Why It Frequently Takes 3 Weeks for New Employees to Become Productive

Congratulations! After a long and arduous interview process, you’ve found the ideal candidate for your business. They’re enthusiastic and experienced, but as soon as they sit down, they realize that they aren’t properly equipped to do their job.

This is precisely how to start a new hire on the wrong foot. Not only is it discouraging for them, but it is also expensive for you. While it may be tempting to blame individuals in these situations, they actually indicate a systemic shortcoming in your onboarding process. The only effective way to prevent these outcomes is to create procedures that ensure everyone on your team—new people included—can fully contribute.  

An Unprepared New Hire is the Most Expensive Kind

Let’s consider the costs you and your business will face if you don’t proactively set your new hires up for success.

Payroll Costs: Let’s say you’ve hired your new team member at a starting salary of $45,500 per year, after all deductions. Assuming that your business’ active working time is about 48 weeks each year, after accounting for holidays, you’re paying that employee $937.50 each week. Even a productivity delay of two weeks costs you almost two grand ($1875, to be precise), and that’s just what they take home, not their net salary.

Culture Costs: How would you feel if you landed a brand-new job, only to discover that, internally, the business is somewhat disorganized and therefore impacted your ability to perform your role? It wouldn’t take long for you to get frustrated and start to question your decision, I’d wager. A bad first impression has impacts and implications far beyond the first few moments it takes to gather one.

Team Productivity: To get your new employees up to speed, the rest of your team will need to be available to help their new coworker. Unfortunately, this means that everyone else will likely interrupt their own workdays to assist your new employee, sacrificing their own productivity in the process.

How to Be Better Prepared for Your Hires by Improving Your Processes

Avoid Underequipping Your New Hires

Proactivity is the name of the game when it comes to equipping your new team member. If your new hire starts on Monday, your team shouldn’t wait until Friday to begin preparing a workstation for them, as this leaves no time to acquire any necessary items that aren’t readily available. 

Ideally, preparations to set up a workstation should begin as soon as an offer is accepted, as this provides the opportunity to procure and prepare the equipment the new team member will need, with time to overcome any obstacles.

Assign Everyone Roles Based on Their Needs and Responsibilities

On a similar note, you don’t want your new hire to sit down at a fully equipped workstation and immediately spend all their time sending access requests and asking about login information. Not only will they be unable to get any work done, but they’ll also distract others from doing their own work.

To avoid this, have IT create role-based templates that provide users assigned to these templates with all their necessary access, and nothing they don’t need. Sales team members would be assigned a template tailored to their specific sales needs, while management would be assigned a template that includes all necessary tools and authentication permissions.

Acknowledge that Things May Not Work Out Forever, and Prepare for That

Chances are, the majority of your team members will leave your employment before retirement age… and if they do last that long, they’ll probably retire. Either way, employees will leave, and will need to be offboarded. As it happens, the most effective way to streamline your offboarding process is to streamline your onboarding process.

This streamlining enables you to get people working more effectively and efficiently from the start and helps you completely revoke their permissions when they are no longer required.

Why Wait Any Longer than Necessary to Turn New Hires into Valuable Assets?

In many ways, the first week of someone’s employment will set the tone for their entire tenure. As a result, it pays to make sure this first week goes smoothly and effectively, with your new hire able to hit the ground running and contribute straightaway. The right onboarding process and systems allow this to happen, and we can help you with them!

Reach out to us to learn more about the tools we provide and management services we offer, and how they can help elevate your team’s potential. Give us a call at (774) 213-9701.