- Early intervention, such as onboarding, is important if you want to keep employees for the long term
- Michelin North America welcomes new employees with a formal and personalized onboarding process
- Onboarding Generation Y employees requires communication, feedback and Day One impact
Day 1 Critical to Gen Y
The early intervention may be particularly important when it comes to hiring Generation Y, or men and women born about 1980 or later. This demographic is expected to comprise approximately 50% of the workforce by 2014.
For this demographic, early intervention translates to Day 1 on the job. Author Jason Ryan Dorsey, a Gen Y-er himself, explains why: "Many Gen Y-ers decide on our first day at work whether or not we will stay with an employer long term," he writes in "Y-Size Your Business: How Gen Y Employees Can Save You Money and Grow Your Business."
Generation Y recruits want information about career development sooner rather than later, and onboarding is a good time to begin having that conversation "even if follow-through doesn't occur until later," adds Alexia Vernon, coach, trainer and author of "90 Days, 90 Ways: Onboarding Young Professionals to Peak Performance."
Moreover, communication is important to this group of workers and not simply communication about a company's benefits package. They need to feel engaged, they need to understand their role in the company's success and they want feedback, Vernon says.
"Informal feedback, even during the onboarding phase, is important. Don't wait until a formal feedback session," she advises. "They want to know so they can self correct."
That said, many best practices related to onboarding Generation Y are appropriate for onboarding any new recruit, regardless of the employee's demographic or length of time in the workforce. The same holds true for worst practices. With that as prelude, Vernon offers up this list of onboarding no-no's:
- Don't bring in new hires when people "don't have time to really show them the ropes or provide the support they need."
- Don't make onboarding a one-shot deal. (At Michelin, the formal onboarding process concludes after one year, at which time the employee transitions into the normal process of career management.)
- Don't overlook an informal network of people resources, such as mentors and peers.
- Don't forget to include the direct manager in the onboarding process.
The Center for Effective Organizations' Ledford is emphatic on the final point, as well. "The first line supervisor plays a critical role in onboarding -- the supervisor is the face of management for the new employee."
