When you find the right person, start on the right footing

First impressions count! When onboarding really try to keep in touch, even a month can feel like a long wait, and regular contact demonstrates that you care.

Meet new starters for a coffee, introduce them to their new team mates ahead of their start date and demonstrate that you haven’t bought an FTE, but you are onboarding a valued individual. There is a difference and starting on the wrong footing may make them consider an early exit if they don’t feel valued.

Give staff work of value

Nothing helps push people out of the door faster then giving them work where they can’t see the value of it! Even if you recruit replacements, teams with poor value delivery will become revolving doors and no slick recruitment process or throwing money at it will solve the problem. Ask them to playback what they think the value of their work is, and if they can’t articulate it then that’s a smoking gun.

Also consider personal drivers and work with your engineers, some will want to mentor, some like complex issues, others may want to delight customers, so try and find the right role for the individual and allow them to offer greater value than writing lines of code.

Give them a choice of tools

You hire a developer at £50k then immediately give them a used and worn-out laptop. This sets a bad impression. Let them choose their device and accessories, it’s their tool to get a job done so let them pick what they think is most suitable. If they feel choose it, they are more likely to use it! Developers given poor tools will try and find reasons not to use them, so you get a poor rate of return on issuing a poor standard issue device. Saving a few quid on hardware when you have paid thousands just to find the right candidate is a crazy way to hire engineers!

Underperformers kill teams!

There is no point hiring a superstar to sit them with somebody that doesn’t care. Tackle underperformers and be honest on what you are not seeing in their performance, you may find that an open and honest conversation will expose issues both politically and operationally that need addressing.

People are demotivated by their environment and circumstances, so find out what is driving poor performance and help them resolve it. If you don’t fix the problems and just introduce new people into the wrong culture, then it can make them consider pulling a handbrake turn and going somewhere else.

If unaddressed in the long term, then the culture can become toxic and even the most motivated and dedicated staff will lose heart. Stop the rot.

Give them a safe space

Safety is paramount on teams, and it requires a culture that starts at the top. Lack of safety to speak out and raise concerns leads not only to poor staff retention, but it also drives negative business outcomes. Boeing and Nasa are too high-profile examples of what can go catastrophically wrong when staff are told to keep quiet and focus on the wrong targets.

A team under pressure to deliver against unrealistic deadlines is likely to be cutting corners, this damages the morale of engineers, and they will want to leave before the powder keg erupts.

Reward honesty and team improvement and listen to concerns, it will save your organisation a major event, and help to improve your systems!