Perfman HR – How To Settle In A New Employee
May 6, 2011 by admin
Filed under Business & Professional Jobs
Settling In The New Employee
Take your new employee around the office and make introductions. To help her get to know her colleagues, it may be helpful if you ask someone who doesn’t already know her to do this.
Take your new employee around the office and make introductions. To help her get to know her colleagues, it may be helpful if you ask someone who doesn’t already know her to do this. Give her a departmental phone list and point out the key people she’ll need to contact. Show her the photocopying and fax facilities, the supply cabinet, restrooms, ATMs, the company cafeteria or lunchroom, the company library, the vending machines, and explain parking protocol and the corporate Intranet.
Remember that new employees can waste a lot of time searching for information if they aren’t told where to find it at the beginning. Anticipate what they will need, and cover it in your orientation tour. Are there features in the neighbourhood that are helpful to know about? Of two neighbouring Chinese restaurants, which one is the best? Is there a restaurant with a particularly great lunch buffet? What is the parking situation? If she is using mass transport, point out the location of bus stops or subway stations. Share as much information as you can to help get your new colleague settled.
Starting the Performance Management Cycle
As you begin to put your new hire to work, it’s helpful to review the company’s business outlook, including its objectives and plans for achieving them. Go over corporate values, product information, competitive position, marketing strategy, manufacturing or service process, and personnel organization.
Next, explain his duties and get him started on an assignment. Make sure he knows exactly what’s expected of him and when he is supposed to deliver it. One of the main reasons some employees fail is that they are not clearly told what is expected of them or given clear goals for the first six months or the first year. So, as you hand over your new employee’s first assignment, take the time to spell out performance objectives — this might be “increase the close rate by 15 percent during the next year” or “identify system problems during the next three months.” Then set up a schedule—say, every month—to do a formal check on how the new employee is progressing toward these objectives.
In between formal visits, stop by periodically to check in. Ask how things are going and probe for specific details that will let you know that your new colleague is on track. If you sense that something is amiss, ask more questions and give feedback. Then be sure to follow up until you are assured that things are going well. Get into the habit of briefly documenting every such conversation with your staff.
CASE STUDY: HOLD ONTO EMPLOYEES BY LETTING THEM GROW
Supermarkets and Hypermarkets are rarely emblems of upward mobility or high morale, not when you consider the low pay and long hours. Annual turnover in some chains approaches 100% for part-timers and 19% for full- timers, which makes for constant hiring and training.
In the US, It’s different at Wegmans, a regional supermarket chain that has repeatedly made the list of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. There, although corporate generosity boosts labour costs to between 15 and 17 percent of sales (compared to 12 percent in other chains), wages and salaries are at the high end. Turnover rates hover at about 6 percent, and 20 percent of employees have 10 years of service or more. One secret to Wegmans’ success might be their dedication to creating new employment opportunities. Rather than hiring experienced truck drivers to service a new distribution center, Wegmans invited employees to apply for the job.
Five months later, Wegmans had enabled two dozen produce clerks and cashiers to become skilled drivers with commercial licenses — and kept valuable employees within the company ranks.
SOURCE: “The Wegmans Way” by Matthew Boyle, Fortune (January 2005).
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