Chatgpt-4o - the 4 basic facts you need to know

Companies and managers alike are always looking for ways to improve. Feedback conversations with employees are being held on the regular, but often they forget to utilize one group that is very important; the people who leave.

In the world of progress, nothing is as important as reflection. You need reflection to look back and see where there is room for improvement. Many managers and companies are already capitalizing on this by holding regular feedback meetings and one-to-one meetings, where both employees and managers openly speak about their experiences. If you are not doing this, then start doing it. Tomorrow. Seriously. The easiest way to improve your company is by tapping into the knowledge of your employees, so don’t let their talents go to waste. In this blog I will not pay attention to that, however. In this blog I will go into the importance of the feedback of the people who will actually leave your company and show you what you can learn from them.

Let’s start with: why?

Well, firstly, people who leave your company have nothing to ‘lose’, so they will be very forthcoming with what they think. In normal feedback meetings, employees are encouraged to be as open an up-front as possible. Although this sounds great, experience teaches us that employees can be a bit hesitant into saying everything that is on their mind in fear of retribution. This factor of retribution is not present at an ‘exit interview’, so your ex-employee will be open and honest.

Secondly, it is important to note that you can learn a lot from the reason why the employee is leaving. It might be possible that this new information helps you to prevent others from leaving for the same reasons as well. Often managers make assumptions as on why employees leave, instead of actually asking and understanding why they leave. This way they cannot effectively deal with possible problems in the internal organisation. Therefore, it is important to find out the true reasons in an exit interview.

Thirdly, it is important for your employer branding as a part of the employee experience. In an exit interview you can take up all sorts of matters which require closure before the employee leaves. Perhaps there are conflicts that need to be settled, equipment which has to be returned, or ongoing confidentiality clauses which have to be signed. Most of all it is a moment for your employee to reflect and express their thoughts and feelings. It is always good to give your employee the feeling that they are being heard, but it is even more important to actually listen (and act).

Still not convinced that it is important to have these exit interviews? Here are ten more reasons.

What to ask?

As said before, the main goal is to find out what the motivations are of the employee who leaves, but it is also good to unravel other possible problems in your organisation. So don’t be afraid to ask creative questions. Don’t make turn the interview in a acquisition and the atmosphere light-hearted to get your ex-employee to really open up. When having these exit interviews, then it is good to keep the questions uniform. Make sure that you are asking everybody the same questions, so that you can actually use the results. More on that later.

Here are some examples of questions that you might want to use:

• What is the reason you are leaving us? (obviously)
• Could you list a top three of reasons why you are leaving us?
• Is there anything we can improve as a company? Performance or cultural wise?
• Is there anything that your own department could improve?
• Is there anything that your manager can improve?
• If you would be owner of this company tomorrow, what would be the top five changes that you would make?
• If you would go back to the beginning of your time at our company, then what would you have liked to see differently during your time with us?
  

What’s next? Data.

Now that you know why it is important and which questions to ask, it is time to get to the interesting part: the data. To get an organised set of data, you will need to try and standardize the answers given by the ex-employees to get a clear picture. For example, if you ask the question “Why are you leaving us?” then you can get a very variety of answers as it is an open question. However, you can label the answers given so you can detect patterns. Answer labels for this question could include: “Atmosphere within company, Development possibilities, Prospect of better benefits, Personal reasons” etcetera.

One or two exit interviews will not give you enough information if you are dealing with possible internal problems. That is because it could just be that the couple ex-employees that you have interviewed might hold a grudge against you. However, if a certain pattern appears when more and more ex-employees point to the same problems, then you cannot hide behind the excuse of a coincidental common grudge anymore. So, volume is key here.

After having the right labels and enough volume, you are ready to analyse the data and draw the right conclusions to improve your company and tackle possible problems.

In conclusion

You should always hold exit interviews, not only because it adds to the employee experience, but you can also actually learn from them. This information can be valuable to retaining your future talent, tackle possibly hidden problems, and improve your company performance.

Do you need help with holding exit interviews, analysing the data, or implementing solutions to newly discovered problems? Get in touch with us and see what we can do for you.

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First impressions matter. So being aware of the first impression of a new employee in your company is crucial to his or her future performance. That’s why in this blog I’m taking a closer look at onboarding.

Onboarding somebody into your company is a lot like welcoming somebody into your house. As with all welcomes, it is not just a first coffee and a short introductory chat. It is a continuous demonstration of cooperation and affection. A good onboarding process is paramount for the productivity of your employee and his or her integration with the team. It encompasses everything from the first small introduction over a cup of coffee until the more formal monthly one-to-one meetings. In this blog I will give some practical advice on how you can improve your onboarding process and the integration and engagement of your new employees. If you’re thinking: “well most of this doesn’t apply to us because the COVID-19 crisis is forcing us to work remotely”, think again. Onboarding is now more important than ever to create a well-functioning team, you just need to rethink your structures in a digital matter. More tips on that here.

Handbooks and more

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. As a part of any onboarding process, there are a lot of practical matters and questions that your newly hired employee has. Handbooks are a great way for employees to peacefully read through and find an answer for their questions, in the first turbulent weeks of a new employment. In the same line, make sure that the handbook has a FAQ as well, where the employee can find the most frequently asked questions, just to make it a bit easier for him or her.

It does not all have to be dull practical stuff, however. You can also include more interesting things in your handbook such as:

• A formulated version of your vision, mission, strategy, culture and values.
• An overview of your team members, including pictures, practical information and fun facts.
• An overview of your customers/clients and stakeholders, and a short summary on each and every one of them.  

Meeting the team(s)

If you want to feel at home, you need to know who are living in the house. It is therefore important to have meetings with the different teams. Now this is where things become a bit difficult to define. As companies differ in size, it becomes more difficult for them to involve everybody in the process. Meeting the team is a process that starts off large, with a lot of people involved, and is narrowed down over time.

Normally the process looks like this:

1. A (digital) announcement of the new employee, who he or she is and what he or she will be doing, for the entire company.
2. A short (digital) introduction of the employee to the entire company (or a larger part of the company).
3. A more thorough introduction with colleagues from different departments with whom the employee will work closely with.
4. A meeting with representatives from the HR, Legal, and Facilities/IT departments.
5. A meeting with the closest colleagues of the employee (or the entire department). Hold this meeting off-site, perhaps as a lunch meeting or afternoon coffee so that the team can really spend some quality time to get to know the employee.
6. One-to-one meetings with the manager.
   

Introduction and training

After you’re done with shaking hands, just like at home, it is time to take a coffee and sit down to talk about some more serious stuff. In this sense I am talking about more thorough introductions on what the company does and how they do things, what they stand for and how they communicate this. Employer branding is a big topic in these introductions and trainings. You need to give the newly hired employee a good idea of what your brand represents and how this translates in his or her activities.

This is also the moment when an employee gets their first introduction to the internal systems, ways of working and contact persons, including possible clients. In this sense it is good to have a training set up from a more senior employee or somebody from the IT department to make sure that the new employee can work with the systems you use. Client or stakeholder meetings are also a big part of the process. A senior employee should take the new employee with him to introductory meetings with the potential clients and stakeholders so they get an image of who you are working for/with.

Another part of this process are job-specific trainings which can be ongoing, but which get introduced in the onboarding process.

Feedback

So now that you have bombarded your newly hired employee with as much information as you possibly can, it is time to harvest some information as well. This means: one-to-one meetings with feedback. These are often meetings between the newly hired employee and his or her manager, where both parties can give feedback to one another. These meetings should be held regularly and continuously throughout the career of your employees over at your company. Try to have such a meeting roughly every month with your employees, even their first month. Of course, everything is still fun and games then, so there will not be that much feedback coming from your employee but try to challenge them even then already. Is there really nothing that the company can improve? How was the first impression? Was it well enough? Is there anything that should be improved? Remember, the image that the company gives of to its own employees often also translate into the same image that they give off to clients and stakeholders.

In conclusion

A good onboarding process is everything from the first handbook until formal meetings with clients and stakeholders. It is a large process which, if done correctly, can kickstart the career of your new employee within your company. In this blog we have given a brief overview of all the essentials. If you want to have a more detailed roadmap of what a good onboarding process looks like, click here.

If you need help setting up your onboarding process, just reach out to us and we'll set up a meeting to see what we can do for you!

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In the 21st century we have come a long way from the original working conditions of ‘free workers’ in the industrial revolution. Over time we have created working places which protect, motivate and empower employees. Employers are always looking to improve the workplace to increase productivity and wellbeing of their employees. We look up to tech giants such as Spotify, Google and Facebook and their creative working environments and see those as the current example of how the perfect workplace should look like, even the term ‘perfect workplace’ is clouded with mystery. In this blog we will take a closer look at 5 common myths about the perfect workplace and show you the reality behind them.  

Myth 1: Working 8 hours guarantees productivity.  

The longer you work, the more work you get done. That seems the premises behind this myth that has been around since Henry Ford introduced the eight-hour workday to his factory workers. Experiments here in Sweden with six-hour workdays show that the opposite is true and that 8 hours does not lead to more productivity. They argue that a lot of the eight hours spent at the office are spent inefficiently and that the six hours put down a healthy amount of pressure on their employees. Furthermore, they argue that their employees are happier to show up and leave the office and are in general less exhausted. While we are not arguing that all companies should switch to six hours of work per day, we are arguing that the normal nine-to-five working days should be a thing of the past as they are simply exhausting your workforce. Try to rethink what makes your employees productive and try to tap into their needs. Perhaps working from home is a viable (better) alternative, or shortened working days with shortened breaks. As always, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.  

Reality 1: Working 8 hours does not guarantee productivity.

Myth 2: The closer the relationship within teams, the less errors will be made.  

When you think about it, it makes sense right? If you have a good connection with your colleagues and your manager and if you got your relationship and work down to a routine, then there should be less room for errors. Nothing is less true. A study by Amy Edmondson shows that employees and managers with a close relationship reported significantly more errors than the test subjects who do not have a close relationship. So why is that? The answer is quite simply: the employees felt more certain to their managers to report errors because of their good relationship. This is important to note because failure is a part of progress. As an employer you need to know where mistakes are made so you can improve your business, therefore it is your responsibility to create the safe environment to be able to report these errors. You should focus on continuous improvement rather than perfection.  

Reality 2: The closer the relationship within teams, the more errors will be reported and the faster they improve.

Myth 3: Like-minded people work better together.  

On the surface this one seems to make sense. The more you are on the same line with your colleagues the faster you take decisions and the better results you will get, right? Wrong. A study by Kathrine Philips, Katie Liljenquist and Margaret Neale disproves this and argues that homogenous teams indeed take faster decisions, but do not make better decisions. The heterogenous teams performed best in terms of decisions as they kept questioning and challenging their partners to come to better results.  

Reality 3: Homogenous teams deliver speed, heterogenous teams deliver results.

Myth 4: Additional perks make for happy employees.  

We have all seen the examples of Google, Twitter and Facebook. Cafeteria filled with food and beverages (sometimes even entire meals), doggy day care services and even cleaning services are all perks which are supposed to make your employees happy. Although nobody ever got sad from a free meal, it is not a guarantee for happy employees. These perks will only be perceived as offerings and add-ons to their job if the working culture is healthy. If you are encouraged to work through your lunchbreak, but in exchange you do get a free lunch, that might feel more as a bribe than an actual perk. It is therefore important that you get a healthy culture first which empower your employees. Only after that fundament is established, can you think about adding additional perks. If you want to learn more from Google, read my blog on the 7 most important lessons here or if you want to find out what truly motivates employees in this day and ages, read this blog.  

Reality 4: Only if you have the fundamentals right, then additional perks will contribute to happiness.

Myth 5: Doing what you love is the best way to achieve the most out of your work life.

We all heard the conventional wisdom that you should strive to work with what you love to get the most out of yourself. This string of wisdom argues that your passion motivates you do great things and make a difference in the world. There is evidence which disproves this self-centred motivation. A study done by O.C. Tanner in 2015 shows that great work or results are not so much achieved by doing something we love but, according to 88% of the participants, it is more focussed on making a difference that other people love. That is where true productivity and great accomplishments lie. This is not to say that you should not try to find job wherein you can do what you already love to do, it is just a way of saying that it is not necessarily the best way of the most out of your work life or achieving great things.

Reality 5: Achieving greatness often begins with trying to make a difference that other people love.

Are you interested in finding out more? Get in touch with us to see how we can help you to:

• Increase productivity
• Open up to errors and improvement
• Create heterogenous teams that deliver results
• Establish a healthy culture which makes for happy employees
• Achieve great results with the right people

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