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Recruitment + Onboarding = Accelerated Success
Paul Duffy
Director, Portal Executive
Over many years working with successful Australian companies I’ve been constantly surprised at how much time, effort and money goes into the recruitment process, and how little goes into the critical first few months of a new executive’s employment.
It seems obvious that an employer would want to leverage the information gathered in the recruitment process to create support and development programmes to underpin a new executive’s success. Almost every company that I talk to agrees with the merits of distilling the wealth of information gathered during interview, assessment and reference checking into key themes that can provide the basis for an onboarding programme.
Very few companies actually do this.
Why?
One answer is resources. Such initiatives are usually driven by a Human Resources or Organisational Development function. Whilst more resources have been made available to HR Managers in recent times, the unfortunate truth is that many HR functions are recovering from a period of underinvestment, and the people and capability to deliver such programmes are in short supply.
More fundamental is the prevailing belief that if you recruit good people and let them loose they’ll be successful. The assumption is that if you’ve attracted an outstanding individual from a competitor (or from an aligned industry), someone who has a proven track record of success with another company, they will be just as successful with your company.
Readers of The Harvard Business Review will recall an article from 2004 called “The Risky Business of Hiring Stars”1. For those who are interested the article can be purchased online Purchase Online - The Risky Business of Hiring Stars. Essentially the authors’ research indicated that hiring a star performer from another company is no guarantee of success in your company. Indeed, the majority of the “stars” tracked by the research performed well below their previous levels with their new employer, and even dragged down the overall performance of the teams they joined.
The authors’ conclusions were that company specific skills & knowledge, and environmental factors (culture, other team members, infrastructure & support) contribute substantially to the performance of “stars”. When a “star” changes company these success factors are lost, and it can take some time for a new employee to create a similar “success platform” in a new organisation.
Such findings reinforce the value to organisations of developing and retaining their own “star performers”. However, the fact is that despite the best organisational development and retention programmes, companies still need to recruit talented individuals – often at great cost.
Executive Onboarding programmes delivered internally or through an external provider can significantly accelerate the success of a new hire. The benefits to the organisation and the individual are reduced role ambiguity, stronger stakeholder relationships, and better communication leading to performance improvement and a shorter “breakeven point”2 for a new employee.
As a recruiter, I believe that much more can be done by consultants to capture knowledge in the recruitment process, and employ this to the benefit of the employee and the company during the critical first few months in a new role.
Portal Executive is committed to bring together outstanding executive recruitment outcomes with integrated executive onboarding programmes that significantly enhance the performance of a new hire.
More information can be found at www.portalexecutive.com.au Or you can contact me on (08) 9380 8378. I’d also be interested in hearing about your experiences on this issue and would welcome your call.
Notes
1. “The Risky Business of Hiring Stars”; Boris Groysberg, Ashish Nanda, Nitin Nohria; Harvard Business Press, May 1, 2004
2. Defined as the point at which the value created by the new employee exceeds the value consumed in the first few months with a new employer. From “The First 90 Days”; Michael Watkins; Harvard Business School Press, 2003
Copyright 2006 Portal Executive
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