5 Ways to Keep the People You Have Hired and Get Them Up to Speed Quickly

It has been a busy time for recruiting. Have you and your company recruited strategically? Or did you just go for the ‘warm body’ to fill a position.

Strategic recruiting means you will get new hires up to speed quicker and increase the likelihood that new hires will stick around longer then you can say ‘pay period”.
An organization I have worked with provides HVAC services to developers in Portland. Last year they held a management retreat strictly focused on strategic hiring. In the retreat they listed the characteristics of a perfect employee for their company. Then they listed the common traits that long term, high performing employees had in common. They quickly discovered that their ideal demographic was men in their late 20′s or early 30 who enjoyed hunting and fishing. Wait a sec, you might be asking what does hunting or fishing have to do with recruiting? Well if you are creative you will quickly put two and two together and know that hiring around lifestyle is a very smart thing to do. So guess where the HVAC Company went to recruit? Yup, the local hunting and fishing games show and they recruited six ‘perfect profile’ employees into the company.

The HVAC Company described above did the first step in keeping the people they recruited and getting them up to speed quickly.

Step One: Have a strategy before recruiting; take the time to identify theperfect fit, what their interests are, where to find them and how your company fits into their lifestyle. One reason the HVAC Company had men interested in hunting and fishing is because the company owner was an avid outdoorsmen and he would take his entire team on hunting and fishing excursions as reward and as incentive.

Step Two: If it’s too late and you didn’t hire strategically it is never too late to have a training and retention strategy. Find out what their lifestyle interests are, how can you tailor reward and incentive around the lifestyles of your employees?
In a survey conducted by Right Management 2006 showed that 68% surveyed stated
bad hires and promotions lead to lower morale, 66% said it led to lower productivity, 54% said it causes loss of customers and 51% said bad hires/promotions increased training costs.

Step three:Provide the training. Many baby boomer leaders expect new hires to have common sense or to just know what needs to be done. Stephen Covey says; fail to plan-plan to fail. We need to set up our new hires for success by providing them with the training to do the job at the highest level. Among surveyed CIO’s in order to retain employees: 63% are providing additional training opportunities and 47% are providing flexible work schedules (Robert Half Technology Survey of 1400 CIO’s)

Step four: Cross-train. Bringnew hiresup to super speed by having them cross train with cross-functional departments. Employees that have a deeper understanding of the overall company operations tend to buy in faster to the culture, the goals and their role in the company success. Set up a simple process of buddy system information sessions for example pairing an operations role with a sales role and let them see a day in the life of each other’s department. It is eye opening and builds team at the same time.

Step Five: Create outlets for fun. I know when I bring this one up people balk especially us Canadians. What do you mean fun? It’s called work for a reason, is a typical baby boomer response to the ‘fun’ word. In my research even tired and burned out baby boomers are looking for a little levity along with their Generation X and Y counterparts.

Survey results from,” Fun Work Environment Survey,” Sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management
Companies who have ‘fun’ plans in the workplace:

79% companies had reductions in turnover
72% companies had decreases in absenteeism
72% companies saw reductions in employee conflicts

95% indicated an increase in the ability to attract new employees
95% of the respondents reported increases in employee enthusiasm as a result of the fun.
94% experienced an increase in group cohesiveness
93% had increased communications among employees and employee satisfaction
92% saw an increase in employee creativity

If you have made it through the first 90 days of a new hire and you have training and retention plan in place then you are in good shape. If your hiring strategy is hit and miss and your training strategy is sink or swim and your retention strategy is that they should just be happy to get a paycheck you could find yourself on the hiring/re-hiring treadmill indefinitely. By the way the HVAC Company in Portland has a 95% retention rate in a very complex industry with a steep learning curve.

Cheryl Cran, CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) is the author of “50 Ways to Lead & Love It” and the January 2008 release by Career Press titled, “The Control Freak Revolution”. Check out Cheryl’s site www.cherylcran.com to find out more.

Cheryl is the President of Synthesis at Work Inc. and an internationally renowned keynote speaker. She provides practical tools and creative strategies for individuals to take their current level of success and boldly grow it to the next level.The companies that Cheryl works with are top performing organizations with a strong focus on becoming a workplace of choice. The leaders of these organizations recognize the value of investing in the growth of employees… http://www.cherylcran.com

If you are a landlord, you know how lucrative and exciting it can be to collect rent. If you are experienced, then you already know that the greatest assets to a landlord are great tenants who always pay on time. The opposite is also true. A landlords life can be greatly complicated and can quickly spiral out of control if they are not careful about whom they are renting their building to. There are a few key reasons and tips that every landlord can benefit from when finding out exactly whom they are renting to.

The most powerful weapon of the wise landlord is a background check. A background check of many types can be supplied by a number of firms which specialize in collecting the information which paint a valid picture of a person’s background, most specifically their
criminal background.

As a landlord, it is important from the business perspective that you know exactly whom you are entrusting your building with. A horrible tenant can lead to damage of any type, as well as lost profits. The landlord is also responsible from a moral perspective to make sure the person he is making the neighbor of his other tenants isn’t a predator. Criminals of all types exist, and there is no guarantee the person who is applying to rent your building isn’t a registered sex offender. It is pertinent that you protect your other tenants and society at large by not exposing people under your care to unnecessary risks, like those associated with allowing a known child abuser to move in beside a family with children.

Along with criminal background checks, there are other screening methods that should be employed by the shrewd landlord. One type of screening of particular relevance is screening for people who have bad credit or have a history of moving out before paying their rent. These bits of information can be gleaned from credit and social security checks. Screening to exclude high risk tenants will pay significant dividends in the end, by avoiding lost profits associated with unsavory and dishonest tenants.

Background checks, social security screening, and credit history checks are all very valuable tools in the arsenal of the landlord who wants to run his business with as much efficiency and profits as possible. Being a landlord is not the easiest job in the world, but it can be made much safer and risk free with a bit of planning and the use of all the information gathering techniques which are at the disposal of the landlord-most significantly, background screening.

Macdataadvantage is a leading online company providing employee screening and background checks as many other secure services. If you would like to learn more about employee background checks or criminal background checks then visit the site for more details about how to protect your business or personal safety.

Truth is, in many organizations, the doing of the survey is more than enough. Only rarely does anyone get down to what happens next.

It’s an easy fix for organizations to churn out the annual or even bi-annual (‘to show we really care’) survey to their people, to assess ‘staff satisfaction’. It is a great tactic for the Annual Report. Yet in most cases, it stinks!

Once the results are in, they get analyzed at Corporate, Divisional and Area level. Any improvements result in back-slapping ceremonies. Individual teams may get feedback on how they did.And for many organizations that’s where it stops.

Sure, they may have a briefing and belief they are going forward, but no-one gets into the deep-seated behavioral issues that need to shift – because it’s tricky, time-consuming and indeed they may have no clue as to how to take this element forward (but they did their survey OK!)!

Whilst the big-picture organization things are important, they usually fit at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The upper levels of fulfillment and self esteem cannot be delivered at arms length.

The only delivery-boy for the behaviors that really make a difference to your employees engagement is the direct environment where they work. And that’s where each and every manager needs to get into close one-to-one relationships with each of their people.

To truly listen, to understand what they can really do to maximize engagement/retention/attendance as the minimum (and extremely good indicators in themselves, rather than the wheeled-out “to show we care ‘survey’”).

Big-time pro-active contribution from a whole team of employees (or is it ‘colleagues’?), the bigger reward.

And here is where the local manager can really take advantage in what’s happening in his business or with his team. He can take the results and make sure that local issues are resolved fast; that he/she asks deeper, more insightful questions about what his/her people are not happy about and then fix them fast.

By developing a local culture (albeit maybe working within corporate strictures), a local manager can make a very successful opportunity work well.

If the manager finds this a tough challenge on their own, one-on-one coaching, by someone who knows what they are doing, really can add positive numbers on the bottom line. I know, I’ve worked with clients who have seen number spiral, for the want of a pretty small investment in relative terms

And once behaviors shift, they shift for a lifetime of value! And that’s what the manager can use to spread their own particular gospel, developing businesses, and people, as they go.

What a result, for success in a sterile corporate world (and psst, against the odds!).

(c) 2007 “How To Land Your Dream Job”. You can have the job of your dreams. It takes application, attention and the information you need to get you there, young or old. There’s all you need at Martin Haworth’s website, http://www.HowToLandYourDreamJob.com