Some believe new recruits don’t deliver value in their first three months. Here’s why they’re wrong, and it’s called the outsider view’s value. Since 9 out of 10 new recruits are willing to quit in their first month, and 1/3 actually do quit within the first 90 days according to Psychology Today, it’s time to enhance your onboarding strategy with below easy-to-perform big wins. Some of the reasons why new recruits call it a day is the company’s culture and poor management. It’s better to act now and double down on your recruitment and onboarding strategy, then to encounter the loss of value of employees leaving further down the road, as this PeopleKeep‘s post is summarizing. To add to this, a recent studies published in the Academy of Management Journal, revealed that when talented people leave, they inspire others, mostly top-performers to leave as well.
The why of enhancing your current onboarding strategy and technology choices is clear. Now, here’s a handful of tips for how and what it delivers. And yes, we keep it simple, since your company is running probably a full onboarding program already, and enhancement is all you need.
First of all, new recruits hold the power of a bringing in a fresh perspective, which value depreciates once they are fully onboarded and become emotionally and professionally attached and invested. It’s wise to instantly and regularly tap into this wealth of insights by you as their manager or leadership before it’s gone forever. For example, put some company challenges to groups of new recruits, every three months, and ask for their ideas and let them enhance each others’ ideas as well. This is a strong sign of trust, builds their awareness of company matters beyond their immediate tasks, and connects them to non-like-minded thinking co-workers.
Example questions:
What in our strategy is most compelling to you, given market dynamics and your experiences elsewhere, and why you choose this aspect?
How can you positively affect our company culture, now that you’re part of it?
What do you believe is missing that can or should be repaired, in our understanding of successful growth?
CircleLytics enables you to ask employees to review what others submitted, and enrich this by keeping scores and adding recommendations. This turns asking questions into emergent insights and action.
Second, they’ve just experienced your employer’s branding, recruitment and – still – onboarding process. They’ve learned a lot about these items, and probably can compare this to their previous employers. For sure they can compare notes with their own expectations or expectations that were raised. Now is the moment to listen and learn. It just might give you some fresh new insights to win the war for new talent and streamline your recruitment and onboarding efforts.
Example questions:
What did our company not (yet) live up to in terms of your expectations?
What did you find here, yet weren’t explicitly looking for?
What’s your recommendation to smoothen our recruitment process?
How would you improve onboarding if you’d be in charge? Why this?
Again, CircleLytics can turn your questions into collective insights to move faster forward.
Third, as their manager: don’t be like others, don’t drive them away. You would be hurting them, your team, business performance, and in the end or maybe faster than you know: your reputation. Be open for their immediate and regular feedback and feedforward. Ask questions about and listen to their experiences, learn from their previous accomplishments and network they bring in. Understand how to make the best of that for your department, culture and business goals. Allow people time to digest your questions, reflect on answering these, and provide essential things such as privacy for them to speak up (ie anonymity). Don’t forget you’re perceived as ‘their boss’, hence you are… And even if you consider yourself a ‘people person’ and not the bossy-type, it’s tricky to assume new employees already know you for – without doubts – the great and beautiful person and manager that you are. Anonymity (ie privacy) enables them to speak up, provides the much-needed psychological safety, and enables you to learn more.
Curious about CircleLytics Dialogue and elevate listening to people? Just plan your demo here.
Example questions:
What stood out most till now, that really impresses and motivates you?
What do you need more or differently to do what you’re best at?
What’s your big tip to me as manager to be better for you and the full team? I’m ready to learn!
Help new recruits build their internal networks as fast as possible. Stimulate and check if they are regularly meeting new coworkers, preferably from different departments. Preferably not only the obvious coworkers, but the silent, more loosely connected-to-others as well. Why? Building a strong internal network facilitates knowledge fluidity, yet also increases the value of staying, and the cost of quitting the company. And loosely connected coworkers not only need it most, but are often the smartest kids on the block.
CircleLytics is being applied to structure people to connect to non-like-minded and enable cross-silo collaboration.
As their CEO, as a fourth item, engage them every month or quarter in dialogue to learn what they’ve seen the last couple of weeks, what they recommend, etc. This way you build strong ties with these valuable new talents and gain unique, fresh insights yourself. Invite them, for example, to your sounding board of new recruits (1-12 months at the company). It’s a magnitude different than solely having to rely on HR’s engagement survey reports based on generic questions. And it’s a unique add-on to your one-on-one lunches with new recruits.
Can you imagine receiving a question like this from your CEO during your first months:
What will you definitely do differently when you’re the CEO, why, and how to get that done?
What is the most exciting, beautiful, unique part of our company’s culture, that drives our growth?
What style or aspect of leadership do you believe is most needed the coming years to motivate our talented workforce? Why is that according to you?
All coworkers should be aware of the necessity to onboard new recruits. I remember at my previous jobs, that onboarding new recruits was tasked to specific people, while letting others ‘of the hook’. To me, that didn’t make any sense. It’s everyone’s responsibility to make onboarding a serious, lasting success. Invite new recruits, have lunch, share obstacles on your projects, exchange experiences. Learn rapidly from what they see and know differently for that short time they have the power of possessing an outsider’s view. Share your network, introduce them to non-like-minded, make sure they find their way. You both win, else nobody does.
We recommend HR to have regular check-ins with new recruits and tap into their collective experience and intelligence re typical HR coined topics, eg:
What do you recommend to improve collaboration between [……] and [……] to accomplish […..]?
How do you experience “trust” till now, and can you reflect on what’s driving trust from your perspective?
How would you express our company culture in your own words to applicants?
What – if any – do you perceive people struggling with when it comes to their wellbeing and workload?
What approach, support, technology, or anything would you recommend HR to reconsider and why?
Furthermore, we would recommend new recruits to instantly work at least 40% of their time on tasks that allow instant performance. Getting onboarded is not a fulltime job, and it shouldn’t be. Nobody’s off the hook, or put differently, everyone is relevant and able to bring value to customers, or to coworkers. Performance motivates. Adding value engages. Makes sure you as a new recruit ask for these tasks: already during your interviews. Show your maybe-next-employer that you care and want to know what you can work focus on from day one.
Ask employees open questions, as their manager, CEO or HR. This way you show you care, listen effectively and with empathy. Moreover, you will collect unique insights that can make a true difference. Towards them, towards the company.
Stay curious, stay in dialogue.
Curious about CircleLytics Dialogue and elevate listening to people? Just plan your demo here.
