You’ve finished the torturous process of sifting through resumes and applications; spent hours listening to job seekers pitch you on how great they are; and now, finally, made the all-important hiring decision. You feel like throwing a party—or at least taking a vacation.
Until you realize that tomorrow or next week your new employee will show up at your business ready to work. But are you ready for them?
Small and mid-sized companies vary in how they assimilate new hires into the company culture. Some allow co-workers to do the training, others train all new hires themselves and still others throw them some information and say “go for it”.
I’m a marketing consultant and not an HR professional, but your employees affect how your customers react to your company, so making sure they are set up for success sets you up for success. Try these five steps with new (or even existing) employees to make sure everyone’s ready when the phone rings.
Set clear expectations: Whether you write them down or not, you have expectations of your employees. It’s only fair to let them in on that secret. If you have opening and closing processes, walk each new employee through the process and what their role in the process will be.
Set clear boundaries: If you have a dress code, exact time of arrival, process for airing out problems, etc. let your new hires know these in advance. Just one excuse of “I didn’t know” can cost you time and customers.
Share your company goals. It’s okay to talk to employees about where you want to see your company go. In fact, if they are going with you letting them in on the journey can give them buy-in which decreases turn-over and increases productivity.
Explain why you do what you do. If you’re just doing what you’ve always done because you’ve always done it that way, this step won’t mean much. But if you’ve created processes and marketing plans, letting your staff know why they do certain things a certain way makes it mean more and it increases the likelihood that they will follow through on the processes you’ve set in place.
Share your passion. You created your company to solve a problem or meet a need. Sure you sell widgets but somebody needs those widgets to solve a problem or meet a need. You fill that gap. And you wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of creating an entire company if you didn’t have a little passion for the work. Share it with your employees. It could be contagious.
