If you have been to my website, heard me speak or worked with me, you know that I am all about the F.I.T. – Function, Integration and Training. As someone who has spent 20+ years in the talent management space, if you don’t’ care about the F.I.T., you will continue to lose the best people and experience high-turnover rates. In today’s market, you can’t afford NOT to care about it.
Too often, companies think getting a recruiter is all they need. That relationship is critical because first impressions do matter. How your recruiter treats candidates will impact your company image and whether candidates seek you out or avoid you. However, recruiting is just the first step in the process.
Once you offer a person a job, your communication with them needs to be frequent. If you ghost them, they will immediately have doubts and possibly buyer’s remorse. Have you ever had someone bail on a job offer? They said “yes” but then pulled out at the last minute? I know this is extremely frustrating, but you may have been able to prevent it. Before a candidate walks through your doors, they need to feel welcomed and have their nerves put at ease. Taking a new job is a huge decision for most people, and it is stressful.
Here is where most companies fail miserably. A new employee has their first day, and they are shown the restroom. They meet a few people and then are left to their own devices. A few will do a little better at on boarding by having IT show them how to use their new computer and phone. This is not enough! In some industries, people will leave within 30 days if they don’t feel equipped and trained for their job.
In most cases, if a person feels like they were thrown into the deep-end of theswimming pool without proper training, they will start looking for a new job within months. What a waste of everyone’s time and resources! I cannot emphasis the importance of on boarding followed by integration / immersion for employee retention. If you say employee retention is a high priority yet do not have on boarding processes and immersion procedures, you just don’t get it. Give me a call, and I’ll help shed some light on it for you.
The best companies have a dedicated person who welcomes new employees, shows them around, introduces them, takes them to lunch and makes them feel welcome from day one. They also have specific items for a new employee to do like watching a video to learn about the company, it’s culture, mission, clients and goals. They go a step further and have standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the position with an updated job description so that the new hire gets a feel for what the role will require and how to accomplish it.
By the way, a job posting is completely different than a job description. You should not use them interchangeably. Every new hire should have a go-to team member that acts/serves as a mentor. New hires must feel comfortable asking questions and need to know who that person will be. The sooner you can build your new employee’s confidence, the quicker they will become a contributing member of the team, and that is the end goal.
Everything I have outlined starts with leadership. If the top tier isn’t committed to setting their leaders up for success, no manager will make it a priority. They will have the mentality that they weren’t given any help, so why should they do it? It’s a vicious, awful cycle that makes your culture toxic, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
When I consult with companies that have high turnover, we always look at leadership first. It is too easy to blame human resources. HR is only as good as the direction and leadership they are given. They cannot make decisions in a vacuum. Talent management is complex and involves finding the right people for the function but it also means integrating those people in a way that sets them up to succeed, not fail. At all stages of the employee life cycle, training is required to keep them engaged.
I am all about the F.I.T. so give me a call today! Let’s start getting the right people on board and keeping them.
A great place to start is improving your communication to ALL employees. My book, Leveraging Your Communication Style provides concrete and proven strategies for enhancing your relationships and building better teams through communication.
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