New research about onboarding sales employees shows the levels of staff engagement, leavers and those at risk. Find out the reasons why new starters leave and problems with the onboarding process.

New Sales Employees Onboarding and Staff Engagement 2014

Onboarding new starters is key to preventing high early attrition rates. Whilst demographic differences are important to recruitment and retention because one size does not fit all staff.

This is true of employee engagement strategies and taking on new employees. Staff engagement improves productivity, customer service and employee retention. Therefore tailoring initiatives to your staff is key.

Sales employees often have a high staff turnover rate. That’s why it’s important to use exit data to lower employee turnover and save resources from recruitment.

This research demonstrates the specific needs of onboarding new sales employees. In 2014 great{with}talent researched 827 new employees from this sector to test their staff engagement levels.

This chart shows the number of new starters who are actively leaving, at risk and engaged.

Read: New Customer Service Employees and Staff Engagement 2014.

Compared to the overall new employees sample of 7,490 new starters there are surprisingly less leavers among customer service employees. The results show that new sales employees are just-below average for early attrition.

There is still a percentage, however, of new sales employees who are willing to leave within the first 12 months of employment. Whilst an equal amount (to the main sample) are ‘at risk’. This makes staff engagement initiatives important.

Early attrition can cost organisations due to recruitment. Yet, there’s also the resources spent on cover work and losses through lack of productivity.

Read: How to Calculate Staff Turnover Rate with Exit Process Cost Calculator.

The top reason new starters listed for being ‘at risk’ of early attrition is the potential for progression through the organisation (45%). This has been rated slightly lower by sales employees.

A reason for this is engaged employees from this group rated potential for progression (79%) significantly higher than the overall sample (75%). This suggests that progression is a key issue for sales employees.

It also proposes that sales staff are happier with the opportunities for progression than other sectors. This could be because sales offers more competitive opportunities or this is somewhat less of a reason why employees would leave.

Whilst the pay and benefits package (38%) came second. Similarly, this is significantly lower, down from 42%.

Yet, the nature of the work itself (32%) is a higher concern to sales employees. This is a difficult area to tackle and a known problem for the sector.

Staff engagement and employee satisfaction are not the same thing. The former refers to the happiness of the workforce with their job, organisation and co-workers.

Whereas staff engagement is employee’s willing contribution to the betterment of the company. This can lead to higher productivity, improved sales, customer engagement and even employee satisfaction.

The key is communication. Employees need to be told why their role in the company is important. They also need to be aware of how they’re furthering the goals of the company.

This will help staff to feel valued and needed. In turn, staff will be more committed to their role.

This should begin at the recruitment stage through an honest conversation with potential employees. It then needs to be re-enforced during the onboarding process.

Read: The Four Most Important Factors of Staff Commitment.

On the other hand, a work-life balance (28%) was ranked as a lower concern by sales employees. One benefit of the nature of sales work is employees will rarely take it home with them.

This is a huge plus in current employment trends where work is spilling into home-life through technology. It’s best for sales employees and for organisations to embrace the separation of work and home. Communicating this to employees may also improve staff engagement.

A recent Randstad Engagement Study found only two-in-five employees (40%) reported the blurring of lines between work and home had increased their productivity. Whilst, 46% of employers agreed.

These stats show that there is usually little benefit to working from home off-hours. Meanwhile, great{with}talent‘s research shows that it lowers staff engagement and therefore productivity in the long-run.

Lastly, training and development opportunities (27%) remains an equal concern among sales employees and the overall sample. In this economic climate training may seem costly but it doesn’t have to be.

There are many ways to engage employees on a budget. Organisations can use mentoring, shadowing, low cost rewards and creating a collaborative culture. These techniques can train employees on a budget and give them a forum to ask questions.

Another way to develop your workforce is through lateral movement within the company when promotions are not available. This builds skills and makes staff more indispensable to the company.

Again, it is important to communicate all these benefits to employees in order to get the most from employee engagement initiatives,

The differences between new sales employees and new starters as a whole shows the importance of collecting onboarding and exit data. It can easily and cheaply improve employee engagement and staff retention in 2014.

Contact great{with}talent and increase “speed to performance” of new sales employees with their onboarding tool:

(Main image from Wise Geek)