Following on from my colleague’s article on “The employee experience, pre-recruitment” I thought it would be important to point out what might seem obvious, but is often forgotten or managed badly, is the Employee Experience post recruitment!
I have been running Finders for 30 years. During this time, I have seen many candidates recruited for new jobs and have heard differing feedbacks on how they have been welcomed (or not) into their new roles. My aim is to share some of these insights in the hope that the information might help future hires have a more successful onboarding experience, and thus to help companies retain their top talents. It has been proven that 90% of employees decide whether to stay within their first 6 months of employment.
Everyone know that to recruit a top talent is costly in term of man hours, skills testing, potential travel and relocation costs just to name a few. Imagine therefore the waste if an employee doesn’t feel well integrated and “at home” rapidly….. the risk of losing him/her is high!
During these days of COVID-19, and tele-travail the onboarding and retention is even more difficult with the new employee potentially feeling isolated away from the as yet unknown team and the general hustle and bustle of office life.
Helpful tips in the process include:
- Keep in touch with the new employee between signing the employment contract and the first day.
• Have the direct manager or team members keep him/her informed of progress within the team/projects.
• Ask HR to ensure that all the paperwork is completed prior to the first day
• Share any company information which is not confidential
- Make sure that the infrastructure is all ready for the new employee’s first day
• Security logins and access key
• Desk (you’d be surprised how often this one gets forgotten!)
• Computer, tablet, equipment and make sure it’s all working! Give your IT department enough time to get this sorted prior to the first day.
- Don’t forget to announce the arrival of the new employee to the company: – responsibilities, location etc.
- Share corporate information pack
• Historically this was done with groups of new starters listening to presentations from key leaders. Today and especially with the COVID tele-travail this might be more efficiently done with a short video which can be referred to more than once.
• Be sure to share the company vision and values in order to “engage” with the new employee on a deep and personal level. Only 32% of organizations communicate their core values to new employees which can lead to higher turnover…
• Plan the first days to cover specific trainings with specific people, not forgetting to block everyone’s agendas and sharing the detailed plan with the new employee and those involved!!
• Make the new employee feel special!
- Don’t forget to schedule the 3 months evaluation, to set objectives for the coming year. This is a great opportunity to check-in with the new employee to see how he/she is doing, feels about the company and the team and to share any feedback to improve performance.
- If possible designate a mentor for your new employee not just for the start but for several months to come. It can be very lonely starting in a new job, and particularly in these days when new starts are often working from home and the feeling of “being alone and over-whelmed” can be significant.
- Make sure to celebrate first year anniversary and any wins along the way – make the employee feel successful and needed! Teams who focus energy on ensuring employees are happy, challenged and being head have a greater likelihood that the employee will want to stay with the business.
- Regularly run surveys to gauge employee satisfaction. At Finders we propose the GAP performance diagnostic, which goes much deeper than just employee satisfaction but measures performance and indicators to increase that performance.
All seems basic and logical, but you’d be amazed how many new starts don’t start with this!
Director Finders SA