Employers regularly hire me to conduct exit interviews when promising new employees leave within their first six months. After conducting hundreds of interviews, I can document that newly hired employees decide what their employer is like and whether they will fit in and be successful during their first days and weeks.
Here’s what employers, managers and supervisors need to know.
The new employee you hired may receive another enticing job offer after they join your organization. Other employers, desperate to land a quality employee, reach out on LinkedIn and other sites advertising attractive jobs. While your new hire may not be keeping an eye on ZipRecruiter or Indeed.com, a recruiter’s algorithms may still find your employee’s LinkedIn profile.
Worse, an unhappy employee on your team may pull your new hire aside and voice concerns. When this happens, most new hires hesitate to let their new employers know what they’ve heard, both to protect the informant and because they don’t want to admit that they listened. Either occurrence may lead to new hire remorse and create festering doubts.
Recent hires who feel uncertain about their manager, coworkers, or job assignments think about leaving. They also evaluate minor difficulties negatively, instead of brushing them off.
Counter this downward spiral. Build a strong relationship with your new hires and integrate them into your team. Explain your plans for them and why they’ve made the right Outline how you want your employee to communicate with you and how you assess performance. Do you prefer emails, texts or calls? On what topics do you want to be briefed? Do you want your new employee schedule time weekly or to pop into your physical or virtual office whenever they hit a snag? You can also ask your new employee how they hope you’ll communicate with them.
In Managing for Accountability: A Business Leader’s Toolbox’s chapter four, you’ll find 14 sample expectations you can give your new hire to get them started on the right path. I’ve found “reach out to me when you need” and “communicate openly, directly,” to be particularly important.
You’ll also find a of 10 “you can expect from me” statements you can provide to assure your new hire s/he has made the right decision to work for you. These include “you can expect from me: honesty, professionalism, direct communication, fairness and leadership.”
As a manager, you can stop new hire churn: Prove to your new employee s/he made the right choice in joining your organization and lucked out landing you as a manager.
