Whether the employees you want to attract and keep are executives or delivery drivers, today’s human resources efforts too often feel like a catch them if you can exercise. You can blame the global pandemic for that! When your home is your office and your office is your home, when all your interactions are virtual, loyalty to a virtual employer can be virtually non-existent. And candidates are fickle. While fishing for jobs can seem like sport, actually joining a new company’s labor pool is so often confusing and disheartening—especially if they are doing it from a distance. If too many new hires take the bait and then spit out the hook, it’s time to find a new way of bringing them onboard.
- What’s the best way to retain the talent you’ve worked so hard to attract?
- What’s the one tool in use today that makes human beings feel connected to other human beings—even though they’re far apart?
The answer to the first question is a proven successful preboarding and onboarding practice.
That is, a well-choreographed process that moves the new hire past the paperwork, into their work cohort and up to speed in their new job. Moving through uncertainty and into productivity is a highly rewarding journey, one that not only builds skills but increases self-esteem. Having that automated step-by-step process in place, and making sure it works smoothly, is the key to keeping the keepers. Personal success inspires group loyalty. Knowing that the info they need is at their fingertips means they are not only getting the resources they need when they need them, they also have a rapid-response lifeline for reaching out through, so they never feel lost or uncertain.
The answer to the second question is the smart device everybody has.
In the years since its birth, the smartphone has grown from a portable telephone into a power tool—one that enables deep research, delivers entertainment and facilitates real-time interaction. It’s easier to carry than a laptop, it lives in the pocket of most of generation Z and Alpha, and delivers them the world. Today, most of us rely on it to keep us connected to customers and clients as well as family and friends. It’s everyone’s digital pal, and who better to be onboarded by than that “digital someone” they trust?
Preboarding and onboarding you can hold in the palm of your hand.
Companies that use the smartphone as a primary preboarding and onboarding tool leverage its universality to connect with a new hire via phone, text, email, voicemail and video calls—in much the same way friends and family do. For job candidates as well as for remote workers, smart use of smartphone features helps to cement the human connection as well as to facilitate business practices. A timely in-app message reminds the new hire to fill out the paperwork HR needs to get them on the payroll. A video meeting with their supervisor sets expectations and starts building a personal relationship. A virtual howdy from their cohorts makes them part of the team.
Engagement is like glue. It cements relationships.
People often use the word engagement to mean betrothal, the kind of commitment that gets sealed with a diamond ring and a wedding date. But at its root, engagement means agreement, it means interaction, it means work, it means keeping in touch. Ideally all those meanings come together when a company and a new employee commit to one another and begin what both parties hope and intend will be a productive and long-term relationship. The first steps count, even when the interested parties can’t meet face to face.
Meet YSoft Clerbo, the HR department that fits in your pocket.
Not content to rest on past achievements, global print management leader, Y Soft, took on the challenge of digital onboarding just in time to have a robust solution ready to go when the global pandemic made face-to-face human relations a dangerous business. Clerbo is technology designed to promote human connection throughout hiring, preboarding, onboarding and getting a new employee up to speed, using a smart phone or PC interface that’s easy to use and guaranteed to be germ-free.
Clerbo promotes employee retention even in the most challenging of times. Isn’t it time you gave it a spin?