In a world where productivity and employee morale can make or break a business, Herb Greenberg offers this glum assessment of the American workplace: Up to 80 percent of people aren’t in the right jobs.
“They’re trying to do jobs that fly in the face of who they are,” said Greenberg, a consultant and author of “How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer,” published last year.
Greenberg preaches that companies and managers would help themselves by investing more time and effort in matching workers and jobs.
Employees whose talents and interests are mismatched to their jobs are likely to display disloyalty, shirk their duties and develop a 9-to-5 attitude.
Finding top performers involves deciding what traits it takes to excel at a job, then determining which employees or applicants possess those talents. “Often, they can be hidden from the people themselves,” Greenberg said.
In matching jobs to individuals, resumes aren’t at all useful: They describe what people have done, not who they are, Greenberg said. Someone with 20 years of experience might really have just one rotten year repeated over and over.
Hiring authorities must get inside people–find out what makes them tick. As a consultant, Greenberg and his Caliper Corp., based in Princeton, N.J., rely on psychological tests and in-depth interviews to coax out individuals’ abilities, attitudes and aptitudes.
In tough economic times, companies should conduct human resources audits, getting to know who they already have on staff. Perhaps they’ll find they have the right people to energize the company, but they’re in the wrong jobs.
“No one can be totally fulfilled and maximally productive unless they’re doing a job that plays to their strengths,” Greenberg said.
