New hires come into the company usually excited about contributing right away. They want to deliver lots of value to their new employer. What makes it complicated are long tenured team members who use different terms for the same requirement or process. This then creates frustration and confusion for new employees. Proper communication processes involving new hires will be a critical issue for leaders at all levels.
Long term employees often live in a bubble of their own responsibilities without understanding how they affect operations throughout the company. New hires can sometimes become confused about the vocabulary and processes the company uses to conduct daily business. Leaders must be aware of interactions affecting new hires to ensure long term employees make the effort to communicate properly.
How can we eliminate confusion on communicating within the company so that productivity and profitability do not suffer?
- Understanding the fundamentals. New hires should be trained in the strategy, vision, mission, core values, and the direction of the company soon after joining the company. Long term team members need to be reminded continually what the business is striving to accomplish. Assimilation into the company culture for new hires is critical.
- Common language. Figuring out the company and industry vocabulary can be overwhelming. The single biggest challenge is for your longest serving employees to properly communicate exactly what they need from new hires as normal business continues. Your team members who have been with the company for many years can get complacent about how they complete their work and through communication sloppiness, they can confuse new hires. This can often be found in creating reports and discussing important metrics. Every day, are we speaking the same language?
- Take extra time to ensure the message is received. When asking new hires to complete a task, it is essential you have communicated exactly what you needed. Then, validate the request by asking them to repeat back the task. This ensures communication clarity.
As a leader, you need to be clear about how longer serving team members are interacting with new hires. You may discover that team members are referring to the same requirement, but are calling it by different names. Company vocabulary must be clear to facilitate effective communication.
How are you ensuring that new hires properly assimilate into the company culture and that longer tenured employees are communicating effectively and clearly?
Please comment or email me at comment@stephenmclain.com.
Click here to sign up on my email list for updates.
Copyright 2016 – Stephen McLain