Getting people excited about their role with a company starts long before the first day in the office. Someone who isn’t riled up about your company’s mission, product, and people won’t end up working with the team.
When you do land a candidate who accepts an offer, it means you’ve found someone who believes in what the team is creating, wants to be a part of it, and has a general perception of the workplace environment. The moment the employer brand disconnects from the employee experience is the moment people become disinterested in what the company is working on, and the domino effect ultimately means these people produce lower quality work and will likely be searching for new opportunities in due time.
One way to maintain a positive employer brand is through your onboarding program, but unfortunately, properly training people during the first few weeks on the job is one of the most overlooked, forgotten stages of the hiring process.
Use these techniques to hold on to people for the long run.
Create an agenda before an employee’s first day.
Remember this gem from the ‘rents?: Failing to plan means planning to fail. For many companies, orientation and onboarding is an afterthought, leaving the job to recruiters, hiring managers, or to employees themselves, banking on the hope they’re quick learners who will take the initiative to fill in the blanks on their role.
Avoid hacking together a plan to get new employees up to speed with the company, their role, and expected goals. Without a set plan and goals timeline, the latest additions on your team may struggle to ramp up with their fellow employees. To resolve the setback, they might end up hacking together their own agenda. Parts of the team will be further ahead than others and performance becomes disjointed. Standardize the learning process from the start to keep employees, for the most part, on the same path toward hitting the company’s goals.
Set employee goals but keep their individual investments in mind.
While it’s important to create a timeline for new employees to reach goals, don’t rush the training process or make the mistake of solely focusing on the company’s business targets. Remember to align the business’ timeline with employees’ own investments. People want to know how their efforts not only line up with what the company wants, but with that they want for their own professional development. Keep people engaged with their role even after their first 90 days on the job, and continually tie back how individual contributions are instrumental to the company’s end mission and goal.
Hire with a purpose.
If you’re not considering the company’s end goal when sourcing talent, you’re not making the right hires for the open reqs you have now. Create a more targeted search process by starting with a company mission and purpose. What kinds of customers do you want to attract, now and in the future? Are the employees you’re hiring capable of growing with the business and eventually leading the team? How will the company maintain its culture while hiring and expanding its employee and customer base? Think about the identity the company wants to take on to hire ideal people for the job.
What other onboarding techniques are we missing from this list? We’ll cover more in our HRCI accredited webinar with iCIMS. Join us for Key Components for Building an Effective Onboarding Program!
