If you read my blogs, you are familiar with my correlations of sports teams to employee engagement and leadership development. When I heard this blunder about the Yankees-I have never been so excited to write a blog! My blog isn’t about Jacoby Ellsbury leaving my beloved Red Sox, and joining the dreaded Yankees. My blog is about how companies, organizations, leaders and managers often overlook important factors when welcoming a new employee. It can affect their engagement levels as soon as they walk in the door.
Before we get to Jacoby-let me paint the real world picture for the rest of us. Ever join a new company, and on your first day learn your laptop wasn’t ordered, or configured? Are they scrambling at the last minute to get you settled? Do you feel like Larry Loser when they ask: Who can go to lunch with our newbie today? Do they have such an informal plan that it makes you feel like: Did they even know today is my first day? Did they plan anything?! Was there any effort?
So-let’s get to the New York Yankees. They made an embarrassing mistake welcoming Jacoby. During their home opener, his picture, just like other players was on the video scoreboard. However, they spelled his name wrong. It’s more than a typo folks. When you don’t take the time to spell a new employee’s name correctly, it reflects poorly on you.
If you don’t have a process to welcome new hires-you should. It should be welcoming and organized. I’m not suggesting anything expensive-just thoughtful. How would you want to be welcomed? Does your organization practice that? Oh-and make sure their name is spelled right. If you can pay him $153 million to play, surely you can afford to spell his name right.
-Stephanie Mello, @stepheeg
Sources:USA Today, Nate Scott, April 7, 2014
Lora Schafer (@loraschafer) says
I totally agree, this is true especially when the employee is new. I would even extend the same to knowing their title.