Induction woes | Why new starter stories matter for employer brand

The first few weeks of a new job can be make or break and when a new starter feels sidelined, ignored or left in the dark the dominoes of trust and engagement begin to fall and with those early promises compromised, the word can get out about, ‘what it’s like to work around here’.

Starting a new job can be daunting, even for the most unflappable, yet the moment the job advert is seen the assurances begin and when that mismatch between what has been promised and what is being delivered is a yawning gap, any new employee can quickly become dissatisfied and unengaged and, at worst start to look for an alternative.

The onboarding process is crucial from those early moments to make any new employee feel welcome, part of the team and importantly get to grips with key performance indicators, systems, culture and how things are done. What employees tell the external world about the business is crucial for a business’s employer brand being positive and alluring for other rising stars that may want to join.

When things go wrong

Liese Lord, Director of the Lightbulb Tree and an interim HR Director says that early on in her career she learnt only to well how things can play out unfavourably. “Earlier in my career I arrived on day one for a new role and was shown to the HR office, outside of the office was a row of empty chairs and I asked the outgoing HR person what they were for. She replied, ‘The factory manager sends people there that he needs to have a word with at break times and they wait.’ She then handed me a couple of cans of deodorant and air freshener and said that I would need them too.”