Sink or Swim Culture Needs to Change

Many companies in the past were proud to say that they embraced a “sink or swim” culture. Meaning that they prided themselves on backing up the idea that only the strong were meant to survive in a fast-paced environment, and those who couldn’t keep up were asked to leave. Even though many applauded this approach in the past, we know better now. 

A sink-or-swim approach means that an organization willingly chooses to provide little to no support for those entering into new roles. The purpose is to identify individuals who are able to succeed in their roles without any guidance from their leaders or from the organization. Those who are not able to meet these performance requirements on their own, which also may or may not have been outlined or communicated, usually get the boot. 

The Risks Involved with a Sink-or-Swim Mentality

It’s no surprise that organizations who have this mentality have high rates of failure when trying to on-board outside hires. The costs associated with this approach are incredibly high, and not just in recruiting fees and salaries. There are also huge opportunity costs related to leading the business in such an ineffective way. 

Having new hires leave soon after they are trained can undercut performance from the rest of the team, and disrupt the work of others within your organization. Just imagine it. You spend months recruiting, interviewing, checking references and onboarding a new hire only to have them exit or burnout within the year. Not to mention this high turnover rate will also tarnish your brand image. Plus, this is not the way anyone would want to be treated in the workplace. 

There is also the potential for employees to create new problems because of the lack of experience or know-how, like a failure to completely understand the business rules and not adhering to processes and procedures put in place to protect the business. 

Having a sink-or-swim mentality ultimately causes organizations to negatively impact the careers of high-potentials, lose talent, and weaken career progression. These costs impact more deeply than the costs associated with recruiting and exit costs when employees leave an organization. 

How to Avoid It

Here are a few strategies you could implement in order to fix or avoid a sink-or-swim mentality at your organization. 

Rethink Your Financial Deadlines

One reason you might find your organization going towards a sink-or-swim mentality is that you might have set your budgets and targets too high or too tight, thus expecting your new hires to go above and beyond too quickly. This might also mean you don’t have any ramp-up periods to meet your budgets, either. 

If you hire great people, then that means they are more willing to stay late, work on new strategies, manage projects over the weekend, and do anything it takes to get over the learning curve. However, this will result in burnout and frustration on all fronts. 

The solution to this is building up enough of a buffer financially to give your organization breathing room to ramp up to your goals, for example, 50% productivity in 3 months, 80% in 6 months and 100% in 8 months. 

Set Clear Training Programs

Another issue might be the fact that you are great at recruiting new employees, however, your onboarding programs could be lacking. You should have training programs in place to make sure that your new onboards are able to perform their role at the highest caliber, and be able to continually develop themselves. You can set up a long-term strategy using 1Huddle’s gamified training platform where you can store training content as well as keep track of your employees’ progress. 

Focus on Retention

Running a company means that you rely on the energy and productivity of your people long term to help you be successful. This means that you should make sure that your employees are valued and appreciated for all of their hard work. Not just millennials, but all generations of workers want to work in a fun-loving environment where they can develop, be challenged, work with people they get along with and are rewarded as they build something great. Creating an environment like this is where you are able to build high retention. However, be warned that this is not easy to do right away, and you will need to work on it every day and you need leaders who are able to model this culture. 

At 1Huddle, we offer cloud-based employee gamification software that can easily adapt to any employee training or gamification strategy you want to implement at your workplace. You can customize your content for a seamless experience and all of your employees will be able to access their training anywhere, anytime and at the push of a button. You can use our gamification platform to measure their performance and make key decisions on where you should take your gamification strategy next. 

Do you want to learn more about how 1Huddle can help you level up your own workforce? Request a demo today.