Get Immediate Value from Your New Hire

Gallo, A. (2010). Get immediate value from your new hire. Retrieved April 16, 2010 from: http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2010/04/make-your-new-hire-immediately.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

This article discusses the importance of getting a newly hired employee properly acclimated, or “onboarded”, into the culture of the firm; it is published on Harvard Business Review’s Web site. For a new hire to be successful, it is important that he or she has a connection and understanding of the inner workings and culture of the business they were hired into and not just learn the basics of how things are done. The author quotes another expert that says there are four domains that new hires need to master: business orientation, expectation alignment, political connection, and cultural adaptation. It is stated that the last two are the hardest for manager to convey but they are the most critical for the new hire to understand. According to Katzenbach, as quoted in the article, managers should follow three steps to get their newly hired employees up to speed and more likely to succeed: 1. Start early; always recruit with cultural fit as well as skills and experience in mind. Once hired, be up front about and expose the new hire to the company’s culture right away. 2. Get them in the right network; make sure the new hire understands the importance of the informal or shadow organization is to getting things done. Introduce the new hire to his or her colleagues and how and where they fit into the overall organization. 3. Get them working; get them involved in real work right away. Training is important, but they need to be involved in the actual working environment as soon as possible. The article also has a do and don’t list and a couple of case studies as examples. This article discusses an important subject that managers should understand because not only is it important to recruit the best possible employee, but it is important to make sure that once that employee is hired that everything possible is done to help that employee become successful, which benefits everyone involved.