Hiring and firing

Summary: This work studies the technologies used in the process of hiring and firing employees. This work also discusses theoretical and practical technologies of hiring and firing employees, pays attention to the matter of corporate vision and its use in hiring technologies. Finally, this work stresses the questions of the relevance between firing an employee and corporate security.

Actuality of the topic is explained with the fact that technologies have become an important part of our daily live. Modern life cannot be imagined without computer, mobile phone, Internet and many other technical tools. Anyway, technologies are not limited with electronic devices and computer programs. They also include the development of theoretical knowledge used by people: how to find the best customer, how to provide people with adequate service, etc.

Technologies have invaded all the spheres of human activity, and employee interaction is not an exclusion. Companies struggle to attract as many employees as possible and the best employees. Technological development reacted with the introduction of theoretical and practical tools on how to reach the employees anywhere and choose the best of them.

Theoretical part is remarkable for various methodologies on how to choose appropriate employees. One of it is the concept of company strategy and in his book «Beyond Entrepreneurship» Jim Collins suggests several reason for why it is important to hire and fire employees according to the company development strategy.

Hire to the Vision. Hiring right people is the key to building and maintaining great corporate culture. This means employee should not only possess specific work skills but should also fit corporate culture. It is especially important in case of specific corporate culture as «wrong» people can harm performance of the company.

To hire «right» people means to understand which values should the employee possess. When these values are established, the company sets specific criteria to find out whether potential employee has needed values. Such criteria may include:

• the introduction of questions-filters and task-filters;
• checking for values via phone call;
• Asking questions that uncover potential employee's character and behavior;
• the introduction of specific interactions [1].

In addition to fitting corporate culture it is important for the company to find employees who share company's vision and get inspired with it. Consequently, employees that do not share company's vision cannot become a part of it.

Fire to the Vision. Sometimes employees do not fit organization or show poor performance so they are willing to leave it or should be fired. If such employees are ignored company will experience performance decrease. The same is true for employees who show good results but do not share company's vision anymore. The reason is that employees need regular stimulation to share company's view.

In this case an employer should undertake actions and fire an employee [1].

Speaking about modern technologies in the process of hiring and firing employees several techniques are used.

Targeted Advertising Boosts Job Postings. One of the recent innovations is the introduction of online services aimed at working with potential employees. One of them is online recruitment. It features several technologies, including display advertisement. Display advertisement includes putting job postings online so more people can see it. Such advertisement is constantly generated and then distributed to meet targeted audience (in this case - potential employee).

Joran Lawrence, who represents one of the companies that creates such advertisement CAN (Monster Career Ad Network), said that behavioral target networks worked basing on cookie targeting technologies and paid attention to the users who showed interest to specific career and then sent them related advertisement. Mr. Lawrence said his customers were willing to attract specific targeted audience so they did not need their advertisement to be the top result for everybody, only for those people who looked for a work related to customer's company. The advertisement is then given to people at every site they visit [2].

The main advantage of this technology is that it widens the amount of the potential candidates, including those people who are not actively searching for job at the moment can be interested in the advertisement and thus apply for work. Such approach greatly saves time and money on scouting for employees, creating advertisement, etc.

Such ads have also showed that the number of people paying attention for such ad increases as people click at them more and more each day. The future of this technology is promising as more and more people are looking for job each day and categorization will enhance the appearance of advertisement [2].

Reaching Mobile-Savvy Candidates. Another technology appeared with the active development of mobile technologies, especially due to the success of smart phones by Apple and Android and reasonable prices for 3G Internet usage. These features also affect the behavior of existing and potential employees. Consequently, to affect this audience means to extend targeted audience and to reach employees in their prime.

Vasu Nagalingam, a person who occupies the position of product director at CAN, adds: «It is typical for job seekers to visit job boards frequently while looking for a job. The best way for them to do so is to use their mobile phones to access job boards from anywhere they go» [2]. In Mr. Nagalingam's opinion, mobile phones constantly alter job seeker's behavior and the reaction to these changes is the key to attracting potential employees.

For instance, one of the creations of CAN is specific app for Apple devices that looks for the candidates for different jobs. The reason for it is that the majority of workforce uses Internet, so CAN developed app that will help employers in building recruitment strategy and attracting the workforce.

Meeting Candidates Wherever They Are Online. This tool is also used to react at the increase of time users spend online. Employers build new strategies to react at these changes in a variety of ways, including work with job boards and social networks. One of the reasons for it is that would-be employees, especially younger generation, are willing to get maximum information about job offer online.

US recruiting leader at PwC Holly Paul explains some features of recruiting: «It is necessary to appeal to the students as they try to get a job in conditions of strict competition. They also expressed the desire to see PwC on Facebook so they would be able to contact us» [2].

It also shows another feature: job seekers have specific expectations towards performance of potential employer. One of such expectations is the actuality of the information. Mr. Nagalingam explains it in the next way: «In case the employer wants to reach an employee the information should be frequently updated to provide the job seekers with the most recent information to meet their expectations» [2].

The use of technologies also poses the same importance for firing employees. One of the main reasons for it is that even after firing former employee can still access network of the company he or she worked at and threat the security of company's data. Even though the majority of employees do not misuse access to network it is better to exclude the possibility of any threat from former employee.

It is also reasonable to prevent all the employees from the access to some of the data about company's activity. Such measures will ensure that the former employee cannot blackmail the company with the threat of making information public [3].

In addition, it is important to integrate technologies the company use in such a way that they would be comprehensive enough to interact with fired employees and will meet requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Finally, information security policy and data protection policy should not violate current legislation and meet the requirements of company policy.

Deriving from it, the company should introduce several IT principles to regulate data protection and firing employees. They are:

• Informing IT department about firing an employee in advance. Such informing can be made even before the employee is fired so IT department can initiate the process of terminating employee from the corporate network. As a results the employee will no longer have access to the network as soon as he or she is fired;
• The company should introduce specific procedures to its policy that will indicate who is responsible for informing IT department and for terminating employee from the network. The policy should also mention which procedures are undertaken and at what time they are taken. The main thing it should feature is information security contact and the procedure of researching, documenting, and revoking an employee's access to the company's network;
• Revocation procedure. In addition to blocking access, IT department should also leave the possibility to restore employee's access to the company's network in case it might be needed in future [3].

It can be said in the conclusion that technologies have double influence on hiring and firing employees. Technologies both create new demands from potential employees and the ways to react on these demands. Technologies also make it possible for employers to save time and money on some advertising technologies that are not very productive nowadays. Technologies also help employers deal with firing employees and separating them from the access to corporate data to ensure security of such data.

References

1. Hiring and firing with the company's vision in mind [Electronic source]. – Access mode: https://www.fastcompany.com/3007912/hiring-and-firing-companys-vision-mind.
2. How Technology is Changing the Recruiting Landscape [Electronic source]. – Access mode: http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/attracting-job-candidates/new-recruiting-strategies.aspx.
3. Employee Termination from an IT Perspective [Electronic source]. – Access mode: https://www.thebalance.com/employee-termination-from-an-it-perspective-1919342.

 

Материал поступил в редакцию 11.04.2017
© Rushdi Zaiter Karam, 2017