The purpose behind the organizational role structure of a company is to ensure team members:
- Enjoy operating in their zone of genius
- Perform at their highest level
When your organizational systems are set up to have the right people, doing what they love to do, and creating systems around that, the result is easier management, more efficiency, increases retention, satisfaction and profits.
Now there are many scenarios where things can shift and it’s important to be ready, for example, if you choose to move your company in a new direction with a different product, you may need to hire new talent to support the new direction and find current positions in the company that are now redundant.
We recently experienced this at Lifestyle Perfected.
We were placing a heavy emphasis on our 5-Days To Financial Freedom Challenge with a mission of helping everyone, not just CEOs & Business Owners, become financially free.
After 6 months of relentlessly dedicating most of our manpower and time to the challenge, we realised we were more aligned with the CEO & team coaching we had been doing.
We decided to refocus on our CEO and team coaching and put our 5-Days To Financial Freedom Challenge on the back burner.
As we made this transition we found certain company roles didn’t fit into the new direction we were going in.
We also found we had a requirement for new roles in our company like Business Development and full sales team.
Instead of simply assigning current staff additional roles, we kept team members within their zone of genius and hired new team members who are passionate experts in the skill set we wanted.
I made the mistake of just redirecting people before to save money and time, however, it ends up costing in my experience.
This is an important takeaway to note if you want team cohesion and maximised output.
The Impact Of Placing Team Members In The Wrong Role
First of all, let’s look at some data that demonstrates the undesired financial impact hiring and placing people in misaligned roles has on your company:
- Companies with high employee engagement are 21% more profitable.
- 53% of Americans are currently unhappy at work and you lose an average of $5,000 every time an unhappy employee quits. It costs, on average, $4,129 to hire a new team member and $986 to onboard them.
- US employers spend more than $1.1B per year looking for replacement workers and right now, 81% of employed team members say they would quit their job for the right offer.
This data shows us the bigger your company, and the lesser the quality of your hiring and placement process, the greater the negative impact you’ll experience financially.
- Signpost Warning – This knowledge can cause company leaders to experience feelings of anxiety and doubt with belief patterns that the right people aren’t out there or wanting to join their company, that their hiring process is ineffective and they’ll struggle to find the right people for their company.
- By shifting these feelings and beliefs to feelings of optimism and a belief that you can find amazing candidates through a highly effectively structured hiring process will help the caliber of the talent being hired.
We’ll be covering this a little later:)
Engaged employees placed in the right roles doing what they love are more efficient and more productive. This is common sense right? So why aren’t things working for you?
The problem is, most of the world’s companies have misaligned feelings and beliefs that guide their hiring process, lead to people needing to do things they don’t like and reduced productivity, retention and satisfaction.
And they don’t take the time to review the feelings and beliefs, before taking the actions and creating the roles and processes.
Unengaged team members have serious implications for business success.
85% of team members internationally aren’t engaged in their work. This means they’re either viewing their workplace negatively or doing the bare minimum to keep their job.
Unengaged team members cost US companies approximately $500B a year.
This alone demonstrates the importance of connecting team members with a role they’re deeply passionate about.
That being said, a study by Gallup shows 33% of Americans are engaged at work. More than double the international average which is great news although, I’m sure you’ll agree, you won’t be proud of a 33% employee engagement rate?
How Do You Ensure Team Members Are In The Right Role?
As your company grows and you look to fill roles with the right people, how do you make sure team member churn is minimal and productivity is maximised?
The first step is getting the right people on the rocketship and in the right seats (as Jim Collins says in his book Good to Great) and the wrong people off.
In his book, Jim goes through the importance of figuring out the ‘Who first, then what’.
What he means here is you need to hire team members who are aligned with you, your vision, and your massive transformative purpose, and then (equally as important) ensure they are focused on what they love to do.
Once you’ve achieved that, as a collective, you’ll figure out how to take your company somewhere great.
I’ll continue the rocketship metaphor for a little longer ;)…
You want the right people who enjoy rocket rides, are excited about where it’s going and excited about going there together, as well as where they are sitting.
So the first step to filling your company with A-players is your hiring process.
Here is an overview of the hiring process we implement with our corporate clients to optimize their experience:
Hiring Consultations & Role Descriptions
- Conduct First Hiring Consultation Meeting
- Draft Role Description
- Review Draft of Role Description
- Role Description Review & Approval
- Role Description and Budget Review & Approval
- Final Role Description and Budget Complete
Sourcing & Shortlisting
- Create best-fit survey
- Create A Reference Collection Survey
- Update Company Careers Page With Role Description
- Share Within Your Network
- Post Job on Job Boards
- Implement Recruiter Sourcing Strategies
- Best Fit Survey – Send for Completion by Candidate
- Shortlisting – Conduct 1st Round
- Create Candidate Folders
- Update Application Spreadsheet With Candidates Who Are Shortlisted and Respond To Best Fit Survey
- Rate Candidates Who Respond To Best Fit Survey
- Update Hiring KPIs
Interviewing initial & references
- Collect at Least 3 References From the Final Candidates
- Review References
- Top 5 Candidates Identified
- Interviews – Invite Candidates for Interview
- Interviewing – Job Scorecard – Update
- Interviewing – Job Scorecard – Review & Approve
- Interviews – Conduct 1st Round
- Interviews – Populate Scorecard for Each Candidate Interviewed
- Select Top Candidates
Final Interviewing
- Interview top candidates
- Select top candidate
Onboarding
- Offer and paperwork
- Onboarding process begins
By following these processes, you can maximize the potential you hire an aligned team member who is in their zone of genius.
The Right People In The Right Roles And The Wrong Environment
It’s all well and good hiring top talent. However, if that talent is placed into a culture and environment that’s not positive, engaging and purpose-focused then the potential for that team member to go past the 6-month point of settling in is minimal and you will go cash flow negative on that hire.
The first step to creating an environment designed to bring the best out of your team members starts with clarifying your company purpose and ensuring new hires (and current team members) are aligned with it.
Your company culture is a direct reflection of how your team members feel. If they’re frustrated, overwhelmed, lack clarity or feel negative then THAT is your company culture and values, not what you list on your website.
- Signpost Warning – CEOs can feel confused and frustrated at the rate their team members are quitting and therefore the lack of company growth.
- By shifting their feelings to alignment, inspiration and commitment around their core company purpose they can start to attract team members who are aligned to them and their company purpose.
By having a clearly defined Massive Transformative Purpose you can provide your team members with clarity on what it is the company is striving to achieve and give them the space they need to get creative around fulfilling that purpose within their job role.
Hiring team members aligned with their job role and the company purpose as a whole you’re putting together the pieces of the puzzle that form an extremely effective organization.
The next step to creating the perfect culture and environment is to look at how different team members, managers and departments are aligning with one another.
Before we do, the image below can be helping in highlighting the current culture you have and what your desired company culture looks like when it comes to leadership styles, mindset and behaviours.
Let’s look at 4 ways you can systemize creating an incubative environment that brings out the best in your team members and elevates their engagement.
The keyword here is systemizing. When you create the culture systems, they become automated within materials, calendars, project and sales management systems, which integrate them easily.
Praising Systems
I’m sure you’ll agree, we all want to feel appreciated. By celebrating individual achievements you can really give your team members a sense of pride towards the work they produce and foster a culture of recognition and appreciation.
Tools to help with the systemization:
- Project Management Systems
- Zoom Meetings
- Slack
Open Communication Systems At All Levels
Open communication should be encouraged across the entire company structure. Nothing creates more bottlenecks than team members and leaders only communicating through their hierarchy.
Transcend all barriers to communication.
Encourage a community of trust amongst your team members by operating a transparency policy. By allowing all team members access to sensitive company information and strategy can make team members more connected and engaged to company purpose & values.
Tools to help with the systemization:
- Slack
- Zoom meetings
- Project Management Systems
Inclusion Systems: Ensure Remote Workers Feel Included
Remote team members can struggle to feel a part of the company. Ensure they have access to company chat rooms, email trains and meetings to ensure they feel a part of what they’re contributing to.
Tools to help with the systemization:
- Zoom meetings
- Slack
- Project Management Systems
- Google Calendar Events
Systemize Social Connecting
Don’t limit opportunities for employee engagement to work-related scenarios. Include social events and occasions where team members can connect with each other out of the working environment.
Tools to help with the systemization:
- Zoom
- Google calendar events
Richard Branson & Employee Health
You may have seen this viral quote from Richard,
In 2017 Richard Branson’s Virgin Group was voted the 7th best company to work for in Linkedin’s top companies list.
This comes as no surprise if you’re in any way familiar with the company. Branson has said himself if he takes care of the employees within the Virgin group everything else will take care of itself.
With a net worth of $5 Billion, it’s hard to disagree with him.
With such a diverse empire, it can be challenging to keep everyone happy so Richard puts a heavy emphasis on ensuring the right leaders are hired.
In fact, he’s developed a formula for the perfect leader.
- They must praise employees instead of criticizing them.
- Genuinely love everyone from the cleaning lady to senior executives.
- Be a great listener who not only hears the recommendations from team members but acts on them.
The person who runs the company, the department or a team can very easily destroy that area of the company if they aren’t good with people.
If they are good with people, and again this is systemized, they can create a positive culture that creates the kind of openness to failure and willingness to experiment that can be rare to find.
By hiring (or becoming) a leader that has key traits of empathy and love your team members will provide feedback and suggestions and won’t be afraid to contribute their input to company procedures all of which will improve the quality of the company.
- Better service.
- Higher customer satisfaction.
- Improved financial health of the company.
A Caring Culture
This is another area of the Virgin Group Richard has made a core part of the company.
In his words, caring doesn’t start when you hire someone, it starts way before that. He cares deeply for every candidate who doesn’t get hired as much as he does the candidates who do get hired.
He once flew on a different airline to Virgin and came across a flight attendant who went above and beyond and really delivered a world-class service.
He offered her a job only to find she’d previously applied and been rejected.
This triggered him to ensure all candidates, hired or not were treated with respect.
He put this in action during his next hiring process where he reviewed 7,000 applications for one job and sent a personal video message to every applicant that wasn’t hired.
Retention Starts With You
To summarize what we’ve covered thus far and what we’ve learnt from the case study of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, the performance and retention of a team member starts with an effective hiring process and morphs into effective leadership.
You create the systems and procedures within your company.
You decide the purpose and values the company is guided by.
Ensuring those are centred around creating a positive culture is key to getting the most from your team.
Next, let’s look at the feelings and beliefs you may have around hiring, organizational roles and leadership before looking at some structured action steps you can take to start building a culture that separates your company from the competition.
Misaligned Feeling & Beliefs
UNDESIRED FEELINGS
- Anxiety
- Scarcity
- Fear
- Distrust
- Low Confidence
UNDESIRED BELIEFS
- I’m anxious about the effectiveness of our hiring process
- All the best people already have jobs
- I can’t find the right fit for the job
- It’s hard to find people I can trust
- I’m not confident my team will follow me
Now let’s look at the alignment pattern you may wish to adopt.
DESIRED FEELINGS
- Optimism
- Abundance
- Excitement
- Respect
- Trust
EMPOWERING BELIEFS
- I’m optimistic about our hiring process
- I will find the perfect fit for this job role
- I’m excited to interview all the amazing applicants
- I respect every person who applies to work for me whether I hire them or not
- I trust my team completely and we learn from our mistakes systemizing the solutions.
Action Steps To Create A Positive Culture & Environment
ACTION STEP 1] Bring your company purpose front and centre.
As aforementioned, your purpose is the guiding light that keeps you and your team focused on your vision.
Therefore, it should play a role in all areas of your company.
The first step in that process is introducing it into all your meeting agendas.
ACTION STEP 2] Streamline your hiring process
A solid hiring process is the most important thing when it comes to building a positive culture. You want team members best suited for the job as well as aligned with the company purpose.
Here is an outline by bamboohr walking you through an effective hiring process. You can also refer back to the Lifestyle Perfected process outlined above.
ACTION STEP 3] Care For & Praise Your Team Members
At Lifestyle Perfected we do this by simply starting every company meeting by sharing our praise and acknowledgement for other members of the team and the work they have done.
We also have regular team health meetings where we vulnerable share our experiences from the previous week and support one another in overcoming challenges.
ACTION STEP 4] Love Yourself So You Can Love Others
As Richard Branson said, a good leader loves everyone.
However, you can’t love others if you don’t love yourself.
Check out our full article on elevating your level of self-love and how it’s a key ingredient for business success here.
One of our CEO clients Bobby Brannigan CEO & Founder of Mercato had this to say about his experience working with Lifestyle perfected.
“I feel amazing in my life and leadership of my company. I’ve elevated my health, mindset, company revenue and connection with my team. The Alignment Methodology has literally changed my brain patterns for the better.”
If you’d like a complimentary consultation on your hiring process, organizational roles, company culture or another area of business to elevate the alignment within your company, reply to this email or alternatively, you can see our programs for CEOs and for teams here.
We’re also excited to invite you to apply to CEO Circle. A group for CEOs to elevate emotional intelligence, increase impact and legacy wealth. If you are CEO and/or a founder with $1 million or more in revenue or assets apply here.
Sending you love,
Nadav
& the Lifestyle Perfected team
