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A few mornings ago, when I got dressed for work, I put on a pair of jeans (it was a casual day) and noticed a small tear. I was annoyed and feeling a little put out that I had to find another pair of pants to wear. But I took them off and tossed them in the dry-cleaning pile, knowing I could ask my tailor to stitch them up.
Unfortunately, I know that lots of people nowadays would just toss the jeans in the garbage. But for me, good-fitting jeans with just the right weight and fit are difficult to find (I’m oddly particular about my jeans), so I’m willing to repair them for as long as I can. And apparently there are a few others like me; author Benjamin Leszcz notes, for example, that Prince Charles has a penchant for patching and mending his Savile Row suits.
But notwithstanding a few notable examples, in general, this idea seems to run counter to the consumerism and throw-away society in which we currently live. The Huffington Post notes that, on average, each American throws away roughly 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles per year.
When something breaks or rips or malfunctions, a throw-away society suggests discarding and replacing. But, when something of quality needs fixing, it’s often worth your time and money to repair it, rather than discard and replace it with an item that took time and effort to search for, and in the end, may not be as good, or as much to your liking, as the original item.
Believe it or not, this has parallels to employee retention vs. employee replacement. Much like my jeans, we go through exhaustive searches to find "perfect fit" employees. When we recruit employees, we spend great amounts of time and money identifying, interviewing and training them. Yet, when they show signs of wear and tear, instead of placing them in the repair pile, we often just discard them. We give up and look to replace them with someone shiny and new who holds the promise of being smarter, better and faster.
But research shows us that isn’t often the case. The Hiring for Attitude research found that 46% of newly hired employees will fail within 18 months, while only 19% will achieve unequivocal success. But contrary to popular belief, technical skills are not the primary reason why new hires fail; instead, poor interpersonal skills dominate the list, including coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament. So it’s very clear that when someone is hired, their odds of succeeding in the job just aren’t that high.
With hiring failure rates so high, why would someone want to risk hiring a new employee rather than enhancing their current one? Many of us fall prey to the bias that the potential of a new employee will be better than the reality of the current employee.
In a study called “The Preference For Potential,” researchers at Stanford and Harvard discovered that people often prefer potential rather than achievement. As Zakary Tormala, et al. note, “compared with references to achievement (e.g., “this person has won an award for his work”), references to potential (e.g., “this person could win an award for his work”) appear to stimulate greater interest and processing, which can translate into more favorable reactions. This tendency creates a phenomenon whereby the potential to be good at something can be preferred over actually being good at that very same thing.”
In one of the experiments, the researchers ran Facebook ads to promote a comedian. Some ads talked about the comedian’s achievements, “Critics say he has become the next big thing,” while others highlighted his potential, “Critics say he could become the next big thing.” And here’s the shocker: Ads that used potential produced 3.27 times the click-rate compared with ads that referenced achievements.
Notwithstanding our psychological bias towards potential over achievement, the reality in most companies is that even if you can successfully hire someone new (and the odds aren’t great), it will still take a few months to get them up-to-speed.
Meanwhile, you could assess your current employees’ engagement, give your managers some leadership training to improve their coaching skills, and provide "mending" to your current employees without having to spend months onboarding them.
If someone has been at your company for a while, it’s possible that there were good reasons you hired them in the first place. Much like my jeans, they provided a good fit, had the right style, and were "purchased" after deciding that they were the best out of all the jeans you tried on (think of it like interviewing).
After years of production, it’s only natural that they (both the jeans and your employees) show signs of wear. But wear is not an automatic reason to discard. If close examination shows that they still meet your original criteria for selecting them, and that criteria is still valid, then mending is likely the more expedient approach. And sometimes, when mending is done really well, the mended item (or employee), emerges smarter, better and faster.
