Employee training involves a heck of a lot more than just defining expectations and teaching skills.
A child’s most formative years happen before the age of five.
The majority of your dog’s behavior patterns will be developed before they’re six months old.
Think of how much time you spend teaching your child how to say “mommy” and “daddy”; or how long it takes to teach your little furry bundle of joy that they’re “bad” when they squat down and take a poop in the house…
Knowing how long it takes to learn new behaviors and skills, why then would anyone think it’s okay to spend a week with a new hire at your company and expect them to hit the ground running, and be successful throughout their entire probationary period?
This might sound like an absurdity to many of you. Perhaps you spend lots of time cultivating your employees. However, it’s a pattern among business owners, managers, and HR staff that’s just as common as over-priced apartments are in Manhattan, Geneva, or Tokyo!
Managers and coworkers play a key role in early development of a new hire:
Even if the new staffer gets adequate training; relationship development and proper feedback and support from supervisors are the lynch-pins that will determine their success or failure.
Call this the foundation…
That first 90 days is crucial. A promising employee can become ineffective and downright disruptive to your business if this foundation isn’t built right. The manager and team have to work just as hard as the employee in order to ensure they have all the proper tools and information to learn.
Read this quote from a study published on the Academy of Management website:
“While much organizational socialization occurs through interpersonal interactions, evidence regarding how these processes unfold over time has not been forthcoming. Results from a 14-wave longitudinal study with a sample of 264 organizational newcomers show that support of newcomers from coworkers and supervisors declines within the first 90 days of employment. Early support and undermining had more significant relationships with work outcomes assessed after 90 days of employment than did increases or decreases in support and undermining over that time period, suggesting early support and undermining may lay a foundation for later work outcomes. Proactive behavior partially mediated the relationship between support and more distal work outcomes, including withdrawal behaviors. Supervisor undermining was uniquely associated with higher turnover (exit) hazard.” (original article)
Don’t you love having to read something twenty times to actually understand what the heck the writer’s talking about?
Let’s sum that report up in terms that an actual human, particularly a manager (the person who can benefit most from this information) will understand:
- A study of 264 new hires found that coworkers and supervisors paid less and less attention to the trainee within three months of their start date.
- Workers who received lots of support from coworkers and management performed better at tasks, had a good attitude toward their job, and stuck around longer.
- Those who felt left out, unsupervised, or undermined, generally lost interest in the job and left to find different work before 90 days passed.
- The workers who were made to feel like they had support within the first 90 days had better output and a better attitude long after the three-month study ended; whereas those who were undermined and who felt disconnected from their team had much poorer output and overall attitude.
5 Tips for getting you and your new hire past the first 90 days and beyond:
1. Avoid making a new staffer feel neglected or “left out of the loop”…
Consider how you’ve felt in new situations – either in work or life, when you’re the new member of a group. When addressing your team, make sure you make eye contact with the new person just as much as the other people.
Dr. Ian Brooks, a New Zealand-based leading business advisor and speaker suggests managers “talk to new hires at least once a day during the first week, if only for a minute or two,” and ask for feedback about how their training’s going and any issues they’re encountering.
It’s important to touch base at least a few times a week, if not daily thereafter.
Always use their name when speaking to them.
2. Have a staff training manual…
Don’t just make it for the sake telling people you have one. Make sure it’s used. If it’s discovered to be ineffective, then update as needed.
The manual should stablish the guidelines necessary for success in your company and make sure they’re followed by everyone.
3. Patience…
One of the biggest caveats for training new hires should be patience. Lack of patience creates an expectation that someone should just “get it” and leave you alone.
Going back to the baby analogy about walking from earlier: would you give up on your toddler if they fell on their first step – their second – third – etc.?
Reassess your own attitudes and internal expectations often, and remind yourself that Rome wasn’t built in a day, before your impatience becomes obvious to the trainee.
4. Managers need to watch their supervisors…
This has been discussed at length in this article. The importance of management and supervisors within the training process.
Don’t allow inappropriate behavior or neglect from a supervisor go on. Even if they do something else exceptionally well, they’re still undermining your business if new hires don’t feel valued by, and ultimately respect them.
5. Don’t wait 90 days for the first assessment…
This should be a private assessment between you and the new hire – preferably at the end of the first week.
Tell them what you think of their performance so far. Be direct, but don’t act condescending or accusatory either.
Praise is easy to give – criticism, or “constructive criticism” as you should call it is an art form – a skill you and your supervisors need to become very good at to achieve success with new hires (see this article for tips on constructive criticism.)
Other Great Resources:
