Evaluating New Hires

Evaluating new hires after their first year can be challenging. This is especially true when your new employees don’t know what to expect. In this article, we’ll give you ideas on how to turn new employee reviews into a tool instead of a chore.

It’s not only helpful to new employees to know what their bosses expect of them, but it can also be beneficial for managers. New employee reviews can help managers determine if they’re on the right track for growing and developing their staff. It’s important for job seekers and recruiters to be aware of how long it takes a brand-new employee to reach their full potential.

For example, research indicates that, on average, it takes a new hire about six months before they feel like an important part of the team. However, you shouldn’t stop there; make sure your employees understand what is expected of them on a daily basis and how they can develop themselves in the company.

Why Evaluate New Hires?

Many organizations set a designated time for finishing onboarding, training, and fulfilling the new role. You need to follow up the training period with a performance review, which seems like a smart move. However, you must understand your goal by conducting a constructive performance review.

Defining What a New Hire Review Is

A new hire review isn’t a test that an employee must pass in order to make it at a company. A performance evaluation should never seem like a test. If it does, your employees might be on top of their game, and after receiving a favorable review, they could slump into unsatisfactory habits.

The best thing to do is evaluate your purpose. That purpose should be to turn the review process of a new hire into a vital part of the onboarding and training process.

What Are You Evaluating?

You might realize that the best way to look at a new hire is by measuring their soft skills and fit for your company culture. This works better sometimes instead of examining job-specific skills that will end up being evaluated later by your ongoing performance evaluation via your PMS platform.

Do you know how to find out what soft skills they should be efficient at? Just take a look at their job description. Soft skills are outlined in job placement ads and job descriptions.

Future Performance Reviews: Laying the Groundwork

There is an increase in employee engagement during the review process when employees have the ability to voice their opinion. When you set and track goals with an employee, this can be a great way to magnify the entrepreneur in them.

Allow them to decide what training and achievement goals they should focus on for the next year of work. You can discuss goals the employee can strive to complete by the end of the year during this evaluation process. This often makes for a much smoother goal-setting process.

There are several long-term benefits when you conduct these new-hire reviews as a part of the onboarding and training process. The next section will highlight these benefits and give you a chance to sharpen and fine-tune the process.

Long-Term Benefits of New Hire Evaluations

Understanding the long-term benefits of new-hire evaluations is important when you want to fine-tune the evaluation and use it as a regular part of your onboarding. The long-term benefits include the following:

• It lets your employees get to know your organization’s PMS platform and culture. This becomes an early opportunity to establish that performance reviews are ongoing and should be considered a tool for identifying the growth, training, and development opportunities.
• It sends a clear message that you’re investing in their success story. Performance management isn’t a punishment at your organization – it’s a means of identifying whether management is doing its job of efficiently guiding team members towards their goals.
• You’re able to identify and begin any additional training that your new employee may need to exceed expectations in their new job role.

Now that you understand what the evaluation consists of, why it’s important, and the long-term benefits, you might wonder when to conduct the evaluation. You might also be curious about why you’re specifically engaging in a face-to-face evaluation with a new team member when constant performance management is the norm at your company because of your up-to-date PMS platform.

When Should You Evaluate a New Hire?

Understanding when to conduct this evaluation is just as important as knowing how to conduct it. Obviously, you don’t want to hold the evaluation too soon. You want to give them a chance to make it through enough of the onboarding process, so they have a chance to feel comfortable in the new knowledge they’ve digested.

If you evaluate them too early, it could make them nervous about not being prepared or efficient enough for the evaluation. It’s also important that you don’t wait too long to meet with them.

The best time to do the evaluation is when they’re about 75% of the way through the onboarding process. There’s a specific strategy for waiting this amount of time.

• They’re far enough through the course to have a firm understanding of most of the major areas of concern for your business, they understand your culture, and are becoming more aware of things like compliance. When they are aware of all of this vital information, you can ask them questions about the way they feel regarding their role within the company. Don’t be afraid to ask them for feedback about how you can utilize them in a more efficient manner. They may not have any feedback about this, and that’s okay. The main goal is to get a feel for how comfortable they are with their placement within your organization.
• Most of the important learning material is fresh in their minds so they can bring up any content or areas of concern they might need help with.
• Once they’re 75% of the way through their onboarding, you should have a pretty good idea of how the rest of onboarding will go. This gives you a chance to get a feel for whether they should continue along the same path or maybe switch to a different department or role within the company.

In the end, all of the elements mentioned above are at the center of PMS. Efficient performance management is continuous performance management. The overall goal and strategy of the modern day performance management system is to provide this constant performance evaluation in an effort to avoid challenges before they become too significant. Additionally, you’re able to identify skill gaps and other challenges team members have before they slip through the cracks and cause bigger problems.

Remember, new employees should understand this review isn’t a punishment. In reality, it’s a way for you to ensure that you’re doing your job as a manager to promote their growth and ensure their goals are aligned with the company. Speaking from this platform always garners better results, leading to a much healthier relationship with team members! To ramp up your performance management process and get better results, call us today at +1 (877) 624-7226!