Induction is just as important as recruitment

If you are recruiting correctly you will be giving it the time it deserves.

Unlike my mate who runs a restaurant in Edinburgh. Well, I say restaurant; café is a more accurate description.

He’s always hiring because people keep leaving – it’s a real issue to him.

His problem is that he doesn’t make it hard enough for people to get the job. He advertises in the window of his restaurant/café and people walk in off the street. He gives them a trial and as long as they don’t screw up too badly, they get the job.

Then, when the new employee arrives, my mate has invariably forgotten they’re coming and so he’s in a bit of panic ‘cos he’s got nothing prepared.

Lo and behold, a week later, the new member of staff becomes his latest ex-member of staff.

Now, there are a couple of reasons for this, firstly it’s because it’s easy come, easy go but secondly it’s because his employees don’t feel welcome when they arrive.

Let’s assume, just a for a minute, that you do give recruitment the time it deserves and you’re using something like the Chainlink Recruitment System, which requires candidates to jump through a series of (metaphorical) hoops before they get the job. In other words, it’s tough to get a position with you, which means you are left with the people who really want to work for you and the job is valuable to them.

Of course, if you give recruitment the time it deserves, this means there’s a significant investment, not least in your time.

And you can blow that investment out of the water if you fail to follow it up with a proper induction process.

Think about it for a minute. All through the recruitment process you’re saying ‘come and work for us, we’re great’ and the first time you get to demonstrate this to your new staff member, you ain’t. Great, that is.

So what does a great induction look like?

Well, to a certain degree it depends on the business, but the one common denominator is time. Your time as boss of the business, dedicated to your new member of staff will say to them ‘You’re important to me and I want you to be comfortable.’

Then you really need to consider Herzberg.

Yes you do and you know you want to.

Herzberg says that you have to make sure all the basics are in place before you can start to motivate anyone with things like nights out. The basics, probably, means things like getting the contract sorted, pay details, where the loos are, being introduced to the team and making sure there is a work station, email address and personal space available if it’s needed in your business, of course.

Letting go is so very hard to do

I seem to be writing quite a lot at the moment about new franchise operations that we’re working with… and this week is no exception.

I have to say, in today’s story we’re not the lead consultant. Someone else is putting the franchise together and they’ve asked us to become involved with the training. Of course, this means that we have to understand the franchise and so we’re pretty close to the whole set up.

The thing is every time we think we’ve nailed everything down the franchisor comes up with something else – some worry or objection. For example, the franchisor is a long established business and he is very particular about the way they do things.

Okay, fair enough. But he’s swithering… as we say here in Scotland.

You see, he’s worried about the quality of the work that franchisees will do, so he wants them to go out and sell the product, which will then be delivered in house. It’s possible, but in this case it would make it very difficult for the franchisor to make any money.

My colleague, the lead consultant in all this, was starting to get a bit frustrated with the franchisor until he recognised that it’s only a natural process.

You see, when you look at the business there’s the Main Man (MM) sitting at the top of the tree. There are quite a few employees, but in the management positions you’ll find the MM’s two sons and daughter. I’ve met these people and they’re all good, solid managers, so there’s no issue with quality.

But why are they there?

Of course, part of it is to do with the franchisor being a family business but it’s also to do with control. The family members are a form of control mechanism for the MM.

Now, all of this has an impact on the franchise. The MM is committed to creating a network but needs help working through his thought processes. To him, right now, it seems as though he relinquishing a fair chunk of control and indeed he is. But he has to balance this with the potential income available to him by putting in sufficient (but not excessive) checks and balances to ensure, as far as possible, quality is maintained.

So, that’s the technical side of what the consultant needs to do to help him. Much more tricky for the consultant, though, is not to impose this process on the new franchisor – that just won’t work. He has to coach the franchisor to help him find his own equilibrium… to make him comfortable with the lessening of control.

It just goes to show that a consultant needs to be so much more than the font of all knowledge.

They need to be coach, mentor, buddy, support mechanism, marriage guidance counsellor and many other things.