Jul 12, 2011
Employees: I pose this scenario to you…
You’re starting a new job. You walk in the first day. What do you expect? Some boring orientation? An overwhelming stack of papers to sign? Meeting everyone and being tasked with remembering names?
It’s overwhelming. How long will it take you to feel like you’re actually a member of the team and not just one of the newbies?
Employers: Here is your challenge…
Make your employees feel at home almost immediately.
The economy is on the rebound. Your company is hiring again. But all of a sudden you’re starting to see what could be a very dramatic shift in company culture
As you replace the employees who were laid off or you begin to exponentially grow your company, you’re faced with the challenge of having a larger mass of new employees than existing employees.
Loyalty isn’t a given when you hire a new employee. They just left a previous employer to join you, who is to say they won’t jump ship when a seemingly better offer comes their way again?
The fact is; loyalty begins the minute your new employee walks through the door. And it starts with your orientation process.
It may be beneficial for you to take a good look at the orientation process. You are still trying to hook your employees for the long haul. Orientation is just another opportunity to sell yourself to your employees and make a lasting impression.
Human resources expert Carl Mistlebauer has 18 years of HR experience. His very specific advice and thoughts on the issue of employee loyalty and orientation are as follows.
When you find yourself in a situation where the number of older employees are a minority then you have to accept the fact that things change.
The key is to not treat the new employees as “newbies” because the reality is loyalty is something that can easily be established just by referring to someone by their first name….or by sitting down with them on a frequent basis and asking them their opinion.
Thus the basis of loyalty is not determined by length of employment but rather by individual value.
If you see your work force as “older employees” and “newbies” you will never be able to instill the new hires with the values and loyalty of the existing employee base, because the existing employee base will want to segregate themselves and be separate.
With leadership you can actually integrate the two groups…but you have to have leadership that does not see “newbies” and “long term employees” but rather sees everyone as new family and old family.
After that its just a matter of making sure everyone works together and intermingles with each other.
My Experience at TxMQ
Let me take a minute to share my personal experience with starting a new job. I can honestly say when after I began my job, I was truly uncertain about my future with the small company.
I even continued to look around (my employer knows this so I am not spilling the beans here)!
I had some other opportunities arise, but before they did, I was taken in and really treated like a part of the team. And that began my first week there.
Day three of my new employment, the owner of the company shut the office down for an hour and a half and took everyone in the small office out to lunch to get to know one another.
By a couple months into my employment, I was having regular office pow wows with my co-workers and the owner about several business growth issues. I really began to feel like my opinion mattered in the grand scheme of things.
At that point, I landed an interview with what I felt would be a great opportunity. I did go to the interview to hear what they had to say and all in all, it would have been a great opportunity. However, I just didn’t feel at the time it was a better opportunity than the one I had been given at TxMQ.
I don’t regret my decision. Because of the friendliness, company culture, flexibility and variety of work and level of responsibility I have been handed, I feel like I can actually make something of myself here and for that I am thankful. I have had the opportunity to have a big hand in developing some key services and offerings from our company and that experience doesn’t come around often.
I didn’t feel like a newbie for long and I can attest that it is just the little things that can make it much easier for new employees when they join a company. Loyalty isn’t hard to build; it just takes a small amount of initial effort to get the job done.
*Carl Mistlebauer has 18 years of human resource experience. Check out his blog at http://changespeakingout.blogspot.com/ .
