5,000 Reasons to Hire Right

You don’t want this happening at your company.

A state worker posted 5,000 comments on a local newspaper website over the space of a year, all while on the job. The worker posted about 25 comments a day, according to a CBS local news report.

To top it off, the worker, in the California Department of Education, still kept his job. That most likely isn’t happening in your firm.

But embarrassing publicity aside, productivity-draining incidents like these can cost your company millions of dollars.  There’s nothing worse than a disengaged worker. They lower morale in the group, don’t get the job done and are a drain on resources.

And engagement can be that much harder when it’s a temporary worker.  But employee or not, workers get restless. A recent poll undertaken by Right Management found that 86 percent of workers polled plan to look actively for a new position in 2013. Only 5 percent intend to stay in their current position. We can blame the current economy and the fact that many folks are working more with less.

But if you want a committed worker, hire right in the first place, communicate and allow workers to build their skills, says a Staffing Industry Analysts report.

At the same time, communication — including encouraging worker feedback — and showing concern for temporary workers were big factors in keeping them engaged. There is a whole science devoted to incenting workers on the job. But if you follow some basic principles, you should have engaged workers.

No one will be posting 5,000 comments on your watch.