How long before expecting new employee to be up and running?

[vanillacourage]

Person was hired for position appropriate for 2-3 years' experience (and that's what they have). Their job is to coordinate team activities. Examples would be on a communication needing 4 peoples' approval, s/he circulates, tracks approvals and ensures timely distribution. On another project, gathers comments in a provided template and synthesizes into a single document, editing for flow. Another task might be Internet research - company history, how many employees, etc - and putting into an easy-to-digest package.

How long would you give a person at this level to settle in before expecting them to be fully up to speed? By that I mean you don't have to answer many clarifications or review their work every time, and mistakes are rare.

[gibbinator]

General everyday stuff, a couple weeks. Several months for more rare tasks.

[indianchica]

Maybe I am missing something. If a person was hired with experience for a job that needs that same level of experience, I would expect minimal mistakes on day one. The only part I can see possible issues is where the previous employer had precise procedures different from this position.

For example I supervise instructors. They should be able teach on the first day but exactly how to enter grades might be a different system than they've used before.

[eddy]

I think within a month for routine tasks.

[cabbagecabbage]

No matter what the experience level, I'd expect a few weeks, say 4-6 of learning the organization's culture and systems. It always takes me 6 months to feel I flow with a job but in a month, I want to be productive.

[ECB]

May 27, 2015 7:01:43 GMT -5 cabbagecabbage said:

No matter what the experience level, I'd expect a few weeks, say 4-6 of learning the organization's culture and systems. It always takes me 6 months to feel I flow with a job but in a month, I want to be productive.

Definitely along these lines.   

[Booze Raccoon]

I'd imagine every job and person is different but I'd give a safe cushion of 6 months.

[CrazyLucky]

I would expect them to take a good 6 months, but I think maybe the tasks here are more complicated than what you're describing. I work at a chemical plant. You might have ten years experience at another plant, but everyone has their own forms, policies, procedures to work with. Plus you have to figure out who does what. For minor things, I would say a month, but for projects and that type of thing, I think 6 months is normal.

I have worked with a person like you are describing. He had 30+ years experience, but the time it took me to double check his work was a lot more than it would have taken me to just do it. He ended up resigning (not because of me!). I hope your employee gets it together soon because it can be a morale suck, not just a time suck.

[Deleted]

When my team schedules around new employees, we give 3 months to come up to 50% capacity and 6 months to be 100% trained. These are usually technical resources who need to learn our complex environment, so we give a long run time.

I would expect to have to review work products for at least the first 6 months of someone's employment. It sounds like a long time but those 6 months fly by when you're trying to learn the ropes.

[shopgirl07]

A day? Maybe a week? Those tasks seem really, really easy.

[moolarkey]

A lot of our stuff is highly technical. We expect 18 months to 2 years.

[lilybug]

6 weeks max for routine tasks / "normal" projects. I'd say by 6 months they should be totally confident and answering others' questions.

[isabel]

4-6 weeks for routine, general tasks. I would give it 3-4 months before I started seriously side eyeing someone for asking me basic questions or even something not basic that I know we've been over.

[cabbagecabbage]

May 27, 2015 8:26:30 GMT -5 shopgirl07 said:

A day? Maybe a week? Those tasks seem really, really easy.

Have you ever reported to several people and required input from multiple sources on a timeline? It's a tedious task requiring lots of patience and social graces. A similar position was my most frustrating job ever. Plugging in the info and writing was never an issue but tracking down executives who didn't want to help and didn't care but we're quick to blame if we were off schedule.

[isabel]

I'm curious why you're asking the question...

[shopgirl07]

May 27, 2015 8:47:03 GMT -5 cabbagecabbage said:

May 27, 2015 8:26:30 GMT -5 shopgirl07 said:

A day? Maybe a week? Those tasks seem really, really easy.

Have you ever reported to several people and required input from multiple sources on a timeline? It's a tedious task requiring lots of patience and social graces. A similar position was my most frustrating job ever. Plugging in the info and writing was never an issue but tracking down executives who didn't want to help and didn't care but we're quick to blame if we were off schedule.

Of course it can be hard to coordinate between lots of people and track down executives. But that's different from not knowing HOW to do it. And as far as doing Internet research and streamlining information into one document, that should take no time at all to master if you've been doing it for 2-3 years.

[captainobvious]

For the everyday type tasks that are done nearly the same almost everywhere probably a day or two. For the tasks that they know how to do, but not how the company they now work for does them anywhere from 1 month (easy stuff that gets done all the time) to 6 months (stuff that only happens once a quarter or not very often.)

[bugandbibs]

6 months. It takes a long time to figure out culture and how to get things done with different personalities. Also, random things come up at different times.

For example, it took talking to 3 people and half a dozen emails to get a full sharps container replaced with an empty one. This took up way more of my time then it did at my last building, simply because I couldn't figure out the right contact person. I have 10 years of experience in my field.

[cabbagecabbage]

May 27, 2015 8:58:14 GMT -5 shopgirl07 said:

Of course it can be hard to coordinate between lots of people and track down executives. But that's different from not knowing HOW to do it. And as far as doing Internet research and streamlining information into one document, that should take no time at all to master if you've been doing it for 2-3 years.

True. I may have read too much of my experience into the OP's situation. I'd be interested in more details on where this new hire is failing.

[thatgirl2478]

wait - are the task examples you provided representative of the bulk of their day to day activities? If so, and they have 2-3 years experience, I personally would expect them to be up and running within a week or two. If they do those types of tasks only once a week, maybe 3 - 4 weeks. But not more than 1 month, by any stretch.

[mich1]

It also depends upon how frequently those tasks are done. Something that is done frequently, it might take very little time to get up to speed. Something that is not done frequently (say once/mo vs every other day) it will take more time to get over the curve.

Like someone else upthread posted, when you walk into a new position, trying to figure out exactly who you need to talk to to get something you need tends to be the biggest time suck. You spend a lot of time tracking something down that should only take a few minutes.

[pixy0stix]

Did they have someone showing them what to do? Or were they just told, "Here's the job, good luck!"

I was plopped into my job, and while it looks easy on paper, there's a lot of nuances, etc. that took a while to figure out. For me, it was figuring out how the org was run, and who to report issues, too. I know people who have been here 20 years and still have no clue how things are run.

[underwaterrhymes]

There are different things at hand here.

First you have tasks that this person should already have experience with. If, for example, I've hired someone to pull together Excel spreadsheets and they have questions about how to sort or how to incorporate certain formatting, this would not be acceptable because presumably this is something they've indicated they can already do. Or if you've hired a receptionist, you assume they understand how to handle a multi-line phone system or can at least pick it up quickly.

Then you have tasks that are specific to your organization that might take a week or so to get used to. I think the second two tasks you describe probably fall in line here. The tasks sound pretty basic, but it might be that the template is different or not intuitive and they need a few days to get the hang of things. Or perhaps they just want feedback that they've done it correctly.

Then there are the larger or less frequent tasks that require greater knowledge of the company at large. That first task you describe probably falls in here. This can take several weeks to several months depending on what it is.

Generally speaking, I think it takes someone probably 6 months to get completely comfortable in a new role, but that doesn't mean that EVERY task should take 6 months. If there are consistent mistakes and challenges that aren't improving after appropriate training and coaching, then there probably is a bigger issue.

[msmerymac]

Simply daily tasks I would expect them to be able to do largely unsupervised within 2-3 weeks at most. Frankly, for most people, by the end of the first week they should be able to come in and synthesize comments into one document first thing. I'd give them a little longer to be able to really work with the flow of the company and set their own work schedule without reminders or projects being pieced out one at a time. But there's a reason most companies have a 90 day probationary period. At that point you should be up to speed and contributing well.

[brooke77]

3 months.