Poor employees are unsuited for position they fill. They might lack skills needed to do work. Or, their work habits and personalities are incompatible with your business environment. They could be excellent employees at a different workplace -- but not at yours.

The best time to weed out unsuitable employees is before you've hired them. After they're on job, dealing with problem will be time-consuming, stressful, unpleasant and expensive. HR experts say that supervisors typically spend 80% of their time with 20% of their employees.

When you're recruiting, you want to know two things: 1. Can this person do job? 2. Will he or she be a problem to manage in this workplace?

The first question is simple to answer. Skills are easy to assess and to test. Look to samples of work, educational criteria, licenses, accreditations, skill tests, etc.

The second question is hard one. You want to discover whether applicant will fit into your workplace.

Before conducting job interview, be sure you know what questions are illegal to ask in your country. Make an error here, and you could be faced with legal proceedings.

Once you know what's legal and what isn't, create interview questions designed to discover applicant's "soft skills."

Examples:

1. Tell me about your favorite supervisor in past, and why you liked working for this person. Then, your least favorite supervisor, and why? Identifying information is not necessary.

This will elicit information about how applicant responds to supervision and how he prefers to be supervised.

2. Describe a difficult workplace situation that you faced, and that you think you handled well. Then, tell me about a workplace situation that you don't think you handled very well and what you could do differently next time.

You are looking for clues about how applicant deals with conflict and difficult situations. In situation that was handled poorly, try to determine if person has learned from mistake.

3. Describe a situation that is likely to occur, or has occurred, in your workplace. Ask applicant how he or she would handle it.

In my experience over several decades of business cycles, I have witnessed a succession of economic contractions and expansions and although at times outlook has appeared bleak, in fact, far bleaker then our present circumstances, every decline has been followed by a subsequent period of growth. It was not that long ago that we awoke to "Black Friday" when stock market appeared to teeter on brink of a cataclysmic collapse. What followed however, was beginning of what has proved to be one of longest lived economic booms in memory. The lesson here is that there will be a new economic tomorrow and in all likelihood it will begin sometime in 2002.

Therefore, it is with eyes wide open that business leaders need to carefully consider long range effects their cost cutting actions will have on their organizations. This is especially true as nature of those cuts, especially where they concern personnel, are fundamentally different today from what they were in past. Circa 1950's, 60's, 70's 80's and even much of 90's, downturns in employment for most part meant layoffs. Certainly, there were specific industries where structural decline resulted in large scale permanent job losses. However, in general, most cutbacks precipitated layoffs vs. permanent terminations. Not so today. The new order is that of permanent severance. The proverbial "pink slip" has turned to bright red.

Moreover, level of employee being severed has also changed dramatically. In previous decades, cuts were heavily weighted toward production personnel and therefore, first line, blue collar worker oriented. Today, with our heavy reliance upon technology to drive economic engine, cutbacks in both manufacturing and service sectors are skewed toward white collar workers. Additionally, more senior workers in their 40's, 50's and 60's have borne brunt of reductions more heavily than ever before, as their higher cost compensation and benefit packages are targeted for maximum near term bottom-line savings.

Conjointly these changes have set in motion what could become a veritable time-bomb for companies that decide to pursue cost reductions through massive staff cuts. The negative consequences will include:

1.Lack of a recallable employee pool. Historically, layoffs inherently communicated at a minimum possibility, if not probability, of being recalled by employer when economic conditions improved. Many furloughed employees expected to eventually return to their employers and, reacted to layoff accordingly by taking interim and part-time jobs. Today many employees are not only informed that their release is final, they are provided outplacement services funded by their former employers. Thus, employers themselves are ensuring that these people will, indeed, not remain available to them. Many of more senior employees, finding new employment difficult if not impossible and having personal savings at their disposal, are choosing to become entrepreneurs, thereby, forever removing them from available labor pool.

2.Poor morale & lack of trust among younger employees as terminations increasingly target older employees. Much has been exposited recently in press about disturbing loss of employee loyalty. Terminating large numbers of older, more senior and experienced employees who have faithfully served corporation for many years, has a profound long term effect on younger, newer employees. Place yourself in their shoes for a moment. They have already been indoctrinated by friends, relatives, neighbors and media that business, especially big business, is not to be trusted. Now they see their co-workers, supervisors, and mentors being fired because "cost cuts need to be made and these individuals represent higher per capita costs to organization" The message is clear and they understand. The reward for loyalty is to be axed when you are over fifty and unable to find another comparable position. They may not bolt today, due to a tightening job market, but they will remember and when economy improves they will seek a future where they feel more secure.

3.Loss of knowledge and experience base. This is a frequently overlooked aspect of cost of losing long term employees. Many companies and even industries are currently developing knowledge bases in order to capture and access organizational knowledge resources. Yet, no matter how effective these databases are, and they can be extremely beneficial, they will never be a substitute for knowledge, experience and wisdom that rests in veterans of organization. Although this is true in terms of deductive knowledge, it is even more important regarding organization's continuity and history. People need to feel a sense of belonging to more than just present, tha "now" of an organization. They also need a sense of past and future. Without this, there are no ties, no traditions, no continuity and often no ethics and values.

4.Loss of corporate culture and available mentors for existing and new employees. This loss of continuity is also reflected in dispossession of corporate culture. I am a great believer in change vs. status quo. However, there are some things that should not change. "In this company we do thus and so, because we believe it to be fundamentally right." Every organization needs to have incontrovertible statements that transcend fluctuating business climate and current trends. These values can and should be committed to pen and paper, but they are not passed on in this manner, at least not primarily. Rather, they are taught and lived and mentored from one person to next. The fewer seasoned people company has to pass these on, less they will be able to maintain soul of organization.