Onboarding that helps New & Old employees!

The interview process is complete. Expectations established and promises made by both parties. The contact signed. Next step: Welcome, Aboard! Onboarding is a process to acclimate a new employee into an organization so that the value they were hired to add to the company is successfully realized as rapidly and cost-effectively as possible.

The traditional process has a 2-part focus: knowing and feeling. In the knowing category, the process ensures the incoming employee understands their role, accountabilities, policies, procedures, who’s who, where’s what (finance forms, off-campus lunch places). In the feeling category, the process intends to have the new hire feel valued and appreciated. A good start and more is possible.

Consider how onboarding a new employee creates an opportunity for your existing staff and yourself to take performance to the next level. As you read this list of the 10 Commandments of Onboarding from careerbuilder http://tinyurl.com/2d2vemo, think how they can apply them to your existing team.

The newbie doesn’t know who is at odds with whom, or gossip about sales, or the rumors about the product quality or last week’s blow up in customer support… yet, that is. Now’s the time to have “the way we do things around here” match your commitment for “the way we intentionally, consciously want it to do things around here.”

Before the new hire shows up (1) take stock and tell the truth about, the current environment, (2) commit to continue what’s working and (3) commit to change what isn’t. This is not about having the “perfect” workplace culture. This is about having a workable culture, one generated from commitments, not habits or the status quo. By the way, you don’t have to have all the changes in place before the new person starts. Having the commitment in place and your team aligned to follow through does need to be in place.  You can also use this process if someone’s recently left the company, or if there’s been no change in the staff and you want to increase performance and satisfaction.

(1) Take stock: What situations have you been tolerating that negatively impact performance? What issues have you been pushing aside that are rearing their ugly heads in other places? What values have you swept aside with the “just get it done” broom and need to reinstate? What are the lessons learned?

(2) Commit to what’s working: Be explicit about the successful practices you do have. Write them down. Do not downplay them by saying, oh, doesn’t everyone do that? No! Not every team encourages divergent, diverse points of view to be aired and respectfully heard.

(3) Commit to change: Identify the specific policies, procedures which are no longer effective. Identify the acceptable behaviors and practices. Commit to a plan, follow-through.

What comes out of the above conversation will be part of your onboarding process. Done with care, the onboarding process takes everyone’s performance to the next level.