your onboarding is costing you
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Happy freaking Monday y’all! Something I thought I’d never say, I think I love Monday’s now???
I love hitting send on this newsletter knowing that I'll get to hear back from y’all. To date, the responses have been fire so keep ‘em coming. Today, I have to know if you're a Taylor Swift fan, what is your favorite track off this album. I’m keeping mine a secret until you tell me yours! FAIR TRADE.
HR Therapy was a smash hit last week! Over 350+ people joined us to hear about all things employee engagement.
GUESS WHAT! We're taking this show on the road, December 1st I'll be hosting HR Therapy Live: HR's Seat at the Table in NYC. Attendees will get all the info they need to make 2023 a success!
The first 10 people to sign up will get 50% off your ticket with the code: HR-EARLY-BIRD.
Last week I left ya with a cliffhanger! Not me pretending my entire life is as exciting as an episode of One Tree Hill. #TeamLucas all the way.
So I’m here to deliver on all things onboarding. You may question, why onboarding? It can’t be that important… buckle up folks IT IS.
SPONSORED BY QUESTIS
Fun fact: employee engagement has gone down for the first time in over a decade.
Now, more than ever, employees are disconnecting from work and focusing more on building for the future.
The financial empowerment movement has taken off and I'm here for it!
It would be smart for companies to offer that as a benefit… After all, benefits that align with personal life goals have better adoption and help decrease attrition.
Have I told you about Questis?
Questis leverages a combo of tech, coaching and communities to help employees solve the root causes of their financial stress. Not to mention, Questis can improve your bottom line, employee productivity, and workplace satisfaction.
See how Questis can work for your team!
ONBOARDING
Onboarding: the key to employee engagementCopy anchor linkCopied
Do you remember that feeling the night before the first day of school? I know I was not the only one that got excited before that first day.
Spoiler alert: I was not in the cool crowd. 🤓
I still get that feeling right before I start a new job. The sheer excitement of something new and simultaneous fear of the unknown.
What can amplify that excitement and take away the fear?
One word: onboarding.
Onboarding is one of the most important moments of a new employee’s journey and yet the part I see so many companies completely fumble.
Raise your hand if you’ve been on the receiving end of a frantic Slack on a Friday about a new hire starting on Monday and the manager claims to have forgotten. 🙋🏾♀️
Onboarding is oftentimes treated as an afterthought, just something HR does to make a new hire’s first day nice.
But, onboarding and engagement are intertwined with onboarding having a major impact on employee engagement. Without comprehensive onboarding how are employees supposed to feel connected to an organization’s mission?
COUGH they can't COUGH
If you think about it, most problems that arise later in an employee's journey could be traced back to onboarding.
BRB spiraling and over analyzing every employee issue I've encountered.
Why onboarding matters:Copy anchor linkCopied
From the second an offer gets signed up until the 90 day mark, what a new hire experiences is crucial for their success and engagement.
Don’t believe me?
A strong onboarding experience can:
- improve new hire retention by 82%
- improve new hire productivity by 70%
- result in an 18x commitment to the organization
- result in 91% more connectedness at work
Pre-pandemic onboarding had a different look and feel. It was easier to build connections with new employees when you can meet them in-person. Welcome lunches and happy hours provided ample opportunities to build strong relationships. They were staples of an in-person onboarding experience!
But, when we had to pivot to a remote world our ability to connect at work suffered, especially for new hires. In the remote world, it can feel really isolating and lonely to join a company.
I’ve onboarded remotely twice and I can honestly say, it isn’t the same.
Employees feeling connected to each other and their companies is crucial for engagement. When employees feel that they are connecting, they feel like they belong and that feeling is SO VERY powerful.
Right now, we’re witnessing overall employee engagement going down.
If engagement is going down, maybe we’re bad at onboarding?
Well, only 12% of employees strongly agree that their onboarding process is great.
3 tips to improve your onboarding:Copy anchor linkCopied
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📣📣 Onboarding is not just the HR/People team’s jobs!
Me again, reminding everyone that not EVERYTHING is HR's responsibility. In fact, the responsibility of onboarding also falls to the direct manager.
But from what i've observed, companies get this wrong.
Here are 3 tips to improve onboarding:
1. Define your culture, mission and vision: What exactly are employees doing here and why does it matter?
Write it down and put it somewhere your new employees can reference when they have questions.
Pro tip: put it in a welcome email to the new hire for their first day. It’s a nice touch!
Here are some examples to jump start your thinking.
2. Have a plan for the first 30, 60, 90 days. Work with the hiring manager on this plan - they will know best on some of these details!
Whatever you create, make a template that can be reused by other managers.
What to cover:
- Day 1: paperwork, resources, systems, company culture, mission, vision, manager / team intros
- Week 1: continue team meet and greets, role and expectation setting, manager working relationship, start setting goals
- Month 1: priorities, integration to the team, projects and task ownership, goal alignment, career development discussions
- Month 2: priorities, feedback around work, successes, goals check in, career goals
- Month 3: priorities, feedback around work, successes, goals check in, career goals
There’s so much more I want to say about the first 90 days so be on the lookout for that as a full edition of IHIH. For now, this resource is helpful.
3. Survey: the first 30, 60, 90 days should conclude with a survey at each milestone. While that feels like a lot of surveys, this time is the most crucial to get right! If something is not going well at the 30 day mark, you still have the opportunity to make some improvements.
My favorite questions to ask:
- I know what is expected of me
- I have the resources I need to successfully do my job
- I understand the company culture
- My goals are clearly defined
- My manager has set expectations about my role
This question bank has many many more!
If you were to take away one thing: if you have low engagement instead of throwing another happy hour pause and take a look at your onboarding and your managers!
(HUMAN) RESOURCES
- Capital raised by Black founders continues to decrease
- Onboarding vs Orientation
- Shocking to no one, work impacts health and wellbeing
- 5 questions onboarding should answer
- A ranking Drake's 30 greatest songs, see mine below!
HR THERAPY
Over 350+ people joined us for the first session of HR Therapy!
You won't want to miss the next HR Therapy. on Wednesday 11/2.
Have any deep dark questions about burnout?
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
📚 What I’m reading: Taylor Swift fan theories about her new album. No shame over here. I loooove a good easter egg! I need to know who these songs are about.
📺 What I’m watching: The train wreck that is Love is Blind S3. I used to believe in this show, but now I don’t know what to think! Yes, I believed in a dating reality tv show. I mean season 1 proved it worked but nothing really tops season 1.
☕️ What I’m drinking: STILL TEA. Ya girl is still recovering from being sick. IDK what it is about lemon and honey but I drink that and I feel like i've been cured. Recently re-ordered my fave tea, hot cinnamon spice.
SONG OF THE WEEK
🎧 Fear, DrakeCopy anchor linkCopied
In honor of Drake's birthday I give you my top 10 Drake songs:
10. Headlines: relevant to my current job
9. Fancy: oh you fancy huh, I say to myself as I click add to cart
8. Successful: used to sing this to myself in college for hype
7. Emotionless: Mariah is my fave artist of all time
6. Fair Trade: 2022 motto: I've been losing friends and finding peace
5. Forever: the GOATS all got together
4. Thank Me Now: you got your resolutions, we just got reservations
3. Paris Morton Music: waited YEARS for this to be on Spotify
2. Nice for What: theme song for life
And number 1:
Fear: baby Drake rapping about how he's scared fame will change him. Me too sir, me too. 😂
That's all for this week! For all the HR people out there that just want to blast Taylor Swift and ignore that email, I SUPPORT YOU.
