As an experienced business consultant I have worked with over 150 companies in Sydney, London and Los Angeles. I specialise in anything staff related including organisational structures, creating healthy leadership teams, staff and performance management, change management, processes & systems, and induction & training.
Over the time I have been working in this field I can say arguably the most significant and costly problem SME businesses face is the management, hiring and general dealings with staff.
Performia takes the guesswork out of hiring, and through their testing and evaluations you get an accurate and true idea of what to expect from a person, and how to better work with them. Think about that for a minute – how invaluable is it to know exactly what to expect from someone (not fall into their social veneer) and know how to manage each individual team member that will bring about the best result, based on their personality? Truly invaluable.
I am not sure how the details of the tests work, but their profiles are extremely detailed, and as a I learnt the hard way, extremely accurate. It is so ridiculously accurate you almost don’t believe it and can’t believe that the person you interviewed who seemed lovely and experienced is potentially dangerous to your company and not worth the risk.
I saw mixed results among my clients when I started referring Performia to them, but it wasn’t until I came across Sagecon, a HVAC installation company, that I realised when you use the Performia system fully and wholly the results are incomparable.
Since coming to work at Sagecon I have noticed something different. All of Sagecon’s team are hired using the Performia system and it is almost effortless working with them – they are so easy to work with, are happy people, and are productive (most importantly). They’re like the team you see smiling and working together in a cheesy photo on a HR website (yes, really).
I think the results among my clients were mixed because you can’t really half-use this system. If you get 3 great staff and 7 non-ideal staff they will out-weigh the good ones. Every time I have ignored Performia’s advice on hiring a team member I have run into the exact problem they said would come up. I have even seen business partnerships fail and their business take a hit because they took someone on which Performia advised would be damaging. And I find that often they go against Performia’s advice because they simply do not believe that the person they interviewed who seemed so nice, so genuine and so experienced could become a problem.
It’s taken me 5 years to really know Performia works and I had daily dealings with them – don’t let it take that long for you.
It doesn’t matter what you do or what you learn, what systems you put in place, if you have under performing, problem focussed staff none of it will work.