Maybe it is just me, but I find that when we talk about sustainability we don’t often talk about our practices around people and relationships.

I have a particular quote that I love-

“In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacity to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.”

Margaret Wheatley

I really believe that. You might ask why I bring up relationships in the context of sustainability, but bear with me for a minute.

A recent blog from Seth Godin pointed out that the customers we “fire” and the customers we focus on tell the rest of them what we represent and what we value. That is both a statement about relationships and sustainability. If we focus on the “wrong” customers our business will ultimately fail.

I think organizations that are highly “sustainable” do an excellent job of focusing on the concept of congruency. When you use congruency as a filter it looks for alignment with the people you invite into your organization on multiple levels-

• They are aligned in the way they view the activity
• They believe they have the ability and capacity to do the activity
• Their personal values are aligned with that of the organization
• They are willing to do the “work”
• They believe in the organizational mission

Having been in and around the human resources arena for over 30 years it is still pretty alarming to me how few organizations look for this alignment or congruency in their hiring practices, even organizations who believe they have a very strong value structure.

Statistics from the Bureau of Labor estimate that we spend $5 trillion on turnover in the United States annually. We lose another $200 billion to “presenteeism”, the cost associated with stress, absenteeism or just lack of commitment according to the American Mental Health Association. We spend $100 billion on training annually on training and estimates say that less than 10% of that “knowledge transfer” is retained after 24 months.

The interesting thing (at least to me) to me is that most of these costs are unnecessary. Most of the turnover is about “fit” not skills. Most of the costs of presenteeism are attributable to lack of alignment and reinforcement.

Sustainability is all about values. Organizations that have embraced a philosophy around sustainability be it “green” building or fair trade have made a statement about their values and alignment. I believe those values should be firmly embedded into their hiring and selections processes. It is the first step in what I refer to as building an “employment brand”.

Steven Zaccaro wrote a “white paper” a few months back describing what he believed and research validated as a “best practice” in hiring and selection:

Defining candidate position requirements (technical skills)

Delineating appropriate candidate attributes (cultural fit)

Recruiting the candidate pool

Assessing the candidate pool

Making the final decision and "onboarding" the successful candidate

You will notice that embedded in this best practice is the consideration for cultural fit in advance of actually recruiting a candidate pool and then validated through an assessment process. You are building alignment into the hiring process.

When everybody that you hire reflects the values of the organization that value set permeates through your culture. Your customers seek you out because of not in spite of what you represent. They become an extension of your brand.

Organizational development and experts on engagement Peppers and Rogers discuss this approach in even more detail.

They distinguish between the traditional view of the intellectual, behavioral, and emotional elements we have traditionally associated with engagement. To describe those a little more fully, the intellectual level is where an employee agrees with your company vision statement and/or a customer values the attributes of your brand. The behavioral level, recommending or purchasing your product or service is where you start to see energy or discretionary effort. The third level, the emotional level, is where you actually see “buy in” and enthusiasm.

In my own writing about Compliance and Commitment® I refer to Ron Willingham’s model where he discusses three levels of “awareness” or buy-in that he calls the I Think, The I Feel, and finally the I Am. Author and speaker Seth Godin refers to the “I Am” as our “lizard brain”. That is where our fears and insecurities live and where our resistance to change lives.

Peppers and Rogers describe a different more comprehensive model which includes five levels and incorporates critical concepts like satisfaction, quality, and loyalty.

The “new” levels in hierarchical order are; satisfied, loyal, recommend, best products and services, and pride.

When you have gotten to a place with your employees and your customers where they see you in the context of best or most desirable practices and pride you have achieved a significant degree of “customer sustainability”. These customers are very difficult for your competitors to lure away. They don’t see themselves as being “customers” they see themselves as being part of your brand.

The benefits of building this into your “brand” are manifested both internally and externally.

Employees who are aligned and engaged produce at a rate 21% higher than their colleagues and are 60% less likely to seek alternative employment.

Shareholder returns are in the neighborhood of three times that of organizations that are not highly engaged.

The competition for talent over the next 10 to 15 years shows an increased demand of 25% for experienced talent with a reduction in supply of 10 to 15%.

As you might suspect this “engagement” thing doesn’t happen by accident. There is a particular strategy that can be employed to achieve it and sustain it.

Engagement begins in great organizations during the hiring process. They don’t try to teach people to embrace their values and norms; they build it into their selection and development process! As a colleague of mine says “Hire hard, manage easy”.

Let’s be honest with each other. In most of our organizations our hiring is typically reactive. We need additional staff or someone leaves and we begin to look for applicants. In many cases that process is one of urgency if not panic. We need a body; we have not really stopped to think about succession, long term investment, or fit.

Another interesting approach is how many great organizations look at the sourcing process. They actually “partner” with experts in recruiting and staffing in their particular industry or segment. They recognize that top firms recruit proactively. They speak to hundreds of candidates, this represents their core competency.

In many cases our search criteria are very focused on “skills”. We get caught up in what HR folks call KSA’s or knowledge, skills, and abilities. The problem is that most employees who fail do so because of “fit” it has nothing to do with their technical abilities. Do you hire for skills or do you hire for fit?

Remember what I shared with you from Seth Godin as well that the customers we “fire” and those we focus on send a message to our customers and employees.

So where do you go from here? As you might suspect I have several suggestions:

• Define your culture. As leaders creating the culture and ensuring clarity is your key role.
• Hire hard- manage easy. My colleague Joseph Skursky uses this motto to describe his technique of investing the time to hire the right people, don’t try to “train” them to be right.
• Hire for congruency. The more alignment you have between the employee’s values and your organizational values the more likely you will have alignment and engagement.
• Be ruthless about your values and flexible about your processes.
• Ensure your entire management team embraces and models these values.

So I think Wheatley is right- it is all about relationships. Higher profitability, higher productivity, and higher retention. That sounds remarkably like sustainability to me. What do you think?