If you own or manage a business, it’s probably been a minute since you were a new hire. Let’s take a walk down memory lane….
Being a new hire is TERRIFYING. The stress of worrying about whether you seem confident enough, whether you are truly the right person for this job, whether you’re going to be able to impress the new boss, whether you’re going to go home on time…… All of these things and SO much more are noodling around in their head.
There’s another thing they are worried about, too.
“Did I choose the right company?”
This question is the one that they worry about the most because they probably turned down several other jobs to take this one. It is the biggest reason most new hires that leave make the decision to do so.
Fortunately for us, as business owners, it is also the one that we have complete control over.
The way we present ourselves to new hires can make or break their new hire experience. If a company exudes support, competence, empathy, and confidence at the beginning of the relationship, it will reinforce to the team member that they made the right choice to stay. It gets them started on the right foot in the very beginning, and it squashes any worries they have that the grass may well have been greener at “other job.”
Conversely, if they are thrown to the wolves on day one, if the manager is disorganized or misses meetings, if their employee handbook is a disaster (or, missing altogether), if the manager is too busy to answer questions, if the world looks like it is falling apart inside their new company, they will quit the moment they can find something else that is reasonable in comparison.
Here are some guidelines to get your employees off to an amazing start:
- Get your new hire and support paperwork in order! Create new hire kits that have all their paperwork included, as well as a few fun culture documents.
- Be sure your employee handbook is current and friendly-looking (we can help with this!). A basic Word doc with no branding will not impress newbies, especially young ones.
- A little bit of swag goes a LONG way. Get a small, branded gift for them: travel mug, hat, pens and sticky notes, etc.
- Schedule times to meet with them, and stick to those times! Being late shows the other person that they are not important to you!
- Present the training plan, and coordinate the training plan with the other trainers
- Schedule one on one meetings for the first 6-8 weeks to discuss how they are feeling, give feedback, and get feedback from them, too.