Life goes on…in what seemed to be a “stalled world” for the past few months, activity is now picking up. This also means that you will have employees who move on to find other jobs, and you will be hiring again.
How you keep your team connected through these transitions will reflect your leadership skills and engagement.
Remember these critical steps in on-boarding and exiting to keep your team solid.
Employees Entering – Your New Team Members
It’s always a lot of work bringing in a new team member, and yet it is critical to the new hires’ success. Advanced planning is even more critical in a virtual world.
Before the person’s first day, send them a message with an outline or “heads up” with what they should expect the first day – and week.
Include critical technology details as well as a meeting and training schedule giving structure to their time.
Introduce the new individual to your team – in writing and “in-person.” Schedule time for each team member to “meet” their new co-worker.
Encourage them to talk about work as well as other topics of interest. You might even provide some suggested topics that each person could talk about:
- Share a career high and low
- Share your favorite past time
- Share your preferred method of communication
- Share your DiSC style
Employees Exiting
Communicate to all team members, and internal stakeholders, when one of your team members resigns. Congratulate them publicly and privately. Thank them for their service.
Plan a virtual send off.
A Zoom team gathering sharing highlights of the individual’s accomplishments, a roast, or a toast. Something to allow team members to connect and say goodbye to the person as a team.
You might even send a gift to the departing team member’s home that they open during the online gathering.
And remember you don’t have to organize all of this yourself. It’s likely you have a team member who would be glad to lead this effort for you.
It may sound strange, but how you treat those leaving makes a significant impression on those remaining.
In a virtual world, building connections between your team members takes more effort but is important time invested.
Don’t let “out of sight, out of mind” become your leadership motto.
In our effort to support you during this unusual time of COVID-19, we have offered these #Leadwell Virtually tips over the past couple of months. We will be phasing these tips out at the end of June. You can look back on all of the tips on our #Leadwell Knowledgebase – Leading Well Virtually.
Look forward to our next series of tips on shaping your evolving culture starting this summer.
