Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Lorrie Coffey

  • Is Your Training Program Legendary or Lackluster?

    Is Your Training Program Legendary or Lackluster?

    “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin

    As I discussed in my recent post Five Elements of a Great Onboarding Experience, having a great new hire orientation can be critical to making a great first impression and getting a new hire successfully onboard with your organization. While many companies have worked hard to create that great first impression, they fall short on the long-term impression they give employees by failing to create a continuous training program.

    I’m currently working with a client to help them set goals for the coming year. In meeting with their leadership and other employees, one theme stands out to me- they lack training opportunities. They conduct annual reviews and set goals with employees, but fall short when it comes to providing training to help those employees meet their goals.

    So how can an organization successfully design a training program?

    First, conduct an analysis of each job to determine what skills are needed for that role. Create a competency matrix that details each role and the skills needed for entry-level, intermediate level, and expert level mastery of that role. Then compare roles and see where skillsets overlap. This will help you to determine what training will have the greatest impact on your staff and yield the greatest return on your investment. It may also help you define career paths within your organization.

    Second, create a formal training program based on the competency matrix. Once you determine what training will give you the biggest ROI, you need to start designing that training. You may need to use internal and external resources. When designing the training, determine what method of training will be most successful. For example, the client I’m working with commented on training that had been provided previously where employees were required to sit through hours of classroom training but were never given hands-on experience with what they learned, so the training was not effective. Also, consider how you can measure the effectiveness of the training once complete.

    Third, use the competency matrix to define career paths and create a succession plan. Look at the roles in your organization, the skills needed for each role, and determine what makes sense for a path of promotion. Then assess the employees currently in those roles for possible promotions when they come available. If you have an employee you think would be great to move up, have a conversation with them to gauge their interest. Some employees do not want to move up into management roles, and that’s ok. But it’s best to know that at the beginning instead of spending time training and prepping someone to move up only to have them turn it down when an offer is made, or worse, have them feel obligated to take the position and then not be happy or successful in the new role. Once you have a succession plan designed, you can start working with those employees that would be good candidates for promotion and help them start obtaining the skill set needed to move into that next role.

    While it’s important to create a continuous training plan for your organization, it’s also important for leaders to understand that training doesn’t have to come in the form of a formal program. Some of the most important skills I’ve learned in my career have been through impromptu training opportunities. As you’re completing a task, ask yourself “is there someone that could benefit from learning what I’m doing or understanding what I’m working on?” If so, ask them if they have five or ten minutes to shadow you in your task.

    I encourage you to ask yourself “What have I taught someone this week?”

  • Change Management: Celebrating the Small Victories

    Change Management: Celebrating the Small Victories

    Change is never easy. I remind myself of this daily as I navigate some major changes in my personal life. And my experience has been a great reminder of why change is often viewed so negatively. It’s the unknown. While they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the thought of changing that pattern and not knowing what the result will be is often petrifying.

    I recently started working with a client who is experiencing a great deal of change in their organization and as a result, is seeing a decline in employee morale. As part of the change management process, I have begun meeting with managers on a weekly basis. While part of the goal of these weekly meetings is to talk through issues or concerns they may have, the primary goal is to help them focus on the positive and then find ways to share those positives with employees.

    I start each meeting with one simple (yet difficult) question. “What went well this week?”

    The natural reaction to this question is to try to think of major accomplishments, but when experiencing change and a decline in morale as a result of that change, employees need steady reassurance that the change is having a positive impact on the organization. Without that reassurance, morale will continue to drop. By showing employees the positive impact change is having, even if a small impact, you’re easing their anxiety over the change and gaining their buy-in.

    So, after watching the managers struggle during that first meeting to answer my question, I gave them some guidelines:

    • Think smaller. It doesn’t have to be a major accomplishment to be worth celebrating. Instead of waiting until the completion of a project to celebrate the work done, set milestones along the way and celebrate when you hit each mark.
    • Celebrate the now. If it’s progress today, celebrate it. Even if it falls apart tomorrow. Deal with tomorrow then, but today it’s a small victory and deserves recognition. And there’s always that chance that it won’t fall apart down the road.
    • Tie wins back to change. If the win was a result of a change that employees viewed negatively, acknowledge that the win was a positive result of that change.
    • Decide how to share with employees. Is it a win that everyone should know about, or just a specific department? And how will you communicate it to them in a way that will ensure they receive it?

    Even though we have only met a few times so far, I have seen a shift in the managers as well. The first week they were hesitant to claim any wins, but during our most recent meeting, they walked into the meeting with a few to share.

    So, ask yourself what went well this week and have you shared that with your employees?

  • Top 10 Recruitment Quotes

    Top 10 Recruitment Quotes

    10. “Recruitment IS marketing. If you’re a recruiter nowadays and you don’t see yourself as a marketer, you’re in the wrong profession.” – Matthew Jeffrey, Global head of sourcing and employment brand at SAP

    9. “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.” – Red Adair

    8. “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.” –Jim Collins, Good to Great

    7. “Hire character. Train skill.” –Peter Schutz

    6. “If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.” –David Ogilvy, advertising executive

    5. “Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for the love of it.” –Henry David Thoreau

    4. “Hiring the right people takes time, the right questions, and a healthy dose of curiosity.” –Richard Branson

    3. “Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture.” –Howard Schultz

    2. “What is a modern recruiter? Someone who is honest first, knowledgeable second, consistent third, humble fourth, helpful fifth, and personable sixth.” –Steve Levy, Principle: Recruiting, Talent, and Social Media Consultant at Outside-the-Box Consulting.

    1. “Nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies.” – Lawrence Bossidy, Former COO of General Electric

  • Five Elements of a Great Onboarding Experience

    Five Elements of a Great Onboarding Experience

    You found the perfect candidate, made them an offer they couldn’t resist, and now they’re ready to start work. While you’ve wowed them up to now, your onboarding and orientation experience is critical to keeping them and to your reputation as an employer of choice.

    • A study by Glint showed that employees who had a poor onboarding experience were eight times less likely to be engaged in their work, with 40% of those employees reporting disengagement just three months after hire. Those same employees reported that they would not recommend the company to others.
    • According to a 2014 study by SHRM, one company surveyed reported that new employees who attended a structured orientation program were 69% more likely to remain with the organization for three years.

    One of my favorite tasks in HR has always been designing and implementing onboarding and orientation programs for organizations. I love working with organizations to learn what processes they have in place, helping them determine where they need to make improvements, and then following up after implementation to see the results.

    So what makes a great onboarding and orientation program?

    1. Communication. As with most things, a great onboarding and orientation experience begins with communication. Even before a new hire’s first day, there is often communications that need to be sent out to them. This may include new hire forms, information on where they need to report on their first day, or even just a welcome email from the leadership team. Make sure this communication is welcoming, informative, and easy to disseminate. If you require new hires to fill out paperwork prior to their start date, provide clear and concise instructions on how to complete and return the forms. Try to think like a new hire, anticipate what questions they may have and answer them proactively.
    2. Preparation. The worst experience I ever had as a new hire was walking in on my first day and being asked to put together my own orientation packet! And it only got worse when I was shown to my office only to find out I had no desk, no computer, and a room full of storage boxes (and they had a month to prepare). Being ready for your new hire to show up on their first day goes a long way. Be ready to greet them at the front desk when they arrive, have their desk, computer, and any other equipment they need ready for them, along with all of their access and login information. Make sure that you communicate their start date with leadership and anyone else who may be involved in their onboarding and orientation so that they are not caught off guard. And maybe even have a few goodies waiting for them when they arrive that first day or plan to take them out to lunch.
    3. Elimination of downtime. One of the worst things I think you can do on a new hire’s first day is leave them alone. Think back over your first day experiences, were you ever left to your own devices? If you answered yes, chances are you also remember wondering why they weren’t prepared for you, why they didn’t have your first day scheduled out, and when someone was going to come to rescue you from your infinite boredom. There are so many tasks to accomplish when a new employee starts, so there really should be no reason to drop them in a room or at a desk and leave them. Designing a standard orientation schedule for their first day, and even their first week will help ensure that there isn’t an excessive amount of downtime for new hires. Consider what paperwork they need to complete, what policies and procedures you should review with them, what training should be completed and who will present it, and who they need to be introduced to. Consider establishing a mentor or buddy program where a tenured employee is paired up with new hires to help them get acclimated to the organization, then have that mentor or buddy help walk the new hire through orientation.
    4. Follow through. Onboarding and orientation are often used interchangeably, however, they are two very different things. While your organization’s orientation may take a day or even a few weeks, onboarding an employee may take up to a year. So what’s the difference? Orientation involves tasks like the completion of paperwork, reviewing company policies and procedures, introductions to team members, and introductory training to understand their role. Onboarding goes well beyond that and includes more in-depth training and management involvement. It is the process of helping the new employee get their feet wet and learn how to become a contributing member of the team. While orientation may be a very formal process, onboarding is often much more informal. Don’t drop the ball after the initial orientation. Make sure that the new hire is being provided with the tools, training, and resources they need to understand and be successful in their role.
    5. Follow up. Designing and implementing an orientation and onboarding program can be a huge undertaking. But all of that effort could be wasted if the program is not effective, so a critical step in the process is to evaluate the results. A great way to do this is to have new hires complete a post-orientation survey and provide feedback on what worked well, what didn’t, and what they felt was missing. I also recommend having a touch base conversation with the new hire after they’ve been with the company for 60-90 days and had a chance to get settled. Use the feedback from the survey and touch base meeting to continue to improve your organization’s onboarding and orientation programs. And as noted in the statistics listed above, another measurable indicator of an effective onboarding program is an increase in employee retention.

    Based on the five elements of a great onboarding experience, how would you rate your organization’s program?

  • Improving Your Time to Hire

    Improving Your Time to Hire

    According to the 2017 Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report published by SHRM, the average time to hire in 2016 was 36 days. With the job market exceeding the talent pool right now, candidates are harder to find, and when companies do find them, they have to move fast or risk losing them to the competition.

    How can organizations streamline their hiring process while still ensuring that they are recruiting top talent?

    1. Assess your current process. A great way to do this is through a SWOT analysis. What is your organization doing well and what are you struggling with? What opportunities are you missing out on and what external threats are impacting your ability to expedite your hiring process? Once you’ve assessed your current process, you’ll be able to determine where changes or improvements are needed.
    2. Document your process. A tool that we use for our clients is a process documentation flowchart. It outlines what resources are needed to successfully complete the process, who is involved in each step, and what the possible outcomes are at each step.
    3. Provide training to those involved. Your process document is useless if you don’t provide training to those involved, so schedule time to train your leadership on what the process is, what their responsibilities within that process are, and provide them the tools they need to successfully execute their part. Also set expectations with the leadership. If you submit a candidate to a hiring manager, let them know you’d like feedback within 1-2 business days. Then follow up if you don’t get that feedback within the time frame set. If you do this consistently, it will become a habit for those managers.
    4. Make sure your hiring process is easy. Just as candidates don’t want the application process to be cumbersome, once they get past that first hurdle, they want to see that ease of process continued during the interview phase. If your interview process includes skills tests or requires samples of work, make those tasks easy. I have a client that requires developer candidates to take a coding test. In order to complete the test, candidates are sent a link to a third-party web host service where they can log in to the test and take it at their convenience versus having to do so in person at the office. If your interview process requires interviews with multiple hiring managers, consider scheduling them back-to-back on the same day or doing panel interviews.
    5. Show candidates that you value them. According to a 2017 study by CareerBuilder, 78% of candidates say that their overall experience during the hiring process is an indication of how the company values its people. A great way to show candidates that you value them is to make sure they understand your hiring process, communicate with them throughout that process, and don’t drag it out any longer than necessary.

    If you take these steps and you’re still struggling to fill positions, you may need to re-evaluate your job posting or the recruiting sources you’re utilizing.

    What can your organization do to decrease time to hire in this tight candidate market?