How to Trust Your New Employee
When you discover that a trusted employee has breached your trust, such as having been caught stealing from your firm, your first thoughts might be, “How could this happen? Why did I not see this? How could he/she do this to me?” These questions are common to business owners facing such situations.
Overview
Trust is a one trait we human beings often take for granted after employees pass initial due diligence: background checks, maybe a credit check or financial review, and perhaps a few phone calls to former employers to verify references. Normally, there is a honeymoon period when we believe the individual will never do anything wrong. We all want to believe that we have made the right decision when hiring a new employee, especially if he/she is who we think we need to meet customer demand right now.
Nevertheless, please spend the extra time to complete each reverification step AFTER THE HIRE. This can help ensure that you have indeed hired the correct employee.
How to Trust Your New Employee
- Complete thorough on-boarding.
- Get feedback about the new team member from your staffer who conducted the orientation and training.
- Check in with the employee repeatedly in early weeks, asking several formalized questions to assure there are no red flags.
- Review documentation: sales receipts, vendor bills, timesheets, email logs. These resources assure your new team member is adjusting and helping keep the operation running as you desire.
- Schedule three- and six-month formal reviews.
After you’ve had an incident, it’s not uncommon for some paranoia to set in. You might think you cannot trust anybody.
Our Advice
As natural as it is to trust, it’s equally natural to feel anxious after you’ve been burned. Avoid those thought patterns. Instead, simply know that, as the business owner, you have a responsibility to pay attention all the time, to all facets of your operations. It is your business, after all! Failure to do so could result in some unpleasant outcomes followed by difficult conversations with your team.
Need some help establishing these processes? Check out our organizational management services and give us a call.
