How to Power Your People with Recruiting, Onboarding, Learning, and Engagement

ByContent Manager
Outsourcing human resources services

While recruiting, onboarding, learning, and engagement may seem like very different aspects of employment, the reality is that they are all very interconnected. For example, if an employee has a very positive onboarding experience but isn’t followed up with other positive experiences, chances are you may not be able to retain the employee. The vast majority – 90% – of all employees decide to stay or leave a company within the first six months of employment.

And often, the decision to stay or leave isn’t only driven by compensation or benefits. In many instances, employees leave because they do not feel engaged or feel as if they can grow professionally. For these reasons, ensuring that your employees feel engaged and empowered throughout the hiring and onboarding process and after their employment begins is crucial.

But several key initiatives can ensure employees feel a part of the process no matter their employment phase as part of outsourcing human resources services. These can also help employees feel more satisfied in their positions.

Initiatives for Employees to Feel Satisfied

  1. Start onboarding during recruitment. It may seem a bit premature to start onboarding while you are still recruiting, but providing applicants with an accurate view of your company can narrow the field and ensure you get applicants who are a good fit. By including accurate information about your company’s culture across all information – including job postings, your website, and social media accounts – candidates will know what to expect. And this is true about the details of the position. There is no point in misrepresenting any aspect of the job. Many companies do this to make the position appear more attractive, but it inevitably fails if you hire a candidate who has to do a far different job than expected. 
  2. Make it meaningful from day one. The pandemic has shifted how many companies operate, making remote work more common. As a result, new hires often feel out of place or struggle to connect with other employees. However, you can mitigate these effects by emphasizing relationship building in the early days of employment. Carving out time to help them understand their role in the organization and making introductions with others that the new hire will be working with directly is a great way to start on the right foot.
  3. Promote personal development. Promoting personal career development always sounds good to employers until they realize they will have to replace an individual when they move into a new role. To avoid this, many managers try to keep employees in their original roles. But the bottom line is that this strategy counters human nature, which drives many people to aim higher. If you don’t allow room for growth in your organization, an employee is likely to leave for opportunities that would enable them to grow. And while this often means that you will have to replace the individual as they move up in your company, it also means that you are retaining high performers and promoting leadership from within your organization. When employees see this, it often motivates them to set even bigger goals. And working with the employee to help them achieve the career goals they have identified is one way to employer team successful team members who remain loyal to your organization.
  4. Develop mentor-mentee relationships. Developing relationships is one of the biggest ways to keep employees engaged, and it’s harder now with remote and hybrid workplaces. But assigning new employees to experienced ones can help new hires learn the ropes quicker and develop close relationships across your organizations. These arrangements also help more experienced employees still feel valued in their role since they have a chance to show off their expertise and knowledge. Mentor-mentee relationships can improve retention and help new employees learn valuable skills more quickly than they might otherwise.
  5. Have a little fun. One key area HR professionals have recognized as vital to enhancing engagement is workplace gamification. While you can’t turn everything into a game in most organizations, it does help to have a little fun when possible. For example, games such as scavenger hunts can help new employees learn where everything is located. And competitive games – provided they remain good-spirited – can also be a fun way to help everyone enjoy their job a bit more and get to know other team members.

Helping employees feel empowered in today’s workplace is a big challenge. Outsourcing human resources services may give your company a big boost in this area. These professionals often know how to develop engagement strategies that work at every stage of employment.

CA HR Services specializes in working with small and medium-sized companies to help develop legal, efficient, and appropriate H.R. processes and procedures that meet state and federal labor law requirements.