When I founded Surge Ahead nearly 8 years ago, my intention was (alongside providing L&D support) to work with employers to improve how they recruit. Anyway, it turns out, rather than wanting me to share my tricks of the trade to develop clients into more effective recruiters, to date most of my clients have just wanted me to do the recruitment for them!
Recruitment has always been a large part of my job roles and I have been lucky enough to work both as an in house recruiter and as an agency recruiter, even on large campaign recruitment. Way back in 2006 I worked on a national campaign with Somerfield, who were restructuring the entire store management team, and bringing in a new role of Department Trading Managers. The buzz of high volume recruitment was exciting, and as ever with recruitment, bought lots of highs and lows.
Hospitality recruitment has been challenging, since I started doing it in 1998! The recruitment market has swung both ways so many times over the years. The challenge with recruiting (and retaining) chefs in particular is complicated by the fact if they don’t enjoy their jobs they know they can leave and get lots of temporary work, and probably even walk straight into a new permanent role, given the demand has always far outweighed supply.
My experience within hospitality is that many employers have over promoted not just chefs, but waiters, bartenders, receptionists, housekeepers and spa assistants into management roles as a way of retaining them. Sadly, the skills that make a great waiter, are not the same as the skills that make a great manager. That wouldn’t be a problem, if the employer was prepared to invest in management and soft skills training to support the development of newly promoted managers, but sadly, again, this is often not the case.
Ironically, this over promotion as a ‘reducing recruitment’ tactic, by way of retaining an employee that otherwise would have left will always end up in higher turnover. It is well documented that most employees leave their workplace due to poor management. So, whilst you retained the employee that was looking to leave (questionable decision in the first place, but I will come back to that) and then not giving them the skills to make them effective at all their new management responsibilities, you are highly likely to risk losing team members.
Signs of an over promoted, undertrained manager:
- Little decision making, due to a lack of confidence or knowledge
- Micromanagement, due to fear of being held accountable and not trusting the team
- Poor communication skills, especially communicating clear objectives to the team
- Resistance to feedback – often taking feedback as a personal attack on their performance in a new role, or becoming defensive
- Blame shifting – lacking in accountability, due to a lack of confidence in accepting full responsibility for something they are unsure of
- Inability to develop talent due to their own lack of training, they may struggle to train, coach and mentor others. This can also be a byproduct of fear of competition for their own new role
- Failure to meet service standards or organisational goals due to a lack of effectiveness in managing time and resources
- Limited vision for the future of the department, due to constantly fire fighting the many daily problems that occur with a lack of effective management skills
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason the team members then start resigning.
Who wants to work in that team?
So, the moral of the story, when that resignation letter lands on your desk, is to think very clearly about whether offering a promotion to retain that employee is the answer. When you are really busy, up against numerous deadlines, doing all you can to operate a thriving business within budget, whilst maintaining consistently high standards of service and product quality, giving someone a promotion to retain them can seem like a quick easy answer to a problem.
For an employee to resign, most often after interviewing and being sold enough to accept a job elsewhere, its fair to say they have mentally checked out of your workplace. Promoting them won’t resolve all the issues that prompted them to make the decision to leave. OK, if they are leaving for progression it may, on the surface resolve that issue, but if they were ready for promotion, surely you would already have done it? They have forced your hand. If you hadn’t promoted them because they weren’t ready, you are misaligning their skillset to a role they will perform poorly in. That sounds like setting them up to fail. Unless of course you also plan to invest heavily in their development? Which, in all honesty, would probably cost more than recruiting someone who is already an effective manager, but more importantly, interested and invested in your business!
Another huge consideration is the message you send to the other team members. ‘If you want promotion, resign, and they’ll promote you to keep you’ It can also demoralise other employees who may have been more deserving, or better suited to the promotion. It sends a message to the whole workforce that promotion is not based on merit, but the threat of departure.
Now to the one that most business owners are concerned about – the cost. Promoting someone who isn’t ready or qualified for the position can be costly in terms of training, development, and potential mistakes made in the new role. If the employee ultimately leaves anyway, the company has invested resources without a long-term return. The fact is it’s a temporary fix to deeper issues. More often than not in this scenario, the employee leaves within a year of the promotion anyway. Often because the real issues that caused the initial dissatisfaction are not addressed, and often because they are out of their depth in a new management role they weren’t ready for.
So, what started as a blog about recruitment, has slightly veered left (and right!) The point that I am making is that due to the regular occurrence of employers over promoting as a means of retaining employees, the recruitment market becomes even more challenging.
So many CVs come across my desk, with employee’s (more often from independent businesses than large brands) that look like they have years of management experience. When I interview them and we discuss the basics of management, they really have no idea.
- They don’t know what a P&L is.
- They can’t tell me about a difficult conversation they have had.
- They haven’t done performance reviews
- They haven’t been involved in managing poor performance
- They can’t describe their management style
- They don’t know anything about employment law
They may have been involved in training new team members and perhaps dealt with the odd customer complaint. They may run shifts, but they have not worked as a manager. A glorified, over promoted supervisor with the wrong job title.
The impact of this, is that inexperienced in house recruiters, do not have a process in place to ensure they can spot these applicants. Effective recruitment strategies will attract the best people, aligned to your companies culture and values. They will ensure you build a diverse workforce that fosters innovation, creativity and an inclusive workplace. Effective recruitment improves overall employee performance by hiring candidates with the necessary skills and experience to succeed in roles. It also saves time and resources by getting it right first time and using streamlined, efficient methods to attract the right people quicker and more cost effectively.
“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”
This was my goal when I started Surge Ahead. Not fish (which I have a phobia of!) but recruitment. My thoughts were if I taught people to recruit, they can recruit well for life. As it turns out, I do it for them each time.
Not unlike this blog, things in life don’t always go to plan, and as long as things have a positive outcome, I guess the journey to it can take some interesting different paths!
If you would like some support in implementing a winning recruitment strategy, please get in touch!
lucy@surgeahead.co.uk 07713 069050 www.surgeahead.co.uk
