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O P I N I O N
Getting new employees in the door is just the start – onboarding and training compel them to stay. Take hires from new to committed
R ecruiting new employees is a process approached with considerable time and effort at most AEC firms. Hiring a new employee is certainly worth the resources and energy, as determining the capabilities of your new employee and understanding how they will enhance your company and its culture is crucial. However, what happens once those employees start? Sure, they get a tour, they meet their colleagues, and they’re set on the right path for success. Or are they?
Matt Hoying
The challenges of finding employees right now are well documented, so when we finally find one, it is understandable that we feel the hard part is over and we don’t put as much focus on making them stick. Yet can we expect new employees to know all of the intricacies of company culture and expectations in a day, a week, or even a year? Onboarding and training are the work that needs to be done with thought and intention to create an environment of success for both the new employee and the company. The following are a fewways to invest in an environment for success and examples of how our firm implements these strategies: ■ ■ Understand the systems. Making sure a new employee gets the big picture of the business
is important to long-term success. The roles we are hiring everyone for are primarily to improve the company and our ability to serve our clients – their specific expertise is secondary. If they understand that they will be working on stormwater and how that bit of the company works, that’s great. Yet helping them understand the administration behind the stormwater department, the survey crew that provides data, and the accounting that pays the bills not only helps the employee get the bigger picture but will hopefully help them see where they fit into it and how they impact it. At our company, we take new employees (in a
See MATT HOYING, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER FEBRUARY 28, 2022, ISSUE 1430
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