“…………over 80% of the global workforce is actively disengaged”

ACQUIRE TALENT THOUGHTFULLY

ONBOARD VIGOROUSLY

TRAIN FOR EXCELLENCE & PRODUCTIVITY

DEVELOPING HIGH LEVELS OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT DAY 1   ……….and beyond

Before we move on to New Employee Engagement Initiative Day 1 & New Employee Feedback, a look back to THE HIRING PIECE  

The selection process has to be executed with Employee Engagement in mind, see post Hiring for high levels of Employee Engagement. If the organization has been successful in training managers to identify candidates who are most likely to become engaged employees, you will be well positioned for the next step, actually creating that engaged employee and monitoring engagement and management practices in your workforce through employee feedback.

Why “Management Practices?”  We know employee engagement and management practices are linked, see post Management Practices Impact Engagement.

ENGAGEMENT INITIATIVE STARTING DAY 1

A THREE PRONGED PROGRAM

• It starts with the programs you create for bringing new employees into the organization, and
• Continues with monitoring and surveying those new employees about those processes (Feedback), and
• Monitoring and surveying all employees about their work environment across a range of factors.

Bullet #2 is the primary focus of this post.   However, reviewing some basics will set the stage for the importance of both engagement and early feedback from new employees.

Employee engagement is important because it’s about the value employees deliver and it affects the bottom line. Please see previous post Engagement =s Commitment.

Fact: organizations that collect data on workforce behavior and create reports on engagement have concluded that over 80% of the global workforce is actively disengaged, i.e. unmotivated.

This represents a cost to employers.   The organization is paying a salary for an expected output and outcomes and not getting full value back.

You can extrapolate further and calculate the impact on:

• product and/or service quality,

• customer satisfaction,

• waste & injuries due to errors, and

• employee dissatisfaction resulting in turnover.

Understanding the importance of Employee Engagement vs. the fact that today’s organizations are dealing with an Engagement crisis should raise your concern about Engagement levels in your organization and encourage the implementation of initiatives to promote it starting on Day 1 of employment;

• Develop new hire programs and measure their effectiveness, also
• measure the engagement of existing staff followed by implementation of remedial programs to improve it.

ORIENTATION, ONBOARDING & TRAINING PROGRAMS

THAT PROMOTE ENGAGEMENT ARE ESSENTIAL

>>>> Getting feedback on the effectiveness of these programs, also essential <<<<

The effectiveness of the programs you develop and utilize with new employees to promote engagement will determine

• The trajectory of those new hires’ success and productivity in your organization,
• The value they deliver to the organization, and
• How soon they deliver that value

You can’t know, with confidence, if your efforts are adequate and accomplish their purpose unless you ask for feedback? It’s as simple as that.

If feedback from employees of any sort is avoided in your organization, it is worth asking why this is the case.   I can assure you, the answer to that question will, of itself, be enlightening.

Here are some of the responses I have heard when asking companies why feedback is not solicited from employees.

• •    Employees will expect us to do something with the feed-back  – FAIL
  •    We already know everything we need to know – FAIL
  •    Everything is just fine – FAIL
  •    I’m in charge – FAIL

Is your organization “Feedback Phobic?” What’s the rationale behind it?

There are several very important reasons for soliciting new employee feedback impacting both Employee and Organization Development.   Here’s just one that deserves some attention. It is more focused on the Organization Development side than Employee Development.

Do you often wish there was a way of getting fresh eyes on the efficiency and effectiveness of operations at your organization without having to bring in an expensive consultant?

An excellent source, at the very least a place to start, and more often than not – ignored, is getting feedback about your operations from recent hires.  

These folks are not yet immersed in and married to departmental or organization routines – the way work in done, the processes that are in place. They are seeing things through fresh eyes. The way you wish other employees and managers were able to see things.

These new employees also present an opportunity to learn about the “best practices” which may have been used in the other organizations with which they have been associated – however, new employees are not likely to volunteer such information without some indication that it is wanted. The new employee feedback process I will outline provides the opportunity for communicating that sharing best practices as well as new ideas for improving how work is done is valued and wanted.

You might find long term employees resent the idea that a new employee might have something of value to contribute or especially that management may want to hear what it is.   This is especially true in organizations where the status quo is something to be guarded at all cost, new ideas and ways of working are few and far between and are only entertained from those in managerial roles and with longevity in the organization.   (Sounds pretty awful when it’s written out in plain English doesn’t it?)

Back to the new employee, those first few months on the job, and gathering information about the execution & effectiveness of new employee programs

Those early weeks are the building blocks for what will come later in the way of performance from your new employees, so companies need to know about the effectiveness of the programs they have put into place.

I like to survey employees who have been with the organization for 3 – 6 month and have completed a good part of their training and are “doing the job.”

The “doing the job” piece is critical, since it allows the new employee to evaluate how effective the training has been.

Make it clear in the survey introduction, that completing the survey is a service that is valued by the organization.  State that understanding what we are doing well and not so well in bring people into the organization is considered critical to the ongoing success of the organization and critical in identifying improvements to new employee programs.

Further, I like to include words in the introduction that describe the value of their “new eyes,” their insights into the quality and effectiveness of how work is being done gained during training and their early weeks on the job.   Insights that can be invaluable in reviewing work processes to make improvements.

Once surveys are returned, I believe there is great value in conducting a meeting (a video conference if necessary) with those recent hires to review the survey responses and promote a dialogue that can take the organization to the next level in how new employees are brought into the organization.  Such a meeting typically involves employees from several functional areas – another plus.

Beyond the reasons stated above, there are additional benefits in adopting a regular process for soliciting this type of new employee feedback in a MEETING FORMAT, they are:

Facilitation of development of a mind set that encourages  building work relationships which tend to create open communication, cooperation, and fosters trust (a basic building block for Engagement),

 

Attaching value and importance to what employees do (another building block for Engagement,

 

Defining the behaviors the organization values with action not just words on Mission, Vision, and Values statements,

 

Developing a bond between organization and employees that translates to commitment, i.e. Engagement,

 

Developing employees who think about how work is done and how to do it better, a hallmark of the Engaged Employee.

 

In the next post (Part II), I will provide a step-by-step process that I have used very *effectively to collect feedback (and a TRUE STORY from the process):

• Orientation,
• Onboarding (Please see my definition of On-boarding) ON-BOARDING IS NOT ORIENTATION, and
• Training (See these two posts on creating effective training ) TRAINING & TRAINING THAT COMMUNICATES – PRODUCTIVITY & EXCELLENCE ARE THE GOAL

*When I say effectively I mean having feedback meetings that have contributed to positive change and created measurable improvement to existing departmental  processes and to orientation, on- boarding and training programs.

See Part 2 of this post:     New Employee Engagement Initiative Starting Day 1 – PART 2

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