Employee Experience Battlefield Guide: Induction

It is a tough fight out there to attract, retain and engage people. On the battlefield where even the strongest are pushed to their limits. Employee Experience expertise must be part of your battle plan!

The pain is real

Almost all companies face the brutal impacts of the labor force shortage. According to PwC’s 8th CEO Survey 75% of companies named lack of labor amongst top pain points, followed by another people-related topic of the changing demographic features. As a major consequence people costs are rising more than expected and companies are unable to pursue market opportunities. On top of these negative trends CEOs claim that they are not able to innovate effectively – we are concerned that this is not a volume issue but originated in low engagement mainly, as it will be described later here.

It is not a surprise that companies never spend more budget on various interventions aiming at better attraction and retention of employees. Recruitment marketing spending is in the air. Employer branding projects are everywhere. Still, results can be questioned.

Gallup reports (State of the Global Workplace, 2017) as low as 10% engaged workforce in Western Europe as the second worst region after East Asia (6%), and 15% in Eastern Europe, while the actively disengaged population exceeds these numbers with 19% and 16%. Generating significant growth, driving productivity and innovation with 1 engaged person in 10 is not an easy job. High time we stopped the decline and increased the ratio of our engaged people. But how?

First of all, company decision-makers have to widen their scope when coming to the topic of lack of labor force and disengagement of staff.

Promises fade, when reality hits…

Amongst many available HR surveys, the Develor ones also highlighted the priority of the topic of attracting talents. “Employer Branding” has become the number 1 priority for HR decision makers. When looking behind the numbers and asking these HR leaders what do they mean on Employer Branding most of the answers can be translated as recruitment marketing activities mainly or only, like reshaped job advertisements, redesigned career page, intensified social media use and better-crafted employee value propositions.

So, the full focus is on attracting talents (even less talented ones). It is a logical reaction to the increasing number of vacant positions. But a simple root cause analysis can easily pinpoint that much more efforts should be done on the retention of employees.

Recruitment campaigns –  even successful ones – frequently lead to higher people turnover due to two reasons. In many cases, organizations overpromise because they feel that the reality is not attractive enough and cannot differentiate effectively the company from competitors on the labor market. So, let’s lie (just a little bit…), maybe the newly recruited colleagues won’t notice – sure they will. And on top of that, the existing labor force is also reading those never met promises and will increase dissatisfaction and frustration, and thus the turnover.

Early dropouts hurt a lot

Significant amount of employees are leaving in the first week and the first month due to promises not delivered. The second reason is the lack of adequate induction. Adequate means –  in this case – not just the most efficient way of training of job-related knowledge and skills, but the engaging and seamless onboarding. People should feel that they are welcome, important and special. So even if there is a big volume of newcomers, we have to treat them in an embracing and personalized way: you and the work you do for us are important and we have big plans with you. If you can focus only on one phase of the Employee Journey, choose the induction phase.

Update your battle plan!

Look at your current practice with 3 simple questions below. Don’t be afraid to redesign it.

• Do we deliver our Employee Value Proposition promises in the induction?
• What makes the first day unique and sticky for the newcomer?
• What makes induction training a real positive experience?

Employee experience is the holistic approach focusing on the lifecycle of a newcomer on how to increase positive experience during the entire Candidate and Employee Journey in order to attract, retain and engage people.

Start with the revitalization of your induction phase to drive your retention power.