Mike 
The start of a new year inevitably brings changes, and one of those may be the addition of one or more new staff members. Regardless of the role, I’m sure you have high hopes and expectations for this person’s contribution to your organization. After all, you did the hard work in the selection process and picked the very best candidate for the position. But are you prepared to do the hard work in the coming months to insure their success?
Inadequate “onboarding” of new staff is a common problem in churches, ministries, and non-profits. It starts with a “plug-and-play” assumption: “We hire great people, so just plug them in and let them do their jobs.” But even great people need help on the steep learning curve that they face in a new job. The problem is made worse when the organization operates on the flawed belief that they don’t have the time and resources for effective onboarding.
So let me ask two questions to challenge these assumptions:
- What is your historical success rate with new hires? If it’s great, then your onboarding practices may be fine. But if you find that more than 20-30% of new staff are “not working out” in the first year, it’s time to look deeper.
- What is the “cost” of a bad hire? The effort required for effective onboarding pales in comparison to the cost of failure for new staff. That cost includes poor results in their program, the frustration of staff and volunteers that they work with, and ultimately the cost for terminating the person and then hiring their replacement.
