Onboarding Employee Love
New hires should love your organization. You offer a flexible work arrangement, matching 401k, generous PTO, and health insurance–among other benefits. Salaries at your organization are above average for position, region, and industry. You’ve given your new hires everything they need to love you…right?
Wrong. One of the biggest–and first–mistakes an organization makes with a new hire is assuming that acceptance of the job offer equals love of the organization. It does not.
The hiring process barely gets an organization and new hire past the “first date”. Sure, they both find each other attractive in important ways, and so they’ve agreed to continue dating, but love? Not just yet.
What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Talented employees who love their employer…will brag about their employer. Employers who are bragged about…will be envied. Employers who are envied…will attract more top talent.
Love is everything. But organizations often fail to cultivate this love until it’s too late. In order to gain employee love, employer’s must invest time and resources in the employee onboarding phase. This is when employees will decide whether the organization is a keeper or just another fish in the sea.
Only Fools Rush In
Many organizations will direct all resources toward finding and hiring the best, but then relegate employee onboarding to a mishmash of emails, paper stacks, and afterthoughts. They rush through onboarding because they assume employee love has already been gained. Fools!
Rushing employee onboarding is like splurging on a romantic 5-star restaurant for the first date, and then following it up with McDonald’s…no, actually, it’s like knocking on the date’s door, and then throwing a handful of McDonald’s coupons in the air and walking away. “Hurry up the car is running.”
Cultivating employee love takes time and consistent effort. An organization should never assume that one action or the mere passage of time will result in that love. To gain and keep employee love, an organization must consistently show love. And that starts with employee onboarding.
A Culture of Love
A unique, compelling employer brand is usually one reason why a candidate accepts a job offer. And an organization with an effective recruitment strategy likely invests time in promoting this. But everyone seeks to make great first impressions, and everyone dresses up for the first date.
It is during the onboarding phase that new hires learn whether or not an organization can deliver on what its employer brand promised. Did they promise a friendly work environment? Transparency? Open-door policy? A work-hard-play-hard philosophy? Well, then, the organization better deliver. And it needs to deliver early and often.
According to SHRM, half of all hourly workers will leave a new position within the first 120 days. That leaves precious little time for an organization to back up its employer brand and cultivate employee love. To succeed, it cannot rely on gimmicks, giveaways, or once-a-year public displays of affection. On a daily basis, it must manage an employer brand defined and driven by an authentic and exceptional culture of love.
Cultivating Employee Love With Technology
An organization with a culture of love is a wonderful thing. But that love can go to waste if a new hire does not return the love or is not feeling the love. Technology can be invaluable in ensuring that:
- an organization hires an employee capable of love;
- an organization succeeds in showing love to new employees.
It’s in the best interest of every employer to hire individuals who can love them because re-hiring is costly. The Center for American Progress (CAP) puts the cost of replacing an employee at around 20% of that employee’s annual salary. That’s why organizations invest in hiring technology to efficiently find the “perfect match” for the position and the organization.
A similar investment in onboarding technology helps organizations show love and efficiently move new hires from “first date crush” to “longterm love”. Quite simply, onboarding technology makes an organization look good and a new hire feel good. It does this by automating time-consuming tasks and drastically reducing–or even eliminating–those groan-inspiring stacks of paper.
The Game of Love
Love can be cruel. Your organization can do all the right things in hiring and onboarding new employees: present yourself honestly, patiently seek the right match, make the first move, plan the perfect first date, and commit to a relationship…
But damn if that new hire doesn’t leave you for some fun, young start-up with a fake brand!
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. But at least you’ll know that you did it all in the name of love.
ExactHire provides HR technology to help employers hire, onboard, and retain top talent for their organizations. To learn how our solutions can help you get the employee love that you want, contact us today!
Feature Image Credit: Love Colour 
by Thor(contact)
