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Give your HR the help they need. The help they get is the help your employees need and what your employees need is what the business need. Break the system, because your employees need you!
In the past year, I wrote about Employee Experience (EE) and why it is the change workplaces need. We have created an Employee Experience audit and tested our theories with five companies for free. Yes, you missed it, sorry! A lot of work has been done changing, adjusting and sometimes throwing everything out we thought would work.
Our EE audits showed that organisations are more concerned about their systems than their users (employees). So we reverse-engineered everything and created a framework that allows organisations to design their EE with people in mind. It is not that difficult.
We broke EE down to seven pillars (that's the basic level):
ATTRACT | HIRE | ONBOARD | MOTIVATE | PERFORM | DEVELOP | EXIT
Let's look at ONBOARD: Designing Experiences From The Candidate's Point of View.
Here are some of the questions our audit toolkit includes:
Every section starts with a question: How Do You Want Employees To Feel About You During the Onboarding Process? Guess what, HR and leaders find it very difficult to articulate it:-) It is not easy because we have never been taught to think that way. We have been taught to run processes.
The toolkit then goes into detail with questions like (there are more questions):
Onboarding Network: Do you have identified & trained organisational and departmental trainers, mentors and/or coaches? Do you have a clear structure of who is responsible for what during employees' onboarding process?
Digitalised Onboarding: Do you have a digital tool to manage onboarding and conduct induction? Can employees learn the way they would like to or it is the same mandatory process for all?
Employee Onboarding Plan: Do you have an employee onboarding plan? Prior to arrival, Day 1, First Week, First Month, 31-90 Days. Does the plan include a welcome email, introduction to the team, preparation of necessary tools and introduction to the departmental trainer and coach/mentor? Do you send the first 30 days training plan to the new joiner?
Employee Onboarding Plan: Do you have an employee onboarding plan? Does the plan outline the required number of check-ins, departmental trainer, mentor or coach, review timings, and information about the employee that helps customise the onboarding experience? How about uniform, access, email and all other tools the employee will need to do the job? How about the workspace?
Check-in conversations: Do you have a specific timeline for check-in conversations? What is the structure? Who is involved in these conversations? How frequent? How do you acknowledge great performance and encourage development when needed? When do you start recording low-performance?
Measurement: New Joiner Experience Survey: Do you have a survey designed and sent to understand employees' experiences during their onboarding process? How frequently do you send it? How do you use this info?
Onboarding is probably the most overlooked part of the hiring process and employee development. Get this one right and your life will be super easy! I had a very solid onboarding structure for my 700 guys which I monitored. Those departments that followed the structure and plan had much lower turnover rates and faster integration rates than those that didn't.
To me, onboarding started with a welcome email and a clear training plan sent to employees 1 week before joining. In this email, I introduced them to their departmental trainer, managers and head of department and sent information about the hotel. Many replied with a "Wow, thank you! I never received anything like that before."
Creating employee experiences is easy. All you need to do is pay attention and set up your structures.
PS: If you want the EE Audit Checklist message me. Or, if you know somebody who would like to redesign their employees' experiences and change the mindset that governs these old-school practices I would appreciate the connection. HR has changed, and we are here to help them because nobody is helping them let's be fair. We just all blame them.
In the meantime, answer those questions and see whether your organisation gives a thought about EE or just looking after their processes.
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