Do you know what’s really going on with your new employee in their first few days, weeks and months?

While they may appear calm on the surface, underneath they may be experiencing something else entirely.

Compiled from our collective coversations with new employees (try saying that five times fast), here’s what your new employee may be thinking when you think everything’s going swimmingly!

When people first receive the EAI report, like any new report, they have a few questions about it. So we’ve put together our top 10 pointers on how to interpret and apply the information.

Of course, if you have a few more questions, please let us know.

1. When you receive the report, the time to take action is of the essence. If you have lower than your desired levels of Attachment, you only have a small window of opportunity between the 90th and 120th day for you to actively shift perceptions that may be leading to lower than desired levels of Attachment.

It is important to read and prepare for the discussion with your new employee in as short a time as possible after you have received the report, so you can have the greatest impact with any discussions you may have or actions you may take as a result of the report.

2. The EAI report is not the solution. It is a measure of employee Attachment perceptions. It includes what has possibly led to the perceptions and what you can do to discuss and develop and action plan that could shift these perceptions before the end of the critical Attachment period.

It is critical to note that your employee’s Attachment perceptions will only change through a change in the behavioural impact of the manager.

3. Your new employee has not created the EAI feedback report. They have been asked to provide feedback on their general experience over their first 90 days, which includes perceptions of the manager’s behaviour as it relates to some key drivers.

We have taken these experiences and have created a report that indicates the impact that you as a manager have had in your role as the primary carer of the new employee. There is no wrong perception at the 90th day, only high moderate or low levels of Attachment across 20 separate perception drivers. Your focus as a manager should be on what you can do to strengthen any perceptions that are lower than desired by the 120th day.

4. We do not re-measure Attachment at 120 days. There is no correlation between Attachment and the ability of the new employee to do their job. The level of Attachment should in no way be used as a performance management measure for either the manager or the employee.

Based on split time reliability, we know that the key to strengthening Attachment lies in the willingness and effectiveness of the manager to develop and implement an action plan with the new employee between the 90th and 120th day. If you do this then you will strengthen the Attachment bond, if you do not then it will remain unchanged.

5. Strengthening Attachment is not an absolute guarantee of increasing employee retention. However increased Attachment does reduce the risk of employees either actively seeking other positions or being susceptible to other offers within their first 18 months of employment with you.

Strengthening Attachment will affect the level of discretionary effort an individual chooses to apply within their role which in turn flows through to their performance.

6. There is no down side to measuring and attempting to strengthen Attachment. Everyone wins as Attachment increases. The only risk in measuring Attachment is if the manager chooses to do nothing with the information.

7. To assume you know the strength of attachment before it is measured, is not a good strategy for managing Attachment. Neither is ignoring the drivers that are lower than desired. The risk is not in measuring Attachment and attempting to strengthen Attachment, but that you are using intuition and assumptions that may well be wrong.

Our research shows that over two thirds of managers inaccurately assess the level of Attachment of their new employees. A manager’s intent is never in doubt, only the accuracy of what they understand the issues to be and what is required to achieve the best result. To measure and know, is better than not measuring and leaving Attachment to chance.

8. The EAI report is designed to create confronting realisations but never be confrontational. By this we mean that to discover something you did not know or believed was otherwise is indeed confronting. This process is not designed to score anyone, but rather create an opportunity to address Attachment perceptions in an accurate, targeted and meaningful way.

9. The measurement framework remains constant but the employee perceptions are always different. A manager may start two new people and create essentially the same on-boarding experience for them, yet end up with very different Attachment results for each. The EAI is not a score card of your ability as a manager – only the impact you have had on Attachment perceptions during the first 90 days.

Rather than just questioning what you should have done differently, it allows you to understand the individual needs of your people and tailor the remaining 30 days based on their individual needs and perceptions.

10. Over time we expect that you will use the 20 driver framework to be informally assessing the development of Attachment perceptions throughout the first 90 days. It is this learning over time that will allow you to achieve higher overall Attachment consistently by the 90th day.

Start your journey however, by using the information that is provided in the report to strengthen Attachment between the 90th and 120th day.

For more information on Employee Attachment or getting the most out of the EAI then please email:selina@employeeattachment.com

OK so now most people understand that the recruitment process causes candidates a lot of anxiety.

Confronting conversations contribute to higher levels of Attachment!

And most managers also realise that they need to communicate early on during the hiring process and regularly through the first few months of hire.

But did you know that there are specific issues to tackle during this time, and talking about these issues can actually lead to higher levels of Attachment?

Here’s why conversations are critical.

When someone starts a job they place high expectations on themselves, their performance and their organisation. They compare their performance to the performance of more experienced staff members. They also often do not realise just how long it will take before they reach full competency in their role.

New starters also have elevated expectations that their reasons for joining will be fulfilled and that the organisation is thinking long term about the investment in their learning and development.

In today’s podcast we discuss three more drivers to Employee Attachment and the critical conversations you need to have around these. These are:

-          Performance objectives; as a manager how important it is to clearly articulate what your expectations are while your new employee is on their way to achieving full competency

-          Reasons for joining;  your new employee is often acutely aware of why they left their previous role and can have heightened sensitivity to these issues being  present in their new organisation

-          The learning pathway that’s available to your new employee after they achieve full competency in the role; for people under the age of 55 career opportunities that an organisation provides feature heavily in their reasons for selecting an organisation

Find out more about these powerful conversations around these drivers by listening to today’s podcast. Click here to take a listen and download. We’d love to hear what you think.

Many many years ago I started a temp job.

Honesty in recruitment contributes to higher levels of Attachment!

It was a fill-in job and a favour to a friend who was a Recuitment Consultant. She told me that I would be doing market research over the phone. It turned out it was not market research, but cold hard telesales. I was selling of all things, welding equipment.

Now I am the least likely person to succeed at selling welding equipment.

However I made a few sales and stuck it out for six weeks to prove that I could do it. Then I looked for a permanent job. Few other people stayed beyond the first week.

The fall out from this was that the Consultant damaged her reputation with the client and all of the temporary staff she placed in the role. Few people succeeded and nobody was satisfied.

The irony of this situation is that there were people out there who were really terrific at cold hard telephone sales. I saw a few of them in the team. They had been there for years.

Why am I telling you all this?

Telesales is a hard role to fill. If all parties were honest in communication around the requirements of the role then they could have come up with a solution that worked. The client could have  restructured the roles, rotated the staff or offered better training. Or, perhaps, the Consultant could have changed her recruitment practices to find the right person.

The importance of honesty and completeness in recruitment communication is the first theme of today’s podcast.

We’ll be talking about three more drivers to Employee Attachment. These are: accuracy of the job description; manager alignment; and business awareness.

Here’s what we’ll be covering:

- if you have high staff turnover why you should never shy away from having the difficult discussions about the reality of a role and the organisation when you’re hiring.

- the importance of never making assumptions about people and their willingness to perform a role.

- why your position descriptions and discussions around the role you’re recruiting may lack vital information.

- why describing the organisation to a candidate is just as important as describing the role.

-  as a manager how much communication should you have to make sure someone is comfortable in the role.

Click here to take a listen and download. We’d love to hear what you think.

Team Employee Attachment are taking a short break.

Happy Holidays to all our readers

We’ve got some exciting plans over the next few months.

In no particular order these include:

1) Planning continued global domination (OK we exaggerate, but an exciting new product is on the cards)
2) Eating and indulging more than is good for us
3) Taking a mind, body and spirit break to come back refreshed
4) Catching up on some industry reading
5) Catching up on some light reading

We’d like to take this time to thank everyone for their continued and generous support for Employee Attachment.

We wish you all the best over the Christmas season and into the new year and look forward to seeing you all refreshed next year!

There we’ve said it.

This is one of the things we’ll be discussing in today’s podcast.

How well do you manage your central messages, rotation and incremental learning?

Incremental learning, for example, covers the steps that your employee needs to take, to achieve full competency in their role. Unfortunately, in our experience, not many organisations map this learning process out. Nor do they measure the productivity of their new hire against a road map of skills.

Listen to our podcast to discover just how much damage you can do to your new employee’s sense of security, if you do not fully understand whether your new employee is competent and decide to extend their probation period as a result.

We’ll also cover:

- who is responsible for the communication around the key purpose of the organisation

- what happens to your new employee when those messages are confused

- how a planned rotation can not only help your new employee settle in, but protect their reputation when little things go wrong during their settling in period.

Click here to take a listen and download. We’d love to hear what you think.

Here at Team Employee Attachment we always enjoy talking to clients. Last week we had the very great pleasure of speaking to Jo Hanlon.

Learn Attachment secrets from a top HR consultant

Jo is chief consultant with Mind Your Ps. They provide an outsourced HR solution for medium sized businesses who typically struggle to align their P’s to deliver profit and growth. Jo has at least 30 Ps in her professional toolkit including people, productivity, profit, passion, purposes and practices.

Jo’s been using the EAI with one of her client’s, Peter McInnes. Based in Newcastle, they are an Australian owned marketer of kitchen and home wares. Over the past two years they’ve almost doubled their workforce.

With such rapid growth there’s enormous pressure just to get people on board. It’s very easy to let things the small things slip. Yet Peter McInnes has been scoring very highly on many of the Attachment drivers, which means that they are getting many things right when it comes to attaching their new employees.

When we saw these results we thought “hmmm we must talk to Jo and ask her to share their Attachment secrets”.

In this podcast, you will discover many things including:

• What the EAI told Peter McInnes about the Attachment levels of new employees
• Issues that emerged that they were not aware of before using the EAI
• What they think is the appropriate level of communication with new employees, that is how much is too much, and how little is too little
• The processes they need to have in place to ensure effective Attachment
• How they use the EAI as a feedback tool for managers
• How long is too long (or short) for an effective induction
• When is the best time to introduce a tool like the EAI

It’s very rare that you get an opportunity to go behind the curtain and inside someone’s business. Jo has kindly given us a lot of detail here.

Click here to take a listen and tell us what you think.

Picture this.

You’re hiring. You have a carefully planned recruitment process. You send out a letter of offer to your new staff member. They begin and on day one you give them a quick tour of the office.

How well do you manage your recruitment, pre-employment and orientation processes?

Possibly, or possibly not.

There are actually 20 different drivers that you’ll need to manage to make sure your new employee perceives security, trust and value, acceptance and belonging. In today’s podcast we talk about the first three drivers – recruitment, pre-employment, and orientation.

We’ll cover what each of each driver means and how you can use each driver to create strong attachment perceptions.

Here’s a sample of what we’ll talk about.

- how long your recruitment process should actually be, to ensure that your new recruit takes your role seriously
- who you’ll really need to convince to ensure your new employee feels secure in their decision to choose you
- why it’s critical to put your offer of employment in writing
- how to ensure your employee feels like they belong before they’ve actually begun a role

Of course, we cover a whole lot more. Click here to listen and download the podcast. Then please leave a comment and tell us what you think.

If you’d like to know more about how managing your employee’s Attachment can reduce the risk of losing your valuable investment, we can deliver updates direct to your inbox. Please click on this link, and enter your details.

What's the real cost of poorly attached employees?

Here’s a question for you. Do you know how much it costs to hire a new employee and train them up to full productivity?

$10,000? $20,000? $100,000?

Do you know how long it takes to gain a return on that investment?

We all know hiring is expensive. But losing someone after you have invested all that money, is more than expensive – it’s not necessary and has a big impact on the morale and productivity of the rest of the team.

There is an answer to the cost question.

Find out about the money you’re risking with poorly Attached employees by listening to our next podcast. You’ll find the link at the bottom of this blog post.

Click here to listen and download the podcast.

If you’d like to know more about how managing your employee’s Attachment can reduce the risk of losing your valuable investment, we can deliver updates direct to your inbox. Please click on this link, and enter your details.

Listen to the Employee Attachment podcasts

If you’ve hired anyone recently, here are a few questions for you.

No matter how settled your new employee says they are, do you ever have a nagging feeling that they don’t want to be there – even if they have answered “fine” when you’ve asked them how they are.

Here’s a taste of what’s really going on…

When a person starts a job they’re looking for security. They’re looking to see if they can trust you. They are asking if you trust them. They’re looking for acceptance from the team and the organisation.

Once your employee perceives security, trust, value and acceptance, they will then choose if they want to belong and add value. In short they are looking to Attach to you and your organisation….

Sound complicated?

It needn’t be, once you understand what’s going on with your new employees.

If you’re worried about how you are going to manage all of these Attachment perceptions, click here to listen to the podcast and find out more.