Page 148 - Retaining Top Employees

McKeown08.qxd 4/10/02 12:35 PM Page 136

136 Retaining Top Employees

Sorry, I Didn’t Notice You Standing There
And yet, remember our initial premise regarding retention:
“People stay where they feel at home.”
How does this picture of orientation (dull, tedious, poorly
done) square with the idea of employees feeling at home in the
organization? What’s the effect of negligible or no orientation on
your new employees’ sense of being at home?
Here’s an important principle: the employer-employee rela-
tionship is just that—a relationship. And, as in every other rela-
tionship, first impressions count. In a social environment, we
mostly make our minds up about someone within 30 seconds
of meeting that person. Then, only very hard work on their part
will convince us that our first impressions were wrong.
It’s exactly the same in business: your employees make up
their minds about whether they feel at home or not in the first
three weeks with you. If those first impressions are poor, it takes
very hard work to convince them that they were wrong.

The Time Window Is Small
Previously,in the “status quo” employment relationship,
most new employees intended to stay with their new employ-
er indefinitely.That usually meant at least five years,often much longer.
That gave employers plenty of time to correct early relational mis-
takes—like a poor orientation program or none at all.
Now,however,employees feel much less pressure to hang around.
They need to stay only 18 months or so (considerably less in some
industries and particularly in the service sector) to avoid an unseemly
blot on their résumés. If you fail to make your employees feel at home
from the get-go,you don’t have long to try to compensate.
It’s a bit like the difference between the movies and TV. Movie pro-
ducers can take time positioning a story,setting up characters,and
building a plot.The moviegoers have paid their money to spend two
hours in the darkened theater with no other distractions.TV is differ-
ent. Fail to get the viewers’ attention in the first 30 seconds and your
program is toast. Out comes the remote and they’re gone.
These days,hiring and keeping top employees is much more like
making a TV program than a movie—you have to get their interest
from the start!