Onboarding
While the mechanics of recruiting are fairly standardized, (i.e. search, screen, interview, and then select), hiring represents your first opportunity to ensure you build a team of motivated, high-performing individuals. Aligning company values with job seeker expectations is key to onboarding staff who will propel your prosperity.
To start your recruitment process on the right foot, consider inviting interested candidates for an informational interview. Though often seen as a way for job seekers to evaluate their options or get their foot in the door, these meetings provide invaluable insights for recruiters as well.
Informational interviews offer a window into the real-world experiences, skills, and expectations of people who want to work for you. Rather than struggling to make your existing hiring plans fit the current job market, you can act on what you learn in these interviews. By adapting your pay scales, job descriptions, training programs, and advancement tools, you’ll be in a better position to compete for the best hires.
Effective onboarding is much more than just filling out forms, taking a tour of the break room, and pointing out where to find the office stationery supplies. It’s really about bringing together the puzzle pieces of productivity goals, company culture, and support initiatives that give new hires the bigger picture of how your company develops staff into top performers.
Even for employees in high-level positions, it’s wise to introduce work gradually. Procedures and practices at your organization likely differ from what the new team member is familiar with, and overwhelming someone with new methodologies, systems, and terminology invites disengagement and frustration.
From a culture-building standpoint, the onboarding process is also an important time to foster inclusion and empower your new employees. By sharing company values and encouraging input, you demonstrate your commitment to building an engaged and valued team.
Early in the onboarding process, be sure to review support initiatives such as your diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) program. With reports from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics documenting broad and diverse racial participation in the workforce, your DEIB is what serves as the backbone to building a strong, high-performance team that reflects the culture at large.
If your recruiting and onboarding processes are running smoothly, you’ll quickly find yourself with employees who grasp the company culture and comfortably meet day-to-day expectations. At this point, it’s time to focus on development and growth measures that will coax the strongest possible performance out of each new staff member.
Using a robust performance tracking system like a customized HR analytics dashboard puts the assessment data you need at your fingertips. Metrics that measure productivity, engagement, and efficiency help you identify top individual performers whose accomplishments you can capitalize on. For these stand-out staffers, deploying strategies such as mentorships, cross-training, and increased delegation can turn an already strong performer into a high-performance superstar.
Keeping a close eye on metrics also helps you target and turn around poor performers before they become a drain on the company as a whole. You can provide additional training, make adjustments to workloads, or increase the availability of tools and resources to help struggling staff members improve their contributions to the organization.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, at the height of the recent “Great Resignation” job quits reached a 20-year high. That milestone brought about a shift in the employer-employee relationship that continues to give the upper hand to employees.
Because revolving-door employment is costly in terms of lost productivity, replacement expenses, and damage to employee morale, retention requires significant attention. When your business puts as much effort into employee loyalty as it does to retaining customers, you’ll see a greater boost to your bottom line.
While the loss of any employee is impactful, when a valuable team member leaves the fold it can be particularly devastating. Rather than learning why a high-performance employee is leaving during an exit interview, take a proactive approach by engaging staff in the retention process. Solicit feedback and talk to your employees about how to maintain or improve job satisfaction, and then make adjustments if feasible.
When you engage with your workers, you’ll discover that job satisfaction is not just about pay rates and job titles. Factors like flexible work schedules, recognition, collaboration, manageable workloads, efficient payroll processes, and a healthy work-life balance contribute to your team’s happiness. Even if you can’t tick every box, committing to worker satisfaction ensures your efforts throughout the rest of the employee lifecycle aren’t in vain.
Whether you’re bringing on your very first hire or launching an interim executive search to fill a role in your C-suite, don’t overlook the importance of engineering a sound lifecycle employment plan. From laying the groundwork with optimized recruitment to taking proactive steps to develop and hold onto top staff, the high-performance results you get from your team will be well worth the effort.