Are you a new hire? Just started your work? And you walked into the office with pride and enthusiasm, but there is nobody to meet and greet you? After you have aced the slew of interviews one after the other and finally got selected, you would have some basic expectations and that is fair.
New hires are the ones that need guidance, direction and knowledge transfer in the first few weeks. It is called ‘onboarding’ but unfortunately, it is not given any importance anymore. When the new hires needed to be helped so, in turn, they can help the team and the organization, they are not even introduced to the team. They are not given the basic information to get started in their role. And no matter how hard they try ‘solely’, they cannot ‘fit-in’.
In the interviews, more than 50% of the time is spent to ensure the candidate ‘fits-in’ to their culture, work environment, and teams. In reality, nothing like that exists, in which case, it is just nothing but time wasted effort.
One one side, people like Simon Sinek are actively advocating and talking about fostering a conducive culture at workplaces for a better growth of the organization, on the other side there are a number of organizations that don’t uphold good culture or don’t even feel the importance of it. We have seen proven results when the Executive teams and the boards have invested time and energy in nurturing good culture(like Google, Amazon, Costco) have performed much higher than their peers. Yet, the C-level teams and managers don’t give their time and trials to do any better, rather they aren’t doing even the basic steps to prevent toxic culture and in some cases, they themselves play the drama for their own reservations and titles.
After many futile trials, this new hire will quit. Having no other choice, but to leave the environment that does no good for him/her career wise and health wise. This is, in fact, a Win-Lose situation for the candidate and the organization because, ultimately, it is the organization that failed to keep a good contributor.
Regardless, the time has come, for the organizations to value, understand their employees and provide them with the right tools and benefits to ensure maximum performance from their employees.
Even the best performer needs to be helped to help back and every organization has to pay attention to the fact that onboarding is tenfold more significant than the hiring process. Only when you have on-boarded the new hire with respect, enthusiasm and willingness, there is a successful addition to the team and the organization!!