How to Create a Long-Term Success Plan For Your New Hires

A new season of hiring means welcoming lots of new members to the team. Change can be challenging, so it’s important to focus on creating a long-term plan for your new hire’s success within your organization. This helps build an employee development framework for both you and the individual so they can make a smooth transition and feel empowered to take on their new role, while working toward their career goals and meeting organizational needs.

We’ve put together the four necessary points you need to focus on when planning and building out your long-term success plan for your employees.

1. Onboarding & Training

Your plan for the long-term success and growth of your new employees starts with onboarding and training. Ensuring they have the necessary materials and tools to help them jump in and stay in is essential for overall employee success – and it all starts with onboarding and continues with training. So how can you plan for the best onboarding and training for new hires without falling into common traps? Below are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them so you can maximize your onboarding and training initiatives:

Common Mistakes In Your Onboarding Process – 

• Fast-tracking executives. Onboarding isn’t just for entry-level employees. Many organizations pass right by the onboarding process for their executive-level hires, but don’t assume that they don’t require proper onboarding. While they have more experience, every company is different and has unique needs that their employees have been hired to fill. By onboarding every level of new hire, you will be able to ensure success and continuous growth within your company.
• Relying on charts and bullet points for communication expectations. Take the time to actually show new employees where to go and who to talk to, and introduce them to members of their new team. Many companies fall into the trap of leaving new employees to fill in the gaps themselves. By creating this bridge of communication, you’ll have lines of communication open from the start. As a result, you’ll be able to help make your employees feel more comfortable reaching out to others, collaborate more effectively, and boost productivity.

How to Maximize Training and Onboarding: 

Multi-Device Learning: Maximize your new hire’s performance and potential with multi-device learning from the start. You’ll find your workers will be far more engaged with your training when they’re able to self-direct their education and are not forced to spend hours away from their desks to do it. You’ll also have a far more productive workforce, as they can use your learning platform at their times of need and immediately put their learning into practice.

Plan For The First 3-6 Months:

Frequently, companies end their onboarding after a month, sometimes even less, which can make your new hires feel disconnected and lost. Learning expectations and being entirely comfortable in a new role can take six months or more, and according to SHRM, only 15% of companies continue onboarding after six months. Take into consideration that nearly 90% of employees decide whether to stay or go within that first six months — those first few months make a significant impact on that decision.

2. Goals & Benchmarking

Do you and your new hire have the same understanding of the role and the expectations thereof? It’s crucial to start on the right foot. Start by collaborating with their team and supervisor to make sure goals and training align with team needs and how the new employee fits in. Building this into your success plan will help create a smooth transition into the employee’s new role.

Helping your new hire set goals with their supervisor and strategize a game plan to execute those goals will not only give insight and motivation for your new hire but will also provide the organization a better look at how each employee is impacting the business. This isn’t something you necessarily implement within the first few days, but planning for the next six months, or even further, can help them understand their overall path with the company.

Setting your new team members up with a tool like the Individual Developmental Guide will help direct them to take ownership of their own growth to reach their goals and keep them on track. Utilizing such a tool will help you and your new hire develop a strategic long-term training plan to maximize their performance and boost their engagement.

Tip for Success:
Have a mentor program – connecting your new hires with an experienced team member to bounce ideas off of, hold each other accountable, and give them a sense of support to push out those goals will build a strong foundation for your new hire. 

3. Professional Development & Continued Learning

Learning doesn’t stop after onboarding. Help each employee reach their maximum potential by going beyond traditional training by training self-awareness. The best way for employees to grow their own strengths is by understanding what they are. With the Individual Developmental Guide, your employees and managers can stay connected, and it allows management to take part in each employee’s continuous training. Setting, executing, and completing goals is just one small part of the guide. Your managers and employees can also practice and improve different skills and evaluate their own success.

Professional development is one of the key benefits candidates often search for in a company. They want to know that they will be challenged and have the opportunity to grow, improve, and climb in their profession. Planning out and building this into your long-term success plan — and continuously building on it throughout an individual’s time with the company — keeps them on track and shows them that you want them to succeed.  The Individual Developmental Guide is designed to help employee’s understand their own personal traits, motivators, stressors, and behaviors, so they can work with their managers to build their success plan and utilize actionable recommendations for growth and development.

4. Promotion & Leadership

You’re spending a considerable amount of time — and possibly money —  to help your employees improve their skills. To get a return on investment, your employees need to be able to put those new skills to work in your company – and possibly in a new role – as they flourish.

Did you know 30% of employees feel undervalued in their current position? That’s a large portion of the workforce that doesn’t feel as though they’re being heard. Evaluating performance and identifying career advancement opportunities for your employees is crucial to keeping them and creating long-term success. Discover the collaborative nature of the Individual Developmental Guide, which keeps the lines of communication open and engaging, so you’ll be able to identify those employees who are ready for advancement and set them up for leadership. Given its unique perspective, the guide is often used in both the onboarding process of new employees, as well as later discussions about career aspirations, making it a valuable tool for employee performance management and development. Then aligning the Individual Developmental Guide with competency-based training modules from the Caliper Precision Series, you will be able to successfully close the loop for success when moving from onboarding to ongoing training and development.

For more information on the ways Caliper can help you create and manage long term success plans, reach out to our experts today to start building out a strategic employee development plan.