Finding the Right F.I.T.: A Guide to Hiring, Firing, and Rewarding

Right fit employees are essential for your organization to reach its goals. Your team members need to be a healthy fit for their positions for both the company’s growth and their own personal and professional development. 

When your employees shine, your organization is propelled forward.  Employees not quite the right fit for their position can lower team morale, hinder growth, and disrupt operations.

I recommend System & Soul’s proven framework for determining if employees are a healthy F.I.T. within your organization as you seek to hire, fire, and reward. Let’s explore what that healthy F.I.T. looks like:

Determining Healthy F.I.T.

The Healthy F.I.T. model provides a two-part framework for evaluating employee fit based on your company’s core values and three key criteria: Fuel, Impact, and Timeliness.

1. F.I.T.: Fuel, Impact, Timeliness

• Fuel: Does the role in the organization fuel the employee's Unique Ability®?
• Impact: Can the employee create a significant, positive impact in their role?
• Timeliness: Is the role suitable for the employee in terms of their skills, IQ, EQ, experience, expertise, and capacity? Is that aligned with the stage and trajectory of your business?

Assessing each component of the F.I.T. model regularly allows organizations to gauge employee fit accurately and make informed decisions about hiring, firing, and rewarding team members.

2. Core Values

Next, ask if this employee aligns with your company's core values based on their actions and attitude. Assign a ranking of how closely the employee aligns with each core value on a 1-4 scale where 1 is the closest alignment.

Once you’ve assessed an employee’s F.I.T. and core value alignment, you can chart the results:

What Does It Look Like When Your Team Members Are the Right F.I.T.?

Managers and leaders should be having healthy F.I.T. conversations with their reports quarterly. When answering each of the three F.I.T. questions, the answer should be a YES. If there are any doubts, hesitations, or straight-up no’s, I have some additional questions you should ask in the next section.

Team members who are the right fit for their positions demonstrate alignment in several key areas:

• Passion and enthusiasm for their work
• Leveraging their unique abilities to contribute meaningfully to the organization's goals (Hint: you have to be aware of your employee’s unique abilities to know if they’re leveraging them — if you aren’t sure of where your employees thrive, I recommend taking the Working Genius assessment)
• Aligning with the company's values, fostering a positive culture of collaboration and innovation
• Contributing to smooth operations
• Boosting team morale, creating a conducive environment for growth and success.

What To Do When Your Employees Aren’t the Right F.I.T.

Addressing fit issues proactively and with empathy can lead to positive outcomes for both the employee and your organization. It's essential to approach these situations with a growth mindset and a commitment to supporting your team members.

Ask the following questions to assess why your employee might not be the right F.I.T.:

• FUEL: Are you risking burning out the employee? Are they gifted in a way that they are underutilized? Are they lacking motivation or drive?
• IMPACT: Will they be able to drive and grow the outputs of this position? Are they coasting? Are they limited by some other factors we should consider?
• TIMELY: Can we train them or coach them? Does their experience match what we need at this time?

So, what’s next? Based on your answers to the questions above, next steps could include transitioning the employee to a different role within the organization, offering additional training or support within their current role, or in some cases, parting ways amicably.

Are Your Employees a Healthy F.I.T.?

Finding the right fit employees is essential for your organizational success. Using the F.I.T. model as a guide, you can regularly evaluate employee fit objectively and make strategic decisions to build a high-performing team aligned with your company's goals and values.

Healthy F.I.T. is a part of cadence, one of the six key elements that form the backbone of your organization. How does your company score for cadence on the free organizational health assessment?