How Management Training Can Help You Avoid the Unexpected Cost of a Bad Hire

Want to hear a troubling statistic? The US Department of Labor estimates that a bad hire costs your business 30% of that employee's potential year-one earnings. This is a conservative estimate, too. It's difficult to calculate the loss incurred when you hire the wrong person for your business. Every manager and business owner has dealt with bad hires. Maybe they started out seemingly stellar, fitting your company culture seamlessly and producing exceptional results. Or, maybe you were in a rush to fill seats and let bad seeds slip through without proper vetting. Either way, fast-forward 6 months, and you're stuck dealing with bad employees exhibiting any of the following issues: They fail to produce acceptable quality of work. They work poorly with other employees. They sport a negative attitude. They're late or don't show up. They fail to meet set deadlines. They directly cause customers, clients, partners or other employees to complain. Effective management training programs cover employee management through the entire job cycle, from recruitment to onboarding through wading through any mess created by toxic hires. Combining leadership theory and application of specific learning, management training allows business managers to test their mettle against bad hire situations in a practice environment, before they're faced with damaged profits from actual difficult employees. Develop Accurate and Functional Job Profiles The only surefire way to avoid the costs associated with bad employees is to evade bad hires altogether. That's easily said, but, unless you've created a rock-solid hiring process, it's not so easily done. Quality management training programs help you learn how to make great hires by starting from the very beginning, from before you've even started prospecting candidates. Sandler's management training first aims to help you develop accurate and functional job profiles. This critical step ensures you aren't simply filling seats in a rush – a common practice that leads to bad hires and diminished profits. Having clearly defined roles empowers managers to weed out under and overqualified candidates. Identify Your Business' Best Fitting Candidates The identification process acts as your primary line of defense against bad hires. Management training coaches best practices for the most important step in avoiding bad hires: the interview. Often, entrepreneurs and managers make effective talkers but poor interviewers. It takes training to learn what to ask and how to dig deep and find top talent. Sandler's management training focuses on the interview as a tool to eliminate potential bad hires by uncovering motivators, teamwork skills, habits, and reactions to change, stress, failure, and even success. Learning and practicing great interviews helps managers spot the signs of a bad hire early, even before they're hired, preventing any corresponding costs down the road. Bring Bad Hires Up Through Supervising, Training, Coaching, and Mentoring In a perfect world, recruitment and vetting take care of bad hires before they're placed at a desk. This is reality, though, and sometimes bad seeds slip through even the best hiring processes. Sandler's management training program emphasizes skills that encourage top-down coaching and mentorship. New hires are far less likely to sour if they're nurtured properly. It's only when bad eggs are left to hatch on their own that their hidden tendencies manifest as toxic habits. Supervising, training, and coaching all occur within the walls of your office. Bad hires' noxious behavior, however, isn't always a function of the job. For this reason, Sandler's management training program extends to mentorship training that crosses job boundaries. Focusing on personal relationships with bad employees fosters stronger attachment to individual and organizational goals, which can motivate would-be bad hires to do their best for your company. Help Your Team Filter the Poisoned Well Unfortunately, bad hires often create toxic environments for your other employees. Mitigating the damage means setting all of your employees back on track, not just ridding the workplace of that one hire. Through management training, Sandler coaches managers on the skills necessary to reconstruct positive, productive work environments in the wake of a bad-hiring fiasco. We encourage trainees to focus on long-term improvement. Specifically, we espouse the value of aligning personal and professional goals within departments. This safeguards your good employees against the poisonous behaviors of bad ones, as they become more resilient to obstacles that prevent them from reaching their goals. For managers, this means avoiding losses related to demotivated employees, preventing the spread of toxic attitudes and resultant performance. Navigate Tough Issues Through Skills-Based Exercises Teaching proven management theories goes a long way toward avoiding the costs of a bad hire. That being said, theoretical knowledge only takes managers but so far. Sandler's management training is hands-on. We provide active exercises that put you in the thick of your business' toughest situations, including those borne of difficult employees. Nobody can foresee every possible problem, but practice through management training prepares company leaders to tackle issues with confidence and skill, mollifying costs associated with an otherwise fumbled treatment. Dealing with the Unexpected Costs of a Bad Hire You won't always be able to mitigate the costs of hiring the wrong person. It happens. That being said, owners and managers can steel themselves and their organizations against difficult employees through effective training. The unrealized negative economic potential to bad hires is daunting, but management training prepares you for the worst. Preparation means proper handling of these situations. Proper handling, in turn, means you're less likely to be drained tens or even hundreds of thousands of company dollars when faced with that one unexpected bad hire. Let's continue the conversation. How have you dealt with toxic employees in the past? What happened when your awesome hire turned into a nightmare for your company?  Were you able to help turn them around