Treat people with respect please
May 23, 2011 3:17 PM Subscribe
Why don't companies treat people well in an employer market?
I'm just wondering why more companies don't treat their current employees and potential candidates in the interview process better. I actually do get it but it seems so short sighted.
With demographics the way they are in Canada (And as far as I can see the US), and taking into account immigration rates and other factors, fairly soon we will be seeing a major shortage of skilled workers across the board. I'll get to my reason for this paragraph at the end.
Now I can't for the life of me wrap my head around employers cutting the very things that study after study have shown are the things not to cut. That decrease morale and productivity and lead to higher turnover. Things like health benefits (Not nearly as costly in Canada but they still cut them), vacation time, retirement benefits, RRSP matching, etc... All the while funneling money into losing sectors that benefit the top instead of the customer base and your 'grunt' workers. The real reason you are in business.
And I can't figure out why HR in many companies seems to think that because there are 400 applicants for a position, that making interviewees jump through hoops improves the rate in which their new hire is productive and stays with the company long enough to get their money back. It doesn't. Studies have shown this, and more and more are coming up with the conclusion that much of the hiring process is unnecessary and useless. There are better ways to do things.
For a bunch of MBA majors that are obsessed with statistics and ripping apart things to get at efficiency, why do they seems to ignore these areas?
I now have a job but I applied for a part-time position on the side in an industry I thought would be interesting. They ended up weeding out people until they had 4 people for the final interview. They made us take these tests that were clearly stolen from psychology experiments in the 70's that had a very limited scope, and then applied with a broad brush. Something businesses seem to do often. Then they asked us rapid fire behavioural questions like the tests high paying medical sales companies like Stryker do. Finally they required us to give four work references and 1 personal one. I walked out. I'm not going to piss off my references by letting these idiots phone them and annoy the shit out of them too. All for $13/hr. And you can bet the person that got hired is not too enamoured with them either as all four of us had other jobs.
Going back to my first point, people talk. In the not too distant future, it will be a workers market. The baby boomers won't be able to delay retirement any longer, even if they do dick up the markets again. Just like in 2006, who is going to work for a company that has a reputation for treating people like crap when things were bad for us? Nobody, and what you will get is crap employees that quit the second someone offers a dollar more. It's incredibly short sighted.
I'm just wondering why more companies don't treat their current employees and potential candidates in the interview process better. I actually do get it but it seems so short sighted.
With demographics the way they are in Canada (And as far as I can see the US), and taking into account immigration rates and other factors, fairly soon we will be seeing a major shortage of skilled workers across the board. I'll get to my reason for this paragraph at the end.
Now I can't for the life of me wrap my head around employers cutting the very things that study after study have shown are the things not to cut. That decrease morale and productivity and lead to higher turnover. Things like health benefits (Not nearly as costly in Canada but they still cut them), vacation time, retirement benefits, RRSP matching, etc... All the while funneling money into losing sectors that benefit the top instead of the customer base and your 'grunt' workers. The real reason you are in business.
And I can't figure out why HR in many companies seems to think that because there are 400 applicants for a position, that making interviewees jump through hoops improves the rate in which their new hire is productive and stays with the company long enough to get their money back. It doesn't. Studies have shown this, and more and more are coming up with the conclusion that much of the hiring process is unnecessary and useless. There are better ways to do things.
For a bunch of MBA majors that are obsessed with statistics and ripping apart things to get at efficiency, why do they seems to ignore these areas?
I now have a job but I applied for a part-time position on the side in an industry I thought would be interesting. They ended up weeding out people until they had 4 people for the final interview. They made us take these tests that were clearly stolen from psychology experiments in the 70's that had a very limited scope, and then applied with a broad brush. Something businesses seem to do often. Then they asked us rapid fire behavioural questions like the tests high paying medical sales companies like Stryker do. Finally they required us to give four work references and 1 personal one. I walked out. I'm not going to piss off my references by letting these idiots phone them and annoy the shit out of them too. All for $13/hr. And you can bet the person that got hired is not too enamoured with them either as all four of us had other jobs.
Going back to my first point, people talk. In the not too distant future, it will be a workers market. The baby boomers won't be able to delay retirement any longer, even if they do dick up the markets again. Just like in 2006, who is going to work for a company that has a reputation for treating people like crap when things were bad for us? Nobody, and what you will get is crap employees that quit the second someone offers a dollar more. It's incredibly short sighted.
This post was deleted for the following reason: It's not clear if this is a question or just venting. -- restless_nomad
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