Why even the best process will fail without the right people

Many modern business leaders believe process optimization is the key to success. Celonis, a software company specializing in process mining, recently surveyed 1,200 senior business leaders at large organizations across the US and Europe. Eighty-one percent of leaders said that processes are the “lifeblood” of their businesses, while another 83% said that processes are their greatest tools for creating business value and driving change. [1]

Our take? Processes are not the lifeblood of organizations. People are. 

Sure, every company wants streamlined processes, which are certainly something to strive for. But unless you have the right people in your company, even your best processes will fail. 

In this article, we explain the interdependence between people and processes and how skills-based hiring can help you find the right employees for your organization. 

5 reasons even the best process will fail without the right people

Efficient processes are essential for a business to run smoothly, but it’s the people who make these processes successful. 

Let’s examine why even the best process won't work without the right people.

1. Unskilled workers can’t implement processes effectively

Effectively implementing processes depends on having employees with the right skills and expertise. Without them, your processes will be inefficient and ineffective – and, ultimately, fail. 

For example, say a law firm introduces an optimized file management process to streamline its cases. The process clearly outlines client intake, update letters, and court filings. 

However, the firm hires several junior associates with limited legal experience, analytical skills, and legal knowledge. While these associates can follow the steps detailed in the file management process, they make mistakes, miss court dates, and fail to deliver a positive client experience. 

2. Processes often require adaptability – which not all workers possess

Processes help standardize and maintain consistency across an organization. However, circumstances, technology, and priorities change, meaning processes must be revised and updated accordingly.

The right people can spot when this needs to happen and how to implement the changes. Then, they can quickly adapt to the updated processes.

But not everyone is adaptable. Research from the UK suggests that less than half of employees feel they possess adaptability, and only 15% list adaptability as a skill on their resumes – despite it being an in-demand soft skill worldwide. 

(In fact, our research found that adaptability is a better indicator of employee success than education or experience. Additionally, LinkedIn named adaptability the “skill of the moment” for 2024.)

When we spoke to Chris Estrada, CEO and Founder of Nationwide United Auto Transport, he shared his experience dealing with employees who couldn’t adapt to new processes. 

“I’ve learned that the caliber of your team directly impacts the success of your processes,” he said. “For instance, adopting new technologies for streamlined operations is only effective if the team is adept and open to adapting these innovations.” 

3. Processes don’t work without the right attitudes and values

As we outline in our 2023 State of Skills-Based Hiring Report, “if employees are properly aligned with the culture and values of your organization,” you can avoid tons of issues – from low morale and employee burnout to poor productivity and company-wide inefficiency, including in your processes.

In other words, employees are unlikely to commit to your processes if they lack the right attitudes and values.

Leadership IQ chairman and CEO Mark Murphy agrees, arguing that employees with a poor attitude might as well not even be there.

“Ask every one of your high performers if they would rather be short-staffed or work with someone with a bad attitude,” Murphy says. “Every time we do this, people always say ‘short-staffed.’”

The same is true of workers whose values don’t align with your company’s. Employees are less likely to be engaged and motivated at work when they don’t share the same values their organization does. This means they won’t “buy in” to your processes, no matter how great they are.

For example, consider a hospital introducing a protocol to enhance intercultural communication between care providers and patients. It aims to provide more personalized and sensitive care to a diverse patient population. 

A nurse who genuinely understands and values the importance of cultural competence in healthcare will likely commit wholeheartedly to this protocol. They might take extra steps to learn key phrases in different languages or understand cultural nuances. 

In contrast, a nurse who doesn’t care about or disagrees with these new protocols probably won’t implement them. 

4. Even the best processes aren’t perfect

You know the adage: “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” 

That’s why you must always be prepared for the possibility that a process will fail or not provide the proper solution. The right employees know how to use initiative and problem-solve when this happens so your team can adapt and overcome any challenge that comes their way.

We recently spoke with Stephan Drescher, founder of Germany Travel Blog, who revealed how this exact situation happened to his team.

“We had a well-crafted itinerary during a group expedition across multiple countries to maximize our experience. Despite this, unexpected challenges arose,” Drescher explained. 

“Our team’s adaptability and problem-solving skills saved the day, demonstrating that the human element can't be underestimated. Their ability to connect with local communities, understand their customs, and adjust our plans on the fly was invaluable and something no process could fully anticipate.”

5. Poor communication and teamwork undermine processes

Your processes won’t work if your employees can’t work well together and communicate effectively to get the job done. When team members aren’t on the same page, assumptions, misunderstandings, and mistakes happen – impacting business outcomes.

A recent report by Grammarly Business and The Harris Poll surveyed 251 business leaders, who said that the top three impacts of poor communication at work were decreased productivity, missed deadlines, and increased costs. 

It's crucial to find employees who can communicate clearly and collaborate with their teammates. Consider the example of the Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) project, a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency in the 1990s. The MCO was built to investigate Mars’ climate and act as a communications relay for another spacecraft. However, it failed to land and disintegrated into space instead. 

A review credited the issue to a navigational error “due to commands from Earth being sent in English units [...] without being converted into the metric standard.” More specifically, “the flight software was in metric, and the team on the ground assumed the Imperial.”

It’s hard to think of an organization with more precise technical processes than NASA. But poor communication between teams undid years of research and millions of dollars of investment. 

Challenges to finding the right people for your processes

You must find people with the necessary skills, qualities, and attitudes to carry out your processes. But this is easier said than done. 

Here are some common challenges employers face in attracting and hiring the right people. 

Skills and experience mismatch

A skills mismatch occurs when there’s a gap between a candidate’s actual skills and the ones they need to implement your processes effectively. When a mismatch happens, employees can struggle to perform their roles. They may take longer to complete tasks or find it challenging to follow processes correctly. 

However, finding candidates with the right skills to match your processes isn’t easy. Resumes can be deceptive, and a list of a candidate’s previous roles doesn’t offer much insight into their skills. Applicants can be highly qualified but underskilled, for example. It can also be challenging to get a full picture of someone’s skills during an interview, especially without knowing the right questions to ask. 

Poor cultural fit

Candidates must also have the right values, behaviors, and attitudes to contribute positively to your organization’s culture. Poor cultural fit can affect team dynamics, which are central to effective operations and processes.

As we previously discussed, when an employee’s values are misaligned with the employer’s, it’s hard for the employee to connect with the business’s mission and goals. This can lead to a lack of dedication and an inability to carry out processes effectively – or at all. 

In a recent survey, international recruitment agency Robert Walters found that 47% of employees said a poor cultural fit prevented them from working effectively, while 74% said it demotivated them.

Cultural mismatch also impacts how long employees stay in a role. Workers are more likely to leave a company if they don’t feel like they fit in. In the Robert Walters survey, a whopping 73% of employees reported leaving a job due to poor cultural fit. 

Unfortunately, the culture add concept is notoriously difficult to assess. It can be highly subjective, allowing unconscious bias to affect the hiring process. 

Labor shortages and strong competition for talent

Many industries are still feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when it comes to sourcing candidates. According to US Chamber of Commerce data, 9 million job openings exist, but only 6.1 million unemployed workers are available to fill them. 

This gap is especially obvious in the financial, professional, and business services sectors, where there’s a demand for highly specialized skills. For instance, with companies seeing the potential for AI to streamline processes and improve productivity, there’s a growing need for candidates with the necessary expertise. 

However, individuals with these specialized skills are limited, and employers are competing to hire top talent. Finding the right talent is also a challenge. 

Speaking to Forbes, Shalabh Singhal, CEO of supply chain software company Trademo, explains, “ Someone might be skilled in AI but not suitable for their use case or the stage of the company in its AI journey. This can hurt the lifecycle of AI projects and lead to operational difficulties.”

How skills-based hiring helps you find, hire, and retain the right people

Skills-based hiring is the ideal way to overcome these challenges and find the right people to support your processes. 

For our 2023 State of Skills-Based Hiring Report, we spoke to 1,500 employers and 1,500 employees across the US, Latin America, the UK, Canada, and Australia. We found that 73% of companies now rely on skills-based hiring.

Let’s look at why skills-based hiring is so effective at helping you find the right people to support your processes. 

Identifies candidates with the right skills, traits, and values

Qualifications and previous job titles offer limited insights into a candidate’s ability to implement your processes. But skills-based hiring helps identify applicants with the necessary capabilities and attributes for a role, reducing the risk of mis-hires.

An example of this is in Second Harvest Food Bank in Orlando, Florida. The nonprofit has diverse operations – and, as a result, processes – across its food bank, commercial kitchen, warehouse, and training programs. The company’s HR Manager, Krysteena Downes, takes a skills-based approach to writing job ads that helps identify the relevant skills and find candidates to fill the organization’s varied roles. 

Skills-based hiring can also help you identify candidates who align with your business’s culture and values, supporting buy-in to your processes. Several talent assessment platforms, like TestGorilla, include soft skills tests so you can better understand applicants’ adaptability, communication and collaboration skills, problem-solving abilities, cognitive capabilities, personality traits, and more. 

When candidates align or add to your organization’s culture, they also experience higher levels of job satisfaction, leading to increased employee retention. In our 2023 State of Skills-Based Hiring report, 81.8% of employers said that employees hired with skills-based hiring stay longer in their roles.

Still not convinced? Skills-based hiring is so reliable that in our 2023 State of Skills-Based Hiring report, 88.8% of employers said it’s a better indicator of on-the-job success than resumes. 

Highlights skilled candidates in adjacent industries

Skills-based hiring also helps address skills shortages by highlighting transferable skills rather than industry-specific experience. This enables you to identify otherwise overlooked candidates with the right skills to carry out your processes. 

For example, a candidate with logistics management experience would likely adapt well to a supply chain management role. They have experience coordinating complex operations, interpreting data to identify inefficiencies, and developing streamlined processes. These skills are just the ones you need to help improve your supply chain.

Broadens your candidate pool

Strategies like removing the requirement for college degrees from relevant job ads help you attract hidden talent and workers skilled through alternative routes (STARs). 

STARs who have developed valuable, relevant hard and soft skills through non-traditional pathways can offer a range of skills to carry out processes effectively. Best of all, there are millions of them. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the US economy has almost 70 million STARs. 

Similarly, hidden workers – including immigrants and refugees, older workers, and individuals with criminal records – traditionally face barriers to employment due to their circumstances. These workers are often highly adaptable, making them ideal for processes that require flexibility.

Resumes often conceal the talents of hidden workers and STARs. Our 2023 State of Skills-Based Hiring report found that 43% of employers struggle to determine applicants’ skills based on resumes alone. By taking a skills-based approach to hiring, you can more easily identify these applicants and their potential to support your processes. 

Provides an exceptional candidate experience

Skills-based hiring delivers an exceptional candidate experience, helping you stand out from other employers in a competitive market. It can also help you attract employees with the skills, experience, and attitudes necessary to carry out your processes. 

A key aspect of the candidate experience is quick responses from potential employers. A recent ZipRecruiter survey of 2,500 hires in the US found that around 90% of recently hired candidates heard from their employer within a week of applying for the role, with 50.3% hearing back within three days. Employers unable to match these timeframes will miss out on top talent.

Using a talent assessment platform like TestGorilla is a great way to reduce time-to-hire and improve the candidate experience. Rather than sifting through hundreds of resumes or sitting through hours of interviews, pre-employment assessments deliver detailed insights into candidates' skills, cognitive abilities, and personality traits in minutes. 

Leading the shift from processes to people

While processes are crucial for most organizations, hiring the right people to implement them is the real key to success. However, this can be challenging, especially considering the potential mismatch of skills or culture and the competition for top talent.

Adopting a skills-based approach to hiring is essential to finding the right people for your processes and ensuring they stay long-term. By removing the requirements for college degrees and incorporating skills assessments, like the ones TestGorilla provides, into your hiring process, you can more effectively identify the right people.

Remember, it’s not about the processes but the people who drive them. By investing in finding and keeping the right people, you’ll see your business grow and thrive. If you’re ready to give skills-based hiring a go, you can sign up for a free plan today.

Sources: 

The Process Era Is Here: How Enterprises Are Using Processes as a Lever for Value and a Driver for Change,” Celonis (2024) https://assets.ctfassets.net/zmrtlfup12q3/6D0z5dnfNe63cFhF40ItEe/f388ba2615c50d7cf0bb5791ee2bbb1c/PEX_Final_Report_2024.pdf