Square pegs in square holes

We've all come across clever clogs candidates who turn out to be absolute pains in the backside when you actually work with them. On paper, the qualifications may put them streets ahead of other applicants but, in the flesh, it's a totally different story. How often do you hear "He's just not a team player", or "That's the last time I'm going to her for help", or "He didn't listen to a word I said"? They are all signs that the team boat is being well and truly rocked. They are also signs that something went wrong in the recruitment process. The dynamic unit of today's workplace is not the individual - it's the team. Improved cycle time, leaner operations, continuous improvement, customer focus - they all depend on people pulling in the same direction. They don't have to like each other (although it helps) but they do have to share knowledge and support each other. This applies equally to shopfloor, top floor, sales, product development and even the laboratory - once upon a time the last refuge of the solo operator. As a result, very few companies can afford simply to recruit for what someone can do. They also need to know how they will do it. Life was a lot easier (though possibly not fairer) when businesses could sack people after a trial period simply because their faces didn't fit. Nowadays, the last thing any company needs is a protracted legal wrangle over discrimination and unfair dismissal. The penalties are painful, it destabilises other members of the company and polarises opinions. It pays to be careful. And that means looking at a lot more than just technical or academic abilities during the recruitment process. There's another factor in all this. Some companies are willing to train like never before. They want attributes they know will be good for their own specific processes rather than taking skills learned in a 'catch-all' - and possibly suspect - external educational environment. Companies which are going to invest heavily in their people want to be sure they are going to be worth it. In other words, they want the quality that is almost impossible to teach - the right attitude. Let's start with a business whose entire recruitment strategy is focused on 'attitude'. Power Panels is the winner of the 2008 Barclays Best Factory of the Year Award [see p27]. This Walsall-based designer and manufacturer of complex electronic assemblies is truly outstanding. The bedrock of its success is the massive amount of training it gives its people: every operator receives at least 22 days a year. Its entire culture is rooted in a constant, team-based quest for sustained improvement. Power Panels has few problems finding applicants: the company is known to be highly successful in an area where a lot of industry has closed. Virtually all of its 173 employees live locally. Educational qualifications scarcely figure in the recruitment profile; with its own training school, Power Panels expects to develop the skills itself. "I would argue that every new recruit is an apprentice," says MD Tony Hague. "We are looking for the right people with enthusiasm, creativity and commitment. The kind that, when you talk to them, you feel they are interested and the lights are on." Power Panels uses the performance management system pioneered by the legendary Jack Welch of General Electric (GE). It is based on the assumption that commitment is essential whereas competence can be trained. It ranks people into three types: A - the top 20% - is both committed and competent; B - the vital 70% - is committed but not competent and can be trained; C - the bottom 10% - is competent but not committed and they are the ones that bring nothing to the organisation. Hague says Power Panels started using this model five or six years ago, taking six people (Cs) out of a then 80-strong organisation. In one important respect, however, Power Panels does not follow Welch's principles. Every year, he would fire the bottom 10% of his managers while rewarding the top 20% with bonuses and stock options. It may have worked for GE but in most companies it would lead to finger-pointing and position-guarding, the very antithesis of Power Panel's no-blame culture. It takes a much simpler approach: if recruitment does its job properly, no Cs will get inside the door. Like many companies nowadays, it initially takes on all recruits as agency temps. Many use this route to insulate themselves from expensive mistakes but it can have major drawbacks. It is only too easy to create a divide between 'first-class' and 'second-class' employees - those who have made the grade and those whose every move is being marked as fail/pass. Power Panels, however, has avoided this by rigorous fairness and a willingness to invest in skills development even in its temporary staff. "People in Power Panels are in training all the time, regardless of the time they have been with the company," says production manager Sean Cayley. The agency, which has a close relationship with the company, works with it to pre-screen applicants, making sure they have an aptitude for the fundamentals of the work: a capacity for lean thinking, numerical and reasoning competence and a basic ability to interpret drawings. They also have to pass a colour blindness test (pretty vital when wiring in cables) and to show they can work in metric. Their first interview is with a production manager; their second jointly with a team leader and a trainer. It serves to check their attitude ("Do you like what you see?"), their appetite for personal development and their 'fit' with the rest of the team. Interestingly, Power Panels does not have an HR department. Line managers take responsibility for their teams as well as their output. No-one can wash their hands of people issues here. The company usually takes between 10 and 20 temps on at a time but it can be as high as 35. Cayley describes the induction process as "robust" to ensure that everyone is given an equal opportunity. Power Panels believes that new recruits are at their most malleable, therefore giving the company its best opportunity to shape their futures within it. As well as the induction standards of health and safety, they also get training and practical experience of 5S, kanban, problem solving and SMED. Team leaders use the first few weeks to assess the new recruits' attitude, to give them feedback and to take action. They are reviewed on their first, third, fifth and tenth week before a decision about routing them into permanent work. Cayley says it is essential to make no exceptions - it is the only way to be fair and yet to make recruitment work for the company. Strength in numbers Recruiting to fit into an existing culture is relatively straightforward with a smallish organisation like Power Panels. But what do you do when you have a huge, diverse organisation like 3M whose product range extends from consumer office to graphics display right the way through to healthcare? June Cook, UK and Ireland talent manager, says that decentralisation is one of the strengths of 3M; no-one would wish to impose any kind of bureaucracy which would rob the 'mini-cultures' of their individuality or focus. "Our aim is to join it up, not kill it," she explains. There is, however, still 'Big 3M' and a company-wide set of accepted values - for example, the ability to drive innovation and growth and to develop and engage others - by which all potential leaders are measured. Some kind of wider perspective is needed, firstly to stop the wheel being reinvented and, secondly to manage succession and develop talent for the long-term benefit of the entire business. As a result, 3M operates a complex recruitment model where, in the main, line managers drive their own recruitment but HR provides support where needed. The exception is industrial placement for graduates, which is run centrally. 3M also works with a managed service provider, Volt Europe, whose representatives work in-house managing second and third tier agencies, providing a one-stop shop for the early stages of recruitment and, in some cases, also providing assessment centres for larger intakes. To the candidates, they are indistinguishable from 3M's own staff. After the agency-sifting stage, managers can choose to handle interviews alone or to call in HR support but there are also assessment tools in place to help them. Cook says there is an absolute need to match the 3M culture as well as the skills. "The agencies can do a lot on the skills piece. We don't want to put ten people in front of our managers. We want, say, three who on paper can do the job. So in the face-to-face interviews it's all about 'fit' with the culture and the team they'll be part of." 3M uses OPQs (occupation and personality questionnaires) from assessment specialist SHL to stimulate more probing, effective interviews. These are designed to shed light on how people like to work and their behavioural style: in essence, how they approach a job rather than their actual ability to perform the work. Many companies adopt this approach at different levels of appointment. Assessments come in many flavours; SHL also provides a work styles questionnaire (WSQ), specifically designed to help assess and develop the behaviours demanded for the manufacturing shopfloor. Cook insists there aren't any right or wrong answers to an OPQ; instead, they are about an individual's perception of themselves and their own likes and dislikes. "It means we can dig a little deeper. So we are finding out their preferred style of communication and working. It really helps line managers focus on things they know are important for the team, for 3M as a whole and, indeed, for the customer." There is a second string to HR support in interviewing for 'fit'. "We encourage our managers to go on programmes for behavioural interviewing, or our HR people can sit with them and coach them beforehand," explains Cook. "We try to draw out what they mean when they say, for example, the recruit has to fit in with our customers. Does it mean what they wear, or should they be bullish? Line managers get cautious in that area because, rightly, they don't want to be guilty of discrimination." The interviewing programmes teach a simple style of questioning but one that takes a certain amount of planning beforehand. "It is much more around 'what did you do in the past in relationship to this situation' rather than rhetorical questions of 'what would you do in this situation'," explains Cook. "Those answers could come out of textbooks. This way you use a line of questioning that probes their past experience." It also allows people time to think. Cook says candidates might even know in advance what areas will be explored. It helps them to think about their past without feeling nervous. "The thinking behind the technique is that past behaviours are a good predictor of future ones," says Cook. "Clearly people learn from experiences so we also ask more about what they would do differently now." Does it pay to be as careful about attitude as these two companies? The last word goes to Sean Cayley: "The learning, committed culture is so deeply ingrained now that the standards are set by the current employees."