Everyone hires a new employee with the intention that they become productive within a reasonable period of time. In order for that to happen proper employee orientation and on boarding is extremely important.
There’s a wealth of information available to guide you in the process of orienting a new employee. Just do a search and you will come up with all kinds of articles and checklists, many of which contain great information. A lot of these approaches deal mainly with integrating the new employee in their job and introducing them to the culture of the company, as well as the policies and procedures.
Performance and Productivity
In terms of performance and productivity here’s some additional information that I think will be helpful. One of the most important documents is the job description. This document should have already been introduced to the person during the hiring process, but it’s important to go back to it as part of the orientation.
A strategic meeting should be held with the new employee to review the role description and to discuss the goals of the department and company. This will help the employee understand how their job contributes to the bigger picture. During this meeting the manager should have a discussion with the new employee about setting specific learning and performance goals for the first 90 days of the job. The first 90 days is often considered a probationary period, it’s the time usually required for the person to get a good sense about the company and about performing the key tasks of the job.
90 Day Goals and Objectives
One approach is to ask the employee to come up with their performance commitments for the first 90 days based on your discussion in that initial meeting. This will help you to see how well they’ve understood the job requirements and what’s expected of them. It will also show you how well they are able to articulate goals in writing. A second meeting would be held the next day or so to review what they are proposing as performance goals and to discuss and finalize. This will establish a good understanding through a mutual dialogue.
One thing that should be included in the agreement is support commitments from their manager. The employee needs to identify where they feel they will need help to learn what is required in order to meet their commitments.
Once this is established, you can then determine a training plan to provide the resources and support required to meet their performance objectives. Depending on the complexity of the job a daily check-in with the new employee might be required, but I suggest a weekly review to make sure everyone is on track to meet their commitments.
You can refer to my previous video and article on writing a job description, where you can also find a link to download a job description template and sample completed job description.
Once the 90 day period has approached you should do more in depth evaluation of their performance and then set new performance goals for the next 90 days to six months. The idea is to have regular discussions and take a coaching approach to managing your employees. This creates a win-win scenario for everyone.
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Thanks for watching and see you soon.
Stephen Goldberg