It’s no secret that companies are having a challenging time right now recruiting and retaining good employees. This seems to be a lingering hangover of the COVID-19 pandemic combined with the Baby Boomer generation retiring in large numbers at this moment in time. If your company is also finding it hard to keep good skilled workers, consider modifying your onboarding process with a focus on building relationships within your organization.
Onboarding Is More than Orientation
Many companies view onboarding as solely training and orientation, but to successfully onboard your new employees, it needs to be more comprehensive than that. It’s difficult for many new hires to learn to navigate workplace rules and norms and do their jobs well. Without a mentor or encouraging coworker feedback, many of them decide the job is not working for them and quit. According to Gallup, only 30% of U.S. workers are engaged in their jobs, and worldwide it’s even worse. How do good managers change this trend? By raising engagement levels through relationship building.
Workers are not robots, and they spend a large portion of their waking hours doing work that they may or may not find meaningful. This has always been the case. However, right now our society is grappling with a loneliness epidemic. 40% of adults report feeling lonely or isolated. In a new job, this feeling of isolation can be make or break for employee satisfaction.
Creating a sense of community can go a long way toward making even dull or repetitive work enjoyable for us. Human beings are social creatures. This was the rationale behind quilting bees and corn shucking parties, and it still works today. In fact, improved employee engagement has a positive impact on:
- Productivity
- Performance
- Profitability
- Retention
- Absenteeism
- Shrinkage
- Workplace accidents
- Customer ratings
When a company improves the working environment by encouraging relationship building among employees and employees and management, everything gets better. So how do you do this successfully?
Building Relationships within Your Company
Your workforce is composed of teams, and those teams are made up of individuals. Those people all need to have clear communication, motivation, and morale in order to do their jobs well. During the onboarding period, managers should take advantage of people’s natural desire to make connections by identifying people already within the company who can have a positive impact on the new hire. These may be managers, team members, or other new hires. Encourage managers and established team members to reach out to new employees and make a personal connection, whether this be via a meeting, a training session, or a cup of coffee.
It’s also useful to offer team building activities to new hires. They may be less intimidated to interact with new employees than with management. Sometimes new hires have the same questions and don’t want to bother their supervisor with something that might seem obvious. They can help each other navigate and understand the new environment by example and commiseration.
Of course older employees should be encouraged to mentor new employees whenever practical. Seasoned workers understand the work and the company’s mission better than newcomers and can provide better guidance. It’s best to select people for mentor roles, however. Just because someone has been with a company for years does not mean they are the best ambassador for it. Some people may be wonderful in their jobs but not cut out for training or mentoring.
Building relationships with teammates on a daily basis not only creates camaraderie and trust, it also creates a sense of belonging to the greater organization. When work is challenging, having a friendly coworker can make it bearable or even exciting. New hires who build strong relationships within the company report greater job satisfaction, get better performance ratings, and are more likely to stay in their positions.
Improve Worker Retention
Hiring and onboarding are vital but expensive processes for any company, which makes successful retention that much more important. Organizations with a standardized onboarding process keep more of their workers and experience greater worker productivity. Building relationships between new and existing employees will only improve both the onboarding process and the overall workforce environment.
If your company struggles with hiring or retaining employees and you would like help creating a successful onboarding process, contact us at Prometis Partners. We understand how complex workforce dynamics can be and we have worked successfully with many businesses to strengthen employee/manager relationships. Schedule a meeting with Vincent Mastrovito today.
