Replacing a specialist costs from 100% to 300% of their monthly salary. These costs include: posting vacancies on job sites, time of the recruiter, the team’s time to adapt the employee, the cost of downtime of the project, and sometimes also the costs of eliminating mistakes made by the candidate during the trial period.
Multiply that by the number of replacements per year, and your budget will look like the company had 5–10 more people working. You might be thinking “OMG”, and for a good reason! And we haven’t even mentioned the resources, energy, and, most importantly, the time spent on such a candidate who never became “one of us”.
But is it possible not to fall into this sad analytics? Of course, the secret to helping a newcomer become part of the team is simple — onboarding.
The three whales of onboarding in IT
Today, many materials in the media, on YouTube, and in HR blogs from all over the world are devoted to onboarding. So we decided to figure out what exactly lies behind this concept, and what important points should be taken into account in order to qualitatively welcome a person “on board” the company.
In its essence, onboarding includes all possible processes for adapting a new team member to the already formed rules of work in the company. Conventionally, such adaptation can be divided into 3 directions: formal, informal, and individual.
On-site orientation
Formal direction is work conditions regulated by the management (schedule, vacations, hierarchy, and job duties). This part is usually done by HR. We are sure that on the first day of work, it is customary for you to give a small tour of the office for a new employee, to talk about the departments and their managers, and to discuss the work schedule. This orientation is often confused with full-fledged onboarding.
Paperwork, familiarization with rules and regulations, and familiarizing the employee with the office and workplace are not the most important parts of onboarding. And often at this point, HR completely transfers the newcomer to the direct manager, who also introduces the employee to the team and work rules, maybe even talks about the expected results from cooperation, and then the adaptation from the HR side is completed. This is the main and most frequent mistake — to underestimate the depth of adaptation, because after completing the formal stage, we lose the two stages that follow it.
Team player
The next stage should be an informal adaptation. However, even here it is possible to approach superficially — for example, during adaptation, the main attention is paid to the orientation and familiarization of the new employee with the company’s culture. And 60% consider the employee’s integration into the company’s culture as the main direction of adaptation. But research indicates that this accounts for only 30% of success.
So, in parallel with the internal rules, which are set by the management and supported by HR, informal relations are formed in every company. And even within one IT company, each department, and each team will have its own “unspoken” rules. We think you are familiar with the situation when the team lead is the leader for programmers at work, but at lunch, everyone focuses on one of the developers. This is because work and social roles do not always coincide.
At this stage of informal adaptation, the newcomer undergoes a full crash test on human qualities, opens up their worldview, and is even checked if their sense of humor matches the overall humor of the team.
Control of the situation with informal adaptation often rests with the immediate supervisor. However, it is difficult to objectively evaluate an employee, being part of the group in which they work. And this is important in order to find out if the team is comfortable with the newcomer and whether the newcomer fits in the team. That is why, the best solution is to involve HR at this stage, who can advise the newcomer or answer any question.
We will go through thick and thin
If the newcomer has successfully passed the two previous stages, in about two months the third and final stage of adaptation begins — the individual one. It is at this moment that we should consider the newcomer as “one of us” and whether we are ready to go with them for years. Many HR in IT are faced with the fact that a high-level specialist has adapted well within the team and colleagues, and at the end of the trial period simply leaves. There can be many reasons: from the lack of a corporate eco-program to the lack of interesting tasks. And that is why a beginner, even after informal adaptation, needs a person to whom they can talk about their needs. And the role of a direct manager does not always fit here. The support of HR is a must-have here, to listen and sometimes dispel doubts.
By fully considering all three stages of onboarding, the adaptation in your team will be perfect. It is important to remember that adaptation is only about the plus side: faster inclusion of the newcomer in the work of the team, their productivity, and as a result, higher chances that the employee will stay for a long time. And not only you, but also the new employee will be able to appreciate all this.
Bisseti is the right hand of HR in IT
But what should we do if HR doesn’t have enough time for each newcomer? After all, finding an individual approach for everyone is not an easy task. And if the new employee feels out of place, they will, at best, take a very long time to get involved in the process. Therefore, the solution may be to delegate recruiting and adaptation to specialists.
The uniqueness of our approach is that the Bisseti team supports your candidate and provides feedback until the very end of the trial period. We help you become one team and know how to do it in any situation. And we are already waiting for you with a free consultation from Bisseti.