Want to Enhance EX? Get a Quick Win with Engagement-led Onboarding
So, your employees think work sucks – who ya gonna call?
Enboarder!
We’re nearing the end of the year which means your employee pulse check results are in and – uh oh – they’re disengaged.
You’ve probably been to all the HR conferences, absorbing best practice tips from the legends out in front, and noting industry benchmarks for which to compare against.And what’s everyone saying?
Employee experience FTW.
They aren’t wrong. If your employees are disengaged, then you need to be looking at your employee experience.
And what’s the quickest and easiest way to boost your employee experience? Engagement onboarding, of course.
The mighty employee experience factor
The employee experience is simply the journey your employees take while with your company; from onboarding to performance reviews, to offboarding and every milestone in between. It’s the relationships, the technology, and even the quality of your kitchenette.
Every interaction matters; every interaction is influencing their perception of your employer brand and workplace culture (and how they fit).
And for every experience, whether positive or negative, you can be assured they’re talking about it, especially online. Either privately amongst their friends and family, or publicly on employer review sites like Glassdoor.
An exceptional employee experience is tightly linked with performance and high employee engagement. So, wouldn’t you rather impress your employees from the very beginning and start on top?
First impressions are hard to forget
Just think about it – as with anything in life, it’s darn hard (sometimes impossible) to recover from a bad experience; your aim should always be to start off on the right foot.
Say you’re out to dinner at a new restaurant for the first time and they stuff up your order, bringing out the wrong meals an hour after you order and pay for them. You complain and get a superficial apology but no real effort to make amends for the mistake. You leave determined never to return (and tell EVERYONE about it).
On the other hand, say you were greeted at the front door, personally escorted to your seat by the manager, offered a complimentary entrée ‘just because’, you order your meals and they’re delivered to you 20 minutes later, piping hot and delicious. You order dessert just so you can stay longer. When you leave, you tell EVERYONE, and leave a public recommendation on Facebook.
You return regularly to repeat the experience.
And these are just examples of where you eat; whether you return matters not. You haven’t signed a contract to eat there five days a week, 48 weeks of the year. There’s no real emotional investment, regardless how awesome the crème brûlée may be.
Start Here: Engagement Onboarding
The first experience your new hire has with your company during pre- and onboarding will often dictate how long they stay (and if they’ll bother returning for duty on Day 2). This is why you must provide a stimulating and engaging onboarding experience.
Onboarding is where you live up to all your brand promises during recruitment; where you reaffirm their decision to work with you.
Engagement-led onboarding is how you do it.
Engagement onboarding is experience-driven, providing a seamless and personalised journey for both new hires and their manager. It emphasises communication and interaction, socialisation and integration, and well, promises to be enjoyable, too.
In almost all cases, the new hire’s manager is their first introduction to the company. Starting at the interview, through to contract signing, pre-boarding, and then the employee’s first day. The hiring manager should be their one constant. For the new hire, their manager is representative of their new employer, and is the start of their employee experience.
So, if managers are doing a crap job at these first introductions, when you should be engaging but you’re actually dis-engaging, then you’re already behind where you could, and should, be.
Coach your managers to deliver an exceptional employee experience
You’ve no doubt heard the saying ‘people don’t leave companies, they leave managers’. Some proof? Gallup found that managers are responsible for up to 70% of the variance in employee engagement.
So, a poor manager onboarding experience, which looks like poor communication, little personal or emotional interaction, and a process-and-paperwork-driven ‘you’re-just-a-number’ system, is likely to be a cause of employee dissatisfaction and high turnover within the first year.
Getting employee experience right starts with getting the manager experience right.
Still, you gotta cut them some slack.
Managers aren’t always clear what’s expected of them – They’re also not trained marketers who understand the significance and workings of exceptional employee experiences.
However, they are all able to be coached so they can be engaging onboarding rockstars.
With powerful onboarding software, like Enboarder, managers can be coached in real-time to introduce new habits and conversations that will alter their mindset and behaviour to embrace the onboarding experience and energise their new hires.
If you’re looking at improving employee experience – engagement onboarding is your priority
The more you’re able to kick off new employee relationships and experiences on the right foot, the more you’re likely to engage them and retain them long-term. Start with engagement onboarding and empower your managers to own onboarding; you’ll soon see the effects trickle out to the rest of your workforce.
We challenge you to do this one thing differently in 2019 and see the results in your engagement in 12 months’ time.