- Recruiter after recruiter will target expense as the most detrimental part of good recruitment.
- To be sure, it costs money – big money in some cases, to hire the perfect candidate.
- So how can money be saved after hiring a new employee?
- These 5 tips may help.
Recruiting is expensive. So is hiring. Interviews, background checks, skillset testing, H.R. onboarding all costs a company time and most importantly, money.
With that point taken it behooves H.R. departments to save as much money as possible during the recruiting stages of bringing on new employees. The problem is, money may not always be able to be saved during the recruiting process.
So where have H.R. departments begun to turn to offset the costs of recruitment? Simple, they’ve begun to concentrate on the processes that occur right after hiring a new employee, and gladly, these 5 tips first published on Glassdoor have worked for many companies’ H.R. installments.
1. Create Processes for Onboarding
Smaller companies may “wing it” when it comes to onboarding new hires, but this can come at great time cost.
Getting a new hire up to speed on employment paperwork, introducing them to their new colleagues and training them in their new role are all time-consuming, not to mention costly.
As a result, that position you hired for isn’t getting any work done for several weeks until the new employee has settled in and learned the necessaries such as people in the phone directory, email addresses, worker handbooks, etc.
Of course, accommodating to these and any other needs a new employee requires often means that you have to step away from other activities, which can inevitably take up even more time and money.
This is why creating, and if needed, modifying processes is key to efficient onboarding.
To that end you should have on hand for immediate access:
- Training manuals or handbooks with all the important details the new hire needs to know which you can email to them as soon as they have accepted your offer. Doing this can cut down on any questions they ask once they start work.
- Make your new hire’s training an easy process by creating detailed documents illustrating how to do each function they’re responsible for. Include with this logins and websites that they will need to do their work.
- A new hire should be able to read these documents and work through the processes (with any needed help, of course), to cut down on the time they spend learning their new work role.
2. Streamline Your Payroll Process
While larger companies may outsource payroll functions, smaller businesses who can’t afford to (or don’t have enough employees to justify the service) can do just as well with the right payroll software.
Currently, it is very simple to automate direct deposit through payroll solutions, so once you’ve entered a new hire in the system, you don’t have to think about ensuring they get their paycheck — it’s done seamlessly without your involvement.
Payroll software will also deduct from the employee’s check for health insurance and taxes. There’s also the added benefit of direct deposit in which it provides you reports on what you’re paying your staff.
3. Simplify New Hire Training
Sometimes training is specific to one employee, and other times, it’s applicable to multiple employees. When the latter is the case, you can consolidate your training to save time and money. Use this technique if you hire several people at the same time by scheduling one training session for everyone to cut down on time spent training.
This process is also useful when you need to provide ongoing training for all of your staff. You need to first take one department at a time and block off a few hours each day to get them up to speed on new software or strategy.
This will help you reduce the time employees spend away from their desks, but you’ll also enable a sense of camaraderie because they’re training together.
4. Create a Mentoring Program for Your New Hires
Starting a new job is intimidating for anyone, and new hires, particularly those with little to no experience, may be hesitant to ask questions about processes or what in general they need to do in their new position. This, of course, can create bottlenecks in productivity.
A valuable solution to this is to pair up new hires with mentors.
These people can help facilitate the hands-on training as well as be accessible to answer questions and provide feedback. You can even have your new hire-mentor duo work on actual projects to really submerge the new employee into the aspects of a job they’ll eventually perform on their own.
The beauty of doing this entails absolutely no time loss or additional money spent while training a newbie. Hence, real projects are completed while your workforce is fortified with well-trained employees who gain a sense of satisfaction at having helped complete a project.
Lastly, a weekly (or even daily) check-in when first hired can be helpful to ensure your new hires are growing in confidence in their new role.
By the way, the mentors do not need to be manager level; in fact, a nonmanagerial peer may be better suited to ensure your new hire is comfortable enough to turn to that person for help.
5. Be Sure to Foster a Welcoming Environment
This might seem an odd way to save time or money after hiring someone, but if the workplace is friendly and the colleagues helpful, there’s less chance a new hire will leave in less than a year.
The benefit of this is, of course, it costs money to bring in replacement employees, particularly only after six months to a year. At that point, you have to go through the recruiting process and onboarding all over again, which means spending more time and money.
According to Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory, a process used to motivate workers with not just a paycheck, but with job security, welcoming coworkers and growth opportunities, certain factors are associated with job satisfaction, including achievement and recognition, not to mention the work itself.
Make sure that you and other managers are doing your collective parts to foster these factors within the workforce.
Conclusion
Everyone in recruiting understands how a happy work environment can reduce employee turnover.
Due diligence on you and the parts of other recruiters is of course needed. Encourage managers to interact on a daily basis with their staff, checking in to mitigate any personnel issues that might cause tension or hamper production. Give employees positive feedback and reinforcement so they will continue to want to work for the company.
There’s no getting around the fact that the search for a new hire and subsequent onboard is expensive. But with a few tactics designed to streamline the onboarding process, as well as creating a work environment that your staff thrives in, you can reduce the time and money spent moving forward.
