KickStart: Onboarding smooths the way for new service employees to make your “keep ratio” soar!
Think back to your first day of school.🤔 How did you feel? Nervous? Confused? Scared? Did’ya pee your pants? (Come on… they say confession is good for the soul!)
Guess what? Your brand new techs face these same traumatic emotions as they timidly work on-site in your client’s homes! Who cares how they feel?🤷🏼♂️
You should! Repeated studies prove that a consistent, structured “onboarding routine” will dramatically decrease new employees quitting quickly and often with no notice. In fact…
I recently shared how to immediately make a new hire feel part of your “business family”.) However, the easiest, fastest, and most cost-effective strategy to improve new hire retention rates?
Assign an experienced employee to mentor a new hire during their first few weeks in your company. I call this a “New Hire Mentoring” (NHM) system.
NOTE: I share the “how to” of onboarding and mentoring new employees in my 3-hour SFS: Hiring the Very Best! LIVE seminar. Click HERE to learn more and/or easily register online. (All registered students will receive a video of this live class.)
But meanwhile here are…
5 steps to get an Onboarding Trainer/Mentor Going
1. Make it optional- Trust me. You don’t want your oldest production employee, “Grumpy” George, feeling forced to grudgingly spend time with a “newby”! (Remember this should be a positive experience for all concerned.)💖 So, ask for what will (hopefully) be eager volunteers!
2. Make it lucrative- Most companies that implement my NHM system pay a small daily bonus (20 bucks?) when the new employee passes each Daily Skills Review. Then when a new employee completes their basic training and is ready to work on their own their NHM trainer receives a much larger bonus!💲💲💲 WOO-HOO!
3. Choose a “Cheerleader” for your NHM trainer- Sure, you’ll want your NHM trainer to be well-versed in company procedures. But even more importantly? Choose a mentor that genuinely enjoys their onboarding job! Hopefully they’ll transmit their pride of being a residential services technician to your new hire. (Bonus points if your NHM trainer loves company management and maybe even… YOU!)
NOTE: A no-brainer way to mentor any new employee (including office and sales staff) in customer service skills with homeowners? Use my 12 module, self-paced, MP3 training course, “Winning on the Home Front”!
4. Mentor “off the clock”– After their first day your mentor should ask the new hire out for a “beverage or two”. (Of course, you’ll happily pick up the tab!) Even better, if the circumstances are right the NHM trainer can ask their trainee’s family over for a fun BBQ!
5. Mentor “on the job”– Everyone hates classroom training today.😥 So, your NHM system should mostly be with the mentor working in client’s homes. The extra benefit here? You’ll actually be producing revenue to more than cover your training costs! But it’s important to structure this on-the-job training. Therefore…
FREE BONUS OFFER: All students in my SFS: Hiring the Very Best! LIVE seminars (11:00-2:00 Eastern Time) will receive my Fast Track Training system totally FREE! This onboarding system includes 10 days of written NHM Skills Reviews to get new production employees up and running on their own truck!👌 (All of the Skills Reviews are in editable Word format.)
Meanwhile, my very best wishes!👍
Steve