The Hidden Costs of Hiring the Wrong People – And How to Avoid Them

You make a bad hire — and you have no idea that you did until it’s too late. At this point, the employee is damaging your company’s culture, productivity, and bottom line. You can dismiss the worker, but you’ll still have to find a replacement. To do so, you’ll have to restart the hiring process, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

The hidden costs of hiring the wrong people add up quickly. Learn about these costs today, and you’ll be well-equipped to avoid poor hires.

Signs of a Bad Hire

Unfortunately, it’s possible you made a poor hiring decision if an employee does any of the following:

• Maintains a negative attitude toward work, your company, and their coworkers
• Arrives late for work, misses deadlines, and does other things that would be considered unprofessional
• Remains unwilling to listen to or accept feedback
• Lacks initiative
• Struggles to think and solve problems independently
• Resists change
• Performs below your company’s benchmarks
• Acts in a way that does not align with your company’s culture

Respond immediately to an employee who does any of these things. The sooner you act, the sooner you can help the worker make improvements.

Alternatively, if an employee continues to display signs of a bad hire, you need to act appropriately. Consider how much bad hires really cost. Then, you can decide whether it’s best for the worker and your business to part ways.

What is the True Cost of a Bad Hire?

The true cost of a bad hire extends across the following areas of your business:

Talent Recruitment and Hiring

You can spend big as you try to future-proof your workforce. Talent recruitment and hiring costs you could encounter include:

• Job posting
• Candidate screening
• Interview
• Adding a new hire to your payroll
• Onboarding
• Training

These become sunk costs when you hire the wrong people. Having to repeat the hiring process increases these costs further.

Team Morale

A new hire who falls short of expectations can create more work for their teammates. The increased workloads create stress, frustration, and resentment and lower team morale. These can lead workers who were previously happy with your company to pursue roles elsewhere.

In addition, a bad hire who demonstrates a poor work ethic contributes to a toxic workplace. They can disrupt your team’s dynamics to the point where your company’s culture scares off top talent.

Brand Reputation Damage

Poor hires can make mistakes that impact the way job seekers and customers view your business. To understand how, consider two examples.

An employee is unhappy with a recent hire who is prone to mistakes and proves to be a bad hire. They decide to leave your business as a result and publish an online review of your company. This review is overwhelmingly negative, as it accounts for the worker’s interactions with the poor hire. Thus, job seekers could see this review if your company is looking for talent. The review could make job candidates think twice before they pursue roles with your business.

Or an employee treats a customer poorly. The worker is a bad hire, and they do not remain with your business. Regardless, the damage is done. The customer that the employee treats badly chooses not to stay with your business and instead partners with one of your rivals. On top of that, the customer publishes an online review detailing their interaction with your former employee. This review could lead prospects to look beyond your company for services and support moving forward.

Negative customer feedback, word of mouth, and online reviews about an employee can damage your company’s credibility. If you struggle to avoid bad hires at all costs, you risk onboarding workers who cause your business to suffer long-lasting brand reputation damage.

Lost Time and Resources

You invest significant time and resources to hire, onboard, and train an employee. If you cannot weed out bad hires, you risk poor hiring decisions — and you cannot get the time and resources back that you already committed to these employees.

Once you hire an employee who hits the mark, your business is in great shape. This worker can contribute to your company’s success. Meanwhile, you don’t have to worry about the costs of replacing them. This means you have time and resources to use on new business ventures, innovation, and other areas.

What to Do If You’ve Hired the Wrong Person

Discuss your concerns with an employee if you believe they could be a poor hire. Here are tips to help you address this situation.

Evaluate the Situation With Your Peers

Speak to your peers to assess the employee’s performance. Brainstorm solutions if the worker is not meeting expectations. This gives you data you can share with the worker regarding their performance. You can also provide recommendations on how to improve the situation and help this worker become a productive contributor to your team.

Provide the Employee With Feedback

Meet with the employee to discuss their performance with them. Emphasize things that the worker does well and explain ways they can improve.

Keep in mind that sharing feedback with the employee does not mean the worker will change their ways. Yet, you should give the worker opportunities to get better at their job. If the employee takes these opportunities seriously, they can improve. In this scenario, you can salvage the relationship with the worker and avoid having to find someone to replace them soon.

Share Resources with the Employee

Put the employee in a position to succeed by providing them with resources to help them do their job well. Ideally, the worker will use these resources to become better than ever before at their job.

Create a Performance Improvement Plan

Provide the employee with a plan that details the worker’s performance issues, improvement goals, and next steps. This plan should have clear timelines, success measurements, and consequences if the worker does not achieve the desired results. Answer any questions the employee has about the plan and have them sign it.

Track the Worker’s Performance

Evaluate the worker’s performance and remain accessible to lend a helping hand. Schedule regular check-ins with the employee. These give you and the worker opportunities to catch up and make sure that the employee stays on track with their performance improvement plan.

Reassign the Worker or Adjust the Employee’s Role

If possible, let the worker take on a new role with your company or make adjustments to their current job. The employee could feel reinvigorated in a new or modified role. This could help you avoid having to dismiss the employee.

Do everything within your power to help your employees thrive. If an employee ultimately doesn’t work out, accept that you did your best to help this worker succeed. Learn from the experience, and you can make outstanding hires in the future.

Tips to Help You Avoid Bad Hires

There are red flags that scream, “Don’t hire me.” If you don’t see these during the recruitment and hiring processes, you could make a bad hire. Here are things to do to avoid this situation.

Revamp Your Hiring Process

Define the role you want to fill and your ideal candidate. Vet candidates and look for individuals who appear to have what it takes to handle a job’s responsibilities. Interview candidates and have these individuals meet with several team members.

Take these steps to boost your chances of spotting a potential poor hire early. If a candidate has been thoroughly evaluated and seems like an excellent fit, they could join your team and hit the ground running.

Account for a Candidate’s Cultural Fit

Think about whether a candidate lines up with your company’s culture. Introduce a candidate to multiple team members as they go through the hiring process. Also, it can be beneficial to let a candidate complete a “mock” exercise with team members. Doing these things can give you a good idea about whether a candidate can perform well with your culture.

Invest in Your Onboarding Process

Make your company’s onboarding process seamless and efficient. Focus on perfecting your onboarding process and consider the viewpoints of new hires. Your onboarding process should provide new hires with many opportunities to share concerns and questions. These individuals should feel valued and appreciated as they join your team.

Track a New Hire’s Performance

Meet with new hires frequently and make sure they feel confident and comfortable about their work and your company. Encourage these employees to come forward if they need help. If a new hire is struggling, find out why. Together, you and the new hire can get to the root of an issue and address it before it escalates.

You want the best hires every time you need to fill a vacancy. Help is available when it comes to talent recruitment and hiring. With professional recruiters on your side, you can protect against bad hires. Plus, you can get the staffing help you need to find superb job candidates for your team at your convenience.

Trust PrideStaff as Your Talent Recruitment and Hiring Partner

At PrideStaff, we know how difficult it can be to recruit and hire talent. We are familiar with the risks of making a bad hire and work diligently to help you identify and add amazing job candidates to your team.

Our professional recruiters blend industry knowledge, innovation, and a commitment to your business to fuel your talent recruitment process. With our unique and proven approach to recruiting talent, you can quickly and effortlessly staff your business.

Our recruiters can help you identify top talent and avoid bad hires. Contact us today, and we can help you solve your staffing challenges.