The Top 4 Ways to Make Sure New Hires Stay

Hiring new employees only to see them quit a few weeks later is so frustrating! 

So how do you ensure people stay? This is the very question countless small business leaders find themselves asking often. Too often, really. But is there a better way to make sure you retain the people you hire? 

The answer is a resounding 'YES!' 

You can retain the talent you hire. And you are in much greater control of solving this problem than you may realize. The problem of retaining employees does not have a linear solution. Retaining employees is directly connected to your recruiting and hiring strategies, who you are hiring, why you are hiring them, your interviewing ability and how you set them up for success immediately after they start. 

But today I want to give you some simple reflection points that will have you well on your way to developing a plan of action to retain the people you work so hard to hire. 

Here are 4 steps to retaining great talent:

1- Develop a system for training leaders how to train your team

Most of the time, employees quit because of confusion, lack of clarity, or lack of purpose in their work. The data has shown us this over the past 40 years very clearly. Each of these frustrations is connected to how your leaders are training new employees. Setting new employees up for success on day one is critical to creating a long term desire for working at your organization. 

Your leadership team is a direct reflection of you. Because of this, employees perceive you within their encounters with your leaders. If your leaders give a subpar experience to the team, the team receives that as a subpar experience with you. Change this by teaching your leaders how to train with empowerment, encouragement, and hope. 

2- Make onboarding FUN!

Far too many organizations make onboarding a turn off rather than a turn on. Ideally, onboarding will excite a new employee rather than put them into a position of having to decide whether they like this new job or not. 

Here's an easy strategy to making onboarding fun:

- don't separate onboarding, training and first engagements
- create success from day one by providing employees an opportunity to achieve something
- include each of these 4 elements in the first three days of onboarding- onboarding/paperwork/training, engagement with the team, training with leadership, engagement with a project or client.

When you include small elements of each area within your onboarding system, you create validity to what the employee is learning and excitement of how they will apply what they've learned to become successful. 

3- Create a system of follow through with leaders

Your leaders have been tasked with training and bringing a new employee into the fold. The question then becomes, what systems do you have in place to follow up with both the leader and the new employee? How are they receiving affirmation that what they are learning is going to help them be successful? Who is explaining to them why each task is important to the vision of the organization? How are you ensuring that what, and how, each leader is teaching follows with the culture, expectations and vision set forth? 

Follow through is critical to creating success with your team. Make sure you have a system of consistency, persistence, and repetition. 

4- Clarify your why 

We all want to be a part of building something greater than our individual existence. Employees are no different. They want to know, regardless of how small or large the task, why what they are being asked to do matters. 

Each person on your team should know why your organization exists, what larger purpose it it serving, why you and your leaders are a part of or created this organization, and what role they play in fulfilling the larger vision. When each person on your team understands their role from day one and can explain their role in relation to the larger story being created, it brings about a purpose and hopefulness that people are drawn to. 

Empowering new employees to understand their purpose and the purpose of the organization from the start is critical to ensuring they stick around. When they are invited to play an important role in the story, when they are empowered to make a difference, their desire to do well increases immeasurably.