Give newcomers a good start

The issue also extends to the company's top management level. A recent survey of 25 large companies by the Corporate Leadership Council, a group of human resources directors, found that half of their new top executives were fired or voluntarily resigned within the first three years of joining.

Of course, a new hire may be unqualified for a variety of reasons, may be incompetent, or may not fit into the company's corporate culture. But in many cases, new hires leave because of the wrong way the boss treats them and their jobs. Worse is that the boss makes hasty judgments about the new employee's performance and quickly freezes it.

Naturally, bosses and new employees may have different opinions on how and what to do. Communicating about this can help bridge these differences, but they rarely have these kinds of conversations. Even after a conversation, the boss only casually mentions his expectations to the new employee—in part because of time pressure, but also because he feels the new manager should be given space and time to familiarize himself with the new job, and given They have the opportunity to prove their abilities. So, the new manager will gain important job information by communicating with his ex, other new colleagues, subordinates, and even customers and suppliers. He will draw on his own experience and the examples of previous bosses to carry out his current job. But all of this doesn't necessarily match his new boss's thinking.

As a result, the first formal conversation between the two parties about job expectations often occurs after the boss becomes unhappy with a new manager's work trend or notices his first mistake. At this point, the boss already has such a determination: he is a problem employee. Research shows that the impression a new employee makes within the first five days of being hired is very lasting and difficult to change.

Five management practices that hurt new hires

There are certain management practices that seem reasonable to the boss but can be harmful to new hires. Some of the following management pitfalls can quickly lead to a good employee being mistaken for a bad one.

The principle of ups and downs depends on oneself: The boss always hopes that the new employee can quickly get started on the job and can start the business quickly, especially for the new employee with rich work experience. Such bosses believe that such employees only need to click and stop.

Itemized approach: The boss lists a large number of management responsibilities for the new employee without focusing on two or three key goals that must be exceeded.

The "honeymoon period" principle: At first, the boss always tries to refrain from negative job feedback out of fear that public criticism will derail the development of the working relationship.

Set a tough work schedule: Bosses tend to overestimate new hires' willingness to challenge goals or deadlines. In fact, in order to make a good impression on the boss, new employees often lack the confidence and experience to challenge the boss's "sky plan". The work task has become an unfinishable task.

The illusion of an "open door": The boss thinks that when a new employee has a problem, he will come to him for his opinion. But often the opposite is true. In fact, the situation is complicated by the failure of the boss to articulate expectations—the new employee may not even realize he needs help.

These mistakes often lead to the boss having a bad view of the new employee, making the latter less likely to turn over. These perceptions are like an anamorphic mirror through which the boss observes the employee's future actions and work results. The boss will then find that he has had a hard time accepting any information that contradicts his initial impression of the employee in his mind. But let’s be honest, bosses are so stressful that sometimes they may not bother to reconsider their perception of an employee in order to correct it accordingly.

Misidentifying an employee as unqualified is costly

Management also faces the challenge of trying to find a link between certain behaviors and subsequent outcomes, which means that bosses may imagine some connections out of thin air, while ignoring the real facts. In these cases, the boss sees only what he expects to see. If he notices something unexpected -- such as a "mediocre" person doing a good job -- he might attribute it to external circumstances and think it's just luck.

It's not that the bosses want to look at people with tinted glasses, in fact, they also want a bowl of water. It's just that he tends to process some vague information to support his own views. The end result is that some very good new hires find themselves struggling to shake off that image by being prematurely mislabeled as "unqualified" and ultimately have to leave, which is a loss for all parties. disastrous results.

Those losses may be far greater than you realize. The first is performance taken away by new hires. The company failed to get the full contribution from the new hire because he took a break from work, began preparing an exit strategy, and restarted the job search. Then, of course, is the replacement cost. You'll repay recruitment, onboarding, and training costs, and face the prospect of another job failure. Why did it fail again? Because the boss failed to learn from the process: He blamed poor hiring or HR's sloppy hiring process and ignored his responsibilities. Therefore, the boss is bound to repeat the same mistakes and incur the same losses.

Team spirit is also compromised. If team members feel that the boss's treatment of new hires is unfair and unpopular, they'll quickly draw some appropriate lessons from it.

Bosses tend to underestimate the impact of mistreatment of "underperformers" on team morale, as well as a lack of understanding of how teams work. A star employee commented when he saw that his boss was always trying to control new employees and nitpicking on their performance: "It made us feel that in the eyes of the boss, everyone is optional." The price of this is lower employee performance, lower morale, and lower loyalty. Team members are tired of helping train new hires who are always leaving, and are reluctant to take responsibility for themselves when they train new hires.

Two key things to help new employees

There are two key things that effective bosses can do to prevent unnecessary problems with new employees: communicate frequently, develop good relationships, and get to know the new employee.

Develop good relationships. By engaging with new employees on a regular basis early in the relationship, the boss can communicate priorities, performance standards, time allocations and even job expectations and frequency of communication. Likewise, to prevent misunderstandings, the boss can further clarify his work style to the new employee—including how he does his job and what he likes and doesn't like. This transparency effectively prevents the relationship between the two parties from deteriorating.

While many bosses worry about being treated as a "micromanager" (i.e. hands-on - editor's note), his early intervention in the work of a new manager is not a threat to the latter, as it Like a normal adaptation process, this intervention can be reduced when the new manager is on the job. Conversely, if the boss initially intervenes rarely and instead takes a wait-and-see attitude, but then intervenes more and more, it means that the new manager is not doing the job well. This is more of a threat to new hires.

By the same token, when a problem arises, the boss should step in quickly. Big problems usually grow from small to big. If the boss and his subordinates take the initiative to discuss the problem when it first appears, the problem can be easily solved. The more the boss does not reveal his opinion to his subordinates, the more often his subordinates make the same mistakes, and the more annoyed the boss will be, and the less effective he will be as a manager, the less effective his intervention will be for the new manager. The threat is also greater.