Recall how you felt or how you would feel if you hired an employee who left after a day, three days or a week. Unfortunately, this is common today. In fact, research shows that approximately half of all new employees seriously consider quitting in the first week.
The best way to reduce this possibility is an excellent onboarding program. An excellent onboarding program has two powerful advantages:
- The new employee gets a fantastic introduction and acclimation to the farm.
- You are signaling to the employees that their growth and development are important and required for individual and farm success.
In this article, we focus on onboarding. For more on continuing growth and development, see my previous article “Employee development: Investing in your beef production business’s future.”
Onboarding is today’s term for acclimating the new employee to the farm or ranch. It is more than just the orientation and training that have been our traditional focus for new employees. My Cornell colleague and friend Dr. Richard Stup has developed a tremendous set of onboarding materials that can be accessed here. He defines onboarding as, “The overall business process to bring new employees into the organization, complete necessary paperwork, equip them with safety and performance knowledge and skills, and make them feel connected to a worthwhile team.”
Onboarding then continues until the employee is acclimated to your vision, mission and core values; assimilated into your farm culture; and is fully performing their job responsibilities. I understand that expanding beyond your past orientation and training may sound like unnecessary work and time. However, think about the importance of first impressions. They set the stage for the relationship for days, months and even years to come.
For a new employee to become a long-term, highly productive, engaged employee requires a three-part onboarding process. The first two parts – orientation and training – are familiar. The third – we will call it engagement – is new. The first two are necessary; the third is crucial to your goal of having passionate, engaged, career-oriented employees. We look briefly at the first two and look at engagement in more depth.
1. Orientation
You have always been a part of your farm. The information the new employee requires in orientation is second nature to you. You will undoubtedly miss many key items unless you have an orientation checklist containing all the items the new employee will need to feel safe and comfortable in their new surroundings. You can ask your newest employees to help you develop the checklist and add to it over time. You should develop an orientation schedule for the first day, the first three days, the first week, etc.
A crucial and often overlooked critical part of onboarding is safety. New employees must become aware of the greatest safety issues on the farm and be taught how to respond to injuries or health threats.
2. Training
You are the new employee's training supervisor. I encourage you to explain why tasks are performed the way they are. This explanation will enhance the new employee’s comfort level, confidence and engagement in the tasks and the farm. It is critical, even during busy times, that the new employee is fully trained before doing tasks.
3. Engagement
The more we learn from modern research about leading and coaching employees, the more we understand that the most productive, easiest to supervise, and longest-tenured employees are those who are passionate about the farm’s success; they work because they want to, not because they have to.
Onboarding to create passionate employees requires your leadership and coaching from day one. We look at three components of onboarding for engagement.
Learning pace
The first is to be certain the new employee quickly learns about your farm. Farm owners who share farm information with employees have had positive results. Include the following in your continuing discussion of your farm:
- Continually discuss and reference the farm's vision, mission and core values.
- Explain your hopes and dreams for the future, and share strategic moves you have planned or hope to plan to fulfill those hopes and dreams.
- Talk about the history of your farm. Legacy is important in agriculture.
- Share the traditions, symbols and meaningful events important to the farm culture.
Relationships
The second is building strong relationships with members of your workforce. Back in the “old days” of supervision, friendships at work were frowned upon. Today’s research contradicts that idea. In fact, Gallop's engagement work finds that having a “best friend” at work is highly positively correlated with engagement.
Begin by introducing your new employee to your workforce. Use your knowledge of the new employee to suggest common interests. Monitor progress to be certain the new employee is welcomed and assimilated into the workforce.
Passion
The third component – passion – builds on the first two. Passion takes time to develop but is easily “snuffed out.” To get started on the right path, show your own passion. Most of us, especially us males, struggle to show our emotions. This is a good time to overcome that reluctance and let your passion for the farm show through.
Also, it is not too early to talk about opportunities for the new employee to grow and advance his or her career at your farm. Since they were just in the job market, career plans are in their thoughts. Connecting early with possibilities will increase passion for your farm.
Onboarding success ideas
Two onboarding suggestions:
- Reprioritize the first week: Since we have had an open position, we want the new employee to get started right away. However, onboarding is a marathon, not a sprint. I suggest the priorities for the first week should be: 1) orientation, 2) engagement and 3) training.
- Set scheduled meetings: On the new employee’s first or second day, explain that you will meet with them weekly at a set time – with the only agenda item being their progress in the onboarding process. I suggest starting each meeting with two observations/questions, discussing 1) what is going well and 2) what could be going better. This meeting should evolve into a, perhaps monthly, performance improvement discussion – employee development.
