5 Steps To New Hire Success

Hiring a new person is one of  the key events in your monthly or annual calendar. Why? Because a new hire can symbolize progress, vitality, growth, expansion, stability and prosperity. It can raise expectations and morale across your organization.

So, what you really want to to avoid happening is for you superstar new hire to capitulate and crash out of your company after a month or two into the job under a dark cloud of incompetence. It can dent morale and make employees anxious, particularly if it was a crucial employee who was parachuted in, such as a sales person. And you’d be mistaken if you thought this can’t happen to you, because it can, as a study by the Wynhurst Group reveals that 22% of staff turnover takes places in the first 45 days and so you can’t take it for granted that your new hire will succeed.

But, of course there are things you can do to maximize your chances of new hire success and we have outlined 5 crucial steps you can take below.

1 – Use Realistic Job Previews.

Coach and train your managers and staff to avoid ‘sugar coating’ the job and paper over any cracks; its important to tell job candidates about  both the good and the bad aspects of a role. This is known as a realistic job previews (RJPS), and research from various sources shows that interviewees who face RJPs experience greater post employment job  satisfaction and lower subsequent turnover.

2 – Have a well structured first day.

The 2012 Sales On-boarding Survey by Salesarchitects.net, revealed that employees who had a well defined and structured first day, which mapped out their first 90 days, were the most satisfied.

3 – Set learning and performance goals.

This may sound obvious, but in the time pressurized environment, that many employers operate in, proper goal setting and reviewing can be neglected. Therefore, ensure that managers are coached and trained and given the time to deliver a proper new hire on-boarding program of goal setting, reviewing and support provision.

4 – Help the employees to build a social network.

New hires who can most rapidly build informational networks with key contacts in the business will become productive much faster than those who are more isolated. In fact, a study by MITSloane Management Review found that new hires who sit in a central location in the office, with a lot of passing human traffic tend to on-board faster. So, develop a socialization programme which includes assigning all new hires a ‘buddy’ to help them learn the ropes and perhaps deploy a company social network with detailed profiles to help them make social ties.

5 – Low hanging fruit.

According to a study by AT&T, allowing a new hire to pluck low hanging fruit so they can make quick wins, (this means give them some small but achievable goals to begin with), can give them confidence which means that they get up to speed faster.

So, as you can see, its vital that you don’t take new hires for granted – as they are a massive turnover risk – but if you follow these steps you will maximize the chance of having a rapidly on-boarding successful hire.