If it ain't broke don't fix it?

If it isn't broken don't fix it is a phrase you hear often and there is a perceived wisdom that it must be right, after all, if there is nothing wrong why bother to change it?

I have been merrily working under this preconception for years, until last week when during the course of a lunch with an old friend (who has significant experience in running huge businesses in the professional services space) we got talking about recruitment strategy.

I am going to share his thoughts with you because it was a very different take on the do nothing if it's working theory. He began by saying that, if it ain't broke don't fix it is a flawed strategy or at the very least a non strategy. Doing nothing often means maintaining the status quo which is fine for a while but eventually you risk being left behind; particularly if your competition suddenly changes their strategy or becomes more aggressive in the market, or more efficient, or  if your business is susceptible to changes in technology which may have an impact on your strategy. He had read my previous recruitment insight last month in this column and he agreed that a multichannel recruitment strategy was a good thing because at the very least it puts the business in a position from which it can be flexible, not dependent on any one source or limited suppliers. But he cautioned that it was not enough just simply to play at it, instead he advised that as a recruitment team, you have to continually improve your offering to the business and that ongoing improvement and better quality of hire, is the goal year on year and to achieve that; you have to tinker and improve every year, you cant just say we are ok and we will do the same again next year; or you will get left behind. He added that in today's world, cost reductions are essential and achievable.

There are some classic anecdotes I could cite, a Formula 1 car does not get faster every year without improvement, technology changes everything and this years winner, will be left behind next year if the car is not improved because all the cars will be improving; so whilst its not broken it is vital that it receives ongoing improvement in order to maintain a podium position and stay ahead of the field rather than get left behind. This thinking resonates with most recruiters at recruitment agents. They say that more often than not, when you talk to a prospective new client the barriers go up immediately regardless of whether you are offering something new and potentially fantastic its almost impossible to get an audience. "We are very happy with what we are doing"; "I like my agencies";" I have been doing the same thing for years and it's has worked up until now" are all common objections; and another way of saying: "its not broken and I am not fixing it". The problem is that when you finally realise that it may not be broken but someone else's strategy is working much better and the competition have got a lead and an advantage on you in the talent game, by then its too late and any changes or adaptation will take time to have an impact which could be costly.

This leads me to the other pearl of wisdom I got from my lunch, "people just don't give change a chance". This also resonates with me and with recruitment strategies, particularly with regard to social media.

There is a strange attitude to recruitment and social media.  You hear a lot of "we have tried it and it didn't work". Really? How long did you give it? Did you go into it hoping that you would be proved right all along? I have seen at first hand the reluctance to approach social media and social networking in recruitment. "We will give you one job to see what you can do- It’s in Mongolia-off you go, let’s see how well referrals work now!" (I jest about Mongolia, but only just).

The thing I find intriguing is that you get perfectly sensible, experienced people suddenly changing into the Y generation. They acquire that most modern of traits i.e. the requirement for instant gratification, you know "I want it now". Except in this case  its " I have tried it, I used the social networks yesterday and we haven't had any response". This is what I mean by going in to something with the intention of making it fail because it upsets the status quo, it gets people out of their comfort zones, its change. If you don't give change a chance then the natural conclusion is that your strategy is right for you and if aint broke there is no point in fixing it.  But I wonder where we are heading with all this reluctance to adapt? When email came along, the fax worked perfectly well and the Royal Mail was still delivering letters, so it wasn't broken. How many businesses still use the fax as part of their daily communications instead of email today? 

Another "It will never catch on" was the internet. Many people made a virtue at the time of not having an internet strategy, particularly the bookshops. Then Amazon came along and the book shops have been going bust ever since, but their model was not broken, its just that selling books evolved and many of the book stores didn't realise because they were closed minded and not interested in how the new technology would affect them. Recruitment agencies took the same approach initially. Most recruitment agencies did not bother with an internet strategy, now its all they do. Employers are still lagging behind the recruiters in terms of their thinking on candidate generation, too often relying on a strategy that lets the recruiters find the candidate first and dealing with the cost implications later. This is fine, as long as the business has no requirement to reduce cost and as long as your competitors aren't stealing your talent at a fraction of the cost that you are paying. It is also fine until your talent acquisition model becomes too expensive and cannot feed the talent into the business therefore starving the business. The problem is that, when you analyse your recruitment/ talent strategy it doesn't look broken yet, but can you afford to wait until it finally does break?

Getting back to my lunch conversation. My friend said that his own experiences in trying to seek systematic, ongoing improvement in his business have been very frustrating because of the negative internal reaction to any change, but he remains determined to push through a cultural change and to persuade his talent acquisition team to embrace social media and to ensure that it is embraced sensibly as part of a long term strategy.

It would be good to hear from readers about their experiences. Have you encountered reluctance to embrace social media/networking in to your recruitment strategy? Do you have examples of positive or negative reaction to change in recruitment? and, what impact if any has it made on your business or on your clients?

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