JobJoy™ Reports for Organizations

Applying Natural Talent Assessment to Human Resource Management
If there is interest from management to resolve any of the problems outlined below, George Dutch Career Consulting Inc. would welcome an opportunity to make a detailed presentation to a management committee and include costing for exact numbers of employees involved.

Just call us at 563-0584 or 1-800-798-2696 or email us.

Symptoms of Job Mismatch in an Organization
• decreased productivity
• increased sick leave
• accidents and inflated health care costs
• theft and sabotage
• low staff morale
• unresolved stress and anxiety
• exodus of key people to competitors
• organizational breakdown
• wasted time
• disloyalty
• lawsuits
• poor decision making
• greater number of errors
• antagonism between groups
• premature retirement
• high turnover with increased training costs

A Classic Dental Lab Success Story

"Finding Good Technicians to Make Dentures Can Be Harder than Pulling Teeth"

Richard Charlebois makes people smile. However, finding good employees has been a challenge for 40 years. Now Charlebois finally has something to smile about.

Richard Charlebois is a partner in Aurum Ceramic/Classic Dental Laboratories, a company that makes dental crowns, dentures, bridges, caps and almost anything else that a dentist can put in a patient¬s mouth, other than fillings.

Classic Dental Laboratories is the largest creator of dental appliances in Canada and the sixth largest in North America. The company has 60 highly skilled employees in Ottawa and 400 throughout Canada and the United States. However, as Richard says, finding and keeping those employees has been harder than pulling teeth.

"Our employees work in an assembly line. It takes three to six workers to make any individual appliance. We need people with good hand skills who can work repetitive tasks. It's highly skilled and pays quite well, but frequently personalities don¬t fit the job. Either they're not repetitive oriented and get bored doing the same thing over and over again - or they're not smart enough to do the job. Our ideal would be to find fairly introverted people with good skills. However, that wasn't enough."

Charlebois¬ daughter had gone to Ottawa-based career counselor George Dutch for assistance when she couldn't find a job that made her want to get up in the morning to go to work.

He was so pleased with what Dutch had done for his daughter, he asked him if he could reverse his usual skills and find a way to keep his employees on the job.

"Richard told me that he had a reliable test for determining an applicant's ability to perform intricate, detailed work requiring strength in hand-finger coordination. This is important because his jobs involve the repetitive use of this skill in the design, construction, alteration or repair of crowns, bridges, dentures, partials and orthodontic appliances," said Dutch. "However, he had a chronic problem finding employees who were motivated to use that skill on the job. Motivation is not the same thing as ability. An employee might have the ability to perform intricate detailed work, but not the motivation.

"Everyone assumes that employers know what they're doing when they hire somebody. Many of them don't. People will test for special skills, but being able to do that job doesn't mean someone will be motivated to use those skills on the job. People frequently confuse talent and motivation on the job," said Dutch. "People need a complete motivational pattern. When you rely on just a piece of the pattern rather than the whole pattern you run the risk of ineffectiveness and of not achieving the results you want."

Dutch says, "It's not a question if they want it or not, it's a question of whether or not they're suited to it. To make matters even more difficult to predict, some people don't know until after they already have a job that they can do it well."

In addition to core skills, the technicians needed to respond to the job conditions and work environment with characteristics such as patience, perfectionism, enjoying working alone and artistic talent, according to Dutch.

"Richard indicated that the parent company had resorted to simulated and psychological testing to generate employee 'profiles' supposedly able to predict future performance, but they didn't seem to help. The "churn rate" of new hires was still over 50% in the first year of employment.

"The assumption here is that test scores reflect the motivational dynamics of the individual tested. That assumption is false. I know of no test results that provide a direct correlation between these qualities and success in the rough-and-tumble world of work."

Dutch says the key to a happy employee isn't categories and labels. He helps his typical clients find careers that are "the right fit" for them by identifying their "natural talents and motivation". He does it by having them tell him about the past experiences in their lives that they really found satisfying and rewarding. Then he searches for careers where people can apply those drives and talents.

In this case, he did the same thing, but in reverse. He met with the Ottawa lab's top five employees who performed at a high level in terms of quantity and quality, seemed to enjoy their jobs and had been with the company for at least five years.

Then he interviewed each in detail about their job and what they really enjoyed in their lives before they got their job. Dutch says the purpose of these interviews was to solicit stories from them about those times in their lives when they were doing what they enjoyed most and did it well.

"People tend to gravitate to activities that require their innate or natural inclinations. They will seek out opportunities to use their talents in situations that trigger their performance. Motivated employees tend to be productive and satisfied employees."

Dutch says he was looking for people who were fairly introverted with good skills - "people who would prefer to work at home on a sculpture than go to a party."

He came up with a group of questions and a style of interview that any supervisor anywhere in the company could use to identify the "right fit".

"It works," according to Richard Charlebois. "Guys who are able to do good work quickly can make a lot of money. I want to find people that will stay and live here happily ever after. In the past we would hire somebody because his brother needed a job. We don't do that anymore.

"Since we've been using George's screening techniques, we have almost eliminated turnover. Part of that may be due to the turndown in the economy - but not too much of it. We still had a lot of turnover during bad economies in the past."

- with Nick Isenberg.