The news that recruitment is expensive and time consuming is hardly a revelation; cross-sector research data suggests average replacement costs of around £4,000 per head and over 70% of organisations experience difficulty finding new starters.

Against this backdrop of significant investment in attraction and recruitment, early attrition presents a constant drain on an organisation’s resources. Research typically indicates that 1 in 4 new joiners resign within 6 months.

Reducing Early Attrition: The First Months are Critical

It is widely acknowledged that the early interaction between new employees and the organisation is critical. This period of the employee life cycle often has a significant impact on levels of commitment, sense of integration, and ultimately length of service.

Understanding the impact of this critical period is one thing; gathering reliable data from new starters is another. The process is often hindered by the reluctance of new employees to comment on negative or concerning issues – being identified by your new employer as someone who is not happy is often seen as foolish or risky. In addition, the task of collecting new employee integration data is often a time-consuming administrative task for HR.

FirstImpression provides a practical resolution to the difficulties of collecting new starter integration and engagement data.

FirstImpression is both comprehensive in its measurement of critical areas, and easy for the employee to complete. The data is collected and managed by TalentDrain providing the certainty of anonymous feedback for the employee and ease of reporting for HR.

FirstImpression can be used on an ongoing basis, collecting feedback data from new employees at a set point in their employment to provide regular report updates to the user.

Alternatively the tool can be used on a more 'project–oriented' basis. A number of organisations use FirstImpression to take a 'snap-shot' of a particular intake or group of employees (e.g. graduates, all new starters over the last year, new employees by region).