WE DISCUSSED earlier that one of the qualities that is more predictive of long-term success in a job than any others is “self-selection”—when the candidate really wants to work for this one company, more than any other company that he might have chosen or that might have chosen him.
The same research uncovered a second quality that predicts success: the way the individual starts the job, from the very first day. As the saying goes, “Well begun is half done.”
People today are too valuable for the “sink-or-swim method.” New employees require a “hands-on approach” in their new jobs. Start your people off right.
When a person begins a new job they have what is called “low task-relevant maturity.” This means that they don’t yet know how to do the job properly. They have limited or no knowledge or experience of this job. They may have an excellent education and may have done many other jobs in the past, but at this job, they are brand new, almost like infants.
On the first day, your new employees’ willingness is high but their self-confidence is low. It is at this special moment in their career that they need a lot of hands-on attention from you or from someone else. This is the key to building high-performing employees.
Most companies and managers have onboarding plans for new hires, especially expensive and important new employees. But even if you are starting an administrative assistant or receptionist, it is absolutely essential that you have a plan, a checklist, of exactly your process for quickly getting this person up to speed.
You should organize your time so that you or someone else can work closely with new employees for the first few days or weeks, familiarizing them with the past, present, and future of the company and with their particular jobs. Many companies have a complete one- or two-week process of familiarization that they go through with each new employee or groups of new employees. This is especially important if your company is growing fast and you are bringing new people on board at a rapid rate.
If you do not have the time to work closely with new employees, assign them to one of your best people. Some companies make the mistake of assigning a new employee to an average or underperforming employee, thinking that this is a good use of the mediocre employee’s time. However, it is during the first few days and weeks of the job when the new employee develops an understanding of how the company works, the required standards of performance, and the competence of the other people.
When you assign an average or underperforming employee to show the new person the ropes, the new employee quickly gets the impression that average performance is all that is expected in the company. If you assign a new employee to a person who does not work very hard or well, or who is negative and complaining, the new employee will adopt these behaviors and this mind-set from the very beginning. This is not what you had in mind.
When you set up a buddy system for the new employee, you should sit down with the employee who is going to orient the new person and work out a strategy and plan of action, even just a checklist, for exactly what you want the current employee to do in the first few days and weeks with the new employee. Do not leave this to chance.
Good people are too valuable, expensive, and important for you to go through all the trouble of hiring them and then let them start slowly with average performers as their models for their own performance in the future.
What companies have found is that even ten years after their hiring, if employees are started off right, with intense training with top people in their first few weeks and months, they are far, far ahead of other people who started at the same time but who did not get the initial high-quality, hands-on training and treatment.
As a sales manager and trainer over the years, I have been amazed to learn that fully 70 percent of companies do no sales training at all. They do what is called “product training,” and they think that this is the same as teaching people how to approach and interact with a prospective customer.
When I worked with IBM as an outside speaker and trainer, I was delighted to find that after the company had gone through the laborious process of selecting a new salesperson, it would train that salesperson for as long as eighteen months before the salesperson was allowed to go out into the field and contact customers on his own.
The best companies start their new people with intense training, like the Marine Corps, to make sure that their new people become excellent and important contributors to the company for the long term.
Future performance is significantly improved when an employee is started right, from the first day.
The best companies are those that take the onboarding process very seriously. They plan it carefully in advance. They commit their very best people to it. They stay on top of the process and maintain an open-door policy. They invite the new employees to go to their managers at any time with any questions or concerns, especially before they lose their confidence and enthusiasm.
1. Take the time to assign or partner a new person in a new job with someone who can show the new hire what to do.
2. Develop a written plan for exactly what you will do to start a new employee off right.