Engaging Employees Beyond the First Six Months|Engaging Employees Beyond the First Six Months
engaging-employees

Engaging Employees Beyond the First Six Months

Here's the bathroom. Here are your neighbors. Break room is around the corner. Now just "shadow" Mark for the first week and you're good.

For too many companies this little speech plus the network wifi password is all the onboarding you're going to get. Even companies that do a first-rate job of bringing employees up to speed - think of Zappos with its legendary four-week "culture awareness" training - may not be giving employees everything they need to get past the six-month marker.

What if this is as good as it gets?

There's an interesting shift in employee mindset after the first six months on the job. Perhaps this is how long it takes to move past a "trainee mentality" and into a "this is what the job is all about" way of thinking. Gallup research has found that the first six months on the job are when employees are most likely to be engaged. After six months employee engagement plummets from 52% down to around 33%.

The not-so-surprising consequence of these free-falling engagement numbers is that more than half of those who voluntarily left their job did so in the first twelve months. Even more telling is why people leave after such a short time on the job. About one in four people who leave an organization within the first year say that it's because they didn't have clear guidelines about job responsibilities. Another 17% said that they didn't feel connected to co-workers while 12% felt they lacked recognition for their contribution.

Altogether, these numbers paint a picture of workers who feel disconnected from the rest of the organization and to a large part left to "fend for themselves."

3 ways to move from onboarding to ongoing engagement

IBM takes a longer view when it comes to integrating employees into the company's culture. Even before a new hire walks through the door they are assigned a Connections Contact to help navigate and engage in IBM's way of business. For up to a year following their date of hire, IBM employees are actively encouraged to seek out new communities of interest within the company. Career guidance is provided so there is a clear line-of-sight to advancement inside the organization.

The good news is that your organization doesn't have to be at the cutting edge of innovation like Zappos or have the resources of a small nation-state like IBM. Helping employees stay engaged past the six month honeymoon period isn't particularly hard and it needn't be expensive.

Here are three ideas to get you started:

1. Better feedback leads to better performance.

HR specialist Josh Bersin points to the success of "star ratings" in improving the online (and now the offline) retail experience and says that feedback might just be the "killer app" in workplace performance. Instead of the semi-annual employee review, think of regular ongoing feedback for employees and management alike. This could definitely help employees feel like they have clear guidance and appropriate responsibilities.

2. Praise from peers leads to stronger connections.

For the 17% of employees who left a job within the first year, stronger connections with peers could have saved the day. In fact, according to a study by Oracle, 42% of employees believe that their peers contribute more than management to high engagement levels. Implementing a system of peer recognition and feedback can not only help reduce turnover it can boost engagement rates overall.

3. When it comes to praise, more often is better.

We know that there is a strong connection between recognition, engagement and productivity. A 2014 study shows that job satisfaction declines dramatically as the interval following recognition grows longer. This is just one more piece of evidence that frequent recognition drives engagement better than the outdated semi-annual review.

As more and more organizations are waking up to the importance of Onboarding to employee retention and engagement it's important to keep one thing in mind. The focus on communication, feedback and praise shouldn't come to a screeching halt once an employee is "on board." Maintaining these connections needs to become part of every company's DNA.