies. His research team spent five years defining what it means to be great - and the results are compelling. One of the primary characteristics has to do with a company’s approach to hiring.
Collins describes the great company’s goal in hiring new employees as: “Get the right people on the bus. Get the wrong people off the bus, and get the right people in the right seats.” He explains that too many companies expend energy on recruiting people who either don’t fit in with their corporate culture, or won’t buy into their business model. Because hiring commonly occurs in response to urgent problems (i.e. turnover and increased business), employers sacrifice quality for immediacy.
Although I readily agreed with this conclusion, it didn’t impact me until I read Jason Jennings’s latest book, “Less is More. “ Jennings took a similar, yet less academic path to highlight the common traits among companies that achieve great productivity. I took a double take when I read a subheading in the section on eliminating bureaucracy. It began with the phrase, “Get the right people on the bus.”
These writers used different qualifiers for their research but came to strikingly similar conclusions. Collins created his sampling based on pure financial performance over a specified period of time, while Jennings looked at specific productivity measures. In both studies, the companies that scored superior marks take a strategic and disciplined approach to selecting their people. They all make sure that the right people get on their bus.
Is it right for your business?
How does this affect the average company? After all, aren’t most of us just trying to drive the bus? Why worry about who gets picked up and who gets left off as long as we’re following our route? I believe that this is a valid argument for small & medium-sized employers trying to stay afloat in a recovering economy. At the same time, I have yet to meet a legitimate business owner or CEO who doesn’t possess the desire to build a great company.
So, in the quiet safety of your car or home, ask yourself the following three questions:
Have you hired people who appeared to be great employees initially, but failed to live up to expectations?
Has your company lost people to competing employers who pay slightly higher salaries for the same jobs?
Are the employees on your team in a state of constant conflict with one another, no matter what incentive programs or morale boosters are introduced by your company?
If the answer to even one of these questions is in the affirmative, it may provide an opportunity for you to introduce this hiring concept into your business. This is not to say that every single candidate considered for hire has to be the absolute best person for the company. Sometimes expediency is required in order to operate efficiently. However, smaller employers can begin to identify the characteristics that make up the “right” people for their bus, and steadily incorporate them into their hiring criteria.
Who’s on your bus?
Beneath all of the information on recruiting methods and interview tactics regularly found in this column, lays a firm belief that a company is a collection of like-minded people working towards the same goals and striving to create profit. The quality of the ideas and products that a business produces is dependent upon the people that create them. The higher the quality; the greater the profit.
Both Collins and Jennings recognized this fact in their studies and expressed it in a clear metaphor. According to Collins, if the right people are on the bus then it won’t matter if your bus changes direction. They choose to stay on the bus because they want to work with the other people already there. What a great goal to reach for! Whether our bus holds 10 people or 100, we all have the opportunity to build a great and productive company through the people we choose to pick up along our path.
Kevin Flemming (email:kevin@integritypersonnel.com) is head of business development for Integrity Personnel, an integrated staffing and recruiting firm in the Lehigh Valley. It helps small and medium-sized employers attract and acquire the talent they need to do business.
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