How to waste €60,000

Here’s an efficient way to pour 60,000 euros down the drain: create an expensive recruiting process and watch your new joiner quit within ninety days.

The 60,000 euros figure came from a pharma company (and that was at the low end of their estimate). The company goes to great lengths to hire the best and the brightest and yet inevitably several new joiners won’t last three months. Even for less-skilled workers, the waste adds up. 

• time & resources to attract people

• time & resources to process candidates 

• time & resources to orient those you hire

• time & resources to train them

• negative effects on team morale and productivity

• opportunity costs of the role remaining unfilled

• damage to company reputation as the new hire/new leaver tells others

Why would a new joiner leave? After all, they put a lot of time and effort into the process too, and they typically arrive with a sense of promise and potential. What goes wrong?

Typically, the problem is that the new boss or team or role simply isn’t what the candidate imagined. After a few weeks or months, they think, “This isn’t the place for me.” 

And they quit, never getting the chance to discover anything beyond their first impressions because they don’t know how to discover who and what else the company has to offer.

One solution: help new employees build connectivity as part of their orientation. Put them in peer learning groups that provide them with an instant cross-functional network outside of their team. Help them develop skills so they can navigate the company and find their tribe, the “people like me who do things like this.” 

Help them feel like they belong. It will save you a lot of time and money. And the skills and relationships they build will last long after orientation is over.

Help them feel like they belong. Before it’s too late.