Friday, December 02, 2016

Sink or Swim is Not a Training Program

What's your process for bringing on a new employee? So many companies - including some rather large ones - don't actually plan the employee's first day. They throw them into a job and hope they survive.

My friend Josh Peterson tells the story of a company that did that - and the employee quit before noon. No one wants to feel that their job is unimportant or that the company doesn't have a plan of some kind. That's just one reason for having an actual PLAN for an employee's first day.

Of course you need to do some paperwork. But you need to do a lot of work before the employee shows up. You need a job description. In writing. You need to create logons for the PSA, RMM, the domain, email, BDR vendors, etc. Whatever they will need should be set up and ready to go. This should all be handed to the employee along with their hiring paperwork.

This keeps your day productive and gives the employee lots to do: Log into everything. Look around. See what's what. Learn some client names. And verify that their credentials are correct.

After that, the new employee can go to lunch with someone on the team and talk about you behind your back. Hey, it's going to happen eventually, so you might as well get it started. Your team as a team needs to develop a personality that works. Later the newbie can shadow one or more other employees . . . learning YOUR way of doing things.

Like everything else - Consistency doesn't happen by itself. Teamwork doesn't happen by itself. Your branding (defined as everything you do) won't come together by itself. You need to put a structure and processes in place that make these things happen.

Here's a quick video with more tips.



Comments welcome.

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