How to Motivate Your Newest Employees

For any company, hiring and training new hires can be quite the hassle. Amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday office work, new hires can be neglected and feel useless. New job environments can be stressful. It’s easy to be overwhelmed with the myriad of protocols, chain of command suggestions, and other general information that new employees are often bombarded with.

Sometimes, when people are overwhelmed, we tend to have a natural, ‘pull-back’ reaction. Overwhelmed employees might not even be able to figure out where to start and, thus, their motivation levels can dip quickly.

This is not only inefficient for your business, but it’s also a waste of both your time and your new employees’ time. If they’re doing something they can get excited about, it might be time to consider whether or not they were the best hire in the first place.

Informed Engagement

However, before you second guess whether your new hire was the wrong hire, consider these suggestions to help you keep all your employees motivated:

Gather Data

While there are many ways to do so, the first step in maximizing the motivation of your new hires is to gather information on their likes, dislikes, and such. Surveys can be helpful in identifying employee preferences and motivations.

Determine Needs

Compile the information you’ve collected about the motivations and preferences of your new hires and examine it for trends. You can also look closely at each individual’s responses and become familiar with what makes each of your new hires tick.

Each new hire will have specific needs related to work environment, interpersonal connections, and intrapersonal interests. Creating a profile for each one of your new employees will help you identify and act upon his or her needs and wants if you begin to see a decrease in overall motivation and productivity.

Customize the Hiring Process

By taking time to identify common trends in motivation amongst your new hires, you can begin to tailor your hiring process to maximize the efficiency of your company when it comes to bringing new employees onboard.

Many studies suggest that it takes up to six months for new hires to be fully onboarded. Knowing what motivates your new employees to learn and contribute will help you decrease the time that it takes for your company to successfully onboard them.

Engage New Hires

After gathering the pertinent information for what motivates your employees, it’s time to act. Find creative ways to keep them engaged with your company and its goals. This will reduce the time it takes new hires to feel comfortable and expand their degree of commitment and contribution.

Overall, employees want to feel like they’re understood and fit in. They want to be challenged to learn and contribute to the growth of your company. Engaging their current skills from the start and offering them opportunities for growth and development is essential to optimizing your company’s onboarding process.

Continued Assessment of Motivations

As new hires become reliable and loyal employees, many companies have a tendency to overlook their ongoing needs and motivations. In fact, longer-tenured employees often feel overworked and undercompensated. They come to feel the company is taking advantage of their skills and knowledge base.

Your managers should continually assess employee motivations to help maximize efficiency and productivity. This can also help foster collaboration between different divisions of the same company and help you streamline onboarding of new hires and ultimately increase your company’s effectiveness.