Go Fast Or Slow? The Paradox of Hiring (and more)

We unpack the paradox of speed in HR and show how to move quickly without breaking culture. From hiring to onboarding to tough calls, we share practical systems that build confidence, reduce risk, and raise performance across eye care teams.

• defining values and role-critical skills for hiring
• hiring smart instead of hiring slow
• avoiding desperation hires and “okay” performers
• designing 90-day onboarding with cross-training
• building psychological safety and belonging
• using pulse surveys to surface early issues
• acting swiftly and thoroughly on investigations
• anchoring decisions to values and documented process
• measurable payoffs in retention, performance and calm

This show is sponsored by Seasoned Advice HR Services, where I help eye care businesses to make more money and save more money by hiring better, retaining better, and reducing your HR risk
If you would like an HR assessment or ongoing HR support, please reach out to me at seasoned-advice.com
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on your podcast app and share it with someone who would value the content
I also invite you to subscribe to my HR newsletter for iCare leaders. You can find information about that at seasoned advice.com

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This episode is brought to you by Seasoned Advice HR, where I help eye care clinics to hire, retain, and manage better — helping you get Better Results Through People. Learn more at seasoned-advice.com. 

Get my free HR and leadership downloads here: https://www.seasoned-advice.com/signup-for-free-downloads

Transcript

Welcome And Topic Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Greetings and welcome to iCare Leadership Live. This is the podcast for iCare leaders who want to level up their leadership, create better cultures, and improve the financial results in their clinics. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the paradox of moving fast versus moving slow in HR and hint, they're both important. This is an interesting conversation. So let's join the show. Hey everybody. So yeah, we're going to talk about when rushing and going too fast can hurt you. Um in terms of HR. You know, going fast is usually good, right? You think I need to see a lot of patience. I need to move quickly. Uh, I need to hire fast. You know, we've got a we've got an opening on our team. Or we've got someone we need to get rid of. You know, pretty much everything. Usually speed is like one of the one of the best things you can do. We've got to file this claim. We got to get get paid quickly. Um, but there's a balance. There's a balance. And when it comes to people issues, there's at least three key areas where speed hurts. And it can hurt you um much longer than than you'd like, right? That that pain will last a long time. The first one is hiring. Uh, you want to take your time with hiring, um, but this one has a little bit of an asterisk because you want to be uh methodical, but you don't want to be slow. So I don't agree with hire slow. I want you to hire smart. So have a plan, know what you're looking for. The minute you have a vacancy, you know exactly what your core values are, how to determine if that person meets your core values or not, how important those core values are to you. You know what is vital for the job you're recruiting for. Every job's different. So what are the skills skills that are vital? Uh, you need to know all that stuff, but you don't want to rush the process, right? So it's a balance. Um, rushing through a recruiting uh can really hurt you because let's say a resume lands on your desk and you're like, man, I'm so desperate. This this person looks pretty good. They look good enough. I'm gonna talk to them, and yeah, they're okay. And you bring them on board. And guess what? They are maybe they're okay. They're okay. Well, guess what? Does okay get the job done? Is it okay what you're striving for in your clinic? Are you just striving to have okay people? Chances are you probably will have someone okay. That first person you talk to is okay, but but that's not great. That's not great. If you want to have greatness, you can't just jump on the first person you talk to unless you know, unless you have that list in front of you. Oh, I know, oh, they they match this, they match that, may they match that. I've vetted them, I'm checking references, I'm moving quick, I'm texting the candidate, I'm calling their references today. I've got great questions, right? So you have a methodical process, by all means, move fast on a strong candidate. Um, but watch out because what happens is you let's say you have two people quit at the same time, and you only have three people in that department. You're gonna want, you're gonna feel the pressure to move fast, you're gonna feel the pressure to hire faster than what is ideal. And you know, I guess my main advice here is do the homework ahead of time. Do the homework ahead of time so that you know you can move fast without it hurting you. Uh, but if you haven't prepared yourself, then moving fast is going to hurt you. It's gonna hurt you because you're either gonna make a bad hire or you're gonna make a okay hire. And an okay hire is probably not elevating the culture of your clinic. So watch out for that. Uh, next thing is the next step of the of the process, which is onboarding. You don't want to rush that, you don't want to to make this go fast because that's a key moment. It's a key moment of your entire staff cycle is those first 90 days, because they're figuring out is this a fit or not? Uh, who's who? Where do I fit in? There's the social integration, there's the knowledge integration and the training. And the last thing you want to do is compromise that by going too fast. Uh, because someone could could come in and feel like unwelcome or feel incompetent very early on. And it's going to be really hard to change that first impression. And if you don't put the work in, you don't put that upfront investment in, think of it as a down payment on your house, right? Get that down payment in there so you've got a head start, you've got some equity in this property. Same thing with staff with hiring. You want to put making a little initial investment, a really a big initial investment. And it might hurt a little bit. You might be like, man, I have to spend like a week or two, they're not productive, you know, they're just sitting with other people learning, and maybe they're not even learning their own job. They're learning about the jobs of other people in the clinic if you're really doing it well, uh, because you're showing them how the whole business works. They understand the optical department, they understand what the optometrist does and the post ops, they understand the surgery schedulers and what those conversations are like. So when a patient has like kind of an off-the-wall question, they can say, Yeah, you know what? I was just with surgery schedules the other day. And this is what they said. But you know what? Let me let me see if I can go grab somebody. Um, and so they can they can start to answer questions, you know, and um, and they start to think about how the clinic can operate better because they have a better and a more holistic viewpoint of the entire business. Um, and shoot, maybe that's some point they they say, gosh, I really would like to do that other job. I got to observe it a little bit, and I think it's pretty cool. Um, and they can bring their skills uh to another position. I think there's a ton of value to that type of thing. Um, there's a ton of value to helping employees get to know each other during onboarding. That's something you really can't rush. Um, make them feel comfortable, make them feel safe, give them a mentor, a buddy, uh, give them an activity to do that gets them talking to other coworkers. Some people need help in the social department. There's a lot of introverted people, extremely introverted people. And they might be great at billing, they might be great at uh being a testing technician, but they're not so confident when it comes to getting out there and getting to know other people and what they do. And that's okay. There's many different types of great employees out there, but people who are not extroverted are gonna struggle to socialize. And the point is not to help them make friends, the point is to help them to feel safe and secure and have functional work relationships with each other. Um, and so there's different ways of getting people to socialize and just interact. It's not about happy hours, um, it's not about um getting overly personal, it's about just getting to know people, getting to know people and helping your new hires feel like, yeah, I can fit, I fit in here. I'm one of the I'm one of the people that belongs here. And that's a big uh thing that you want to do in onboarding is you want to give them this message that, like, you belong here, you belong here. And by the way, uh, we were ready for you on your first day. We put thought into it, and that sends a powerful message. Um, it sends a really bad message when you're not prepared and you don't have your stuff together. So you need to have a plan. Have a plan and show them that you've put the forethought into bringing them on board, and that sends a good, you know, message. And I've had employees tell me, wow, this is the best onboarding I've ever experienced. I've never had this kind of experience. Y'all were so organized. It's not hard to be in the top, you know, 10% of employers when it comes to onboarding. There's a lot of riff-raff out there in the hiring and onboarding department. So just put a little bit of effort there and it absolutely makes a difference and it sends a right impression. It's a good time to ask your new hires, hey, would you write a review on us uh on Glassdoor? You know, you've had such a good experience. We love having you. You know, we'd love for you to tell people about uh what it was uh like, what it were what it's like to work here. That's a great time to ask people that question because they're feeling excited about being there. And um they haven't, you know, um they've been taken care of. Uh another thing that you really ought to do in your onboarding to make sure that you're taking care of your new hires is check in with them regularly. And if you have an HR person, have them check in and and ask them how's it going, or send them a survey and you know, that they can respond to, maybe even anonymously, um, so that they can indicate um how things are going. Uh, I guess I would lean towards not anonymous because you want to be able to go to that person and say, hey, you know, you said that um you had some issues. And actually what I have found, and I think this might be true with Gen Z, your younger employees, is they like to do a survey and they're they will be more honest in a survey than they might be to your face because they can kind of sit there and they're used to they're used to this um digital self-disclosure. So uh I think a survey is actually a really good idea. And people will say, and they will say things like, I don't feel like I'm fitting in, or I'm not sure I'm getting all the training. You know, they'll give you like a three on a five scale or something like that, or a five on a 10 scale, and you'll be able to go to that person and say, Hey, what's going on here? You know, you said that your training was kind of meh. Uh, what can we do? Like, is there an issue? And then that will allow you to interrupt any kind of problems and figure out what's going on. And uh that's a powerful, that's a powerful thing to be able to do. This show is sponsored by Seasoned Advice HR Services, where I help eye care businesses to make more money and save more money by hiring better, retaining better, and reducing your HR risk. If you would like an HR assessment or ongoing HR support, please reach out to me at seasoned-advice.com. Last thing that can really hurt you um when you know by going too fast is decisions related to investigations, discipline, and terminations. And this is another one where kind of like hiring, there's kind of two sides to this coin. Meaning you don't want to rush it, you don't want to rush a decision, but you don't also want to drag out a decision, and you don't want to um, you know, let something fester and go unaddressed, right? So you want to be swift but assured. You want to be swift but confident and thorough. And that's, you know, I guess if there's anything that I would that the of any theme of this whole conversation, I guess it's it's um move quickly but with purpose. Uh, but with purpose and with a process. Um, so when it comes to terminations, investigations, uh, you want to take your time and make sure you get the facts right. Um, review the documentation you've got, interview one more person. I, you know, many times in my career, uh, when I was looking into a sensitive issue, I had one more conversation and it opened up a whole um channel of information that either changed my perspective on an issue, or it gave me way more confidence than what I had before that conversation. And if there's anything that is valuable in an employment decision, it's confidence in the decision. Yeah, you know, there are decisions you make all the time where you're like, yeah, I think this is the right thing, but I'm still a little bit nervous about where it might go, or maybe I didn't get everything. Having confidence that wow, we we we dug into this, and I definitely know what I'm gonna do, but based on this information, I got a lot of um confidence that this is what happened and that this is the right thing. And sometimes it's just a comment one makes um or that a couple people make to you that clarify the facts or clarify the the situation that can solidify a decision or even change a decision. Um, and so you want to you want to be methodical about that stuff um and make a decision based on your values. Again, just like with hiring, what are your values? What are your values when it comes to employment decisions that might result in a termination? Um that's important to know. That's important, and I can't, every employer is different. Every employment, some clinics are going to be more sensitive to certain things than others, and that's okay. That's okay. Um, but you have to also manage your risk. That's why HR is involved, um, to help you think through that and to be objective, to help you be objective and make sure things are looked at objectively. Um so don't rush, but have a process. So, anyway, hiring, onboarding, and investigations, terminations, discipline, those are things that it's that it's that paradox of move quickly um but with purpose. Move quickly but with a process. Um, and if you do that, you will you will experience more confidence and more success in your people decisions, and you'll also find that over time those decisions will um yield better results in your clinic. You'll be calmer, you'll be more confident, you'll have better retention, you'll have better performance, uh, you'll have less right, and so a little bit of investment in systems and doing things the right way will yield the results that you're looking for in your clinic. What everyone says people is the most important thing. That's the most important thing in your clinic. Well, people issues are complex, and so all the things I've been talking about are kind of complex because they they involve systems and decisions and processes and the everyday behaviors that you have to do um to make good decisions and to have good outcomes, and they can't be rushed, they really can't be rushed. Um, but when you do them, you can move faster. So that's the paradox of um of speed when it comes to HR. Hope that was useful to you. If um if you have questions, shoot me a message. It's uh mike at seasoned-advice.com. I would love to connect with you. And we'll talk to you again soon here on iCare Leadership Live. Well, that brings this episode of iCare Leadership Live to a conclusion. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on your podcast app and share it with someone who would value the content. I promise to bring you more guests and content to help make you a better eye care clinical leader. I also invite you to subscribe to my HR newsletter for iCare leaders. You can find information about that at seasoned advice.com. Now go out there and lead with confidence.