Congratulations! You’ve found a candidate and they’ve accepted your formal offer for employment. But what are the next steps? If your answer is “wait for them to show up on your doorstep and get them moving right away,” you’re in for a rocky ride.
There are actually plenty of tasks that will need to be completed in the onboarding process—some even before the new hire’s first day. For a detailed look, check out this month’s article, “How to Set Up Your New Hire for Success.”
Skipping through this process could cost you in productivity and revenue for years to come. Here are some real-life examples of onboarding, or lack thereof, gone terribly wrong.
The data points (aka process) by which these firms were evaluated are:
• Adopting a mindset that team members are investments, not instruments
• Preparing and completing a pre-hiring checklist
• Defining roles
• Outlining short and long-term career path options
• Collaborating on trajectory
• Assigning a mentor
• Periodically meeting, monitoring, and checking in
True Story: $525 million AUM planning and investment firm, of 14 employees, sacrifices full year of productivity and profitability and loses one senior advisor due to lack of onboarding.
This firm brought on a novice advisor from a well-known and respected CFP undergraduate program and provided a $65K compensation package. As expected, the advisor had very little experience in the field.
On the surface, this is not an exorbitant salary or a terrible move if you have the time, resources or processes already in place to train and prepare the advisor to take on client management and servicing tasks, without constant oversight, within 90 days of hiring. This, however, was not the case at this firm.
With no guides, resources or training program to follow, the new hire was left defenseless. Naturally, someone else in the firm had to neglect their own position in marketing and client management to spend time training the advisor. The time commitment was overwhelming for this individual who virtually went from generating business leads and client management to being a highly overqualified hand-holder. So, not only was the firm taking on the $65k compensation expense, but was sacrificing potential revenue and quality client service.
Enter the domino effect.
