3 Ways to Strengthen Your Employee Integration Plan

Employee integration is a sensitive subject in most companies. For HR professionals, it’s an upward battle that very few are winning.

Many are desperately searching for new ways to snuff out attrition, and the idea that they’re still getting it wrong is haunting.

Truth is, employee integration is complex. It requires a well-thought-out and structured plan with many moving parts and people.

The upside?

A great employee onboarding plan can improve retention by 82%.

As an HR professional, what can you do to give employee integration the attention and support it needs in your organization?

How do you build a structure that ensures new hires get the very best exposure to all your organization has to offer?

And how do you make new hires feel like they’ve found a new home?

Navigating Employee Integration

In this article, you’ll find answers to these questions. We’ll touch on three areas that HR professionals struggle to address; cultural immersion, the importance of cultivating the new hires-line manager bond, and the hidden value of peer support.

While these aren’t the only components of a well-structured employee integration program, if incorporated, you’ll find that fewer new hires will exit your organization.

Introduce Cultural Immersion

New hires are most fragile and impressionable in the first few days after joining your organization.

If they’ve just left a comfortable job that didn’t offer as many growth prospects, they’ve joined your company in the hopes of trading up.

To trade up, they need to feel comfortable as soon as possible.

Cultural immersion is all about exposure and engagement. Give new employees the chance to see how your organization works at different levels.

Get them involved in activities, and place them with colleagues, key stakeholders, and their line managers.

An important note:

As much as your brand is everything that customers decided it represents in their minds, perceived company culture is the same for new starters.

To ensure that your new hires get the best experience of your company, surround them with people and moments that show the progressive nature of your business.

One way we do this at viGlobal is by creating powerful employee integration programs.

HR leaders get to choose what the employee integration process looks like for New hires, and they can pick from a collection of templated plans, or create their own.

Establish a New Hire-Line Manager Connection

It’s common knowledge that new hires need to be introduced to their managers early on in the integration phase.

Important information is shared about the new hire’s role and responsibilities on the job, and what the performance requirements will be.

Sadly that’s where the all-important bond ends in most organizations.

For a new starter, line of sight, as well as feedback, are crucial to their performance and job satisfaction.

It’s essential that integration plans include regular feedback sessions with managers, leaving no stone unturned.

In my experience, HR managers and other leaders struggle to manage the employee integration process because plans are usually limited to a few interactions.

With a smarter approach, you can drive deeper connections and employee satisfaction with new hires — enough to help improve manager-new hire relationships by as much as 91%.

We’re pro-engagement. It’s built into our employee integration software. HR managers can coordinate regular meetups between line managers and new hires like clockwork.

As soon as an employee Integration plan is created, PeopleCntr automatically sends calendar invites to the new hire and line manager. Both know exactly what’s happening, where it’s taking place and most importantly, when.

Champion Peer Performance Feedback

According to Gallop’s How Millennials Want to Work and Live report, only 4% of HR leaders believe that they are successful at engaging Millennials and other generations in the workplace.

A shockingly low number, but it’s believable. I’ve seen this engagement partly influenced by ownership. Employee integration is an HR manager’s responsibility, but often, it’s also considered a line manager’s task.

In fact, that’s where the lines of ownership get hazy. With little or no clarity about who should take the reigns, new hire integration quietly takes the back seat.

A simple solution is to set clear roles and broaden the feedback pool. At PeopleCntr, we realize that more organizations have become consciously aware that the strongest teams are formed through regular engagement.

You can support team growth by involving team members in the performance feedback process of an employee integration plan.

We’ve made it possible for existing staff to share feedback on performance, culture fit, and other key areas of your new hire’s experience.

This means a more holistic view of exactly what your new hires are going through at each stage of their journey.

Create Better Integration Experiences

Employee integration can be challenging and complex, but with the right approach, it is doable.

Introducing cultural immersion, line manager engagement, and peer performance feedback plans could tip the scales in your favor.

And with a happier and more empowered workforce, just imagine what you’ll be able to achieve.