Michaels & Associates

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In our previous two articles, we've been weaving a tale of two employees, Sydney and Charlie, to provide ideas on how to improve your new hire training program. Let's finish the tale with some more tips and insight.

Follow Up

Sydney

Charlie

Sydney completed her orientation program a few weeks ago, and she's doing her best to fulfill her new responsibilities on the job. However, she struggles with some tasks and finds herself making things up as she goes along. She still has unanswered questions that are beginning to affect her productivity and confidence. At this point, she's not sure what to do. Should she try again with her manager and see if he can fill in the blanks? Should she ask her teammates for help again? Or should she spend some time tonight on the online job boards to find a more promising job opportunity?

Charlie has completed his first major unit of onboarding and is applying his new knowledge. In the last week, he met with his manager to review his progress and his mentor to ask a few more questions. The Learning & Development team also asked him to participate in a roundtable discussion to see how he liked his onboarding and what suggestions he has for improvement. Charlie leaves work each day feeling fulfilled and confident. He is proud to represent Zeta Company and knows he's found a place he'd like to stay for years to come.

Too many times, new hire training is implemented with little or no follow-up by managers, Learning & Development, Human Resources and other stakeholders. What are the dangers?

• Employee retention of the material they were presented can drop.
• Employee confidence is reduced.
• If they don't get the follow-up and reinforcement, they can do exactly what Sydney did: make things up when she didn't know the answer. Besides the obvious effect on the employees, this also negatively impacts standards and consistency, and it puts the company at risk.

By integrating follow-up into the learning process, you can monitor employee progress, identify any misconceptions they may have and quickly put them back on the right path. You can also identify gaps in the training and make adjustments for future new hires.

Final Thoughts

According to the SHRM Presentation by the Wynhurst Group (April 2007), 22% of staff turnover occurs in the first 45 days of employment. The presentation also states that new employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58% more likely to be with the organization after three years.

Which statistic do you want your organization to reflect?

Here are a couple more statistics:

• On average, companies invest a minimum of $10,000 to hire one employee.
• The cost of losing an employee in his or her first year of employment is estimated to be at least three times his or her salary.

You invest a lot in your employees. You want and need them to be successful. You want and need to prevent turnover. With a relatively small investment in your employee onboarding process, you can dramatically, positively impact your organization through an engaged, productive workforce.

Continue reading:
Employee New Hire Training (Part 1) →
Employee New Hire Training (Part 2) →