As I’ve stated in past posts, there are three big onboarding questions. The first was, “Do I really want this job?” The second is “Can I really do this job?” I saw a great example of this watching interviews from the British Open this weekend. I number of golfers stated that there is always a concern that they had the talent and what it takes to really make it on tour. They stated that you never quite know until you’ve been in the heat of battle on Sunday in the majors.
So as you bring on new employees, they are going to have the same doubts even if they have a lot of talent and are well suited for the job. They haven’t been under fire yet with your company and they don’t really know what to expect and how they will perform. The moral of these individuals waivers as the days, weeks and months go by without an answer. As their confidence goes down, there is a potential for all sorts of mistakes and errors to happen. Therefore it’s critical to help new employees answer this question as soon after hire as possible.
We did a test of this one day in a call center. Group 1 was the control. They began taking live calls in week 4 of their training. For group 2, we found a basic all that they could take live on day 3. Group 2’s response was almost unanimous. The said, “this job isn’t as hard as I thought. I can do this. I’m looking forward to learning more.” Group 1 heard about this an were envious. They couldn’t believe the other group was on the phones yet. They had all sorts of questions about what it was really like. They carried their nervousness all the way into week 4 at least those who didn’t drop out.
Leave a Reply