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By Jake Outram, Senior EX Advisor, Qualtrics
Something strange is happening. New joiners have historically spent the first months of a role in a warm glow of excitement, a phase recruiters know as the ‘new job honeymoon period’. However, for the first time, they report being disaffected, restless, and failing to connect with you, their new employer.
That’s a big problem. It means that even after putting in all the hard work and cost to hire new joiners, you cannot guarantee they will stick around. Companies are forced back into the jobs market, repeating the expensive and time-consuming process of hiring new talent all over again, and placing continued pressure on existing team members who are working without the support they need from within the team.
The Society for Human Resource Management estimates the cost to replace a staffer is 6-9 months of their salary – an expense to avoid if possible.
Nonetheless, the data gives us reason for concern. Recently, Qualtrics polled 37,000 employees across 32 countries about their feelings about work. Compared with longer serving employees, new hires consistently reported lower levels of engagement, intentions to stay, well-being, and inclusion. Some 39% of employees who have been with a company for less than six months plan to leave within the next 12 months, a 6-point deterioration from 2022. Some have even asked for their old jobs back.
This chimes with what I hear from customers - the number one people challenge right now is attrition of new joiners. I’ve genuinely never seen anything like this before. So, what’s changed? The evidence suggests companies have dropped the ball on onboarding and pre-onboarding.
It’s ironic in a way, in the height of the pandemic many companies put lots of effort into making new people feel welcome. Everyone was aware joiners were coming into the organisation in unusual circumstances. As a result, HR leaders, managers and team members went to great lengths to try and introduce people virtually, and deliberately over-indexed on regular check-ins during onboarding.
That may have been even more focused than pre-COVID. But what’s happened since is many organisations are still working out their best hybrid or return-to-office mix.
Many companies have been distracted from welcoming new people in. I’ve spoken to Chief People Officers who admit that established, well-structured, focused inductions that were in place pre-COVID have not been refreshed and it is not uncommon to hear leaders admit that ‘we don’t do a good job with onboarding’.
There’s clearly an onboarding impact on retention. While we knew it would be tough to connect with a new environment if hired during lockdown, and new employees made allowances for their new employers, we somehow forgot that it would be just as unsettling (and certainly for younger workers) to get the hang of a new role if only half the team are available in-person, and even then maybe only occasionally. It’s much harder to form the social bonds that we took for granted pre-COVID.
It goes beyond Friday drinks or a monthly team curry. As a new-joiner you benefit from being included in those off-the-cuff discussions – for example about a customer challenge or opportunity – just because you are there and looking interested.
But if we agree companies need to be doing a better job at welcoming in new people, what can be done?
In my view, we need to go back to some of the positive behaviours realised during COVID and talk to individuals.
We could also rethink the approach to employee listening. Standalone employee surveys are too crude a tool if used in isolation. Instead, we should complement holistic all-employee surveys by capturing the experience of new hires during onboarding and use that data to understand how to best connect to the organisation and keep them motivated. A real-time approach to feedback and sentiment, at key moments in the employee lifecycle, would give HR leaders a more accurate picture of what’s happening in their organisation and how the employee experience is contributing to business performance.
Let’s make this strange phase just that. The new job honeymoon period can be revived if new people are treated like they were when they needed support the most.
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