We’ve all seen it happen. A manager retires, a supervisor takes an opportunity elsewhere – it’s finally your chance to apply for a promotion.
At least it would have been had the company decided to promote from within…but they went with an outside hire without carrying out an internal candidate search.
At Swiss-Tech, we believe this is a shame and, truthfully, a missed opportunity for an entire organization to improve.
The Real Cost of an Outside Hire
Going the outside hire route isn’t always wrong. In some cases, it can be very helpful if the position requires knowledge or skills that aren’t available within your current team.
It shouldn’t be, however, your standard method of adding talent to your business for reasons both cultural and financial.
Differences in Training and Culture
An outside hire may have years of experience but that experience was for another company. You have no control over how they were trained or what business culture they come from.
That’s not to say that an outside hire can’t assimilate to your way of doing things, but it’s certainly something to be mindful of when bringing in someone new.
It’s Costly
When you begin to add up the time and money spent on recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and training a new employee – it’s not cheap.
In fact, it’s estimated that the national average cost of hiring a new employee to be $4,129 and the average time to fill a position is 42 days.
Promoting from within helps limit these costs by reducing recruiting and training time significantly.
Advantages of Internal Promotion
Employees want room to grow. It’s as simple as that.
If you’re not providing opportunities for good people within your business to move up and take on more responsibility, they will eventually find a different workplace that will.
At Swiss-Tech, we understand this. We also know that in addition to retaining great individual contributors, our company reaps other advantages when we promote from within.
1) Training Quality Improvements
As a producer of Swiss machined components for mission critical applications, our quality and ISO Certification standards must be met at all times. This also means that each new employee we bring in must be able to reach those standards on a daily basis.
Because of this, training is vital to the success of new employees. By promoting one of our team members, we’re rewarding an individual who is already accustomed to our processes and has proven their ability as a contributor.
This enables us to seamlessly meet our production requirements and pass along our institutional knowledge to new hires.
2) Internal Process Refinement
“In order to know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been. Promoting experienced employees into leadership roles where they can mesh with new people and new ideas allows us to better keep up with current demand.” – Kristi Granberg, Swiss-Tech HR & Accounting Manager
Refining your internal processes is an absolute necessity for world-class quality manufacturing, and the advantage of retaining veteran talent with a great work ethic cannot be emphasized enough.
At Swiss-Tech, we’ve created an environment of innovation and process improvement. Since we have people who have worked within our business and industry for years, they have the ability to identify areas of inefficiency and provide possible solutions.
This helps our entire team perform smarter, faster, and just plain better.
3) Significant Morale Boosts
Enjoying the people you work with has a powerful impact on the morale of your staff. That’s why, at Swiss-Tech, we’ve done our best to foster a family-oriented business culture.
But it’s impossible to build a sense of family if turnover is high and coworkers don’t know each other very well.
Promoting from within creates the necessary space to help individuals reach the next level of their professional development. This isn’t lost on new hires, either. It gives them something to aspire toward in order to reap the same benefits.
We’ve found that it also improves the overall quality of work, job performance, and satisfaction of our employees.
Pictured left to right: Kristi Granberg, Jason Price, Lisa Morgan, Scott Bliss, Karen Ozanich
We Promote from Within at Swiss-Tech. For Example…
It’s important to us that we practice what we preach, and we didn’t have to look very far to find great examples of how promoting internal talent has helped us succeed.
Scott Bliss – Engineering Supervisor
- Years at Swiss-Tech: 24
- Path to Promotion: Entry-level Engineer to Engineering Supervisor
Karen Ozanich – Director of Operations
- Years at Swiss-Tech: 5
- Path to Promotion: Planner to Shipping/Receiving Manager to Director of Operations
Kristi Granberg – HR & Accounting Manager
- Years at Swiss-Tech: 2
- Path to Promotion: Accounting Manager to HR & Accounting Manager
Jason Price – Director of Engineering
- Years at Swiss-Tech: 4
- Path to Promotion: Engineering Manager to Director of Engineering & Support Technology
Lisa Morgan – Accounts Receivable Payroll Clerk
- Years at Swiss-Tech: 32
- Path to Promotion: Entry-level Inspection to Accounts Receivable Payroll Clerk
“We aren’t interested in just upgrading titles. Instead, we focus on recognizing an individual’s skill set to match their potential with specific job duties and create a win/win situation for both ourselves and our employees.” – Kristi Granberg
Ready to Jumpstart Your Career?
At Swiss-Tech, we take great pride in the continuity we’ve been able to achieve by attracting, identifying, and retaining top talent within our industry.
If you’re interested in taking your career up a notch by working in a dynamic, family-oriented environment, we’d love to hear from you.
View our current job openings and fill out our online application today. For any additional questions, please contact Kristi Granberg at 262-728-6363 Ext. 101.