When Was the Last Time You Walked Through the Front Door of Your Community?
Welcome to Huntsville Mural. Credit: Public Art Archive
This morning we met with a group of business owners and hiring managers in a city we’re assisting with Talent Attraction strategy.
During the discussion, one of the people at the table shared a piece of advice he received from another business owner years ago when he owned a hardware store:
“Every morning you come in the back door and walk through the store to put up the ‘open’ sign and unlock the front door. When was the last time you went around the front and opened the front door? You have to see your business the same way that customers do to understand their experience.”
It’s a great reminder in its most literal form: Our routines and assumptions can be limiting, and we have to make the effort to to see things from an outside perspective.
But it’s also a perfect metaphor to think about the work we do in Talent Attraction and Community Onboarding:
New residents are walking in the front door of your community. You’re working hard to attract them and invite them in. But when was the last time you walked in the front door yourself?
You know why your community is special. You probably have an established social group. You know how to fill your weekends. You know where to find the under-the-radar $5 breakfast spot and the basement bar where everyone gathers for trivia on Fridays. You take these things for granted, as you should. But it also makes it easy to assume that newcomers feel the same sense of welcoming and inclusion that you do.
If you’re not new to a community yourself, it can be difficult to get this “front door” perspective in a real and unbiased way. Here are a few ideas we’ve learned from our work in communities big and small:
Ask someone who moved there recently to tell you their honest experience. Did they feel welcomed? What parts of relocating were easy? What was hard? What support do they wish they’d had or could they use now?
Review your relocation guide as if you knew nothing about your city before you opened it. What does it say about your community? How useful is it? Does it serve your sponsors more than it does your newcomers?
Make “Do you like living here?” a staple of your small talk arsenal. Ask everyone, but especially people who tend to interact with lots of newcomers: baristas, hotel concierges, Uber drivers, restaurant servers. Remember that the answers they’re giving you are the same answers they’re giving new residents who are forming their first impressions. If they’re leading with “It’s boring” or “It’s cold” or “It’s hard to make friends,” those messages might as well be written in big letters on your community’s welcome sign.
Ask longtime residents when the last time they made a specific and earnest invitation to a newcomer was. You have no idea how frequently we hear from new residents that their “Oh I could live here” moment was a single, simple invitation. One game night invite can change everything.
Start making a list of your community’s connectors: those people who know everyone. Where and how are they encountering new residents? Can you activate them through a WayFinders program, or find other ways to formalize their welcoming and networking skills?
Ask your employers for themes they’re seeing and hearing in their exit interviews. Why are people leaving? What aren’t they getting? Something clearly brought these candidates through the front door of your community — what’s keeping them from staying?