Article Contributed By: Alissa Henriksen & Mary Nutting of CorTalent.

So you have used Prevue assessments to assist you in making the ‘right’ hire but did you realize that most of your new hires  decide whether your firm is the ‘right fit for them’ within the first 18 months of their start date?  An effective on-boarding process will encourage your new hire to conclude they have made the right career decision in accepting your job offer. Most new employees are yearning for feedback and training and the opportunity to discuss their ramp up goals on an on-going basis. If your organization does not have an effective on-boarding process in place, read on to help you jump start a new program.

What is on-boarding?

On-boarding is the last stage of the recruitment process and the first steps toward retention.  It should be a key part of an organization’s talent management plan and the process for integrating new employees into their new work environment. A good on-boarding process provides:

• A strong employer welcome to the new hire
• A structured process that provides new employees with complete and accurate information about the culture, mission and goals of the organization.
• Assignment of a mentor plus interviews with co-workers, managers, and executives during the employee’s first few months to strengthen the employee’s bond to the organization and its people.

What is the difference between orientation and on-boarding?

New employee orientation generally involves a first-day session or a first week of activities that familiarizes the employee with the organization’s structure, mission, and policies.  It typically includes a review of the employee handbook and the completion of necessary payroll and benefits paperwork.  On-boarding is a much more comprehensive approach that starts before orientation and extends anywhere from three months to two years, depending on the position.   It provides a more strategic plan for employee success than orientation.

Why is on-boarding important?

Statistics show that employees are most vulnerable to leaving an organization in the first 18 months after they are hired. In most cases they have simply not found their way within your organization. Making a good first impression on the new hire is therefore critical.  Effective employee on-boarding serves three interrelated purposes.

• First, it ensures the employee feels welcome, comfortable, prepared and supported. These feelings increase the new hire’s desire to make an impact (i.e become productive).
• Second the feedback from a new hire allows you to consider changes that will promote employee job satisfaction and long term effectiveness.
• Third a well-designed on-boarding program reduces training costs, hastens time to productivity and improves retention.

What makes on-boarding work?

On-boarding is successful only when Human Resources and hiring managers are both actively involved.  The goal of this partnership is to establish a long-term relationship with the employee that starts before the employee is hired and endures the everyday trials of the workplace. While HR plays a key role in the early recruitment and orientation phase and in guiding the on-boarding process, the hiring manager must be engaged in the employee’s successful integration into the organization over the longer term.

Prevue in the on-boarding process.

You used the Prevue Selection report to support the hiring decision; however we all know that almost no one is a perfect match. Virtually every new hire has a few areas where they didn’t quite match the Prevue benchmark for the position. These are the areas where the new hire may find some challenges in meeting the demands of the job. The hiring manager can get a jump on understanding and addressing these challenges by reviewing a Prevue Personal Development report for the new hire. It will provide the manager with:

• An overall personal profile of the new hire.
• A job fit benchmark that highlights the new hire’s strengths (where the new hire’s scores match the benchmark for the position) and the areas where the new hire may be challenged (scores off the benchmark).
• Suggestions on how the manager can assist the new hire to address the challenges the new hire may encounter in the new position.

There is no better way for the hiring manager to get an inside look at the new hire. And the best thing is that if you used Prevue in the hiring process, the Prevue Personal Development is absolutely free of charge.

The Need: First and foremost the company needed to reduce turnover. At the same time they wanted to hire consistently better people without increasing their time or cost to hire. The company had tried several tools and programs to remedy the problem but none had proved successful.

The Solution: As the first step in developing a hiring solution the Prevue Consultant worked with the company to identify the employees who best represented the profile of a top performing Collection Agent.  The selected employees were invited to take all three Prevue Assessments, namely the Prevue Abilities Test, the Prevue Interest Inventory and the Prevue Personality Inventory.  At the same time four of the company’s best supervisors were invited to complete an online job survey that asked specific questions regarding the demands and expectations of a collection agent.

Both the testing of the top performing employees and the completion of the job surveys were administered online using the Prevue Assessment System.  Once completed the assessment results of the job incumbents and the surveys from the supervisors were analyzed to provide a Prevue Job Fit Benchmark for the collection agent position within this company’s unique environment.  This benchmark defined the preferred profile of abilities, interests and personality traits of a collection agent.

Typically a Prevue Job Fit benchmark is used by a customer to identify the best or most ideal candidate for a job opening and is quite specific or restricted. As with many high turnover positions the types of persons who perform well in the collection agent position are more diverse. In these cases the benchmark is used more for screening than selection. The company needed to identify and screen out applicants who were not likely a good fit to the demands of the collection agency position or the company’s work environment.

The Prevue consultant therefore widened the benchmark for most of the abilities, interests and personality trait measures that are addressed by the Prevue Assessments. At the same time, those measures that were proven to be more significant predictors of top performers were identified and emphasized in the company’s hiring process. Although this modified benchmark qualified a higher number of applicants it was effective at distinguishing those who did not exhibit a basic level of job fit.  This approach enabled the hiring manager and her recruiters to focus their limited time and resources on those applicants who were more likely to exhibit the attributes that are typical of top performers. Thus the company was effectively using the Job Fit benchmark to identify poor fit applicants before devoting time to an in depth review of those applicants’ resumes and conducting interviews.

The company implemented a policy to test every applicant and interview only those who exhibited an 80% match to the benchmark.   Further, the hiring manager and her recruiting staff used the Interview questions provided in the Prevue Selection report to focus quickly on areas where an applicant might be challenged by the demands of the position.

This revised screening and interviewing process resulted in reduction of the turnover rate for the position to 31% in 6 months. After 2 years the collection department had reduced their turnover to less than 20% and attributed the implementation of the Prevue Assessments System as one of the major contributors to this success.

Written by: Mike Campanella & Ken Danderfer

June 6, 2011

1. Organizational Fit
2. Hiring manager satisfaction
3. Time to productivity
4. Character/Personal values demonstrated
5. Increase in productivity (i.e. sales, service, etc.)
6. Employee’s first performance review rating

A quote from Kim W. Nowell, SVP, Human Resources, Direct General Corporation summed it up best – “Organizational Fit is one of the most critical elements in acquiring any new talent. A candidate may possess the technical skills that are being sought, have the perfect educational background and come highly recommended, but if they are ‘mismatched’ organizationally, the chances are much greater that they will struggle… As employers we should focus on the ‘whole person approach’ – balancing all components of the individual and the company. Solid acquisition strategy tools will help in that endeavor”.

So how do companies go about measuring and assessing Organization Fit? There arefew organizations today who have the time or resources to develop measures of Organizational Fit; however those companies who use Prevue assessment products are factoring in Organizational Fit when they develop customized Prevue benchmarks for the key positions in their organizations. While the Prevue benchmark process is primarily focused on determining job fit for each position, it inherently reflects the required Organizational Fit for new hires because it is based on input from both management and top performers in each position:

1. The Job Description Survey method for developing Prevue job fit benchmarks identifies management’s opinion of the qualities required for success, not only within a particular position, but also within the environment of the organization. Where an organization is endeavoring to change its culture the Job Description Survey study process will help to identify the characteristics that need to be emphasized to effect the desired change.
2. The Concurrent Study method for developing Prevue job fit benchmarks identifies not only the preferred profile for a specific position, but also the characteristics of top performers within the organization’s environment.
3. Combining the Job Description Survey method and the Concurrent Study method helps to reveal the organizational characteristics that should be sought after by the organization in new hires.

The importance of using quality pre-hire assessments like Prevue was emphasized by the study conclusion that, “a few solutions stand out as ones that separate the Best in Class from all other organizations. Foremost is the use of pre-hire assessments. In fact, Best in Class Organizations are 47% more likely than underperforming operations to use pre-hire assessments for measuring knowledge, skills and abilities and are 67% more likely than underperforming organizations to use pre-hire assessment tools for measuring behavioral attitudes or attributes”.

Your authorized Prevue Distributor can help you identify both the job fit and the Organizational Fit requirements for your organization through the development of Prevue job fit benchmarks. In these times when all organizations are required to become more productive with fewer resources, finding the right people for your team with the right fit to your culture has never been more important.

If you would like a copy of the Talent Acquisition Strategy Study published by the Aberdeen Group, please request a copy from support [at] prevueassessments.com.

Written by Kenneth J. Danderfer.