So you’ve put your best efforts into finding the perfect hires, after the endless screening, endless interview processes, reference checks and finally decisions are made! Managers are happy, new employees are appointed and excited about joining a new organization. How do you ensure your hard work doesn’t go to waste? There is nothing more disappointing for a recruiter than finding out their great hire left within 6 months of joining.
During the hiring process, we are focused on the attraction experience, giving the candidate a taste of the organization that entices and attracts. Throughout that hiring process, we ask for feedback and managers openly offer feedback on candidates; feedback flows naturally throughout the process. However, all too often, that natural flow of feedback stops when the candidate moves from the attraction experience of recruitment to the engagement experience of being an employee and here’s where the problems start.
Chances are your candidate has joined your organization because they saw an opportunity to develop, to grow and progress their career. If these are the key drivers for joining, they continue to be the key drivers for staying, yet we often lose sight of that in organizations. We stop giving feedback, we let the candidate sink or swim in their new environment. A new culture can be daunting for a new hire and this is the time that they really need feedback and lots of it. We tend to automatically worry about giving and receiving feedback as we assume nobody wants to hear how they are getting on. Well, the good news is that fear is unfounded! According to a recent survey of 1,000 employees & managers about their feelings on feedback, it turns out they are open to wanting more feedback, they think it improves their performance and they value it highly.
People want more feedback:
60% of employees and managers surveyed would like to receive feedback on a weekly or daily basis. Waiting for a probation review or a monthly 1:1 is not enough. It’s easier to understand how we need to improve when we are told in the moment and ideally as early into our career as feasible.
Feedback from every direction:
4 out of 5 employees and managers believe feedback from a colleague is just as valuable as feedback from their manager. In the modern workplace of cross-functional agile teams & remote working, a manager is only one stakeholder in an employee’s performance and development. Employees recognize the value in getting more feedback, from multiple sources helps build a real picture of their strengths & weaknesses.
In-time feedback changes real-time performance:
7 out of 10 employees believe that good feedback can be more effective for their development than a training or learning course. And they aren’t just looking for praise and re-enforcement. They want constructive feedback, so they can improve areas of weakness. In fact, 74% of employees believe feedback that gives direction to improve is more valuable than praise.
Aligning your attraction and engagement experience:
So having created an incredible attraction experience, its time to ensure our onboarding experiences match. While our candidates may have been wowed by the great start, we need to focus on ensuring the employee experience continues to deliver. Getting a strong feedback culture in place from the outset can make the difference between your great hire staying or leaving. Let’s keep our best hires in-house with great feedback practices.
Authors
Aisling Teillard is CEO and co-founder of Tandem. Prior to Tandem, Aisling has over 20 years’ experience in enterprise HR, the last 15 spent in the role of HR Director at both SAP and Telefonica. Aisling is also a renowned speaker, author & judge on the topics of performance management and HR more generally. Tandem enables crowdsourced, real time feedback that energizes people to achieve more.
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