Onboarding

Over 50% of people recruited into an organisation will leave within two years and one in four new recruits will resign in the first six months.

The estimated organisational cost of just one failed executive-level hire can be as high as $2.7 million. Why is this?

Part of the problem is that new employees are not engaged.

How to engage new employees

Onboarding - an overview

The first few months in a new role is an emotional journey. We can understand this by looking at the change curve which describes the typical psychological journey that people go through after a major transition in their life.

The ups, the downs, the good and the bad

The aim for any induction needs to be to make the change curve as shallow and swift as possible for new hires. This means catching them before they dive too deep into uncertainty and lose confidence – resulting in a downwards spiral towards crisis.

If they reach this point, they may decide that giving up and letting go is a better option than carrying on. This leaves you, once again, searching for someone new.

The merit in storytelling

Storytelling is a strong tool to engage and inspire others. By creating an over-arching story that unfolds over their first few months, individuals will feel part of something more than just their job.

How to apply it

To reduce uncertainty and subsequent stress, we can share an onboarding toolkit with key information.

It can be easy to feel like just another cog in the machine. By focusing attention on new employees as individuals – understanding their aspirations and goals – we can help excite them about where they are and where they can get to.