Welcome aboard: don’t fall over!

We need to get better at managing people into new roles.

In New Zealand, one in four people who start a new job will have left within a year.[1]  Amongst government agencies, the figure may be closer to one in three.[2]  

Many regard turn-over in the first year as a straight cost to the business. In addition to recruitment costs and the costs of managing the exit, the cost to effected teams and opportunity costs for the organisation are considerable. 

Turnover of newly hired employees may be due to:

• selection errors — the new person didn’t have the skills for the role,
• not properly understanding the role in the first place.
• (Only 36% of new hires feel they receive an accurate picture of the role.[3] ),
• a poor relationship with the new manager,[4]  and
• failure to build relationships across the company.[5]

The risk that the new hire may leave isn’t the only thing to worry about. According to a CEB study, when a newly appointed manager doesn’t transition well their staff are 21% more likely to say they want to leave.[6]

Retention rates improve in organisations that have thorough on-boarding programmes. In 2013, the Aberdeen Group looked at the differences in retention amongst 230 companies who were either regarded as having best-in-class transition programmes for new employees, or those who were regarded as laggards. Organisations whose programmes were best-in-class retained 91% of new hires at the one-year point, compared with 30% retained in laggard organisations. 

Transition into a new role takes a good 100 days

Perhaps the reason for the high turnover rate is that we under-estimate how long it takes for people to transition into a new role. There seems to be a mismatch between what executives say about how long it takes to come to a full understanding of a new job, and what organisations think. When the McKinsey group asked 1200 executives how long it took to feel fully comfortable in the new role, 52% said 31 to 100 days, and 31% said 101 to 180 days. In contrast, when the Aberdeen group asked organisational representatives how long they thought it took for new hires to transition, 50% of organisations believed transition was completed within a month, and about a third thought it took one to three months. As the Aberdeen Group points out, 90% of the organisations in their study believe employees make up their minds whether to stay or go in the first year; yet, within a few weeks, most organisations take their eye off the ball of managing the transition.

At Right Start we take the view that a person’s transition into a new role takes 100 days, and we have developed a range of resources and programmes to support people during this time. Our goal is not only to retain people and to help them feel comfortable, but also to help them perform. People who transition well are also more likely to be performing better at the end of their first year. How successful transition sets people up for performance is the subject of an upcoming blog.

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[1] Lawson Williams (2016)

[2]  http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/281471/one-third-of-govt-staff-don't-last-a-year

[3] Love, D (2015) Refocusing Onboarding on Integration, CEB Blog, March

[4] Kammeyer-Mueller J; Wanberg, C; Rubenstein A, Song, Z (2103) Support, Undermining, and Newcomer Socialisation:  Fitting in During the First 90 Days, Academy of Management Journal, v56 (4), pp 1104-1124

[5] PWC (2008), Best practices for retaining new employees: New approaches to effective on-boarding

[6] Learning & Development Round Table (2005a) Positioning Leaders for Successful Transitions