Retained search – an elite model of executive search committed to helping companies place top corporate leaders – is kind of like corporate matchmaking.

Firms engage with client to meet their needs and build lasting relationships with candidates, and their goal is to curate the perfect match between the hire and the company.

Companies that invest in retained search firms expect to see a pool of top-quality candidates and first-class support to hire a new leader. The client company pays a retainer (a fee paid in advance), which means the retained search firm must go above and beyond to deliver top-quality results. 

Unfortunately, 40% of executives fail in their new role within the first 18 months. When this happens, the retained search firm has to find a replacement, at their own cost.

Everyone knows that high employee turnover is costly, but when a retained search firm is involved, there is a domino effect of consequences for all the players involved.

Which brings us to the focus of this article – executive onboarding. Specifically, why it is important to all stakeholders in the executive search process, and how retained search firms can bridge the gap between recruiting, hiring, and onboarding executive placements.

I asked George Bradt – executive onboarding expert and author of The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan – to share his thoughts on common challenges for new executive onboarding.

• How retained search firms can help with executive onboarding
• Common executive onboarding challenges
• Impact of remote work on executive onboarding
• Key elements of a successful and robust executive onboarding program
• Advice for successful executive pre-boarding and onboarding experience
• Stages of executive onboarding
• Podcast: Executive onboarding with Gianna Driver

At the recent HR Transform Conference, we had the opportunity to ask about your biggest employee onboarding challenges. What did our Process Street survey say?

• 25.6% said weak visibility & accountability 
• 19.8% said too many manual tasks 
• 19.8% said poor efficiency & speed 
• 18.6% said challenges with tools & technology 
• 16.3% said clumsy coordination with other teams 

Want to know how to make new hire onboarding less of a pain? Keep reading! 

While 52% of senior managers feel the annual engagement survey is an accurate assessment, 48% of employees do not. Factor in that 1/4 of managers think the surveys are pointless and you have a problem.

Annual surveys encompass such a long period of time that it becomes difficult to accurately measure which initiatives have been effective and which are not. 

In addition, it limits the ability to make changes to engagement and motivation policies as they need to happen and before it’s too late to correct any potential damage. 

An employee pulse survey is useful as a tool for monitoring engagement, but it can also be applied to other situations. A pulse survey might be used to evaluate new procedures, strategies, and business practices to measure their effectiveness. 

Paired with annual surveys, the pulse survey is a powerful tool that can keep your goals targeted and productive. 

This post for Process Street will cover everything you need to know about employee pulse surveys – and provide a template you can start using immediately with your free Process Street account.

• Employee Pulse Survey template
• What’s the difference between a pulse survey & an engagement survey?
• Pulse survey best practices
• Optimize employee engagement with this free pulse survey template

Let’s dive in!

Perhaps you’ve heard about The Great Resignation, the record number of employees quitting their jobs. In September of 2021, 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs. Each industry has experienced a varying level of employees leaving their positions, though certain ones, like the foodservice industry, were particularly hard hit.

In this post for Process Street, We’ll explore this phenomenon affecting the working world and look at some ways your business can continue to onboard top talent despite the shortages of workers. 

• The Great Resignation: Causes & effects
• How companies can win the talent war

New hire churn is expensive. Working in HR, you know the cost of having to replace an employee once they hand in their resignation.

A recent survey found that 65% of workers are actively searching for new employment. If you’ve worked in HR for some time, the thought of two-thirds of your employees walking is very worrying. The cost of a new hire found through a recruitment agency can be up to $7500 or more. To start building employee retention early on, and prevent excessive hiring costs, it pays to focus on a perfect onboarding experience.

Here at Process Street, we’ve extensively studied onboarding to help prevent exorbitant costs. One of our greatest successes has been in looking at the recurring tasks involved in onboarding. We’ve helped to provide insight into what can go wrong, and also built templates to direct companies away from excessive spending and losses. 

We believe you can create a perfect onboarding experience for new hires. We also think it can be done without breaking the bank. Please read on to find out more, and utilize our best onboarding templates:

• What makes a good onboarding experience?
• Why is a good onboarding experience important?
• Employee onboarding and retention
• When does employee onboarding start?
• How long should employee onboarding last?
• How to automate employee onboarding
• Employee onboarding for small businesses
• Ask for feedback to help improve employee onboarding

I felt numb.

My relationship of the last 2 years had just collapsed, which was the straw that broke… well, my head. I spiraled into a mental breakdown.

I was living in Italy without knowing anyone but my (now ex) girlfriend, living in the same apartment as her, not being able to speak the language, and around $4,000 down in my bank account from when we’d moved there two months prior.

And yet, thanks to our employee assistance program here at Process Street, I was able to get back to England safe and sound. And without worries about getting fired adding fuel to my problems.

“US businesses lose up to $300 billion dollars due to work-related stress. While the root-cause is a grueling work-culture that has gone unchecked for decades, an EAP can help to a great extent.”

– HR University, 7 Best Employee Assistance Programs in 2022

No matter how focused and productive an employee is, there will be times when they encounter personal problems that affect their work. That’s where employee assistance programs (EAPs) come in.

EAPs exist to listen to your team’s problems and help them through whatever they’re experiencing. In other words, every team should have access to some kind of EAP.

That’s why this post will take you through:

• What is an employee assistance program (EAP)?
• Employee assistance program benefits
• How to set up an EAP
• Process Street helps you perfect the employee assistance program

Let’s dive right in.

Employee churn costs about $60,000 per employee, without taking into consideration the indirect costs such as lost business, lower morale, lost productivity, and the time and resources spent on candidate selection before hiring someone.

As a manager, preventing that from happening should be one of your top priorities. You can’t have a productive, successful team if you’re always training new members. 

This Process Street post will cover why churn happens — specifically among Millennials and Gen Z in the post-pandemic job market — and what you can do to prevent it. 

• Are we heading towards the Great Regret?
• Employee churn: Prevention is better than a cure
• Improve recruitment & prevent churn with process automation

Let’s get started.

Named as one of the top 100 HR influencers of 2022 by HR Executive, Gianna Driver is currently the CHRO at Exabeam and has 15+ of experience scaling global, people, and talent functions.

Gianna loves leading teams and helping them meet ambitious goals, and boasts a wide range of leadership experience (from board management to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, to process creation). Gianna loves the energy that comes from creating structure out of chaos.

In this episode of The Employee Onboarding Podcast from Process Street, Josh speaks to Gianna about:

• Executive onboarding vs. employee onboarding
• Scaling organizations quickly and effectively
• Using data to continuously improve your onboarding program

You can listen on Apple, Spotify, Google, Podchaser, Podcast Addict, Deezer, & all your favorite podcast platforms!

At Process Street we focus on helping you streamline repeatable work by transforming process knowledge into collaborative, actionable workflows. In order to maximize workflow engagement and impact, we think your team should have the flexibility to participate wherever it’s most convenient.

If Microsoft Teams is your hub for collaboration and teamwork, you can now easily stay informed and take action on all of your Process Street workflows right where your team already operates: Welcome to Process Street for Microsoft Teams.

What was once the exception has now become a common workplace model throughout the world. Since 2005, remote working has increased by 159%. Without a doubt, those numbers saw a massive jump with the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. 

This new way of working (and living) is here to stay. Why? Remote work can offer increased employee productivity, reduced churn, and decreased absenteeism, and much more. But these benefits are only within reach when you’ve set up a good remote workplace. 

One way of enforcing an effective remote workplace is during the onboarding phase. You can familiarize new hires with the correct resources and processes from the get-go. Just as onboarding is a good way to integrate your employees into a remote working environment, it can also be your biggest downfall if not conducted properly. 

That’s why, in this Process Street article, I’m taking you through everything you need to know about onboarding employees in a remote environment. 

• The complete onboarding checklist for remote employees
• Embracing the remote work model
• Why is onboarding for remote employees important?
• Onboarding remote employees: Best practices
• Staying connected in a remote work environment 

Let’s get ready to onboard!