Relief…you just made a significant investment in your company. You completed a rigorous process to identify, attract and land THE candidate that your business needs. However, now is not the time to celebrate or shift your focus to other priorities. Instead, put as much time and effort into planning your new employee’s onboarding and assimilation into your company, department, and position as possible. Your executive assimilation program is critical to speeding up your hire’s time to performance and reducing the potential for failure – a topic we discuss throughout this blog.
The statistics are staggering – one study by Leadership IQ cites that 46% of new hires fail within 18 months. According to Egon Zehnder’s 2017 executive transition study, culture and politics, not lack of competence or managerial skill, were the main causes of failure. When you consider that a failed hire can cost you up to three times the employee’s compensation, why are only 29% of companies offering cultural assimilation? On top of that, why are only 52% organizing critical objective alignment meetings with the hire’s manager and team? Considering the historically low unemployment rate and the intense war for talent, making assimilation a mandatory component of your recruitment process is necessary. Prioritizing executive assimilation will undoubtedly differentiate you from your competitors.
It’s becoming evident to companies that their conventional employee onboarding programs are inefficient and simply ineffective. An executive assimilation program involves much more than new hire paperwork, payroll and benefits presentation, IT distribution and registration and building tours. Rather, it requires you to help new hires understand their essential deliverables. Including how to navigate within their department (or organization) to successfully accomplish those objectives. The Egon Zehnder study also reported that 75% of leaders believe success or failure during the first few months is a strong predictor of overall success or failure in the position. But transition failures happen because new leaders misunderstood the essential demands of the situation. Therefore, it’s crucial that expectations for the new employee are set and agreed to within the first week of employment.
At Kinsley Sarn, it’s our ultimate goal to provide value. We’ve structured our executive retained search methodology with this goal in mind – guaranteeing results and satisfaction!In addition to executing on an executive search that fits your company and culture, we include transition services with each retained search placement. Our executive assimilation program is proven to help new hires make a quick and effective transition into their new role and your organization. We’ve explained our assimilation process step-by-step below.
Using the search profile developed for your search as a foundational document, we partner with you to prepare a CSP outlining year one’s key deliverables and objectives. This will provide the new leader with the information they need to quickly integrate with their position and your organization.
An assimilation workshop is an opportunity for your new leader to meet with their direct reports and other key stakeholders. Further, the workshop allows your new leader to ask their questions, understand the challenges and opportunities facing the team, and begin building trust. This eases the overall transition for both you and your new leader. While also reinforcing the key deliverables and objectives expected of the leader.
After approximately 90 - 120 days in the new role, comprehensive feedback is gathered through interviews with relevant parties. The purpose is to provide the leader with early feedback on their progress in assimilating to their position and organizational culture. While preserving the confidentiality of the respondents, the new leader receives feedback on what is going well and, most importantly, opportunities to improve their fit and positive impact.While many companies are spending more time on identifying and hiring critical talent, they must make assimilation a critical component of their talent acquisition process. Effective assimilation will not only support the leader’s success within your company and their position, but it’s also been shown to speed up the rate at which they achieve success. When you invest in a retained executive search firm, you expect to see a return on that investment. While many firms can execute on executive placement – not many go beyond placement to ensure transition success with a personalized executive assimilation program. Compare your options and set your standards for executive search high–your company’s success quite literally depends on it. Speak with our team further about how we can successfully place and transition a new executive into your organization.
