SuperManager Podcast: Office Horror Stories – Bad Hires

Christine: You’re listening to SuperManager, the podcast for people who manage people and business with ideas, trends and expert interviews to help you be a SuperManager.

Sam: Hey, welcome to this week SuperManager podcast, I’ve got a group of friends with me today and they are,

Vicky: Victoria Wors, HR consultant for small to midsize businesses.

Jerry: I’m Jerry Richardson, I’m a Labor and employment lawyer at Evans and Dixon.

Sally: My name is Sally Bowles and I’m with Prefix Technologies

Sam: And I am Samantha Naes with CN Video, corporate video production. It’s always interesting when you hire the wrong employee. I can remember one time I had conversations with this gentleman. I interviewed him. Everything went really well. He showed me examples of his work. He did beautiful camera work, beautiful editing, seemed like the perfect fit. I was so excited. He started in on his first day. He seemed a little bit lost, but said, “hey, would you mind if I work on this at home a little bit this evening?” You know, just a little bit nervous. And I said, “yeah, don’t prefer it, but not a problem.” Came back the next day and some progress was made and then I noticed on the second day he wasn’t making much progress, seemed a little confused, was having some difficulties and he said, “yeah, I’m just going to, I’m going to work on this a little bit this evening when I’m relaxed.” And he came back the next day and it’s making some progress. And so this went on for a little bit and I finally had a talk with him, I said, “hey, I really don’t prefer that you take work home with you. Is this an hours issue? Are you better in the evening? What’s going on here?” And after a lengthy back and forth conversation, I discovered that his demo reels weren’t done by him. They were done by his brother. His brother was the videographer and editor and he wanted to be a videographer and editor. So he answered all the questions properly, showed his brother’s work and then he was going home and his brother was helping to teach him how to do the editing, which would not have worked at an actual video shoot. You know, if I, if I had to hand him a camera. So obviously that person was not a good fit and did not work out. But I’m sure there are a ton of horror stories that people have encountered in the office where somebody just didn’t fit in.

Sally: Yeah. he moved to St. Louis to take the position. I had a great interview, actually had three great interviews and quickly discovered that he was not qualified for that position at all. Didn’t understand the lingo, how to deal with customers. So yeah, it didn’t last very long. But again, when you interview and you hear things, maybe it’s that we want to hear things and maybe it’s that we want to find that person. Yeah, that one did not work out well for any of us. And unfortunately not our customers either.

Sam: What happened? What do you mean?

Sally: He didn’t understand how to have a stable network. So he would make decisions while being out in the field that weren’t in the best interest. So it caused a lot of problems for our customers, which is obviously embarrassing. But also more work for our other technicians that had to go in and clean up.

Vicky: Had you been looking for that person for awhile?

Sally: Oh yes.

Vicky: And so you got to the point where we got this guy,

Sally: You want to hear it, you want it!

Sam: You know, decisions two worst enemies are hope and fear.

Sally: You’re right. You’re right.

Jerry: Just to ask a question, in the process, did you get references?

Sally: Yes.

Jerry: Did you talk to them?

Sally: Yes. As a matter of fact, even talked to the current employer, he was in a manager, supervisor role. So he wasn’t really hands on per se. He was more managing the people of it. But when presented problems during the interview had great answers, had great problems solving things. So, looking back was it that he was just managing these great people that could do a great job and they’d come back to him with what they did really made me wonder Jerry.

Vicky: Well I’m wondering if an assessment would have helped you, but you can’t use an assessment for a go. No, go on hire, cause they don’t have a one to one relationship as far as success. But what you could use is in the early part of their employment, you would see how their behaviors were starting to match up and help you make that move quickly.

Sally: It was very quick.

Vicky: Okay.

Sally: There was no time wasted, I assure you.

Jerry: That’s critical.

Vicky: You would have had, you would have had customer complaints and all kinds of,

Sally: Oh no, yeah, and nobody wants that. So yeah, no, we moved very quickly.

Sam: Yeah. And that can be even worse than what originally happened. If you act quickly enough, if, if a customer or customers are starting to complain about someone and you’re able to act quickly enough, usually you can repair the damage that’s been done and keep in good with the client. But you know, if you’re dragging your feet on that or not really sure what the problem is, boy, all kinds of damage can be done.

Sally: You’re right. You’re right.

Sam: So one of the things that we started doing as a result of the employee that we hired, that whose brother was doing his work for him is we now have candidates take an assessment on how detailed oriented they are. And we ask them to demonstrate their abilities. This is beneficial for the candidate because a lot of them have just graduated and they don’t have a lot in their portfolio and it gives them the ability to demonstrate what they can do, but also because a lot of examples that people have are going to be documentaries, sports, news, and that’s not the type of video production that we do. So we want to give people the opportunity to show that they can do how to videos and explainers and things like that.

Vicky: Well it’s not only giving them the opportunity to show they could do that, but also gives them the opportunity to experience the real job you’re going to be expecting them to do, rather than some pie in the sky, your professors said you can do this and this and make hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it.

Sam: And there was a lot of that out there. There is a lot of that out there.

Sally: Not only that, but I would think it would show you their style or a little bit of their personality and are, are they going to be a great fit for what you’re looking for?

Sam: The only thing that doesn’t account for is how they’re going to fit in with the rest of the team.

Sally: Right.

Vicky: And that’s where my assessments come in.

Sally: The culture. Right. And that’s huge.

Vicky: Yeah.

Sam: And that is definitely helpful. The other side of that is personality. There are a lot of horror stories with people just simply having personality conflicts and things like that. For example, I think I talked about this in another podcast where we had an employee who, for whatever reason I’m not sure why, was overly obnoxious with his chewing and his noises. They were in a shared workspace to a point where,

Vicky: Double mint gum snap, snap, snap. Okay.

Sam: Well, I mean just, just overly obnoxious with everything. Employees would kind of bring it up very politely. They’d say, “well I’m having trouble concentrating because there’s a lot of noise.” You know, they were being nice about it. But once I figured out what the problem was, I had to have a conversation with this employee and he started only doing it when I wasn’t around. So when I would walk by, everything seemed fine. But when I wasn’t around, what I was hearing from the other employees was that it’s gotten worse. He’s intentionally making noises,

Vicky: Sneaky Pete.

Sally: That’s what I was thinking, sneaky.

Jerry: Or there’s some I’ve encountered and it becomes a hygiene issue so they can get all cleaned up for an interview. Then, they get hired.

Sally: Yeah, that person that you interviewed never does come to work, right.

Jerry: Right. And then as you said, coworkers tend to try to be tolerant, but it does get to be a distraction. And so those are delicate issues, but they can disrupt the workplace.

Sam: I worked in an office with a woman who was pregnant, and so she had a heightened sense of smell. And if you, when you pair that with an employee who is having hygiene issues, you, you okay,

All: Oh.

Vicky: I’ve had one where actually men come up to me with tears in their eyes. A coworker did not believe in fragrance. It was a cultural thing. Men do not wear fragrance, and it was so accurate. It was so bad that people were nauseated. I had to call him in and talk to him.

Sam: Oh, a man was wearing so much cologne that it was,

Vicky: No, he did not use soap.

Sam: Oh,

Vicky: He did not use fragrance. It was,

Sam: Oh…

Vicky: He says, well, in my country that the male musky smell and all is very, very attractive to women.

Sam: How do you,

Vicky: I said, not in the United States.

Sam: How do you handle that? I mean, if it’s causing problems for everybody else, I’m looking at Jerry the attorney.

Jerry: Your biggest factor is that it’s not associated with a protected class, body odor, all right. And even, even if it is linked to a culture, a specific culture, right, okay. Let’s assume that it is, you can have certain minimal standards of what personal hygiene are in the workplace. They’re nondescript.

Vicky: Well, I’m glad I’m not part of that culture. Okay.

Jerry: So you can deal with it, but it’s, it’s one of those things that everyone finds difficult to deal with, especially if the person’s a good worker.

Sam: Yeah. We, I worked in an office, I don’t know what the issue was with this person, but it was a hygiene issue and she had been spoken with time and time and time again and she said, you know, I am. I’ve taken care of it. And you know, clearly she wasn’t. And I remember when she retired, they threw away her chair and her cubicle where she sat the carpeting. It was like, you remember in the Peanuts gang, the kind of the pig pin, the puff and smoke? The carpeting around her chair was just dirty, filthy, dirty.

Vicky: She had other issues in her mental,

Sally: I was going to say,

Sam: She worked in a department where she had to interact with other people and employees. They didn’t mean to be rude, but they were like, “oh I have to go have a conversation with”, or you know, take a deep breath before, you know, kind of jokingly, but, but it wasn’t, it was an unpleasant experience for everyone working with this person.

Jerry: And you can also have situations, and sometimes people are hypersensitive but around cologne or something.

Vicky: Oh God. My late husband, oh my God, we’d go to a restaurant, we’d have to get up and leave cause he was swelling up and tears in his eyes.

Sam: What about stealing? Have you ever had employees in the office that have taken office supplies, things from the office, stolen people’s lunches?

Vicky: Who hasn’t?

Sally: Yeah, I think that’s a really common problem, right?

Vicky: I mean, I was taking notes and then somebody gave me a pen and,

Sam: Well I don’t mean that type, but,

Sally: I do remember going into the lunch break room one time and a male coworker was eating my lunch. I went to the refrigerator to get my lunch and I couldn’t see it. I turned around and there was my beautiful salad in front of him. And when I said, “that’s not yours.” And he said, “oh, it was in the refrigerator.”

Vicky: Well, I, I will tell you there was some drivers in a company where I worked as a young HR manager and I, uh, found out that they were upset with one of the drivers that would go in and eat all the other drivers sandwiches. So they fixed one with cat food in it.

Jerry: Sounds like The Help.

Sally: Yeah.

Vicky: They reported it. They tried to get him to stop and so,

Sam: So what happened?

Sally: I turned it into a joke. I started writing on the outside of the bag. This is not yours.

Sam: Yeah, we had,

Sally: So I tried to turn it into a joke and he never did eat my lunch again. I don’t know who else he’s moved on to, but I solved my own problem.

Sam: I don’t really think that it’s ignorance that they just didn’t understand. We had somebody who was eating people’s food and I had a talk with her about it. Somebody had brought in their favorite little k-cups for the Keurig with these little Chai Tea lattes and they were disappearing and she was taking them. And I said, “Oh, you know, maybe you didn’t, weren’t aware that those actually belong to somebody.” And she apologized and they kept disappearing. And I came back early from a meeting and I could smell the chai tea and she tried to hide it behind her computer monitor. So even after she’d been talked to about it,

Sally: She did it anyway.

Sam: She was still stealing the food and I,

Vicky: Well, we’re getting ready to come on a season that employers are going to experience an increase in their office supplies. School starts.

Sam: Ah…

Sally: Oh…

Jerry: Well I’ve had several clients where trusted employees, who have check writing privileges have abused in this for years.

Sally: Yes.

Jerry: When money has disappeared and suddenly something happens that they start to go back and audit and they can find hundreds of thousands of dollars,

Vicky: This is where, when I go in and I find out,

Sally: Yes, that happens a lot.

Vicky: HR person is also the payroll person. Over a period of time there has been a phantom payroll created.

Sam: Oh Wow.

Vicky: That, if you got the same person doing both of those, you’ve got an opportunity for embezzlement.

Sam: You’ve got to have some checks and balances in place.

Sally: Absolutely. Absolutely. I know recently there was an owner whose spouse was ill, so he was not at the office and when he came back he found out that three extra payrolls had been run.

Vicky: Correct.

Sally: That’s hurtful. Painful. And how do you recover?

Jerry: Well, and frequently the money isn’t there to recover.

Sally: No, it wasn’t.

Vicky: It’s usually at the casino or you know, whatever.

Sam: Vicky, you had a story about a manager getting drunk.

Vicky: Oh God. We hired this fabulous, I was consulting for a company. They needed a manager and I’m not going to say in what area because,

Sally: Please don’t, yeah.

Vicky: But I came on this woman that was fabulous, great experience. She interviewed beautifully. We hired her all reports were, she was working out fantastic and this was a very difficult work environment, but she was onboard. They loved her. I did know that she was having some issues, personal life issues. She was a professional. She had a number of years experience. And I just indicated that something you have to please be aware of. I found out later she had an issue in her home life. She got drunk one night, called every major manager in the company to come get her and take her to their home, not take her home.

Sally: Oh my…

Vicky: And when she sobered up she realized what she done. She being professional and real, only saying how she just really screwed that up. She called and resigned and and you know, how do you rebuild from something like that? But it’s one of those things you kind of have an indicator in the interviews. This woman was dealing with much more than just needing a job.

Sally: Well had she never heard of Uber?

Sam: Well it may have been longer,

Vicky: She was,

Sam: I don’t think, I don’t think that was the point though. I, but I have to ask, how did the, how did the male managers handle this? Did any of them report it or did any of them show up to pick her up or what?

Vicky: Well, my understanding is one of them said to another manager that reported to him, just go get her, take her to one of the hotels and you know, get her somewhere safe if she’s in a bad situation. And they did not do that, but, and you know, this was just all second hand.

Sam: Yeah.

Vicky: But I was so upset because she was fabulous. Absolutely fabulous.

Sally: I think sometimes bringing in who’s going to be their coworker, who they’re going to be spending a lot of time with is huge.

Vicky: We did do that with this one.

Sally: Did you? Okay. If you don’t kind of have that good friend at work, they’re not going to really stay. That’s just my opinion, I know. But you need somebody that’s going to not only do a great job, but that’s going to fit in with your company easily.

Sam: I think a big part of that is making sure that employees coming in and existing employees really understand the company culture.

Sally: Oh sure.

Sam: This is what’s expected of you. This is how everyone is behaving, this is what’s appropriate. This is what’s not appropriate.

Jerry: That is fantastic advice. I totally agree with it and I give to employers, but even if done, if I’m on the receiving side of that information and I want a job,

Sally: You’re going to look great. You’re going to agree.

Jerry: Yeah, that’s no problem. And so I think it’s inevitable that there will be stealth candidates that come through and maybe for 30, 60, or 90 days we’ll be able to kind of pass pretty well.

Sam: Right.

Jerry: And then things will unravel at some point.

Vicky: The longer that period, I guess we call it an attenuation period. We don’t call it probationary periods anymore. Right?

Sally: Right.

Jerry: We’re all at will, so you don’t need probationary periods.

Vicky: But during that first few months, most people can have a good act. The longer it goes, then you start seeing the slippage.

Sam: Yeah. They start showing their true colors.

Vicky: They start showing their true colors and where an assessment comes in in that period of time. I use a Birkman assessment. It’s usually a behavioral situation.

Jerry: I draw a distinction between behavior that’s fixable and a character trait that is not fixable.

Sally: Right, I agree.

Sam: Right.

Sally: Yeah. As mean as it sounds. Sometimes when you see that character trait, you need to just address it right away. Don’t brush it under the rug and realize that, you know, maybe it’s just not a fit. I think that it’s better for all of your employees that it’s, you just take care of that.

Vicky: A lot of employers, and thank goodness you did not fall in this trap, but a lot of employers just stay with it because it took them so long to find this person. And the thing is it’s the damage, I have a client right now that has an engineer that’s absolutely tearing up the department.

Sam: I think to Jerry’s point, what was it you said there the difference that the,

Jerry: Difference between the behavior which is fixable and the character trait, which is not.

Sam: I think the assessments are really going to help to determine the character traits. There are assessments you can take that are personality assessments where you can kind of determine their tendencies and, and what their true character is. And then I think the proper onboarding, the training, the company culture. When I mentioned that I didn’t mean, I mean obviously you’ll do that during the interview process, but I meant during their, what do you call it now? It’s not probationary period,

Vicky: Attenuation.

Sam: Their attenuation period is kind of reinforcing this is what the company culture is like and this is how we behave and these are appropriate and inappropriate. Giving them every opportunity to understand what the appropriate behavior should be.

Jerry: And depending upon the workplace, there are certain kinds of approaches such as having civility training, maybe having conflict resolution training because these are things that are repeated that employees have conflicts with each other and they can either deal with them constructively or not constructively.

Vicky: Isn’t it okay these days to call people names?

Jerry: Are the names some way linked to any protected class?

Sam: And then what about once you discover there’s a problem with an employee? Just kind of one last topic I want to talk about. I think my problem used to be that I always hoped things would work out hope that things would change or get better and you kind of learn, I think with the experience to pull the trigger a little bit faster to say, okay, here’s the problem, here’s how we need to address it. If it’s not going to get fixed, then step one, step two, step three and step four is is kind of final. But how quick is too quick? I mean, what’s the appropriate amount of time and energy and effort to put into trying to correct a problem?

Jerry: Turnover is a big expense.

Sam: Yes, it is.

Jerry: So with that investment in mind, you’re always going to have to make a judgment if someone is not a good fit, pulling the trigger sooner is better than later.

Sam: Yeah.

Jerry: Because it will cost you more than the farther you go into it. But I don’t think you could have a rule of thumb and say you got 30 days, but you’ll know. You’ll give them a chance or two and you’ll know.

Sally: I think that’s a really good point, and I think it also protects your other employees because you don’t want your good employees to get so aggravated that they start looking.

Vicky: It’s the rotten apple in the barrel.

Sally: Right. That’s what I mean. I mean, sometimes you just need to address it and realize that your good employees deserve better.

Sam: Well, and even if they don’t start looking for another job, it can really ruin the work environment.

Sally: Attitudes.

Sam: Yep. Yep.

Jerry: You mean a toxic work environment is not productive.

Christine: Thanks for listening to SuperManager by CN Video Production. Visit our website at cn-video.com for additional episodes and lots of SuperManager resources, or give us a call at 314 VIDEO ME.