HR should hire those who don't need HR

Think about it. If you can get the highly motivated, self-driven, problem-solving professionals into your business, they hardly need HR care at work. Their initiative and their ability to deal with challenges proactively take care of them. That, really, should be the purpose of HR's existence in an organization. Let's walk through it.

Induction. The motivated research and learn about your business before they even show up for the interview. They've been through your website, blogs and social pages; they've found someone who worked with you; they know the nitty-gritty — they can tell you where you messed up. Do you really want to sing your induction deck to them in a room? You introduce them around and they get cracking.

Policy reading. They'll read it on their own. And if they don't agree with something, they'll walk up to the CEO and argue it out. Once satisfied, they'll abide — even if it sometimes means compromising. Their priorities aren't misplaced.

Employee engagement? You must be joking. It's the motivated ones who run engagement every moment — in meetings and out of them, in parking lots, cafeterias, trainings, excursions, car pools. They don't wait for a birthday cake-cutting or the traditional-dress day. Those are the two engagement events HR calls.

Appraisals. A real one — but it's played between the team member and management; HR has little rope here. The motivated will ask management for an appraisal on demand, even if it's winter outside.

Training. How do you think the motivated one got so good? She doesn't wait for the organization to train her. She trains herself — Coursera, podcasts, Ted Talks, meetups, and now an entire AI tutor in her pocket. The self-driven have never had more leverage than they do today, which is exactly why they're worth ten of the average hire in the AI era.

So as an organization, the single most important factor that can make or break your venture is your ability to hire these motivated supersouls. Or you'll keep burning time and dollars running motivation workshops where staff eat samosas, drink your coffee, and go right back to bitching.

Want to build the hiring engine that actually finds those people? Talk to plugHR.

Originally published on the plugHR blog.