Contributed Post
As a small business owner, you have likely dreamed of the necessity of hiring your first employee.
It’s the point at which your business is making inroads. You’re not going to be one of the cruel statistics about start-ups; you are functioning and thriving. So much so, you can offer a new person a job, a living, a career. It’s a huge goal to tick off and one that should be treasured.
Even as you hire and more and more people, there is always a frisson of excitement that comes with it. You have made it; generating revenue not only to sustain you and your business but others as well.
In the midst of being an entrepreneur, however, it’s far too easy to forget what it’s like to be an employee. Your concerns are not the same as your employees’ are. The business feels natural to you and perhaps even self-explanatory. If you fall into this problematic area, it’s not long before you have a disgruntled workforce. Without any malice on your part, you become one of the “horrible bosses” that social media is filled with complaints about. Not understanding the needs of your workforce is a massive contributor to this issue, and one you need to address.
It doesn’t matter if you have just a single employee or your dominion stretches multi-nationally, you rely on your employees. They are the lifeblood of your business; without them, you don’t have a business to speak of. As you can become a “horrible boss” without ever intending to be one – can you aim to rid yourself of the tag?
Of course you can. As with so many things in life, it starts at the beginning – the beginning for the employee, that is. From the moment you have recruited someone, your work begins. This is the time to set a precedent and potentially decide someone’s future mindset towards you and your company.
We judge elected officials on their first 100 days. As an employer, when your employees can seek pastures new far quicker than a politician, you don’t have that long. The first month – broken down into weeks – is the most crucial. Establish a good relationship at this point and the chances of a successful working relationship improve dramatically.
Week One – New Job For Employee and New Chances For You
The first week on any new job is daunting for the employee. While they have had the self-esteem boost of being hired, everything is now different. Every company has its own ecosystem and way of doing things; they’re not familiar with it yet. Very quickly, they can feel like an outsider. Worse still, an outsider who is confused.
The first thing to get right in the initial week is training. No matter how desperate you are for someone to just come in and get on with the job, they have to know what they are doing. This is why it might be helpful to carry out a competency assessment so that you know exactly what this employee is capable of and identify any skill gaps. This will help you plan what training will be most beneficial to them and save yourself explaining things they already know. There are AI tools to help you with this if you prefer.
Things You Should Do – Week One:
Provide the most thorough training possible. If you don’t know how to utilize e-learning for your company, then you are missing out on an excellent method of teaching someone the ins and outs of how you work. Consider taking Captivate training classes and learning to build your own unique training system, which you can then use again and again. New employees will settle in faster as a result.
Also endeavor to provide materials they can consult from home, giving them a chance to study up. If you already have an existing e-learning program, then run through it yourself and see if it’s up to scratch in providing the vital information.
Speak to the new employee individually and ask how they are getting on. No matter how busy you are, make time for a quick five-minute conversation. This is all the more important if you have never actually met them before.
Test them on their new skills, but make it clear there is no penalty for failing the test. You both need to be sure of where strengths and weaknesses are.
Things You Shouldn’t Do – Week One:
Expect someone just to understand how things work, even if it seems obvious to you.
Lose patience with the speed they are pickings things up – we’re all different!
Give them too much responsibility to begin with, even if their role is ultimately going to be supervisory.
Week Two – Settling In and The Problems It Creates
The second week is a mix of still-new feelings, but with a little more comfort added.
Things You Should Do – Week Two:
Ask them to recap the first week, ensuring everything they need to know how been retained.
Make sure you have paperwork (such as payslips or HR information) dealt with.
Ask existing staff how they feel the new person is doing. If possible, do this anonymously – people may need to raise an issue, but don’t want to believe they are throwing someone under the bus. Anonymity makes people more likely to be honest.
Things You Shouldn’t Do – Week Two:
Expect them to wait for employee privileges, such as lunch tokens or parking passes. These should be ready by now, or their employment situation will feel temporary.
Start “laying down the law.” They are still new, so go easy on them as they adjust to their roles.
Monitor them too closely. It’s all well and good to be concerned about their performance but, if possible, monitor them as remotely as possible. They don’t want to feel like you are breathing down their neck. In Week One, that’s acceptable, but by the second week, they will want more freedom.
Week Three – Getting To Grips With The Job At Hand
You should begin to see a steady improvement in performance, resulting in extra confidence for the employee. This is a time for settling in in other ways.
Things You Should Do – Week Three
Focus on the culture of the workplace. Do they know their options for lunch? Do they know the people to speak to if they have an issue? Answering these questions before they are a problem is useful.
Ensure the new employee knows the procedure for booking holidays, sick days and other need-to-knows for future employment.
What You Shouldn’t Do – Week Three
As has already been mentioned, don’t expect miracles in terms of their productivity. It’s acceptable to expect certain things by now, but acknowledge they may take more time and effort. Things will speed up as they go along.
Week Four – Decision Time
Week four is the point at which both you and your employee have to make a decision. If either of you is unhappy with the arrangement and don’t see an immediate improvement as possible, then it might be time to end their employment. This is a “cruel to be kind” strategy, but it works. If you really don’t see a way an issue can be resolved, then better to stop now than when they have invested many working hours.
If you are generally happy, however, then use this week as a refresher. Take a couple of hours to go through their role; their duties; how the company works. Ensure that all the lessons of the first three weeks have been absorbed. Get to know them a little better on a personal level, learning issues (such as childcare or their commute) that may impact their working schedule. You can then see if there are allowances you can make while also making it clear what your “red lines” are.
It’s also a good time to get feedback on the training process and company introduction itself. Again, use anonymity for this via a survey. If you have only hired one person, then anonymity will not help, but encourage them to be as honest as possible. Hopefully, you can both learn lessons that will lead to a fruitful working relationship in future.
