Employee Communication is Vital to Business Success

Consistent employee communication is crucial in building a successful company. I recently had a not-so-great experience with a member of my team that I’m sure would sound a little too familiar to many of us. Have you had a new employee join your team, show up eager to work, perform extremely well for the first few months, and then something starts to go wrong?

Their work starts to slide, they start showing up late, their performance starts to go down hill, and they seem to start losing interest in their job. You may blame the employee and think he or she is just not ambitious enough for you or your company. But is this a fair assessment?

When a person comes to work on their first day, they usually want to do a good job. If you’ve done a decent job at hiring the right person, they’ll be eager to learn and to contribute to the company. This is what you get on the first day. Now it is up to us to nurture this. So how do you do it? I suggest you take a look at your orientation process and your performance review process.

I’m a big believer in spending time up front hiring and nurturing employees for high performance. I suggest developing an orientation process where you, or your hiring manager, spend a significant amount of your time orienting a new employee on their first day. Explain the history of your company, your company’s purpose, your values, your goals, some of the policies they need to know on day one, go over their job description and expectations (spend time on this one), and of course show them around the facilities and introduce them to everyone working that day.

Early and continuous performance feedback is also required to help steer them in the right direction early on. Immediately after hiring, do a one-week sit down to see how things are going and if they have any questions for you. Then I strongly suggest doing a full detailed performance review three months after hiring, six months after hiring then move to a twice-yearly schedule indefinitely.

Remember – If they don’t know what’s expected of them, how can they be expected to perform? Communicate, make it clear what is expected and give constant feedback and you’ll have a team that works hard for your business the way you want them to.

Andy