At one time, about 16% of new hires at CPA firms left within the first 90 days. However, since the pandemic, that number is closer to the average across industries of 33%. Sometimes that attrition can’t be helped. In today’s market, it’s common for someone to receive a better offer shortly after accepting a new position. But pay is not the only reason people leave shortly after starting a new job. When interviewed for the Accounting Today podcast, Jeff Phillips, CEO of Padgett Business Services and co-founder of remote job platform Accountingfly, reported three additional reasons they see people leaving: 1) They don’t understand the job, 2) They don’t have the tools they need to do their work, and 3) They’re lonely.
Well, when we heard that, you know what we said: Marketing can help! At the core, most of these issues can be resolved with clear, thoughtful and proactive communications. Which your marketing team is already poised for. Here’s how the marketer’s toolbox can help improve your new hire onboarding process and head-off the three issues Phillips identified.
1. Not understanding the job
This one is sneaky, because we would argue this starts well before onboarding, and even before an offer is made. If you’re working with job descriptions someone found on Google, a new hire might be surprised when your firm’s specific expectations don’t match up to what they were provided when they chose to apply or during the hiring process. Your HR and marketing teams can start a dialog across departments to help craft a job description that accurately reflects what makes this role impactful at your firm. This will help avoid confusion and dissatisfaction when the new person joins the team, making their job training onboarding easier and more enjoyable for everyone involved. Making sure that expectations and reality are closely aligned will help build trust with your new team member.
2. Not having the tools needed to do their work
Surely you want your new team member to be successful, and for their work to get done well. So, let’s assume the tools they need do exist. How come so many new hires feel like they don’t have what they need to get the job done? Most likely it comes down to communication. This is a great time to use your CRM to level up your onboarding.
While your marketing team is speaking with your team about their roles and responsibilities, they can find out what information was helpful to them when they were starting out, and what they wish they would have known, or what resources they would have liked to have been able to access. Then your marketing team can work with various key personnel to develop a digital onboarding process to help provide new hires the right information at the right time. This can include onboarding paperwork, a cheat sheet of who to know at the firm, the holiday calendar, and even recommendations such as where to find parking and the best places to go for lunch.
As your marketing team builds out the drip series, try and put yourselves in the shoes of a brand new employee. The first day at a new job is often overwhelming and includes being introduced to dozens of people, filling out pages of paperwork and touring new spaces and digital platforms. It’s not a surprise that a couple of weeks later someone may not remember which administrative assistant supports which department head, or where to find certain documents on the server. Not only do these types of gaps lead to frustration and inefficiency, they can also leave a new team member feeling unsupported. Having a new hire come into the office? That’s where the drip email with a digital welcome packet and onboarding paperwork can come in handy. They can take care of the paperwork at home so that their first day isn’t spent in an empty conference room filling out forms, and instead they can focus on meeting their new colleagues.
3. Feeling lonely
Overcoming loneliness comes from engaging in meaningful relationships, not from proximity. Just because your team is in the office doesn’t mean they are collaborating, getting to know each other’s goals or actively finding common ground. Whatever your in-office policy looks like, creating a plan that will help cut through feelings of loneliness even up to a year after someone starts working can deepen their professional relationships and feeling of being valued within the organization.
Consider creating a plan that matches a manager with a new team member with the purpose of helping the new team member acclimate to the firm’s culture. Often new team members will work with different teams based on the project and it can be a challenge to develop a more long standing relationship within the firm. Your CRM can come in handy here as well! First, work out a series of intentional conversations or meetings that the manager will initiate with the new hire. This might be monthly at first, then every other month perhaps later in the year. Each meeting will have a prompt such as, organize a meeting with a partner, or coffee check-in after tax season. Once you’ve arrived at your sequence, program tasks into your CRM that will send reminders to the manager when it’s time to reach out. Once a meeting is scheduled, the manager can check the task off as complete, and it’s off their plate. This will not only encourage thoughtful contact between team members, but allow the firm to observe the efficacy of the program as these activities are logged in the CRM.
In today’s competitive market, employee experience is just as important as client experience. You’ve likely been focused on recruiting, but retention is just as important. Now is the time to work together with your marketing team to develop and deploy a thoughtful onboarding program as part of your retention strategy that will keep team members satisfied throughout their employment at your firm. Want to talk more about recruiting and retention? Reach out! We’d love to learn more about your firm.
