5 Ways To Use Behavioral Onboarding To Improve Employee Retention Techniques
Posted on Mon, May 21, 2012 @ 10:03 AM
When you bring a new employee into your organization, his or her integration into the unfamiliar environment of the new workplace doesn't end once all the introductory documents are signed and the office tour ends. Especially within the first 90 days of an individual's employment within your organization, the consistent application of employee retention techniques is vital to keeping this valuable member of your team productive, engaged and happy. Taking the extra effort to properly integrate new hires into your company will ensure that the time, money and energy you spend hiring and acclimating them to their new culture is an investment in a long-term addition to your organization. Follow these five simple rules to improve employee retention in your workplace.
Get to Know the Individual
Everyone solves problems, manages time and resolves conflicts differently. From the earliest stage of hiring, do everything you can to gather useful behavioral information about a potential employee. This data isn't just useful in the hiring process, it's also essential to an individual's ongoing success throughout his or her career in a given organization.
Use What You Know at Every Step
One of the biggest mistakes managers make in the application of employee retention techniques is the failure to continue to use them once the new hire has settled into his or her position. It's not enough to use what you know about the individual to ease the process of the earliest stages of hiring and orientation. As the employee develops on-the-job skills, consistent interactions with coworkers and a pattern of conflict resolution, it will be easier to fit all of these things into your desired company culture if you remember how the individual tends to respond to the demands of the job.
Share the Information
New hires may not work directly under the managers who hire them. As an individual moves throughout your company, his or her different managers may not have a clear understanding of his or her behavioral tendencies. Just as it's important to maintain focus on the individual's behavioral information between orientation and acclimatization, it's important to hold that focus between team transitions.
Build a Better Team
All employees will have to work with others from time to time. Even those positions that tend to be independent of group work will occasionally involve other employees. The behavioral information you have about your employees is valuable to their interpersonal interactions as well. Take every opportunity to help your employees get to know one another so they can approach group work with a more nuanced understanding of each individual's methods and personality.
Create a Clear Path of Advancement
How long an employee remains with your company depends on how confident an employee feels about his or her future within the organization. As you gather behavioral information, take note of how eager the individual is to advance within the company. Those who see your organization as an environment where both personal growth and daily comfort are possible are more likely to be consistently dedicated to their work. An employee who wishes to remain in his or her current position shouldn't be pushed to advance too quickly while an employee who wants to advance his or her career should be encouraged to do so through educational opportunities. Keep your ambitious employees focused on the tasks of their current positions but encourage their curiosity about the responsibilities and methodology of more advanced positions.
Using these intuitive employee retention techniques will help you build a strong, stable company culture and maximize the expenditure of resources applied to hiring and orienting new additions to your team.
