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_The Human Resource Audit
Die Finanzen eines Unternehmens gehören
jährlich, in den meisten Fällen sogar quartals-
weise auf den Prüfstand. Doch nur wenige
nehmen sich die Zeit, ihr wichtigstes Kapital
regelmäßig zu untersuchen: Die Mitarbeiter.
With all due respect to IT, marketing plans,
quality control, etc., the basic thing that
differentiates a company from its competitors
is its people. While everyone agrees to this
point, rarely do companies take a look at their
personnel to satisfy themselves that indeed
anyone with whom a client or potential client
might deal, fully represents the company in
the best possible way.
What we are suggesting is that a company
must focus far more strongly on the people
side of its business than is typically done.
How should this be accomplished? Having
assessed over 2,000,000 people for more
than 28,000 companies, 70-80 % of them are
currently misemployed.
This does not mean that they are total failures
or that they should be immediately fired.
What it does mean, however, is that 70-80%
of people are currently working at jobs not
best suited to their core strengths. Study after
study has proven that when an individual is
job matched, meaning that he or she carrys
out a job playing to his or her core strengths
and not involving their untrainable weak-
nesses, success is virtually assured.
The solution is simple and probably would
prove ridiculously inexpensive. Just as a
company, as we said before, would not think
of working without a financial audit, neither
should the company be willing to move for-
ward without a “human resource” audit. This
would constitute assessing an entire work-
force – sales teams, management team, service
providers, foremen, etc., employing a concept
that we often suggest to government of “zero-
based budgeting.” By this we mean, make no
assumption that just because an individual
is in the typing pool, or is a salesperson, or
is a service manager, or a vice president of
marketing that he or she is exactly in the

right job. Start the audit by asking some
simple questions: Who is the individual?
What are his or her core strengths? Are there
core untrainable weaknesses and how then
do those qualities match the competencies
truly required by the job they happen to be
filling? If there is a great individual job match
– wonderful. In the many cases, however,
where either there is a weakness in their cur-
rent job match or whether their profile points
to a radically different job within the com-
pany, appropriate actions can then be taken.
We have worked with companies in which
25-30% of the people literally changed jobs
without one single termination and with a
noticeable increase in productivity.
With this human resource audit, a company
can tap the most exciting, inexpensive, readily
available source of talent in the world – its
own workforce. No search fees, no exhausting
interviews, no great time lags in “finding that
right person” need to be incurred. The right
person is probably working for you right now,
only perhaps not working at what they should
be doing.
Once this audit has been completed, and you
have fully maximized the human resource
completely available to you, a company can
then look objectively at what lacks still exist
and can then go about filling those needs
from the outside, and fitting the new people
appropriately into a team, the character of
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45
which are now well known. How the individu-
al fits into the team is as much a key factor as
the individual’s own ability.
In summary, Sigmund Freud once said that
life is all about Lieb und Arbeit. The important
thing, given this, is that love and work wher-
ever possible be combined. The truly success-
ful person, who makes maximum contribu-
tions to a company, loves his or her work. An
individual can perform at a mediocre level
not loving their job, but never at a top level.
To deal with change, a company must know
those people and maximize the productivity of
each of its precious employees. Only through
a human resource audit and building future
hiring around the team that current exists,
can this be achieved.
Herb M. Greenberg ist
Gründer und CEO des
Beratungsunternehmens
Caliper. Mit Zweignieder-
lassungen in zwölf Ländern
unterstützte sein Unter-
nehmen bereits 28.000
Firmen bei der Auswahl und
Entwicklung von Mitarbeitern. Der Psychologe
ist anerkannter Experte für die Beziehung
zwischen Persönlichkeit und Job Performance.
Greenbergs neuestes Buch How to Hire and De-
velop Your Next Top Performer erschien 2000,
das Werk Succeeding on Your Own Terms wird
diesen Herbst herauskommen.