If the 80/20 Pareto principle is true, then a HR challenge?!

It has been proven time and again, in practice and theory that the 80/20 Pareto principle is mostly true, to whatsoever thing in life you could extrapolate it to...... 80 % of your revenues comes from 20% of your clients......    you spend 20% of time on the most productive things... and the remaining 80% of time on chores.......

Here is the challenge then for recruitment and HR pro's..... If only 20% of your people are going to perform above par,  and the remaining 80% are going to hover at average or sub-average, then how do we refine our recruitment strategies and hiring so that atleast 1 in 5 hires at any level are fitments in the top 20%.... Hmm...  i would say a really tough call.....

Even tougher would be to strategize and implement an engagement and performance improvement plan to push as many of those in the 80% to the 20%..... Going by what Jack 'the gut' Welch oft stated, your bottom 20% (or was it 1o%), has in any case to be weeded out...  

The humongous HR challenge is to create a decisive engagement for the remaining 50% lot, which is engaged, but unable to perform/excel for reasons to be figured out.... 

Unfortunately, this 50% or 60% are given much lesser attention, while most of the time is spent by management and HR in singing hosannahs of the top 20%........

I would feel that HR would rather focus more on the middle 60%, and make them more engaged to create a winning organisation...... Your top 20% would anycase perform... and retaining them would be a huge challenge...... do whatever, some of that top 20% would go, and you cannot stop it....  and you want the bottom 10 - 20% to go..... 

So spend a chunk of HR time in focussing on the middle 50%......  That is a crucial learning, if we have to take it that the Pareto principle is indeed true in HR/recruitment/people management as welll.......