Kevin Keegan had it. Stephan Erickson did not. Jamie Oliver has it and so do the manager and the staff I visited last week. Enthusiasm. They were bubbling over with ideas, keen to tell me their thoughts and excited by their plans. If only we could bottle this stuff or better still put it in a spray and then at large staff gatherings walk down the isles spraying it in the air like air hostesses do prior to landing.
Why are some people so enthusiastic at work, so excited about what they are doing when others doing the same job seem devoid of ideas, lacking in energy and cynical about the ability to make a difference? Does it come from within or are people inspired by a leader? Do positives attract and feed off each others energy creating a ‘can do environment’? And if some people put energy into a room do others suck it out?
What implications does this have for our approach to recruitment? I have always felt we put too much emphasis on experience and qualifications and not enough on enthusiasm and values. When I was recruiting staff to work in large residential homes I was desperate to change the cultural. I had good managers who were champions of independence, choice, dignity and respect but who struggled to defeat the staff room culture. When they were on duty, walking around the building promoting and encouraging everything happened as it should but when they were on their days off, holiday or away from the building attending a meeting everything reverted back. The majority of staff could be influenced by the manager or the staff room leaders. Training resulted in people knowing what was expected but it did not stop them reverting to doing what was easiest when the manager was not about.
When the opportunity arose to recruit new members of staff it was seen as a real chance to shift the staff room culture. What was needed were people with enthusiasm, energy, creativity, a desire to make a difference and set of values compatible with improving the lives of people living in the home. Person specifications were drawn up for the vacant posts which were as inclusive as possible, no requirement for experience in care work, no requirement for working with the client group, no requirement for qualifications. The essential requirements were; a positive attitude to the client group, willingness to work shifts and willingness to undertake training. The result was a large number of applicants and very little criteria to short list so we interviewed large numbers over several days. A bit like the X Factor. We had to see a lot of no hopers to unearth a few gems. The interview questions were all based around the ability to apply values like choice, dignity and privacy in relation to situations within the home .We were also looking for enthusiasm.
This may appear a bit hit and miss. Someone states they would go to the laundry to find the dress a resident wanted to wear rather than persuade them to put something on that was in the wardrobe. How do you know they are not just saying what they think you want to hear? But isn’t that true of all interviews? How do you determine if someone is enthusiastic and how do you score it in an interview? It seems to work OK on the X Factor both the panel and the audience seem to be able to identify those with potential and you know a positive and enthusiastic person when you meet one.
This approach made some HR colleagues nervous and was certainly time consuming but the impact these new staff had on the staff room culture was dramatic. Justification, I think, for giving more weighting in the interview process to enthusiasm and values over the traditional emphasis on experience and qualifications.