It's so difficult to attract talent these days. So why shoot yourself in the foot when it comes to retaining them? Yet that's what most employers do by forgetting about emphasizing the onboarding experience. Get some tips about how you can improve this critical step in your hiring process that, done well, will improve retention at your company.

About our Speakers

• Shelly Dretzka, owner at aHRrow Consulting, a human resource outsourcing company in Wisconsin. Learn more at www.hrwisconsin.com
• Justin Vajko, owner at Dialog Employer Branding, a marketing agency that promotes your jobs beyond the job boards. Learn more at www.recruitwithdialog.com.

Justin Vajko: Hey everybody. I'm Justin and I have Shelly Dretzka from aHRrow HR Consulting here with me, and we're going to be talking about what is candidate experience and why it matters and how to improve it. Because apparently, Shelly is the person you want to talk to about candidate experience. And we'll talk about why that is in a little bit. But before we get started, Shelly, for those who aren't really familiar with candidate experience, what it is, we're talking about entrepreneurs. They're starting to grow their businesses. We're talking about companies. Maybe they have one or two HR folks, but they've never really had that deep level of training. What is candidate experience in your eyes? And why does it matter?

Shelly Dretzka: Well, thanks for having me, Justin. So what it is, is the experience the candidate has. That was really mind blowing, wasn't it? But the importance of that is, the journey that a candidate takes as they're out there and they are looking to find that next great opportunity in their professional lives and what are they experiencing? What is happening to them during that entire process? And that starts from when they're interacting with job boards, or on LinkedIn, and then all of a sudden, they're getting communications from those companies, from the recruiters, from the hiring managers to the messaging, the phone calls, the interviews. What is that all feeling like along the way? Because really, great candidates are taking that all into consideration when hopefully, they get that offer, that doesn't all go away. So if something went wrong early in it and then the company falls in love with them and they're ready to make the offer, there's going to be that little thing in the back of their head about something that went wrong during that experience that could make a difference when it comes to offer time.

Justin Vajko: Well, that makes a lot of sense. So there's a hidden cost here that a lot of employers aren't aware of that if you're not owning your candidate experience and something like you just said, a negative something or other, communication was dropped and the candidate had to follow up, maybe follow up again, because there's a busy HR team. They can't keep up with everything. Maybe that leaves a bad taste in their mouth that'll make them reconsider when the time comes, they get a job offer.

Shelly Dretzka: Exactly, exactly.

Justin Vajko: So we talked a little bit before this call about candidate experience and things like that. I want to know, so you have an interesting take on this that I've never heard anyone else take. And we deal with candidate experience here at Dialog with our clients. We want to make sure that from the moment they hear about the job to apply, everything's pretty smooth. And even after that, we don't control that outcome, but we do coach our clients for how to make sure their candidates can have a good experience after they apply. Are they being communicated with in a timely manner, blah, blah, blah? But you've got a different take on this. So I want to know, what is the difference between what you do and your approach to this, your philosophy and what a lot of people take towards candidate experience?

Shelly Dretzka: Sure. So I think a lot of people, the first thing they think about and good company cultures really talk about, the employee experience. So already, I'm taking that to the pre-hire. So we're going back in the timeline and saying, "Okay, I know you're all concerned about when the employee is on and their life cycle with you as an employee, but we're going to go backwards and we're going to start that relationship in the pre-hire." So in the applicant in candidate experience. We won't talk about it today, but I also say it goes in the other direction and it goes post retire, post fire, whatever rhyme you want to come up with. But again, that whole life cycle. And my theory around all of that is, treat people with kindness no matter where they are in the process, no matter where they come in and no matter where they fall out. I always think about how would you like your family member or a friend to be treated?

Shelly Dretzka: We've all heard the bad stories. You don't want to be on the other end of that, where someone's talking about the bad experience they have with you as a hiring manager or with a company. What I see as difference too, is a lot of companies, they talk about their onboarding process, right? They talk about this process that people go through and we get all this stuff done and to them, the process starts on day one. And sometimes on day one, they've done all their HR paperwork. They've handed them off. We've all had those days where you come in and maybe there's a desk waiting for you, maybe there's not. Maybe there's not a computer. Maybe your new boss isn't even there to greet you. So those type of things, just thinking about that day one, and you get handed all of the paperwork and they put you in an office and you fill out paperwork until your hand cramps up.

Justin Vajko: Yeah.

Shelly Dretzka: And you're calling your spouse to find out what their social security number is and the kid's date of birth and you're doing all that. Which to me, that doesn't sound like a really good experience.

Justin Vajko: Sure.

Shelly Dretzka: Because it's a process. They're fulfilling exactly what they said it was. We're going to put you through an onboarding process. So what I like to do is, take the process piece of it, which is really this much of the entire experience, and I actually like to try to do that before they even come onboard.

Justin Vajko: Okay.

Shelly Dretzka: Is their technology they can use? Is there something within your HRIS or your HCM system that is allowing you to give them access to it and they're data filling that all? First of all, it's efficient. There's going to be less error. So I like that part of it, using the technology. And it's all done ahead of time. Now, maybe when they show up, you're going through a couple other things just to clarify everything's right. But I like getting that process done, out of the way, and possibly, even before they step foot in the building for the first time. But we're doing other things along the way, too, in that experience. We're staying in touch with them for those two weeks between the offer and their first day.

Justin Vajko: Okay.

Shelly Dretzka: If anyone has been hiring nowadays, a lot happens in that two week gap. I have individuals falling off after they've accepted an offer, because another offer came through. Those things are happening, but if you stay engaged with them and you're giving them a good experience, it's a little harder for them to make that phone call or shoot you that midnight email the first day they're supposed to show up and say, "Yeah, nevermind, I'm really not coming in on my first day." Good luck. You get to start the process all over again. So to avoid that, we're staying in contact with them for those two weeks. It's cards from the department. It's phone calls from the CEO. It's sending flowers, or whatever that package is if you've got a lot of cool swag, right. The mugs and all that great stuff. I mean, to get that in a package at home before you've even started it on day one, first of all, I'm going to be like, Ooh, I got to remember, I've got to do that process piece. I'm going to go do that.

Shelly Dretzka: And they're really excited for me to be joining them. I mean, that is really the difference that I see is, we make that process very tiny. We expand what that experience looks like, pre-hire to post retire, and we just do those things right, and we keep them really engaged from before day one. And then day one is the fun stuff. We're welcoming them. There's somebody there. Maybe it's a side kick or a buddy or whatever the language is in the company, who's meeting them at the front door. You're telling them where to park. You're telling them they don't have to bring a lunch that day because our team's going to take you out to lunch. They're all excited to see you. We've put out a great announcement with your picture and fun comments about you. And really, they're getting that experience from day one. We all remember that day in high school, when you're like, "Oh, who has lunch with me? Who am I having lunch with?"

Justin Vajko: Oh, yeah.

Shelly Dretzka: "I don't know anybody." Let's take that all off the table for the new hire and when they come in, I'm going to tell you that night they're going home to their family, or they're texting their friends, or maybe they're putting something out on Twitter that man, that was the best first day I've ever had and I can't wait to go back tomorrow.

Justin Vajko:

Well, have you seen this work for other employers when you've done this? I was just curious, what are some of the effects of this happening?

Shelly Dretzka:

Yeah. So you're definitely going to reduce that fall off in those two weeks with that experience. And I'm doing, I'm talking now post offer.

Justin Vajko:

Yeah.

Shelly Dretzka:

What you're controlling with that. You're going to have a lot of great feedback about the onboarding experience. Also, you're going to ask them for feedback of what worked, what didn't work. So you're even engaging them like, "Hey, you're our newest new hire. What did you like about that? What didn't you?" And there's just, there's different energy. How do you put an ROI on that, right, Justin? But there's just a different energy of a new hire when they are excited and they're welcome and they know you are waiting for them and you're just as excited as they are. So there's definitely that. So you're going to have faster engagement. You're going to have way less turnover.

Shelly Dretzka:

So actually, I actually have some stats here. So employees are actually 18 times more committed to their employer if you give them a good candidate, or now it's a new hire, experience.

Justin Vajko:

Wow. That's huge.

Shelly Dretzka:

So, Bamboo HR put that out there for us.

Justin Vajko:

Wow. Okay.

Shelly Dretzka:

Yeah. You're going to, retention right? Now, we've spent all this time and if there's hiring managers out there, recruiting managers out there, they know how painful this market is right now. It's very, very hard. We got to move quick. We got to hire quickly. We got to get our people in the door because there's a lot of other offers out there.

Justin Vajko:

Right.

Shelly Dretzka:

So then we get them in the door and then some people are like, "Whew, we got them in the door. I'm going to go work on my other two openings I've got, or ten openings, or twenty openings." Okay, but now, we need to retain this person, because we don't want to start that process all over. So according to Glassdoor, the most recent is, a good onboarding experience is going to increase new hire retention by 82%.

Justin Vajko:

Oh wow.

Shelly Dretzka:

Okay. Putting in a little extra time, sending a card, making a phone call. And once you create all that, what matches your culture? You turn the experience a little bit into a process, right? There's a checklist and you tell people here's your responsibilities and then everybody controls what they control. And then the only other, the other stat I had actually from SHRM, which is the HR organization, is a good onboarding experience is actually going to ensure that 69% of your employees stay with you for three years.

Justin Vajko:

Okay. That's huge. Two out of three employees. Over two out of three.

Shelly Dretzka: Just because you gave them an amazing experience at that beginning of their employment.

Justin Vajko: That's amazing. And the first objection I think of when you tell me all this is, well, who's got time to do all that? And when you think about it, and I like what you said, you turn your experience into a process. I want to talk about that here in a second, like putting that checklist together. But that little bit of time, when you think about how many years, what is your target? Two, three years if you want someone to be with you. What is that? 6,000, 7,000 hours of time they're going to be with you. If you can trade, what is that total? Maybe two hours, five hours, maybe ten hours, if you go all out. I don't know. You tell me. But if you just trade that for all those years, man, it makes sense to do something like that.

Shelly Dretzka: Yeah. So you're systemizing it and it's a team approach. This isn't HR. People are like, "Oh my God, I don't have time to do that. I got to go recruit for the other 20 people on my desk." But you're sharing that. You're tasking it, but others are accountable and responsible for it. So sending, even just having a stack of congratulations cards and you shoot it off to the department, it's already addressed, already has a stamp on it. Can you guys all sign this, seal it, drop it in the mail?

Justin Vajko: Yeah.

Shelly Dretzka: What did that just take for the department to do that? The phone call for the CEO, the CFO, to pick up the phone and make a two minute call. I'm going to tell you eight out of ten times, they're leaving a voice message.

Justin Vajko: Yeah.

Shelly Dretzka: So it's not turning into this big, long conversation. They're just saying, "Hey, saw you're coming up Monday. We're excited to be here." So you're putting it so the HR person is taking 30 seconds to put it on the CEO's calendar to say, make this call.

Justin Vajko: Make this call, right.

Shelly Dretzka: Make this call. Here's the person, here's their title, here's when they're joining us, here's maybe something kind of fun about them that you want to mention in the conversation.

Justin Vajko: Shelly, do you have any kind of, we don't obviously want to turn something that needs to be, it sounds like this needs to be really custom to the culture of a company. Some companies will do more, some less. Some will do the lunch things. Some, they won't. Where's a good place for somebody to start putting together their candidate experience after somebody is hired in that two week period and how do they wrap their heads around that? Maybe, they'll have a couple ideas. Certainly, I think if we hired somebody here and we wanted to implement this, I have a couple ideas for how we could do that. We're a fully remote team, so I'd have to think creatively. But I'm curious, is there a checklist? How does someone start?

Shelly Dretzka: As an HR consultant, like lawyers and doctors do, I'm usually like, please don't Google. It's going to get you in trouble. That's with compliance things. With these type of cultural things, let's look out there and let's look at best practice. Let's talk to other people. Are there other organizations that you think, Hey, I really think they do that right. Ask the people at your round tables. Ask your peers, what are you doing in the onboarding experience that is really cool? And then like you said, then it gets tweaked. Plus, then you're going to maybe talk to some of your current employees. They're like, "What do you wish we would've done different when you started with us?" Because I will tell you that's one thing that I would hear too, is when we implemented this really cool thing at one of my clients, employees who didn't get that experience were like, "What the heck? Where were my stickers on my desk when I got here?"

Shelly Dretzka: And where was my... And it was like, ooh, this is a little bit of jealousy that they didn't get that experience. So, there's that. It's go after the good practice, see what's out there, tweak it, make sure it fits your because your culture, I mean, I love the whole remote thing. I mean, I'm seeing people, you can send lunch to people. You can Door Dash somebody on their first day. You can still send them the card, still send them the phone message. So all that can really be done. It's just how you revise it. And then I'd say, keep having the conversations with your hiring managers and with those employees so that as we go forward, like a little fast forward, I'm making sure we're having some real deliberate and intentional meetings with those employees at 30, 60, and 90 days.

Justin Vajko: Okay.

Shelly Dretzka: The 30 days with the manager, how are things going? And offsite, if possible. Go have coffee. At 60 days, I always liked when I was in house and I do it with some of my clients, offsite, I go and have coffee with them. That's that fun time where you're like, "Okay, so we went through the HR stuff. I didn't get to ask you all these personal things. Now, you're here. I want to know about you. What do you do for fun? Tell me about the family." You can't ask all that stuff in the interview, but now they're there and if that's your culture that you want to care and have that family feel. That's when you open up the door and then ask them, "How did it go? What would you do different? What have you seen at other companies? What are your friends talking about?" And then take it back to the drawing board and go, okay, does that make sense to me? Does it make sense to the culture and you keep evolving it to make it cool and fresh?

Justin Vajko: Yeah. Have you found, I'm thinking of this role, Shelly, is there a role for those follow ups or somebody to own this whole process? Or did you say it's between the HR team and the supervisor? What do those roles usually look like? And then, who should own that follow up process? The HR person? What do you see as some best practices there?

Shelly Dretzka: Yeah. So I think, again, if you can use the technology and you can put an onboarding experience into a process and use those modules within your HRIS system, that all can be done. It can be tasked and things that are automatically handed out at hire, when you accept the package, you say, go, and then everything's date driven and sent off. So that's the coolest way to make it very efficient. It's going to be the HR person, but in all... Like you could have an HR intern that owns that and make sure the things that are going off and being taken care of. I mean, it doesn't have to be high level, but you need to involve everybody because it's the culture. So it's going to involve your HR team. It's involving your hiring managers, your leaders. There could be training involved too.

Shelly Dretzka: Maybe it involves your IT guy, or maybe you have the person meeting with all the managers of every department within the first week, just to learn about the company and who they are. So getting that feel of, Hey, I really feel like I'm part of this. I'm not in the silo over here in my department. Again, I also like the, I call them sidekicks. I wasn't a fan of the buddy word, but I liked sidekick. I was going through a superhero thing when I came up with that. But they have that go-to person that they can always go back to and be like, where's this, where's this?

Justin Vajko: Yeah.

Shelly Dretzka: You know what people forget to tell people on the first day? Where the bathroom is.

Justin Vajko: Oh, that's funny.

Shelly Dretzka: Oh my gosh, add a tour on your list. Give them a tour of the building, because this poor person on their first day is going to be wandering around possibly without a key to get to where they need to go. Add that to your list.

Justin Vajko: Add it to the list. Well, that being said, what are some really cool things you've seen? Bathroom tour, critical. You need to make sure you get that in there. What are some of other 2, 3, 4 things you are like, oh, don't forget to do this. You mentioned maybe a postcard, a call. Are there any other steps in there that we could add to that list for those who are looking to build their own list now?

Shelly Dretzka: Yeah. I think another, a technical thing, because I think where frustration really comes in those first couple days is technology. So getting them some one-on-one time with the IT person or whoever that is, that they know everything they need to do their job is there for them on their computer or their laptop. Their logins, their access. How to scan. How to make a photocopy. All of those things, because nowadays, we want people coming in hot and they're ready to work. I mean, it's not like, hey, three months from now, we want you to start sending emails. It's like, so here's the pile of stuff. If you can get through that by tomorrow, that would be great. So technology is a barrier and a frustration. So I like to have that in there that they're spending time with that IT person probably on day one or day two.

Shelly Dretzka: And then there's those nice to have. So yeah, I mentioned the card, sometimes it's flowers. Maybe it's a basket. What I like about that, is sending things to the home. And again, this goes through the entire employee experience. When you send things to the home, you're now involving the family. You're involving the spouse and the children, because when someone's had a bad day, Justin, what do you do?

Justin Vajko: You tell your family or your spouse and the family finds out you had a bad day.

Shelly Dretzka: Yes and they all hear about it. And then, now your wife is going to say, "Really? That company that sent us that really nice birthday basket for you? They seem really nice. I don't know why you're complaining about them." Now, they're on team company. They're on team HR. So I think that's a cool way too, because we all have bad days. We all go home. We all complain about it.

Justin Vajko: Yep, it does happen.

Shelly Dretzka: Sometimes then, you need those reminders of, Hey, they sent us that card. They did this for, hey, when you went above and beyond, they gave us a gift card to go out to dinner and celebrate or going to Dells as a family, or whatever that case is. So those are things along the way, too, in the experience. I'm not a fan of cash bonuses. I mean, they're spent like that. They're in your gas tank. You put it in a paycheck, it's gone. It's going to the bill. It's all about experiences. What are your employees going to remember? Are they going to remember you gave that $500 Christmas cash bonus and you had no idea what you did with it, or are you going to remember that they got you a gift card for you and your family to go spend a weekend at the Dells?

Justin Vajko: Right. Definitely going to remember the second, because it's actually a twofer. The first one is, cash gets spent like any other cash. You don't remember the spending experience typically. But the other one, you just pointed out like that gift card, I got this tip a long time ago for giving gifts. If you want to make a really good impression on someone, tell them beforehand what you're going to do it and then do it. And it's a twofer. You get both the beforehand and the after and stuff. Surprising them, you just get the one experience. So a gift card similar to that, where you give them, wow, we got the gift card and then you spend it and then they remember. Yeah, definitely more memorable.

Shelly Dretzka: Yep. So that's part of the employee experience too, that's a total reward. It's a whole nother conversation as well when you're talking compensation stuff. But yeah, so those are all the things. And really at the end of the day, if you don't know what your employees want, ask them. Just ask them. Have a conversation. Sometimes do a survey. Sometimes their employee's like, yuck, another survey. But really, walk around and say, "Hey, what's of value to you? What are we doing right? What do you need from us to be successful?" All those great things and have those conversations. I just did a post today on that. Have the conversation, be open, be honest. Is it a yes or no or a not now? And take action where you can. That will build that trust. Again, that's helping with all of that experience, which is helping you in your retention. And then if you have employee referral programs, whole nother side topic, they're going to go tell great people that they should come work for you.

Justin Vajko: Yeah. Didn't I hear a stat somewhere that someone's more likely to refer you in the first X amount of time working for you than, than later? So I think there's something out there like that, which makes sense. When the experience is fresh and overwhelmingly good, you're more likely to refer someone than five years, six years, ten years into the job.

Shelly Dretzka: When you start getting into the weeds of it. It's actually called the honeymoon period. So honeymoon period of the job, everything's great. I'm so excited. I'm not at that hell hole I just left. So those type of things, but if we can expand and lengthen out that honeymoon period, even a honeymoon period into a good marriage, we'll use that.

Justin Vajko: There you go. Go from dating to honeymoon to marriage.

Shelly Dretzka: Exactly. That's really what the whole process is. I can always make analogies. I can make really great sports analogies, family analogies, raising kids analogies. I've got them all. But you can, I mean, we've gone off on so many different tangents, but really that points to the fact of how interwoven the employee experience is and all the effects that it has on your employees and the bottom line of your business.

Justin Vajko: Right. Well, thank you so much, Shelly, for talking with us about employee experience, not the process and how to break that apart, and make it more about an experience that someone will remember. It sounds like it helps improve retention, employee happiness, and maybe get that family on board being on the same page as the HR team, in terms of wanting to stay there, which is pretty cool. Some cool ideas today. Thank you so much, Shelly.

Shelly Dretzka: Of course.

Justin Vajko: Where can someone learn about more about this? Is it your website? Do you have a page? Tell us more, if someone's interested in getting your help with something like this.

Shelly Dretzka: Yeah. So if they want to find me, my website is just www.HRWisconsin.com. Most of my business, it comes from referrals and people who know and like me and have done business with me. They trust what I do. So check out my LinkedIn as well. Take a look at my post. Get a feel of who I am. Sometimes I like say I'm not that typical HR person. I like to have fun with what I do. I love working with small businesses. So yeah, schedule some time with me to have a chat and pick my brain on stuff. I always love to give at least a little bit of free time upfront and so hopefully, I gave some good things today. But right, if you want to now make this really into your experience and how to process it, yeah, that's something I love. I love doing that with my clients.

Justin Vajko: Well, we can tell. I think there's energy you have around this topic, Shelly, that's gotten me real interested in it. Never really considered the whole experience side of things, but boy, it sure sounds like it pays dividends. So it's a win-win for the company putting together a plan and for the employees experiencing it.

Shelly Dretzka: Yeah, its fun stuff. Especially in the HR world, we do lot of not so fun stuff. Hey, let's spend some time on some fun stuff.

Justin Vajko: That's right. Great, great point. Well, thanks again, Shelly.

Shelly Dretzka: Awesome. Thank you.