Don’t Waste Your Entire Recruiting Budget. Get Your New Team Members Onboarded the Right Way.

Episode 057

Ben Walters: [00:00:00] Ben with SuperPumped podcast, I am excited to share today how in summary, to get your employees on board so you slay the turnover dragon. So I'm here on the banks of the Ohio River. You can see behind me the barge going by, but the whole recruiting process, if you don't actually get them onboard and productive in your company, it's all for naught. The first thing that we talked about in the podcast, and feel free to go back 'cause each of these we detail out in an entire podcast episode, but this is a summation of the onboarding process. When you think about onboarding, you generally have an HR person or a recruiter depending on the size of your company. They do that phase of things, but then when you go to get them on board, there's often a handoff. And what I see in many companies is just clunky. First thing you want to do when you're onboarding is you wanna have a super clean handoff. And we actually did a video on this with football fumble. But a lot of [00:01:00] organizations, they just kind of assume, okay, I recruited, now show up on Monday at 5:00 AM or whatever the time is. And then someone gets there, they don't know where to park, they don't know who to meet, they're not sure how they get through security. Really, if the recruiter or the HR person who hired somebody can help with just a couple more minutes of getting them comfortable and handing them off to either their manager or the trainer or whoever's gonna be working with them in the onboarding process, that is critical.

Ben Walters: Now, here's the second thing, and this is a big one, and we talked about this in the previous episode, but we wanna do a review of the why. During the handoff, when the recruiter is handing off the new hire to their manager or to the trainer, they wanna say, this is Delaney and we've hired Delaney because she did incredible work at this company, she spearheaded this project and we really see a lot of potential in her or we just like her tenacity or her references were [00:02:00] glowing or whatever it is, so you're revisiting that and you're sharing with the new hire what what is important about this person, what makes them unique. Continue to connect on that human level.

Ben Walters: Then the second part of the why is not only is it why about them, but it's also why does this work matter? We're all on the same page. Everybody wants to do work that matters, and if we don't convey why this work matters, there's no reason to stay other than the paycheck and often somebody else will be offering more. Continue to communicate the why of the jobs.

Ben Walters: Then there's what I call the Goldilocks principle. This is the idea that if you come in too cold on the training, if you just kind of throw someone into a new job, they're gonna be overwhelmed and they're probably not gonna stick around 'cause they're gonna be like, whoa, this is freaking me out. But if you come in too hot and you decide that you're gonna help this person [00:03:00] for the first four months, then by the time you get through that training process, they've come to believe that only doing a portion of the job is the only thing they're capable of.

Ben Walters: I tell a story of how my brother Tony, who has special needs, has seen this both directions where people throw him into a job with almost no training, and then he's not got it figured out. He hasn't learned it. He washes out. Either they fire him or he gets freaked out and he ends up not wanting to go back. But the other way is where he's had a job coach for like weeks and weeks and weeks. He gets used to doing only part of his job, and then when the job coach disappears, it's like, wait a minute. How am I supposed to do all this? And he gets overwhelmed on that side, and then he can't ratchet it up.

Ben Walters: One of the things I did at least, and it worked for me was each day a certain percentage of the job we were gonna hand to the person, which lends us naturally to the three Ts of training. Most people [00:04:00] are gonna focus on the first T, which is what I would call the either tasks or the technical. That's the nuts and bolts of what they're doing. If you're a dishwasher, here's how you wash the dishes. You spray 'em, this, that and the other, or you're a computer engineer or HR here's how we do the thing. The very specific things that you are output producing.

Ben Walters: And as a type A hard charger, I blew this so long needlessly in my business where I would just hammer on this and then they'd wash out and I couldn't figure out why. And what I realized was there's two other T's. There's the terrain, meaning people have to be comfortable in the building where they keep their lunch, where they go to the bathroom, where they park. All of those things matter, that terrain that they're in every day. If it's in-office job, if it's remote, it's a little different. But there's also terrain there too that's maybe even harder to navigate.

Ben Walters: And then the third [00:05:00] T, and this is probably the most important, and I've learned this one from my wife who is very relational, is that the tribe matters. Integrating that new hire into who are they working with, what are those people like? What are their interests? What are their passions? If you don't get them into the tribe, if they feel no connection, pretty quickly, they're gonna wash out. That's the three Ts of training.

Ben Walters: And then the last thing we talk about is sequencing. You can train someone up, you can show 'em the ropes of the building, you can get 'em onboarded with the tribe, and they can learn these tasks. Tasks and training go together. But if you don't sequence those tasks correctly, you're gonna have a problem. And I talk about how you can do everything right with the creation of a latte. You can pull a proper shot, you can put the proper amount of syrup in, you can put really proper amount of whipped cream and all the different things that go into that, steam the milk correctly. But if you add those [00:06:00] to the cup in the wrong order, it comes out gross. Meanwhile, if you put 'em in correctly, they're fantastic.

Ben Walters: You could have someone where you do all this work, teaching them the task, getting them on board and the tribe, and they're sequencing things wrong, and then all of a sudden as an employer, you are frustrated 'cause you're like, hey, they're not putting out the way we would like with the output, or we're not getting the results, or their work's just shoddy. Maybe they're doing it in the wrong order. I see that a lot where we drop the ball on not only teaching the tasks, but properly sequencing the tasks.

Ben Walters: These are five ways that you can onboard your employees better. You can start slaying the turnover dragon. If you missed any of these particular episodes, I would encourage you to go back, check 'em out. If you have any questions, hit up superpumped.com or book a consultation. I'd love to talk to you more about what you're dealing with in your organization. We are here to help. Thanks for joining me today. I hope it was helpful, and I'll see you next time.

 [00:07:00] 

Ben Walters: If you enjoyed today's show, I have two quick next steps for you. First, subscribe or follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. And second, jump on over to superpumped.com to find out all the incredible ways we can help you launch your SuperPumped Business.

Ben Walters: Keep well and I'll see you next time.