STORIES

Traditional hiring often involves detailed job requisitions emphasizing credentials and work experience. Recruiters frequently use these filters because they have a paradigm that certain degrees and experience can predict job success. This approach contradicts Koch's principle of Virtue and Talents, which seeks candidates who are contribution motivated before evaluating their aptitudes.

The fact that this paradigm was flawed became obvious when a supervisor, with HR’s assistance, hired a candidate who — based on his resume — looked like a good fit. But after he was hired, significant gaps in his performance became apparent. Unaware of our over-reliance on credentials, we invested in further training — including an evaluation of his aptitudes and probability of success. Both the assessment and his later performance revealed that, despite his professional credentials, he lacked the ability to excel in the role, which resulted in the employee leaving Koch.

“If we were going to be successful, we needed to think about people and their work differently,” said Cara. Rather than “checking boxes” based on a resume, the HR team began looking at each candidate as an individual, noting their unique blend of values, aptitudes and experience, and determining if they had the right motivation and skills to be additive to the team. And for those without the traditional credentials, “we needed to remove the barriers that were limiting their ability to make it through the screening process.”

Michelle Small, who leads Koch’s talent development program, recognized one of those barriers. By placing GPA and degree requirements at the beginning of the process, she saw that Koch was losing good candidates due to their lack of credentials. “While unintentional, we were signaling that they couldn’t be successful here,” said Michelle. The HR team began challenging hiring managers and other leaders to reduce or remove these requirements in job postings. “That allowed us to look beyond a candidate’s resume and see them as a whole person.”

Once candidates were hired, we recognized the need to improve how we help them develop — identifying and applying the gifts that enable them to create value for others. We also uncovered another paradigm that was holding employees back: discouraging and making it difficult for employees to seek new or different opportunities within Koch.

As a large company, we have a natural advantage because we can offer a wide range of employment opportunities. But we were not making the most of it. “It had become easier for our employees to find new opportunities outside of Koch than inside,” confessed Cara. Overall employee turnover had been increasing and was especially high among employees who had been at Koch for less than two years. “Far too many talented and contribution-motivated individuals were leaving,” she said.

To address the problem, the team experimented by asking Maria Ruvolo to move into a new role focused on internal mobility. She set out to understand why employees were going to other companies. She uncovered numerous barriers, including the fact that employees were required to get their supervisor’s approval prior to applying, which many were reluctant to give. Supervisors tended to believe their employees could create more value on their current team instead of in other parts of Koch. Other employees feared being thought of as disloyal or simply lacked knowledge about other roles inside Koch.

Maria decided we needed a new approach and developed the concept of career navigation. Its goal: “To make it easier for employees to find a personally rewarding role where they can create the most value.”

Career navigation helped teams across Koch see the bigger picture. They were empowered to remove the barriers between groups and apply the division of labor by comparative advantage more fully.

How do you get a company of more than 120,000 employees who live in 60 different countries and work in such diverse industries to change their paradigms? You start with proven principles and then focus on something every employee has: a supervisor.

Job one for Koch supervisors at every level is to create an inclusive environment in which employees understand how to succeed by maximizing value creation in harmony with our principle-based framework. Supervisors have a responsibility to really know their people — to help them find the intersection of their passions and aptitudes with the needs of the business.

As HR worked with supervisors, we discovered two more faulty paradigms that are all too common. First, people often think that if an individual is good at doing the work, then they will automatically be good at supervising others doing that work. Second, to advance your career, you must become a supervisor. Both paradigms are false.

Cara explains: “What if you do not have the aptitudes or passion for leading people? Does that mean you can’t continue to progress and contribute more? Absolutely not! At Koch we are trying to create an environment that allows everyone, including supervisors, to explore their strengths and weaknesses without fear, and to have the courage to step out of roles that are not aligned with their gifts.”

What began as an effort to rethink and disrupt the Human Resources model at Koch turned into an ongoing journey of changing some strongly held paradigms about people and our processes. “Employees can own their careers,” said Cara, “so they can do work that best aligns with their gifts and passions.”

This approach of focusing on the uniqueness of each individual is a differentiator for Koch. Candidates, especially recent graduates, tend to approach their career like they approached their education: by looking for a well-defined path. “Instead, we encourage recognizing that life is a journey of self-discovery. What we want will change as we continue to learn more about ourselves and the world around us,” explained Cara.

Overcoming faulty paradigms in our hiring, development and supervising processes was only possible because we were guided by principles. “Although we’re challenging norms and seeing positive results for our businesses, we still have more to do,” said Cara. “As with any journey, there are detours, surprises and bumps along the way. We’ve often failed and slipped back into old habits and ways of thinking. There are still some who cling to those old paradigms. But it’s up to each one of us to continually identify and better apply the principles that will help us succeed long-term.”