Does Your Onboarding Process Build Emotional Engagement?
We have been already writing about the importance of creating an onboarding process that builds employee engagement. Why?
According to the Wynhurst Group, new employees decide whether they feel at home or not in the first three weeks in a company and 4 per cent of new employees leave a job after a disastrous first day. And the cost of losing an employee in the first year is estimated to be at three times salary.
We recently found an awesome post by David Lee on creating an onboarding process that welcome and inspire new hires. In the post David outlines what The Ritz-Carton, Texas Road House and Southwest are doing differently to build a program that builds employee engagement from Day 1.In this post, we focus on the Ritz and Southwest, to view his entire post click here.
The Ritz-Carlton The Ritz-Carlton focuses on the emotional takeaways that their new hires will experience. Why? According to Diana Oreck, from the Ritz-Carlton - "People don't remember what you said or what you did, but they always remember what they felt." So for each facet of the employee onboarding process, the Ritz asks the following:- "What's the emotional take-away here? What is the way we are doing this right now and what emotions would a new employee take away from this experience?"
- "Are these the emotions we want to leave them with?" If your answer is no, then ask "What emotions would we like them to experience?" and "How can we create an experience that would naturally elicit these?"
According to Oreck, the examples of emotions you want to elicit in your new employee orientation and onboarding process include welcomed; comfortable and secure; proud; excited; inspired; and confident.
The Ritz starts with a video that helps new hires understand what it would mean if you were in the top 1% in various fields. As images of Tiger Woods and Bill Gates and people in the top 1% of their field flash across the screen, inspiring music plays in the background with the lyrics "What have you done today to make you feel proud?"
The video then transitions into letting the new employee know that being with Ritz-Carlton means they are among the top 1% in the hospitality industry. Imagine how you would feel, as a new hire, if this video were played at your company - Proud? Excited? Secure? Inspired?
The Ritz Carlton balances two important messages in their orientation program: "You are now part of an elite, best-in-class organization," and "We're lucky to have you." At Ritz-Carlton, Oreck and her colleagues tell new hires "Aren't we blessed that you picked the Ritz Carlton for your 'second place'," referring to the second most-important place the person inhabits each day.
Onboarding at Southwest
Southwest Airlines is another company that understands the importance of designing its employee orientation and an onboarding process with the goal of creating positive emotional experiences. According to Cheryl, Hughey, Southwest's director of onboarding other companies seem to focus primarily on creating logistical efficiencies that allowed the new employee to become productive more quickly."Here's what it is that I think we do differently, or what we emphasize more: in a lot of companies, it seems like if there are online forms to check off and documents that get passed around from HR to the hiring manager to the new employee, they think onboarding has been accomplished. While getting those kinds of logistical things automated can help you get your new employee up to speed and productive more quickly, it won't necessarily help you with retention.
If you want them to stay, if you want them to become engaged, you need to make sure you do the "feeling" part of the process, and you do that by showing them how they will make a difference, giving them examples of how their fellow employees make a difference, making them feel welcome as with our Sponsor a New Hire program. It's those kinds of things that lead to not just better retention, but a more inspired workforce."
Southwest has designed the onboarding process around four mantras:
- "Everything Matters"
- "Think Experience"
- "What's the Emotional Take Away?"
- "What's the Perceptual Take Away?
We think that more companies should think about the messages they are sending in their onboarding sessions. Are they stimulating the right emotions? Are they building engaged employees or are they just forcing employees to “tick boxes” leading them to ask themselves what am I doing here?
- "What's the Emotional Take Away?"
Comments
How ironic that you feature American Airlines and their very considerate onboarding, it would be nice if they had the same attitude towards their customers. I propose that American Airlines take the statement below from their training and insert the word "customer" in the place of employee. "If you want them to stay, if you want them to become engaged, you need to make sure you do the "feeling" part of the process, and you do that by showing them how they will make a difference, giving them examples of how their fellow employees make a difference, making them feel welcome as with our Sponsor a New Hire program. It's those kinds of things that lead to not just better retention, but a more inspired workforce."
Posted by: Marcela Curry | May 22, 2008 09:44 AM