Many companies are experiencing slow or cautious growth. Others are, or soon will be, wrestling with sudden spikes in growth or customer demand. During times of abrupt expansion, companies often overlook how rapid growth affects the company’s culture.
Unfortunately, many companies today find that their talent acquisition strategies lag in their ability to respond to these immediate needs. In fact, our recent workforce trends study revealed that many organizations are simply not updating their talent acquisition strategies often enough.
What does growth have to do with a company’s culture? It’s a shock to the system, literally.
Culture shock can ensue when a company has a great influx of new employees or even large numbers of temporary employees, consultants, or independent contractors. Further, companies that choose to sit back and rely on static or outdated strategies for sourcing and recruiting talent risk compounding the effects of the shock.
Recently, a few articles highlighted the issues surrounding culture and change. Most notably, an article at The Hiring Site highlighted how difficult avoiding culture shock can be when a company grows and expands, sometimes at an unexpectedly fast pace.
Interestingly, the article doesn’t touch on talent acquisition strategies or the various staffing solutions a company should use in tandem with expansion. I think that’s an important starting point.
How did you address the need to add workers, skills, and recruiting resources in the first place? The method can have a great impact on the amount of culture shock your company endures.
Here are a few tips for reducing the initial culture shock that might accompany the need to hire large numbers of workers.
• Align talent acquisition and recruiting strategies with your culture. Don’t try to fit a square-peg outsourcing strategy into a round-hole company, especially if your organization is very internally focused or hierarchical. A recent Wall Street Journal article shed light on four types of company cultures. The breakdown is based on how an organization functions internally, including communication, decision making, and its methods for promotions. Think about the values that fuel your culture as you look for the most fitting solution.
• Forecast and plan for what is likely to occur. Get your resources in line and online before you need them. Most programs, especially large MSP or RPO programs, take a few months to ramp up. If you take a few months to decide you need to do something, then another six months to choose a provider, you’re already set back almost a year.
• Build agility into your talent acquisition strategies. Once you have all your options ready to go, be willing to change from one solution to the next if needed. For example, you might need to move from temporary staffing to permanent or vice versa. Identify which areas can benefit from specific types of staffing solutions. Then set the expectation that you might have to make adjustments as conditions change.
• Even the best companies have to deal with culture crises from time to time. Based on the results of a workforce study, it seems that some crises can be avoided if a company successfully factors company culture into the workforce equation. Organizations need to align and prepare their company’s talent acquisition strategies and staffing solutions to fit their culture.
• Prescreening also plays a big role in hiring the right people for the job (temp or perm). A company needs to screen for the right core competencies. So, if you are a non profit organization that is looking for development and fund raising talent, a candidate that has worked and developed their experience and core competencies in the for profit financial services industries or on Wall Street, may not be the best fit for your non profit/ charitable organization… as this type of candidate may not find your organization is a good fit for them and vice versa. Using behavioral interviewing techniques, checking references and administering personality profiling assessments may help you vet the right candidate. You'll be happy and so will the employee---and your culture won't suffer.
Thanks to the following sources: Matt Rivera, The Wall Street Journal, The Hiring Site & Us Here At Strategic Workforce Consultants
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