Some time ago I was consulting in a frozen food plant that had about 105 employees. A new customer placed an order that required the plant to double its production.
This made it necessary to hire almost 90 new employees as soon as possible. The original plan was to use a contractor to screen and select the candidates and fulfill the new staffing demands.
As we talked about the plan as it existed, several things became clear.
The hiring contractor the company planned to use had no idea of the specific requirements necessary for success in the positions that needed to be filled.
They would screen out people with criminal pasts, drug abuse problems and active warrants for their arrest, but would not know what qualities were most desirable.
Such a sizable influx of new people would overwhelm the culture of the plant, introducing nearly as many people who didn’t know how to play on this team, as there were original teammates.
Think about it like this. Good people, wanting to make a contribution, would bring the practices and culture from their last employer and apply them here. It would really fragment the plant’s focus.
This could create difficulties in reaching the production goals that they had to rapidly achieve.
We did some basic training in interviewing skills for the shift and team leaders. It was nothing fancy, just some basic information and practice designed to give the folks confidence.
We had them identify the competencies of their best workers and determined which traits and behaviors in candidates might presage those characteristics. Then we let them screen the candidates that the manpower firm uncovered.
As it turned out, most of the workers in the plant were women. We identified the best workers among them, who were invited to serve as “big sisters” for the new people, with responsibility for showing them the ropes and talking to them about, “how we do things here and why.”
In preparing these “big sisters,” we helped them to appreciate what was important about their own performance that we wanted the new hires to emulate. By going through this process, the shift and team leaders also became more comfortable in talking about behavior and how the work should be done.
When the new employees started to show up several things were apparent. The shift and team leaders knew them and were invested in their success, particularly the ones whom they’d selected for hire.
The “big sisters,” who worked to instill the culture while orienting people to their tasks, were proud to be role models, and an unexpected benefit resulted; performing in this new capacity strengthened their own commitment to their jobs and company.
The new people did not come to work feeling alone, unsure and disoriented. They had people to talk and work with whom they knew, and had a good understanding of what was expected from them, and how to do their new jobs.
The end result was that production ramped up more quickly than the plant manager had expected, production goals were met within the needs of the customer’s time frame, and there was less waste and breakage, and fewer accidents than was normal.
It wasn’t rocket science, but a little time spent up front, including the right people, paid big dividends almost immediately that continued long into the future.
