New employees are starting!!! Whoo Hoo!!!
Your company has a lot of work to do, and you need excellent talent to get that work completed. Your company wants to set the expectation that they must produce quality work and it must be on time. After all, you’ve got projects to finish and customers to keep happy.
If you care about developing talent, you will effectively onboard all new team members.
If you believe in ensuring that your new team members have everything they need to be successful, you will make sure everyone works together to get them those things.
If you want to treat your new team members, the way you would want to be treated on your first day, then you will invest in creating the best onboarding program possible.
But what you want and what happens, might be two entirely different things.
For an onboarding program to be successful, the plan must put every new employee first and protect them from getting overwhelmed by the chaos that exists in your company. I have seen new employees onboard effectively, and others were thrown to the proverbial wolves.
While it costs a lot of money, time, energy, and resources to effectively onboard a new team member:
- How well will this new team member engage with other people on the team?
- How much will this new team member support company initiatives and strategies?
- How likely will this new team member do whatever it takes to get the job done?
- How possible is it that this new team member will become a leader in your organization?
If we don’t invest in developing new talent, they walk.
There is no question about it. Your talent will leave.
And if your new team member leaves within the first year, your investment just walked out the door and more importantly, you didn’t serve them to the best of your ability.
I encourage you to take a look at how your company, department, and division onboard its new employees. Please don’t say “HR takes care of that” because onboarding is everyone’s responsibility. A robust onboarding program encompasses all of the technical and process-oriented information that a new employee must have, but also include all of the cultural information as well. Everyone plays some part in onboarding a new team member. Be mindful of whom you pair them with, because putting the new employee with someone who is toxic or detrimental, won’t make the kind of impression you were hoping. Ultimately, be intentional. Treat every new employee with kindness, respect, and attention, so they don’t put themselves in professional jeopardy within the first few months. Set them up for success. Do it by showing them, taking the time, and investing your energy in making their acclimation to your company one that you both won’t regret.
If you are interested in reading a valuable resource, SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) provides a “New Employee Onboarding Guide – Proper Onboarding is Key to Retaining, Engaging Talent.” You can check out that resource here.