HR Pulse - Spring 2009 - (Page 38) More Hellos, Fewer Goodbyes Reducing Early Turnover and Shortening Time to Productivity By William C. Byham, Ph.D., and Debra Walker How can you ensure those previously cast-aside organizations don’t poach your talent? The new hire’s leader holds the power. M uch has been written about the criticality of making good hiring decisions in health care—finding people with not only the right skills and experience but the right motivations and fit with the organization too. Perhaps even more has been said about the shortage of health care talent and how hard it is to find and land the best candidates for your organization’s open positions. But far less attention is paid to how new employees are brought up to speed in their very first weeks and months on the job. How can an organization jump-start productivity or time to contribution, increase engagement, and reduce turnover in the first 90 days among newly hired associates? Giving your newest staffers a strong start with your organization is essential to success on the job and leads to retention of top performers. Reducing new hire mistakes is critical to patient safety as well. To be successful, your strong-start activities need to be more than a simple event. In this article, we’ll make the case for this often-overlooked but critical step, and share three best practices that shorten time to productivity. Hello One Day, Goodbye the Next Retention in health care continues to be a serious problem. Development Dimensions International’s recent study of 110 health care providers found that more than two-thirds (69 percent) had moderate or great difficulty retaining critical-skill workers. This figure is much higher in health care than in other industries—just 43 percent of companies outside of health care face the same struggle. The majority (58 percent) of health care job seekers surveyed thought their prospective employers should expect them to stay just two years…or less. A strong orientation and on-boarding process is a critical tool employers use to reduce early turnover, engage employees, and set them up for success. Yet nearly half (47 percent) of health care staffing directors rated their on-boarding processes as “fair” or “poor.” 38 HR Pulse Spring 2009
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