In today’s world, sustainability often refers to efforts that provide for our current needs without compromising the needs of future generations. Green technologies, renewable energy and recycling are three examples that help facility managers minimize their use of the Earth’s precious resources. Employee sustainability is also an effort designed to improve the new hire process through green technologies while improving retention of quality employees. For example, the use of paper in new hire processing is extremely wasteful for today’s standards, while uncontrolled turnover negatively impacts people and is unsustainable for long-term organizational health.
Since the 1980s, organizations reduced, downsized or eliminated people from the payroll in order to maintain profitability and efficiency. Furthermore, many organizations have come to accept a high number of resignations simply because it is the expected norm in today’s society. Employee retention is a lost art that needs to be rediscovered if we want to encourage employee sustainability within our organizations.
Establishing a team
Human resources professionals often use the term “onboarding” to describe the process of helping a new hire become a productive member of the organization. Of course, this is not actually a word. It is a non-word that has not yet found its way into the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Communications sometimes get side-tracked because of the use or misuse of words. We often hear people say “yuman” instead of “human” and “orientated” instead of “oriented.”
The problem with “onboarding” is that it is too mechanical and does not do justice in describing the process of helping a person become part of the team. We are not talking about someone who is boarding a ship or ready and willing to participate in a function. We are talking about a very long and complex process from the initial communication with a candidate to the first 12 months of employment.
American advertising pioneer Leo Burnett once said, “The work of an advertising agency is warmly and immediately human. It deals with human needs, wants, dreams and hopes. Its ‘product’ cannot be turned out on an assembly line.”
We need to deal with the human issues of turning candidates into valuable team players. It can mean the difference between mediocre companies and highly successful ones.
Profitability and cost management are a big part of this picture. Recruiting, turnover, lost revenues and unhappy customers can be very expensive. Today, no company can afford to miss a beat when it comes to its hiring process, controlling costs and developing powerful team players.
For example, most employee turnover surveys indicate that the cost of turnover will vary from US$3,500 to more than US$10,000. Costs can include advertising, recruiting, training, sign-on bonuses and lost productivity. These costs will vary depending on company practices. If your employee turnover rate is 25 percent and you lose 20 people earning US$30,000, your turnover costs could easily swell to more than US$300,000.
The following are a few suggestions you can consider to create a state-of-the-art hiring process that will reduce turnover, and increase green technology while improving employee sustainability.
Setting the stage
Whether you use outside or in-house recruiters, everyone needs to relay the same messages. Recruiters need to have the mindset from the beginning that any candidate may be a valuable, future employee. Instead of attempting to screen the candidate out, the recruiter needs to sell the company on its culture and the career opportunity. There will be plenty of time to reject candidates later.
It is imperative to leave a good first impression. You may be interviewing the candidate, but that candidate is also interviewing you and trying to figure out if your company is a place he or she wants to work.
Treat them like VIPs
Imagine this scenario. Your corporate office is in New York and you need to interview sales candidates for a position in Los Angeles. After the initial phone conversation, you invite the candidate to participate in a Web interview. You send over a press kit and compensation plan prior to the interview so the candidate has a better sense of what the opportunity is all about. If they don’t have a built-in camera on their computer, you send a camera and tell them to keep it as a gift regardless of whether or not they get the job. The result? Saving thousands of dollars anyway on a trip to Los Angeles you don’t have to make. With today’s technology, Web interviewing is a very effective way to interviewsignificantly reducing travel expenses.
If they pass the Web interview, you fly them to your location, have a car service meet them at the airport and take them to a quality hotel. You include dinner and breakfast, pick them up the following morning and take them on a tour of one of your accounts. Later, you have lunch and bring them back to the corporate office to meet the executives. If an offer is made, the candidates will make an informed, intelligent decision as to whether or not to join your company.
For local employees, you can obviously skip the Web interview but can still take candidates on a tour of a site or the location where they will be working. This is known as a job preview. It gives them a chance to meet coworkers and get a sense of the commute to the workplace. Although it takes longer to recruit this way, you will be making better hiring decisions.
Automating your human resources forms
With today’s technology, there is no reason why your company should be dealing with new hire forms in paper format. Using an automated system, a new hire should be able to complete the forms online. It is necessary for the new employee to enter basic information only once with the system populating all the other forms with this information. This is quick, efficient and tells your new hire that your organization is technologically-savvy. More importantly, it eliminates 80 percent of the time it takes human resources personnel to review and correct forms that were not completed properly.
Orientation and training
Unfortunately, many employee orientations are not memorable experiences and training often takes a back seat when the job requires someone to start projects right away. A quality orientation should not be rushed. The new hire should receive an orientation manual, fully tabbed with everything from benefits and compensation to important dates such as holidays and pay dates for the entire year.
Training should also be multidimensional. New hires should receive a compensation chart that spells out the career path and salary ranges that are available to them. A “buddy” should be assigned to answer questions and help him or her learn the ropes. A computerized human resources profile should be created that tracks all of the skills new hires can acquire for promotion purposes. These skills should be tracked electronically and posted on the “Human Resources Wall of Fame” for everyone to see. This open-book management approach enables the new hire to visually see what he or she needs to learn to get a promotion. It also eliminates questions such as, “Why didn’t I get that promotion?”
Besides hands-on training, videos should also be used to help the new hire quickly learns new skills. With today’s technology, it is relatively easy to produce these training videos in-house. They can be customized to fit in with your systems and processes. This is a very effective learning tool that incorporates sound, video and pictures.
Maintain momentum
Everybody remembers their first day on the jobso it’s important that it goes well. Pretend your new hire was invited to your house for lunch with your family. You will introduce him or her to everyone, followed by a tour of the house and finally, will sit down and enjoy lunch with the family.
The same applies at the job. If new employees feel comfortable and respected at work and enjoy the people they are working with, the chances of them remaining in your company’s employment is significantly higher.
Maintaining positive assimilation requires certain events to trigger over the next few months. During the very first week, there should be welcome letters from key executives and lunch with the manager. Keep the momentum going.
Review company procedures and practices
A great way to get new hires educated quickly is to develop a standard operations procedure manual. Ideally, this should be online so it can be easily updated. The new employee should be required to read these procedures and the manager should certify that the procedures are understood. Try to make a concerted effort to remove the administrative tasks out of the equation. For example, hourly employees should be able to clock-in on a computer instead of coping with manual time sheets. An automated system ensures accuracy especially if it is linked to the payroll system. The last thing you want is a new hire to be upset because his or her paycheck is inaccurate.
It is also critical that the new person completely understands the performance objectives of his or her job. If you were a baseball player, you would need to know how to play the game in order to help the team win. The same logic applies at work. Employees cannot be held accountable for their job performance if they don’t understand the rules of the game. In the absence of clear guidelines, a performance review after 90 days will be a disappointment and the year-end review will be equally disappointing. It is important for the manager to clearly explain all goals and expectations.
Use a coaching style of management to maximize results
New hires want to feel empowered to get things done at work. Remember that working for companies is a lot different than taking orders in the armed services. Telling people what to do is not the most effective way to empower employees to achieve their best. The manager should present a problem or challenge and ask the employee to figure out the answer with the understanding that they can ask the manager questions if need be. A manager is a facilitator that enables people to activate their talents in an effort to achieve results. Regular and consistent feedback concerning job performance is also important for long-term employee retention. People want and expect it.
Create a fun work culture
We have all heard of the expression, “Work hard and play hard.” If you consider that you will spend the bulk of your life in the workplace, doesn’t it make sense to have a little fun in the process? The manager has tremendous influence over whether the job will be fun or a labor of misery. Having a comfortable and fun work culture will result in a number of benefits for the organizationfewer absenteeism, lower turnover, higher morale, better customer service and increased productivity.
Develop long-term team players
The new-hire process that you install within your organization can and will have long-term consequences and results regarding employee sustainability, profitability, cost management and employee morale.
Basketball legend Michael Jordan once said, “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
Develop a process that will transform your new hires into valuable, long-term team players. It’s all about being sustainable and building trust. FMJ
