22% of all staff turnover happens in the first 45 days of starting a job. That means in just 6 weeks a fresh faced new starter has been turned into a disgruntled ex-employee. What happened?
Hiring is expensive, however you do it. When you add up the value of lost time put towards sourcing candidates, it can add up to between 40% of an annual salary to as much as 400% for a senior management role.
So what’s the main reason that people leave after such a short stint with a company?
A lack of support when they start.
Even the most experienced professionals, who have all the technical know-how about a role, still have never worked at your company before. They don’t know what your processes are, where important files might be saved, who does what and the timeframe you expect. It’s never good enough to just sit someone down and expect them to get on with things.
We’ve heard of companies not even going as far as showing a new starter where the toilet and the kettle are!
In the case of someone less experienced, don’t throw them in at the deep end and overwhelm them either. Have a bit of a timetable in place of what you expect them to be able to do and by when, and work together to get there.
A good idea might be to have a rough timetable in place for the first week e.g. Monday morning is for getting shown around, meeting everyone and filling out any paperwork, then Monday afternoon will be shadowing a colleague, and so on. Or build a checklist of all the things a new hire needs to be able to do, a go through it over the course of their probation to ensure they are working towards being a member of the team who is contributing at their best.
When making a bad hire can be so expensive, we find it amazing how little interest some (certainly not all!) managers and businesses can sometime take in onboarding their new recruits properly to make sure things work.
