New Hire Feedback

borntexan · February 2004

Hello All,

We are currently working on updating our new hire orientation and training process. I would like to know if anyone has a "survey" for new employees opinions of their new hire training/orientation experience?

My e-mail is: [email]Leslie.I.Johnson@acs-inc.com[/email]

I would also like to know if anyone has any good suggestions for lowering our new hire turnover rate. Some ideas that we have had are:
1. Start at a wage $.35 lower than current and increase the wage after 90 days
2. Loosen our attendance policy (currently new hires are allowed only 1 call in and 2 one minute tardies in there first 90 days)
3. Offer a "bonus" after 90 days

Any other ideas???

It seems that a lot of our new hires have a hard time with our attendance policy, and several times the new employees have just not been a good fit into the department.

Thanks to everyone for their input!

Leslie

HR in CA · February 2004

What does your company do? Is the retention problem company wide or department(s) specific? What % of the new hires leaving are leaving on their own? What is your local employment situation? Is it a employee or employer market?

ritaanz · February 2004

It would help to answer your questions if we had more information. What kind of industry/employer are you hiring for? What classification of new hires?

marc · February 2004

You already have a couple of ideas regarding why your turnover rate is so high. You might gather some more information by conducting exit interviews that help you pinpoint the issues.

If you are paying a competitive wage, that should not be the problem, but your two ideas are decent. I like the incentive to get a bonus equal to the $.35 times the 12 weeks and then the raise. That would put $1,371.43 out there. A very nice incentive.

As to the fit issue, perhaps your interview process should screen for the types of fit issues you are having. If you know a certain personality type does not do well in your environment, then don't waste everyone's time by hiring that personality type.

My personal opinion is that your tardiness policy is very tight, but your business might dictate the need for it. Plenty of production lines must have everyone at their station and working in lock-step in order to achieve quotas, efficiencies and ultimately, make the bottom line work. If your environment is like that, don't change it. If the time is arbitrary, then what would be wrong with loosening it up a bit?

If you do a search on this site for tardiness policies, you will find plenty of examples that can give you some ideas should you decide to loosen up your approach.

Good luck.

borntexan · February 2004

Currently in our area, it is closer to an "employer's" market. Our company processes child support payments for the state. We truly only have turnover/retention problems in our Data Entry Department. Our tardy policy is such due to strict guidelines that are imposed on us by the Office of the Attorney General. Our exit interviews have actually not been truly revealing in the cause for our new hires leaving. Our wages are definately competitive, however, most of our employees are hired as part-time with no benefits, and progress to full-time when their performance and production dictate. Unfortunately, this is not an area that upper management wishes to change.

marc · February 2004

You get what you pay for. This old saw unfortunately applies to employment. We have several similar jobs that we paid $8 an hour for the longest time. The turnover was incredible. We spent more time recruiting, hiring, and training these individuals than the money we were saving with the lower wages. You might make a case for paying more and putting them on benefits if you look at the true cost of turnover. If you stay at the low-end, you are going to get people that are not motivated or who are treading water waiting for something better to come along.

If you are truly in an employers market, people are glad to have the jobs and will put up with a lot of crap just to keep the paycheck rolling in. That is the opposite of the turnover you describe. Is the path to full time clearly laid out? You mention performance and production guidelines - do the EEs know what they are and what the payoff is if they meet the standards?

Paul in Cannon Beach · February 2004

Is it possible that since it is a "employer's market" and these people are glad to have jobs, you are getting too many people who are are applying without a clear understanding of how boring and repititive their job will truly be?

If so, you can either try to make sure the hiring process adequately explains the job and its monotony (I'm assuming data entry is monotonous. It might be a barrel of laughs) or you could make some efforts at job enrichment. Survey your current crop of data entry folks and ask them what could be reasonably added to their jobs to make them more enjoyable (i.e. music, air conditioning, snacks, flexible schedules, etc).

mwild31 · February 2004

Okay, here's what I would do (among the others that have been listed, especially if your wages are currently competitive in the market):

Go back to the drawing board and look at your recruitment & selection practices. Where are you guys currently looking for applicants - maybe you need a broader net than what you're currently casting. Selection - what kinds of interview questions are you asking - what kinds of responses are you receiving? There's lots of issues here - for now, refocus on the type of interview questions you are asking - and go towards a style that is more in depth - which should help you to get broader answers that help in the selection process. Surface questions will get you surface answers (for example: Q: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? A: In your job! - dumb questions - don't do it.)

Next, the problem the way I read your post is NOT that the applicants know when they take the job, that it's part time w/o benefits & only leads to full-time + benefits once their performance dictates it. It may be, not communicating to the NOW employee how to accomplish the performance expectations. Give a list of training & a performance expectation sheet that outlines this process. Put in a check off list format - as they complete the list - then check it off. My guess is that your folks are leaving because they feel as though they've been sold a bunch of bull during the interview/selection process - outline for them what they have to do to get a full-time job with benefits.

Go to the supervisor & see how they treat folks - is the supervisor good or bad at their job? Could this be one of the indicators of turnover?

Ask yourself, do the folks that work in this area feel good about the job they do? Do they feel it's worthwhile to the company? This is important - MORALE.

Many other issues here - but this should give you a good start. Good luck! x:-)

rad · February 2004

I would not loosen your attendance policy, I think you'd be setting the stage for poor attendance in the future. Thats not a bad policy at all for the first 90 days and if your post-90 days policy is just as rigid, they might as well get used to it right off the bat.

Pork · February 2004

LESLIE: It reads to me that your company should explore "people leasing" to fill these part-time positions with no benefits. Part-time positions are a real headache to manage in the recruiting and retention arena. People leasing can save you money when there is high turnover; with the appropriate contract written to allow those employees to roll over into full-time positions after 90 days could also help your company to retain the training already provided.

I have used this program to good success!

PORK

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