❤️ Is your onboarding process pulling its weight?

#14. Understanding the difference between “meh” and “wow!”

Author

Jill Felska
October 12, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Hello and Happy October!

If there’s one thing Emily (my newsletter editor) and I love, it’s some good alliteration. So you know we couldn’t bypass the opportunity to celebrate #OnboardingOctober! 

This month, we’ll be guiding you through the ultimate warm workplace welcome: your employee onboarding.

Done well, it is SO much more than HR orientation.

But it’s hard to build the onboarding your new teammates deserve without knowing what you’re looking for (and looking out for). So today we’re looking at some common red and green flags before wrapping with an activity that will help you clarify the perfect next steps.

To providing extraordinary employee entry experiences,

Jill

P.S. My heart has been incredibly heavy as I’ve watched what’s unfolding in Israel. This video best articulates how I’m personally feeling. That said, navigating internal communication and employee support isn’t easy. If you’re looking for resources, this post from Lars Schmidt and this post from Mister Editorial are the best I’ve found so far. 

Reflect On This

Try to remember the last time you started at a new workplace:

 ➜ At what points did you feel excited, energized, and/or empowered?

➜ At what points did you feel anxious, overwhelmed, and/or helpless?

➜ What feelings do you recall feeling most prominently?

➜ How does it feel to reflect on the experience now?

Out with orientation, in with onboarding 

An incredible onboarding program goes way beyond orientation. It’s the output of great work and lock-step collaboration across employer branding, culture, candidate experience, people operations, learning and enablement, good leadership, and more…with a healthy dose of first-day excitement thrown in.

 If that alone has you feeling sticker shock (“uh, I thought I just had to help the newbs find the bathroom and make sure they don’t miss open enrollment…”), don’t worry. These common watch-outs (🚩) will show you exactly what pitfalls to look out for in designing a stellar onboarding, while these star student alternatives (⭐️) will clarify exactly what to build towards instead.

🚩: Your company’s onboarding is a one-person show. Your best hiring manager, your CEO, or Midge from HR owns welcoming and orienting new hires, from offer through Day 1. There’s little (if any) input from others, and the program doesn’t rely on any collaboration.

⭐️: Onboarding is a dream team effort, wrangled by a directly responsible individual (or “DRI”). A fantastic onboarding shepherds a new teammate from the candidate experience into the employee experience, clarifying expectations along the way. That means everyone who shapes those first few months  - a new teammate’s direct manager and team, learning and development, company culture builders, leadership, and more - can and should inform design of the early tenure experience. While input and design are coordinated efforts, you absolutely want someone at the helm to own the outcome and manage facilitation. The best onboarding functions like an orchestra: lots of different parts, playing together at the direction of a single conductor, creating something beautiful.

🚩: Your company’s onboarding starts and stops with tactical orientation. A tour of the office (physical or virtual), a glance at the handbook, reviewing benefits, and scanning the org chart are all important elements of a great orientation. But the best onboardings are so much more than that…

⭐️: Onboarding establishes cultural, behavioral, and operational expectations. Learning how to enter PTO is helpful, but doesn’t clarify how a new employee should communicate time away in your unique culture. The org chart is a great tool, but doesn’t give much insight into how decisions are deliberated cross-functionally. See where I’m going with this? The best onboardings are rooted in showing how your company works together. Include decision-making processes. Outline cultural and behavioral expectations, up to and including what accountability for cultural harm looks like (this primer on cultural accountability is aimed at project managers, but does a great job of breaking down what to look out for and how to address harm). Clearly define the ins and outs of day-to-day operations, like which meetings are required vs. suggested, the hows/whens/wheres of your team communications, review cadences, etc.

Pro Tip: Historical examples and narratives are your best friends here! Tell the story of that time your team came together to really live that value, or of how you arrived at the goal-setting cadence that’s worked best for your team. If you’ve never considered capturing these stories via an internal podcast, give this episode of the WTWT podcast a listen!

🚩: Your company’s onboarding generates more questions than it answers. Who owns that process? Do I have to go to all these meetings? Should I wait to disclose my need for disability accommodations? Can I use my new perks ASAP? If your onboarding process generates an avalanche of questions, your new teammates are experiencing a lot of noise and distraction. 

⭐️: Onboarding answers questions before they’re even asked. Think of the questions everyone wants to ask when they’re new, but don't because it could "look bad." Answer those questions, early, often, and unprompted (Sidenote: if you've nurtured a culture where the concern of “is this gonna make me look bad?” is moot, that’s great! Unfortunately, it means nothing to new teammates if they don’t experience that safety firsthand in their first few days, so this is a great chance to practice what you preach). Explain that historical inside joke or reference before it leaves a new teammate confused. Share the company vision before they request it. Offer accommodations options to everyone at the outset, before they ask. Give clear expectations for what communications, meeting cycles, or networking opportunities to interact with, and on what cadence. Direct folks to where they can safely leave feedback before they have any to give. Addressing your employees’ concerns and curiosities proactively shows that those concerns aren’t just safe to consider, they’re important.

Final Thoughts:

Especially if you’re a small shop, it can be daunting to think of incorporating every facet of the employee experience into the design of your onboarding program, let alone anticipating every possible question and distilling the full picture of your company’s culture into something digestible for a diverse array of new teammates.

Well I have good news: it’s totally doable, totally scale-upable or scale-downable, and totally worth it to revisit the state of your onboarding and make some tweaks for a more thorough, effective program. Check out how to get started below.

Your Turn

A full overhaul of your onboarding process can be an overwhelming process. It’s easy to push down the list of priorities, especially when you don’t know where to start.

Never fear! We’ve outlined the perfect starting place - a recent hire focus group - below. This small but mighty project takes just a few hours work and rewards you with meaningful, actionable data.

1. Set a date and select participants. (30 minutes)

Shortlist 6-10 employees who’ve joined the company in the last year. The more recently they’ve joined the better! Ultimately, you’re aiming for 4-8 participants who’ll be available for the full 90-minute remote focus group. 

2. Create a focus group survey form. (30 minutes)

I am a HUGE advocate of inclusive focus-group practices, which include the use of survey forms during the 90-minute session. This podcast episode breaks down the process: essentially, the group spends 30 minutes silently answering each of the focus group questions via an anonymous form. Here are five questions we recommend asking:

  • What do you remember about your first week at (company name)?

  • What did you find most helpful during your first few months on the job?

  • What was most challenging during your first few months in the job?

  • What do you know now, that you wish you would have known earlier?

  • If you could change one thing about the onboarding process, what would it be?

The group will later come together to discuss the same questions, offering up what they feel comfortable disclosing. This format allows for the benefits of live discussion, along with a safe outlet for individuals to disclose thoughts they may not want to share out loud. Not to mention, all of the findings are captured in writing!

3. Host the focus group. (90 minutes)

We strongly recommend hosting this remotely, unless you are a fully in-person culture. Having everyone on camera, in their own space, makes for a smoother experience than having some participants together in a room with others on video. If this is your first time hosting a focus group, the podcast episode mentioned above outlines some great best practices.

4. Pick three actionable takeaways. (Varies)

The focus groups will likely provide a slew of information and inspiration for areas of improvement. Instead of trying to tackle everything at once, pick three takeaways that you can make meaningful progress on in a reasonable amount of time. Momentum is key at this point in the process. Early wins will motivate you to keep going and show the team that change is possible. Which brings us to the final, but incredibly important, step.

5. Close the loop with participants. (15 minutes)

Once you’ve made progress on your actionable takeaways, be sure to close the loop by sending a follow-up note to the focus group participants. Showing them the impact of their time and participation is a powerful way to ensure they continue providing helpful feedback. 

Things We're Loving Right Now

The Holy Grail of onboarding: Whenever someone starts a new leadership role, I urge them to pick up The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins. There is no better resource for making a strong start in an organization. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone rethinking their onboarding strategy, and is chock full of actionable insights, prompts, and recommendations.

For those eager to audit: This list of reflection questions will help you assess 15 key aspects of the onboarding process. If you don’t have a full onboarding workflow, it’s a great way to think through what steps need documenting. 

Don't forget your managers: There are four spots left in my end of year Training for Modern Manager promotion. It’s the perfect chance to establish incredible onboarding for your managers in 2024 at a reduced cost! Grab time with me here, if you’d like to learn more.