The first 90 days in a new employee’s life are crucial. These days set the tone for their experience and their impression of your business.
Generally, people that stick it out for the first year (possibly even regardless of their frustrations) will stay for a lot longer. But at what cost? Are they giving 100%? Do they feel like they’re getting 100%? There is a lot of content out there about silent quitting (which I won’t get into today), but essentially people who aren’t engaged are a liability.
And when I use the word liability I mean to themselves, for not being true to their purpose and ‘wasting time’ as well as to the business for not being productive and valuable. Not to mention the effect they have on other people in the organisation and your customers, which can have even bigger ramifications.
When people leave, there are costs on both sides:
- Employee cost – mental, emotional and financial
- Business cost – time, effort, and resources used to recruit, onboard, train and grow
Does your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) promise the world and only deliver a continent? Quite often the contents don’t match the packaging. Promises are made and expectations are set during the acquisition process, only for the systems, processes (or even people) to fail to deliver on them once they are in the building.
“In South Africa, candidates stay about 2 years and 10 months in the same job before moving on,” – Career Junction
Hiring specialist Career Junction’s Employment Insights provides an analysis of the supply and demand trends in the online job market to represent online labour dynamics in South Africa. They noted that employees who have been in the same job for more than three years are considered above the norm.
So how do we know if the experience we’re promising is being lived up to? Quite simply, we don’t.
We guess and hope (and run employee satisfaction surveys). The only way to know, and effect impactful change, is to to ask. We need to empathize and understand.
Only once we understand the motivations, drivers and actual experience of our newly acquired talent, can we then begin to look at how to reimagine this experience. And not only retain them but turn them into raving fans.