Publications & Resources

May/June 2009
Focus: People - Your Most Important Asset

Keeping Good Employees in Today’s Marketplace

By Rebecca Doepke

In today’s workforce, 96% of employees are still undecided about their employment decision on day one. More alarming is the fact that 65% of today’s workforce is still undecided about their employment decision during their first three months on the job.

What is the key to finding and holding onto good employees?

An onboarding program that engages employees from day one. Financial institutions not only need to develop a process for finding the most talented employees, but they must also take actions to excite and encourage employees in order to retain the best.

Assess your current hiring process
The employee selection process should begin with aligning employee selection practices with the personalities and attitudes needed to effectively communicate your brand and culture to your customers. The best place to find new staff may not be traditional places like competing banks. Rather, the retail industry may provide a fresh alternative to locating exceptional new employees that understand and embrace a sales culture.

It’s also important to match your target segment. Place your ads where your target audience lives, works and shops. Look at how you currently attract, find and hire employees and consider these questions:

  • What is your current hiring strategy?

  • How do you advertise for new staff?

  • Who conducts the interviews?

  • How are the interviews conducted and facilitated?

  • What challenges and barriers do you face?

  • What are the criteria for selecting staff?

Create a pre-employment experience
We expect our employees to deliver an experience to our customers every day. The question you should ask yourself is what kind of experience are we delivering to our employees? Excite your employees about your financial institution the moment they are hired. It’s important that employees start off on the right foot, eager to learn and succeed.

A Welcome Aboard Gift or Package sent to the employee’s home is a great way to provide this experience. This package should contain information about your organization, but it should be more about generating excitement, not preparing them for the job. Add a few items like a coffee mug, t-shirt, or something that speaks to who you are as on organization. For example, if you’re a financial institution known for its green practices, then you could include items such as a tote bag, water bottle, or a gift certificate to the local organic market. The goal is to generate excitement about the organization, what you stand for, and what makes you different. The pre-employment experience should reinforce the new hire’s decision to work for you, add to the employee’s excitement and enthusiasm, and also say something to the friends and family of the new hire.

Develop an ongoing program to enhance the employee experience
An onboarding program needs to be about more than learning policies and procedures. Brand orientation is a critical component to the training process. How can your new employee sell your products and services, answer customer questions, or maximize your marketing efforts if they don’t know the following: Who are you? What makes your bank unique? What differentiates you in the market and what is your competitive advantage? Brand orientation should cover your bank’s history, position in the marketplace, your offering, your brand promise, how to protect the integrity of your brand, and how your brand applies to everyone.

Brand orientation helps create a bond and a connection between the new employee and the financial institution. The bank becomes more than a business. It becomes a living organization that serves a purpose in the community.

Find ways to energize employees at the 30, 60, and 90 day marks and beyond
An effective onboarding program has an engagement process ranging from 3 months to 6 months, and recognizes key points in this timeline to address the standard emotions of a new job.

Typically, the 30-day mark can be a delusionary time – what the employee thought the job and the bank was going to be like may not be reality. At the 30-day mark, sit down and talk with the new employee. Find out if the new hire perceives this to be the job they were expecting it to be. What obstacles exist that prevent them from doing their job or reaching their goals? Ask them what is the best thing that has happened so far during their employment and what they’ve noticed that could be improved upon.

You should also factor in testing during this onboarding period. At the conclusion of the first 90 days, new employees should also be tested on what they’ve learned so far. This will allow you to identify further areas of coaching for continued learning.

Remember it’s important to inquire about how the employee feels things are progressing. It’s not just about if the employee has met your expectations. Find out if the financial institution and the workplace have met the employee’s expectations.

Rebecca Doepke is director of culture for NewGround, a design and implementation firm serving the financial industry, based in St. Louis , Mo. She may be reached at 314-440-8420 or rdoepke@newground.com.

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