Hire Top Performers or Go Home

Show me a business that doesn’t want to hire top performers and I’ll show you a business that will eventually become non-profit...whether intended or not. Any smart business leader wants to find that next top performer who can elevate their game to better achieve business strategy, right?

Here’s the thing – consistently hiring top performers is a highly disciplined process.

High organizational performance starts with a decision.

Once leadership sets their mind to hiring and developing top performers, the path to business growth looks like this:

• Hiring even one or two top performers increases overall employee engagement

• Increased employee engagement eventually begins to attract more top performers
• A group of highly engaged top performers results in high organizational performance

In a comparison of Best-In-Class organizations versus all others, the Aberdeen Group released a March 2013 report that shows how top performing organizations rate in specific areas.

    > Organizational goals achieved – 72% versus only 42% of all others

    > Employees receiving “Exceed” ratings on reviews – 71% versus 24% of all others

    > Key positions with at least one willing & able successor – 70% versus 28% of all others

According to the report, the key difference was how the Best-In-Class organizations hired their people. What it clearly shows is that anything less than hiring top performers equals mediocrity. Based on the actual results, mediocrity looks pretty bleak.

Hire top performers or go home.

If success is the goal, processes resulting in mediocrity are the wrong path and must be changed. If unchanged, mediocrity breeds of a lack of engagement, and you can’t win if your employees aren’t highly engaged.

A recent study by the American Health Association shows that presenteeism – the lack of engagement – costs US companies over $500 billion per year. While that number is huge and shows that poor hiring practices exist in many companies, the question is what it costs your company every year? More importantly, what can you do to change it?

The challenge to business leaders and managers everywhere is simply this – will you make a conscious decision to implement a disciplined process for hiring top performers in your organization? If you don’t, it’s time to go home now.