Is Your Management Style Discouraging New Employees?

After you have made all the effort of recruiting and onboarding the right employees, they will probably join your company all motivated and ready to give their best. However, it is up to you, as a manager, to keep them feeling that way and to not discourage them in their joining period.

Here is some food for thought on topics that might not be too motivating for your new employees:

  • Long periods of reading and pre-work

If you arrive in a new job, usually you just want to hit the ground running. Although someone is new to a job and will, of course, have to learn a lot of things, a new employee comes in, motivated to work. And probably not to sit through weeks of induction and pre-reading. One of the common mistakes is to give new employees way too much time to adjust, to read about the company and to have introduction meetings. Few things are as discouraging as feeling useless and as if you´re not contributing or adding any value. Therefore, even if the new employee is still in the learning and induction phase, if you can make sure he or she can also work on something fairly quickly, it will definitely help for staying motivated.

  • No personal approach

By only focusing on the job and not on the person behind the job, you will not really motivate your new employee. Take some time to get the know the person, their personal situation and what their life looks like outside of the office. Establishing a personal bond can go a long way and failing to do so can truly discourage a new employee because it will make it look like it´s all about the job.

 

  • Being the newbie

This one can be very discouraging as well for new employees, being treated as the newbie for months. Even if they are the last person to join the team, after a little while a new employee should be just as much part of the team as anyone else. Hence, don´t keep treating the latest addition to your team as the new employee forever, or until another new person is hired. “Being new” is only an excuse for the first couple of days or weeks, but definitely not beyond that. Therefore, make the new employee really feel part of the team and as a full member of the team.

  • Micro-management

Few things are as annoying as being micro-managed. Even though an employee is new, you should establish a certain level of trust in them to let them do their job. Therefore, avoid practices like having to check every email they send to senior managers, accompanying them to every single meeting and checking everything they do.

  • No clarity on expectations and objectives

It can be quite discouraging to not have clear objectives or to not know what is expected from you in a new job. Or actually, in any job. In order to stay motivated, it is important to know what you need to deliver, what output you will be evaluated for and what is expected of you. Therefore, be very clear from the beginning on objectives and what you expect from everyone in your team. This will avoid people getting discouraged very quickly and losing their “new joiner motivation”. Make sure to be ahead of the process by already thinking about the objectives and deliverables for a role when you start hiring for it.

These are just a few examples of management styles that will definitely discourage new employees and by being aware of these you can easily avoid demotivated new joiners. What other examples do you have? We would love to read about it in the comments.

 

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