Employee orientation starts with the job posting
Written by: Mark Hirschfeld, Vice President, Consulting Services and Strategic Partnerships, BI WORLDWIDE
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This piece is part of a 10-part series on attracting, recruiting and retaining employees in your organization. To read the entire series, click here.
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Employee orientation starts with the job posting.
Organizations spend a lot of time and money training new employees. This training hopefully helps the new employee get up to speed quickly so they can make contributions to the organization. We also hope new employees will be inspired to bring new ideas and creativity to their jobs.
In our research, we find employees who feel they receive the right training are twice as likely to be inspired, but employees who feel they receive training that was not useful are twice as likely to be uninspired about their work experience.
But what about companies who don’t wait for new employee orientation to help employees learn? Are those employees more inspired?
What we’ve found is new employees who learn about their job and organization prior to being hired are far more inspired than those who don’t. They are, on average, ready to bring their best ideas and creativity to the job.
There are numerous opportunities to help recruits learn about the job and organization, learning that could start with the job posting and continue throughout the hiring process. Yes, in your employment messages you’ll need to tell them about the salary and benefits and where the job is located. Those are table stakes in all employment communications.
But you also need to tell a story. A story that helps prospective employees learn about the job you are asking them to consider and the culture of the organization.
Some of that learning can be targeted to specific segments of prospective employees. One of our clients, a franchisor, found that many of their successful franchisees started out as hourly employees. They knew that not every entry-level person would want that as a future — but some would. So they created videos of successful franchisees that are used in their employment marketing, educating prospective employees of a path that has actually been taken and a story that, in the future, could include them.
New employees have a lot to learn about our workplace. Why not start that learning in the job posting?
Take action:
- Think about some of the key behaviors and outcomes new employees must learn in order to be successful. What would you want to share in your job postings about these behaviors and outcomes?
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