Now that you have your new employee, you then want to retain them at your company. In today’s episode we started discussing employee retention. We revisit the importance of company, career, culture, and job alignment, along with the on-boarding and orientation process for your new employee.
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Podcast Transcription – S1:E13
| Speaker_1: | 00:02 | Get ready for your weekly dose of talent strategies and tactics from industry leaders to help you attract, select and retain your top talent. You’re listening to Inside Executive Search with Steve Yakesh and Scott Peterson. |
| Speaker_3: | 00:25 | Hello and welcome to the Inside Executive Search podcast. My name is Steve Yakesh and this show is for business owners, board members and executives exploring strategies and tactics to attract, select and retain the very best. If you’re not feeling 100% confident that you have a plan to get that very best candidate, keep listening. This podcast will help you get there. That said, as always, the elegant Mr. Scott Peterson is joining me. |
| Speaker_4: | 00:56 | Yes, my radio voice is here today, a week 13 episode. Hopefully it’s not an unlucky recording today. |
| Speaker_3: | 01:06 | Yeah, exactly. So we made it through the attraction series and then the selection series. So, this is kicking off the retention series and we’re going to hit on two topics today, Scott. One is going to be revisiting the importance of having a company culture, job and career alignment during that whole selection process and why. That’s critical for retention. And then we’re also going to kind of finish the podcast around onboarding and orientation of your new employees. Sound good? That sounds great. All right, well let’s kick it off. Let’s start and maybe revisit the importance of having that alignment in those key categories. Culture, job and career. |
| Speaker_4: | 01:50 | Yeah. If we remember we talk quite in depth about these areas several podcasts ago now, I don’t even remember which podcast it was, but around what’s the company culture, what’s the fit there, what kind of employee would fit best with us and also the job fit. What are those tangible things on a job description that you can align with the candidate and then the career motivational fit. So what are those things that the candidate is looking for, not only in the current job but one and three and five years from now. If you do all those three things well, you create great alignment and then you create this sense of a great fit in terms of not only the current job but the future jobs. So, kind of by default you get great retention that way. But |
| Speaker_3: | 02:42 | I think it’s fair to say a company evolves and changes over time. So just because you attracted them and you got him or her in and there’s great alignment today, understand that the company culture can shift, right? The job can shift and potentially then the career track shifts. So what advice do you have once you get them in, how often should you be revisiting these three core components? |
| Speaker_4: | 03:05 | I mean, I really didn’t standpoint. Yeah, I think these components should be looked at annually. I think that’s probably a good timing. Again, companies shift, acquisitions, company changes, executives change etc. So your boss could have changed during this process. So again, you want to make sure that you have that alignment. If things do change, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing or that you’re going to have turnover or retention issues. You just need to acknowledge it and communicate that with your executive. |
| Speaker_3: | 03:34 | Yeah and we’ll talk about the onboarding, but during that onboarding process, it’s always good to revisit with your new hire and my opinion on, hey, I heard this from you throughout our interview process that this was something that’s important to you. This is why you were attracted to the company/position and keep talking about those throughout the first 30, 60, 90 days and then like you said, maybe a more formal check in on an annual basis, but you can’t just talk about it to get them there and then one year later. Right? |
| Speaker_4: | 04:10 | Right. So, yeah, I think to emphasize that the candidate, the new hire, has interest in can create that path of leadership development so don’t ignore those signs during the interview. Take really good notes. Now, if you use an external search firm, the search firm will do this for you as part of the process. So again, if you partner with somebody, they’re going to be communicating with you along that process of the things that they have interest in, the things that they’re concerned about in the organization, developmental areas that this candidate wants to do, that they want more leadership opportunities, that they want more speaking opportunities, just things along those lines so you can develop that leadership plan for them. |
| Speaker_3: | 04:57 | When you’re doing all your executive search with clients on these key roles, is there any kind of common themes that you kind of learn from the candidates? Or is it all different with every one of them? |
| Speaker_4: | 05:09 | You know, it’s certainly different, but everybody wants to keep developing as an employee also as a person. Right? So just to identify those areas that they want to work on, but also what the company would like them to work on. So those can be anything, that can be this. Yeah, those can be the same or they could be a slightly different, but again, early on from a retention standpoint, it shows that the company is listening to what their long-term needs are and it just creates that retention process, as early as we head into the company. |
| Speaker_3: | 05:45 | Okay. Well let’s maybe shift gears a little bit to the actual onboarding and orientation. I know there’s plenty of New York bestsellers out there the first 90 days. I think the first hundred days, you know there are lots of books read or have been written and I have read them, and I would encourage other organizations to read them as well. But give us maybe your opinion, cliff note versions of what maybe are in probably a lot of those books, but what’s the important pieces to onboarding a new executive, whether it’s the CEO or one of his or her direct reports. |
| Speaker_4: | 06:22 | So I think the first way you want to come up with is what is your plan for onboarding, right? Don’t just wing it their first day. and, and sort of show them around, this goes beyond just sitting with one of the leaders in the human resources area to get their paperwork done. You know, that onboarding is really having that executive sit with business unit leaders. It could be potential other board members if it’s a public company. Really understanding where the company has been, where they’re currently at, where they’re going, and get a sense for the business, get a sense for understanding the business, what their needs are at those different business units, etc. So, develop the plan. It should be a comprehensive plan. This shouldn’t be a day activity. It probably is a weeklong activity or it could be spread out so it’s just not all onboarding. Right. But yeah have a plan. Again, it can vary from company to company depending on size, complexity. But again, it’s not a one-day event. It’ |
| Speaker_3: | 07:33 | And I would go as far as to recommend that have those meetings already calendared and on your new executives calendar before he or she shows up and walk them through, Hey, here’s what we have going on for you the first month you’re going to meet with Bob on Tuesday and here’s the reason for the meeting with Bob. You’re going to meet with Jane on this day. Oh, we’re going to meet with our marketing agency so you can get to know them. This is the work they do. Here’s our CPA firm, you know, whatever it might be, have them predetermined and already scheduled because again, that’s pretty welcoming. You know, |
| Speaker_4: | 08:09 | I’m really academic. Yeah. It really ties them into the organization and ties them into the people. Right. They start building relationships, the strong relationships internally with either one of your team, but also colleagues. The stronger your retention is of that key employee. |
| Speaker_3: | 08:25 | And I know you asked this question a lot when you’re doing searches for clients and I’ve done it over the years as well, but always asking candidates about their onboarding experience at previous roles and thus learning as much as you can about that candidate to pass it on to our client. Another piece I think you would recommend is ask those questions throughout the interview process because you’re just arming yourself with how do you need to augment what is it of your predetermined onboarding |
| Speaker_4: | 08:56 | plan and cater to the individual. Correct. Yeah, that’s exactly right and I think it just gets back down to that plan. Not just, hey, what are we going to do day one, but it’s day five, day 10, day 15 and really the why behind it to integrate them into the organization to make them feel obviously welcome, but to integrate them into the organization just really goes so far in that retention. They’re going to lose somebody. You’re going to lose them early if you don’t do this. Well. I agree. |
| Speaker_3: | 09:27 | Well perfect. Well that’s going to wrap up this podcast and a will preview for next podcast. Number 14, we’re going to be talking about options for executive leadership, peer groups, and then also compensation as an ongoing retention tool, not just to attract them, but how do you and leverage compensation and what forms of compensation can you leverage on a retention standpoint. Yeah, those are two great topics. We’ll tackle next time. Perfect. Well, as always, you can find our podcast out on all the major podcast channels or find a link on the executive leadership tab on versique.com and you can look up, Scott on LinkedIn or Versique.com, if you want to get a hold of him, I think that’s a wrap. Yeah, let’s talk next week. Awesome. |
| Speaker_4: | 10:21 | Sounds good. We’ll talk then. |
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