Contributed by James Mitchell
Congratulations! You’ve finished the extensive search for a new employee and are ready to start reaping the benefits of having qualified help at your workplace. No more sifting through resumes and booking interviews. Now it is time to get to work.
You want to jump in and let your new hire know all the ins and outs of the position, but what is the best way to get started? What can you as a manager or director do to help your new hire succeed? Also, what can you do to keep your employee successful long-term? On occasion, keeping great talent can be just as hard as finding it. How can you keep a great employee with your company or place of business?
Here are a few suggestions:
1. Give New Employees Projects, Not Tasks
The first boss I ever had in the “real world” lived by these words and although at the beginning I felt as if she was giving me too much information, I became more knowledgeable of the processes than any of my counterparts. If you give your employee tasks, they will simply finish the job at hand without knowing the overall purpose. Moving forward, you will now have to train him or her again on the same project with a different task or step. This will save time and money training your new hire. He or she will know the whole spectrum of their job by knowing why they are doing this task and how it fits into the overall company goal. Just be sure they have a clear understanding of who they can go to for help if they get stuck. You don’t want to risk putting other projects behind schedule because your new hire has disrupted the wrong people or to risk the new hire making unnecessary mistakes simply because they didn’t know who to ask for assistance.
2. Encourage Calculated Risks
Now this is not to say that new employees or interns should be risking it all in the first couple weeks but there is something to be said for removing the fear of failure. You don’t want them to develop a long-term fear because this could hamper their confidence going forward. Encourage him or her to take some small risks. Your new employee or intern should be looking for opportunities to succeed instead of settling for the status quo. Moving forward, your new team member will not be afraid to share ideas that could end up helping the company grow.
3. Train Now for Long Term Success
Spending time training employees seems like a no brainer, but in 2014, half of all U.S. companies spent more money on coffee than training new employees. This not only handicaps your new hire in the present, but you will also have a hard time retaining them. Taking the time to train your employee may be a lengthy process now, but in the long run is worth the investment. Be sure that your employee clearly knows what he or she is expected to learn in a certain time frame. This is also a great tool for keeping good employees and seeing if you need to tweak your training system. If employee turnover is still high, maybe a change to your process is in order. When you train your employees effectively, they feel more prepared for the workday, they will ask fewer questions and be more productive.
4. Use Social Media
Social media is prevalent and it is not going away anytime soon. Some companies block certain sites or try to stop social media usage by outlawing phones. Social media is not the enemy and has many benefits especially when you are training new employees. You can use media platforms like Youtube to stream training videos employees can watch at their leisure. You can also create a Facebook FAQ page that employees can visit if they have questions. Another great thing about social media is that it is cost-effective, saving companies of any size money.
Finding good help is a process and losing that help costs your company time and money. Effective training can help not only you, but also your new hire to contribute to the company’s main goal as quickly as possible without compromising quality.
James Mitchell recently left a stressful career in finance because he wanted to find a more fulfilling career. Today, he is working as a freelance consultant. In addition to his new career, he enjoys volunteering for InternSolutions.net and finds it very rewarding to connect young people with lucrative career opportunities.
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