• Confused
• Frustrated
• Overwhelmed
• Bored
• Annoyed
• Anxious
• Insecure
• Disappointed
• Regretful

Lee, speaking at ERE’s conference in San Diego, says these are the emotions your employees ought to be left with.

• Welcome
• Comfortable
• Secure
• Valued
• Important
• Proud
• Excited
• Confident

Unfortunately, the questions are rarely asked, resulting in inefficient, ineffective practices.

Do not pose these questions periodically; incorporate them into your approach to build an engaging candidate experience, a more compelling offer presentation, and ultimately, a more productive hire.

Questions for Candidates (Aimed at Improving Offer Acceptance)

• What criteria will you use to evaluate and rank offers you receive? When you’re targeting currently employed individuals or talent likely to receive multiple offers (I would argue that is the only talent you should be targeting), it’s important to focus your recruiting process not only on assessing the candidates skills, but also on determining the factors that will weigh heavily in their decision-making when the process is complete. By identifying the decision criteria early on, you can improve how you position the opportunity you are recruiting for by maximizing the talking points around factors you can realistically deliver and readjust expectations around those you cannot. Too many organizations push through the process only to make a generic offer according to a template that doesn’t address the candidate’s expectations.
• What three things would make this job superior to your current one? If you are truly targeting top talent, chances are a good percentage of the candidates who make it to the offer stage in your process are going to get a counteroffer from their current employer. Failing to identify what factors would make the new opportunity better than their existing opportunity is setting the stage to focus solely on money should an offer battle ensue.
• Who will you consult prior to making a final decision about an offer? Research shows that individuals generally don’t make important life decisions without consulting close friends, colleagues, or relatives. Not knowing who will have your candidate’s ear makes it nearly impossible to predict what issues the candidate’s advisors may bring up. This makes it even more difficult to provide relevant information throughout the process that arms the candidate with positive information to remedy any possible negative issues that could arise.

Questions to Ask During Onboarding and Orientation (Aimed at Improving the Recruiting Process)

• Can you list the most compelling factors that led you to accept our offer? Once the deal has been signed, candidates, now new hires, have less motivation to couch their responses to questions in an effort to improve their chances of getting what they want, in essence, they are more honest. One of the best questions you can ask during this phase of the relationship deals with identifying what about the company, the job, or the benefits was so compelling that the candidate accepted the offer. Identifying what is and is not compelling (the next question) can help you refocus how to communicate about opportunities moving forward. You can talk up the good stuff, while minimizing focus on the not so good stuff.
• Can you list your concerns and any reasons that almost led you to say no? Again, this reversal of the previous question helps you identify what elements need to be either addressed or dropped altogether from your sales approach.
• What part of the process worked the best? What part was frustrating? If you want to improve the candidate experience, identify the aspects of the recruiting process that both engaged and frustrated candidates. Use this information along with statistics about candidates dropping out of the process voluntarily to determine what steps in your process need to be refined in order to convert more talent.
• What caused you to apply for the position? If you want to identify how best to allocate your sourcing spend, you need robust metrics to tell you what messages are driving people to apply and where they came into contact with the message (i.e., the source of hire and branding points that led to interest). Many organizations attempt to collect this information via their recruiters, but the data is often corrupted by lack of adherence to source coding policies.
• What other firms did you seriously consider or receive an offer from? This question is important for two reasons. First, it helps you identify your talent competitors, which often includes organizations that do not compete directly with you on the product or service front. Second, it helps you identify offer elements from other organizations that talent of interest to you find compelling.
• Who else should we recruit from your previous employer? Truly great talent loves working alongside other great talent and generally leverages some influence over colleagues they respect and value at their previous employer. Asking this question not only helps you target future recruiting efforts, it subliminally prods the new hire to actively position the organization as a great next step when they talk to former colleagues. If they’re enthusiastic, you might also ask for their help in recruiting the top individuals via the referral program.

Questions to Ask During Onboarding (Aimed at improving the Management of New Hires)

• Why did you quit your last few jobs? If you want to reduce future turnover, learn what was frustrating enough to cause your new hire to start looking for a new job and eventually quit their previous job. Once you identify these reasons, it’s wise to make sure their current manager knows what they are and develops a plan to prevent similar issues.
• Help me understand what motivates you and what your manager could do to help you be as productive as you can be? Asking new hires early on what motivates and frustrates them can provide you with an arsenal of information a manager can use to manage workforce productivity 1:1. While it would be great if managers would accept ownership for doing this naturally, numerous studies show they don’t!
• Where would you like to be career-wise in three years? This question helps you understand early on what expectations and future job aspirations may influence on-the-job behavior and likely tenure. By identifying what timeline a candidate/new hire has in mind, you can work to make sure you deliver career advancement opportunities in line with their expectations (i.e., before they start looking for someone else to deliver them). Also, ask what they would like to learn, which can be used to structure development and retention efforts.

Questions to Ask Candidates Who Dropped Out of the Process Pre- or Post-Offer

Delaying asking these questions for a period of three months significantly increases the likelihood of hearing an honest answer. If necessary, use a third-party vendor to capture this information as former candidates will have even less motivation to lie.

• Why did you drop out of the process? For those who dropped out of your hiring process early, ask them to list the reasons why they dropped out. Frequently, you will find that your recruiting processes are too slow or too frustrating to engage top talent.
• Why did you reject our offer? Most candidates will provide an answer to this question when they turn down the offer. More often than not, that answer has to do with money. Saying it is the money is an easy out — it doesn’t require as much courage as saying the hiring manager was a jerk, the job sucks, or the company doesn’t provide the right resources to enable employees to do the job they were hired to do. Several studies that have compared offers ultimately accepted by talent who turned down other offers reveal that rarely is the money difference significant. Other studies reveal that if you delay asking the question for several months, you are more likely to get an answer that doesn’t focus on the money.

Final Thoughts

The single-most important activity recruiters can do to improve recruiting effectiveness is to gather information that helps explain why the process is working when it is, and why it is not when it isn’t. By embedding these questions in your recruiting process, you can gain the information needed to radically improve the effectiveness of your efforts.

We were joined yesterday by recruiting thought leader Elaine Orler of Knowledge Infusion to discuss onboarding with a limited budget. With budget cuts becoming widespread in many companies, onboarding is unfortunately a process that often gets cut.

Elaine revealed that an effective onboarding process will reduce turnover in the first 30-90 days and increase productivity among new hires. In addition, effective onboarding can help your brand and reputation.

New hires form opinions of your organization starting on day one. Through bypassing redundant forms and busy work on the first day, new employees are more likely to form a positive opinion of their new role. By welcoming an employee into your business culture as soon as possible, you are in turn preparing them to succeed at their job.

Throughout the course of the webinar, Elaine covered onboarding strategies that included extending existing technology, improving collaboration and communication, and introducing new tools that can help onboarding efforts.

By using a “conversation ecosystem” with third party applications like Facebook, Twitter, and blogging, it’s possible to quickly engage a new hire into the social community of your business environment. Also, by implementing a mentoring or “buddy system” with existing employees, you can acclimate new employees to their roles. In addition many of these strategies cost little to nothing.

At the conclusion of the presentation (about 40 minutes into the video) Elaine answered a plethora of questions from the audience. Among the topics covered were how to onboard current employees into new positions, the challenges of onboarding across different countries and cultures, and different strategies for onboarding across generations. View the slideshow and archived video of the presentation below to learn more!

Effective onboarding is essential to any company’s success when new hires are brought on, yet it can be one of the first programs to be cut from the budget during a recession. By using creative techniques to advance the onboarding process, you can expect to increase your return on investment, enhancing the experience for new hires and improving employee retention.

Join recruiting leader Elaine Orler and I for tomorrow’s webinar, as we explore how to get the most out of your onboarding process in these difficult times. We will be examining methods to develop onboarding without raising costs, such as implementing new technology to increase collaboration and data sharing.

Elaine will be taking questions after the presentation to respond to your thoughts and concerns about onboarding. Make sure your company realizes the importance of effective onboarding to ensure employee retention. We still have plenty of space so sign up today!

____________________________________________________________
Wednesday, March 11th
2:00 – 3:00 PM EST
Register Here
_____________________________________________________________

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at brendan@ere.net.

Keeping these people engaged from day one is the challenge. Other employees are not upbeat; many are feeling overworked and under-appreciated; and everyone has a fear of what tomorrow may bring. So how can you be positive and create an atmosphere that will build commitment and engagement?

Employees who have gone through some sort of onboarding process — one that is more than the usual paper-processing bureaucracy — report feeling better connected to corporate strategy and to the company culture. This translates into engagement and a feeling of belonging.

There at least three things that orientation or assimilation programs can do for you.

First of all, they help new hires feel that they are part of a larger organization and that they are important. By introducing new employees to senior management and by spending time to build in them an appreciation of the organization’s past and future direction, these programs create a sense that management is in control and has a strategy for success.

Second, they help convey the culture of the organization so that decisions get made that are more in line with accepted practices and that help the organization function more smoothly.

Third, they help new employees get up to speed more quickly. Given downsizing and the changes that have taken place in many organizations, helping new employees know what’s what and who’s who will make a significant difference on their time to productivity. Some new hires take as long as a year to reach full productivity, especially if their jobs depend upon interacting with many other employees or upon linking work from different parts of the firm. Inexperienced employees, especially college hires, can have long learning curves that can be significantly shortened with good upfront education.

Here are some tips on designing an onboarding experience that will engage new employees and get them productive faster:

Tip #1: Address potential concerns upfront
Develop a program that has substance and that addresses the serious issues effectively. Some of the new employees may be wondering if they have made the right decision, or whether management has a clear vision for emerging from this downturn. The content might include briefings on the vision and strategy of the organization as well as on its values and fiscal goals. An overview of the finances by the CFO and a greeting from some senior-level executive should be encouraged.

Tip #2: Stretch your program out
After an intensive one to two day session up-front to start things off, subsequent activities may extend over several months at periodic intervals. Some programs include rotational assignments; others may include special projects that are designed to expose the new employee to parts of the company he would not normally have any contact with. For example, an executive could be given an assignment to find out something about the manufacturing operations that would require her to actually go to the factory and gather data. This way she sees how other employees work and begins to get a feel for the culture in action. Scheduling events out several months gives you the opportunity to get into topics in an in-depth way that short programs cannot. They also signals that your organization is here to stay and cares about the future.

Tip #3: Take advantage of the intranet
Every employee needs to get used to using the corporate intranet and become familiar with how to get things done using these tools. A portion of many onboarding programs are now developed as e-learning modules and can be offered to the employee and their family before they even start. New employees can get their spouse involved in choosing benefits and in learning about the firm and its history. The more spouses are part of the work life, the less chance that someone will leave on a whim. Usually when a spouse feels connected to the workplace as well, decisions will not be made hastily but only after some conversation and discussion. Topics that can be covered best in e-learning modules include the history of the firm, organization structure, and of course, the benefits offered. Some onboarding programs have as much as 40% of the total content delivered over the Internet.

Tip #4: Educate managers deeply about the need to provide meaningful discussion and reflective work experiences.
Many recent surveys show that the relationship with the manager is one of the most significant in an employee’s work life. Most employee turnover is ultimately caused by that relationship (or lack of it), which makes the ability to assimilate new employees a core competence of managers. An employee’s immediate manager controls all career progression, educational opportunities, and the assignment of projects. So a manager who takes time to discuss issues with a new employee, who shows concern over that person’s assimilation, and who knows what the employee can do and wants to do, will make wiser decisions and build loyalty over time.

The manager should be included as part of the onboarding process. Some firms have the managers attend a session designed to provide the employee with an initial set of goals — perhaps for the first 30 to 60 days. Others include the manager in teambuilding exercises or have a luncheon where the manager sits with the new employee. At the executive level, the CEO can invite new hires to dinner at his or her home or set up a special quarterly new executive dinner and reception. The key is to make sure the manager has a real role in both the formal process of onboarding as well as in the informal one that happens every day.

Tip #5: Assign mentors or coaches to each new employee for the first 90 days of employment.
Research shows very clearly that providing a mentor who can offer insights into the corporate culture — who can explain the organizational structure and help the new employee understand economic and strategic decisions — is a major contributor to increased productivity and lower turnover. These mentors should be individuals who are exemplars of the kind of behavior and results orientation your firm would like all its employees to exhibit. The role of these mentors can be very simple — as simple as going to lunch once a week with the new hire to show them the ropes and transmit some of the tacit culture that is never articulated or often even acknowledged in formal sessions. These mentors are the vehicles to educate the new hire, and they should be trained to serve as listeners who can intervene quietly with a manager if an issue arises. They need to be respected and well networked in the organization.

Some of these programs might also be used to encourage current employees to stay and making them open to everyone might be a good option to consider. In tough times people need support, reassurance, and honest answers. The more you can provide this right at the start of the employment experience, the stronger your organization’s culture will be and the better its retention of key people.

Claire Prager of the Cheesecake Factory describes the making of this $30,000, four-minute video developed and produced in two months last year as “pretty painless” — which is not how I’d describe trying to finish off its entire dinner-size Thai Chicken Pasta.

Job seekers are viewing the video at a rate of about 40,000 per year. Their eyes are peeled for an average of 3:48 minutes. (The average for similar videos is 2:33.)

Prager, senior manager, talent selection, was responsible for the overall execution of the video, a task she says MadDash’s good work made easier. The video, aimed particularly at the passive job seeker, was posted on Monster, CareerBuilder, AHRE.org, and HCareers. The Cheesecake Factory shows it again during new-hire orientation (which, we report with jealousy, involves a meal at the Cheesecake Factory), as well as at college career fairs and other job fairs, and on the company’s careers site.

The Cheesecake Factory selected an Area Director, Senior Vice President of Kitchen Operations, Executive Kitchen Manager, and General Manager to play key roles in telling the story. While developing the video, it selected the following elements to include:

1. Who is The Cheesecake Factory?
2. Quality
3. Our People and Our Culture
4. Technology and Innovation.

The uber-consistent restaurant chain also owns the Grand Lux Cafe and now RockSugar.

Originally published April 8, 2008.

It’s a great day at Newman Industries! For the last month, it has been actively recruiting a hot candidate to join its sales team. Today, Steven Harmon agreed to join. Newman sees him as a true rainmaker. The recruiter and sales manager share high-fives. Mission accomplished! Spike the ball in the end zone. The job is done! The competition was fierce for Steven, but Newman Industries won.

While Newman Industries was celebrating, Steven resigned his position with his present employer and enjoyed a celebratory dinner with his wife. That night, Steven lay in bed wondering if he made the right decision. He came to terms with his decision and looks forward to his first day at the company.

It’s 8:28 a.m. when Steven arrives for his first day at Newman Industries. He is excited, while also apprehensive. When Steven walks into the office and introduces himself to the receptionist, he is surprised to hear, “Oh, I didn’t know we had a new person starting today. Who did you say you were here to see?” Steven brushes this off, as it is not completely foreign for the receptionist not to be notified about a new employee joining a company.

The receptionist calls around and tells Steven that he is in the right place, but his manager Jamie has not arrived yet. Steven sits in the lobby as person after person walks by without saying a word.

Finally, at 9:10 am, Jamie walks in carrying a Starbucks coffee. She greets Steven in the lobby and takes him to his cubicle. Steven is surprised by what he sees. The cubicle looks like it belongs to someone else. Jamie explains that they had a salesperson leave the company the other day and that they had not had a chance to remove his stuff. “I have an idea,” sputters Jamie, “Since I have a meeting to run to, why don’t you get rid of this stuff and then we can get together at 10. Here is a garbage can. Thanks.”

Steven agrees, but is also a little miffed. “I signed up to sell, not provide janitorial services,” he thinks. While cleaning out the desk, he finds a farewell card in the top drawer that is signed by all of the Newman employees. He thinks it is thoughtful that they recognized this employee as he left the company.

It’s 10:30 when Jamie returns to Steven. She notices that there isn’t a computer set-up for Steven in the cubicle. She calls the IT department to see where it is. She hangs up the phone and looks annoyed. She turns to Steven and tells him that HR forgot to notify the IT department. “They won’t have your computer ready for a couple of days.”

She turns to Steven and says, “I have another meeting to run to, but let’s have lunch. Here is a bunch of stuff to read for now.” Jamie produces a foot-high pile of wrinkled papers and says, “That should get you started.”

Lunchtime comes and Jamie hurriedly comes by the cubicle and asks Steven how he is doing. She then proceeds to apologize, but tells him that she cannot go to lunch. She explains that she got called into another meeting. She suggests that Steven go out and get lunch on his own. “We can get together at 1 pm,” says Jamie. “By the way, Steven, can you grab a burger for me? I’ll pay you when you get back to the office.”

Steven leaves for lunch and is starting to question his decision to join Newman. He thinks back to the interview process and how attentive the team was with him. He remembers how aggressively they recruited him to join their team. He thinks about how warm and welcoming the management group was in its pursuit of him. Today, he feels like a third wheel on a date.

Steven comes back to the office with Jamie’s burger. It’s now 1 pm, and Steven is hoping that Jamie has some time for him. Jamie comes by Steven’s cubicle and thanks him for the burger. She asks Steven to come by her office at 2 to talk about his territory. Steven sits in his cubicle and flips through the pile of papers left for him. All the while, employees walk past his cubicle without ever saying a word.

At 2 pm, Steven goes to Jamie’s office. Jamie explains that the sales team is in a bit of a transition and the compensation plan is changing. Thus, there is no compensation plan to share with Steven that day. The territory is also in flux, but that should be resolved in the next two weeks. After chatting with Jamie for about a half hour, Steven returns to his cubicle. The rest of his day is more of the same and at 5 pm, he heads for home.

Steven’s wife asks about his first day. Steven says, “I’m really happy that I didn’t pull my resume off the job boards or tell the recruiters that I was off the market, because I don’t know if this is going to work out. We’ll have to see.”

The truth is that Newman Industries is really a fine company. It just made a very common mistake when hiring salespeople. It worked so hard to recruit Steven that they celebrated prematurely. The company thought they had Steven when he accepted the offer. That was their error. They failed to recognize that they had only completed the next step of the process. What is missing is a program to ensure the impression made in the recruiting and interview process is continued when the person arrives on their first day.

Many of you reading this probably think I made up that story about Steven. The truth is that this story is an amalgam of the many horror stories that I have heard over the years from salespeople.

Putting together a new-hire welcoming program isn’t overly difficult to do. However, it takes commitment on the part of the entire management team to ensure it is followed.

Think back to the story. Steven found a card that was given to the employee on the way out. How about a welcome card for Steven that is placed in his clean cubicle that has everything he needs to do his job? Office supplies, new-hire paperwork, a computer, a who’s-who list, a phone that is ready for use, etc. Again, it’s not hard to do this, but it does require some thought.

Consider how much money was spent to recruit Steven into Newman Industries. Now think about those dollars evaporating after Steven doesn’t return after his first day.

Unfortunately, most onboarding programs are poorly designed and even more poorly executed. After years of researching and advising firms on developing best-practice programs, I have found that there are 15 key factors that can literally kill any chances of onboarding programs demonstrating a positive impact.

The Root of the Problem

Most corporate onboarding programs are designed from the HR administrator’s perspective. The goal and focus is to ease the administrative burden on HR and to drive compliance activities, not to ensure that new hires can reach expected levels of productivity in the shortest time frame possible.

As a result, most programs have boiled onboarding activities down to all but the bare bones of administration. Every new hire, transfer, or merged/acquired employee gets the same information, on the same timeline, via the same channel.

Doing so has made administering onboarding easy, cheap, generic, consistent, and utterly useless. The result is that most onboarding programs frustrate new hires and hiring managers.

While the concept behind onboarding is truly simple, delivering world-class onboarding is anything but easy and generic. If your current approach demonstrates any of the 15 onboarding program killers described below, you’re missing the mark and need to start over:

1. The wrong definition and limited goals. The first and most impactful error is to define the program as orientation as opposed to onboarding. The term orientation has for years been applied to the narrower range of corporate activities related to “sign up’s” and providing basic information. The goals of traditional orientation are relatively narrow: to get new hires on the payroll, signed up for benefits, and to provide a brief overview of the company’s culture, products, and values. Onboarding, however, has a much broader perspective and goal: to decrease the time it takes for a new hire to reach the minimum expected productivity level on the job. Onboarding (also known as assimilation) lasts longer, occurs at several organizational levels, is metric-driven, and has a greater business impact.
2. Overloading new hires. The most common program killer is overloading new hires on the first day with a volume of information and questions that result in sensory overload. Because new hires are apprehensive, putting them under this kind of pressure makes it unlikely that they will ask tough questions, make good decisions, or remember a majority of the information they are provided with. The best programs limit the amount of information provided and the number of forms and sign-ups required so that they encompass less than two hours on the first day.
3. Failing to extend the timeframe. Viewing onboarding as something that happens only on the first day of employment is a major program killer. The best programs start before the employee’s first day (pre-boarding) and continues for up to six to 12 months. By stretching out the process, you help to ensure that the new hire is not overwhelmed on their first day.
4. Not offering onboarding at multiple organizational levels. Failing to provide information at each organizational level guarantees that the new hire will spend a great deal of time operating blind. The five organizational “levels” of onboarding include:
   • Corporate level. Covering signups and corporate-wide values.
   • Location level. Covering information and issues related to the country/region and the plant/facility where the new hire will be working.
   • Departmental level. This level covers things related to the department the new hire is joining.
   • Team/Job level. Covers things related to this person’s work team and job.
   • Individual level. Covers things at the team level that relate to the unique and diverse needs of this individual.
5. Unidirectional information. Most programs focus entirely on providing the information that the corporation wants the new hire to possess through presentations and videos. Unfortunately, this unidirectional approach lacks interaction and it can make the new hire feel like little more than a “hard drive” for receiving information. In addition, it restricts the firm’s ability to understand the new hire’s needs/concerns. The best programs directly ask new hires about their concerns, who they wish to meet, what they wish to learn, and how to best motivate and manage them. They also ask new hires for referrals and they gather feedback from them on how to improve both the recruiting and the onboarding processes.
6. No metrics or accountability. Most orientation and onboarding programs are not designed and run like standard business processes. Few have any objective results metrics that make a specific individual accountable for producing measurable business impacts. The best programs include metrics that cover time to productivity, new hire retention/termination rates, new hire error rates, new-hire referrals, and program ROI. Hiring managers also need to be held accountable by including their onboarding success rates in their performance appraisals and their bonus formula.
7. Ignoring diverse needs. Although nearly every corporation makes a special effort to hire diverse individuals, few onboarding programs provide alternative approaches to meet the needs of diverse hires. This is critical because diverse individuals, by definition, have different needs and ways of processing information. As a result, there must be variations in the onboarding process (either different information or the same information presented in a different way). By varying the information to meet individual needs you can dramatically reduce diversity frustration and eventually diversity turnover.
8. A face-to-face approach. Although this is gradually changing, a majority of onboarding activities are still provided in a live meeting. Not only is this time-consuming and expensive, it also limits the new-hire’s ability to access this information later on, when they might actually need it. For “remote workers,” not having online access can dramatically slow time to productivity. A superior approach focuses on providing most, if not all of the necessary onboarding information online where it is more easily accessed and searched before and after they start their new job. Online information can include the standard information provided to new hires as well as interactive forums for asking questions, buzzword and acronym dictionaries, as well as photos and bios of team members. In truly global corporations, the need for online information is even more critical.
9. A lack of integration. The very best onboarding programs make a special effort to integrate and coordinate what are traditionally independent activities. The program needs a process that integrates and coordinates benefits enrollment, payroll registration, technology set-up, security registration, business supply delivery, office assignments, new hire training, and “local” onboarding activities at the departmental level.
10. Failing to make the manager’s expectations clear. Information should be provided on corporate success measures, departmental plans, strategies and goals, how this individual’s performance will be assessed, their bonus and promotion criteria, and specifically, what is expected from them during their first week and month on-the-job.
11. Their manager is not present. The most common fault that occurs at “departmental level” onboarding (and the one with the most negative impact) is not having the employee’s direct manager present on the first day. With the manager absent, often the new hire feels unimportant and frustrated. Invariably, in the absence of the manager, new hires are shown their cubical, given “a manual” to read, and told to be patient until their manager returns. The best programs do not allow a new hire to start without their manager present and a plan of action for the first month of the new hire’s employment.
12. No compelling business case. Support for great onboarding programs is unfortunately very cyclical. Programs typically receive a great deal of support when competition for talent is high but they are often cut back or eliminated during tough economic times or whenever the program’s manager moves on. If you want to avoid this painful cycle, it is essential that the onboarding program be covered by a formal “business case.”
13. Run by benefits. Generally, benefits people have a narrow and tactical view of both HR and onboarding. Their view of the process is focused on “sign-ups” and having everything done quickly the first day. In order to be strategic, the program must be “owned” by hiring managers and run by recruiting or employment brand managers.
14. Failing to reinforce the employment brand. Colleagues and friends will contact the new hire during their first week, and if the onboarding program doesn’t provide a great “new hire experience,” they might provide limited or even negative information.
15. Delays in offering onboarding. Organizations frequently postpone most onboarding components until a large group of new hires can participate in a single session. Any delay can negatively impact new-hire productivity and provide an opportunity to make mistakes that will later be difficult to erase. As a result, effective programs offer online onboarding or do not delay onboarding beyond the first week after the employee is hired.

Weaknesses and Problems in Program Administration

There are several common omissions or failures related to the administration of the onboarding program that, although not program killers, can negatively impact the results:

• No written plan. Most onboarding programs have no formal written plan that is integrated with the overall business plan, the HR plan, and the recruiting plan.
• Owned by HR. Rather than being owned by HR, the onboarding program design should make it clear that onboarding problems and processes are “owned” by hiring managers. Managers must realize that they suffer the most when poor onboarding takes place.
• Jobs are not prioritized. Because there is never enough budget, world-class onboarding programs rarely excel unless they prioritize and focus their talent, time, and resources toward onboarding individuals in mission-critical jobs, critical business units, and in jobs with a significant revenue impact.
• No continuous improvement component. Few onboarding programs have a component that allows them to continually improve. In direct contrast, the very best have a formal process for continuously assessing and improving processes and output results by assessing each on-boarding success and failure. Exceptional programs periodically use “mystery shoppers” to identify system problems.
• No best practice sharing. The onboarding program must have a formal design component for the rapid identification, sharing between business units, and the adoption of best practices related to onboarding.
• No data-based decision-making. Major onboarding program design and resource decisions must be made based primarily on data, rather than emotion or historical practice.

Final Thoughts

It’s a critical mistake to build a high-impact process based solely on intuition. A superior approach requires that you examine the “root causes” that drive success and failure. Part of that process includes identifying “critical success factors” which cause programs to succeed and “program killers” that can doom an otherwise well-designed program.

If you want to raise your game, it’s critical that you periodically assess your program design to ensure that it is rich with critical success factors and that it steers clear of program killers.

Editor’s note: Those interested in learning more about leveraging onboarding and orientation to improve new-hire productivity can read Dr. Sullivan’s new book, entitled The Onboarding & Orientation Toolkit, available at www.drjohnsullivan.com.

Twittering for Sourcing
We see it used at conferences. We read about it on our discussion boards. We might even be active “Tweeters” ourselves … but how effective is Twitter for sourcing and recruiting? Erika Hanson Brown recently joined the Twitter community and wants to know how it works in the recruiting world. John Kennedy is skeptical about Twitter. Although it can help save time when learning about a potential candidate, John relies on some advice he received years ago, “there are only three true productive tools in recruiting — the pen, the pad of paper, and the telephone.”

After reading several more responses to Erika, it is clear that John is in the minority. Twitter can be an effective tool if you follow the advice of Kelly Dingee and Mark Tortorici including search strings, and tying together SMS and social networking sites. If anyone is interested, you can check out Dennis Smith’s presentation on the Recruiting Road Show and tune in to ERE’s webinar series on November 5 for some tips and advice from Geoff Peterson.

ATS Wish List
Erica McNally wants to know what are your “must-haves” and your “nice-to-haves” when selecting your ATS. What’s on your “wish list”? Jake Stupak lists the following: scheduling for multi-users, resume parsing, email tracking, and candidate and position matching. Sylvia Dahlby astutely advises to identify your unique business requirements first. “The leading apps all have the basics” — think about what your company needs before creating your list. She recommends CareerXroads and HRchitect for additional information. (HRchitect, by the way, is doing a workshop in San Diego at ERE’s conference on “How to Save Your Current ATS and Get a Return on Your Investment.”)

I have to add The Newman Group (who will also be doing a session on HR systems at the Spring Expo) to that list since it has a wealth of knowledge in this arena. Dorothy Beach, unhappy with Vurv, has been very impressed with Avature’s Recruiting CRM tool as an ATS option. (I also sat on a demo last week with Michael Johnson and agree that it is worth checking out.) This makes me wonder…will CRM tools replace traditional ATS tools? What do you think? Would you take the leap?

Onboarding New Hires and The Buddy System
There are several programs that if implemented correctly can make onboarding strategies successful. Based on research and discussions, many companies would include the “buddy system” on that list. Laura Arnold is very interested in a program that would pair an internal employee with a new hire but wants a new name for “the buddy system.” Apparently, Laura is not alone. Several respondents use a variety of different names, including “Mentor Program.” Bryan Chaney also recommends “Internal Career Counselor” and “Coworker Coach” while Joann Robinson has used “New Hire Partner,” “Orientation Partner” and “Orientation Coach.”

I’m interested in knowing if any companies have been able to measure the success of their onboarding programs, more specifically the concept of a “mentor program.” Todd Raphael has an in-depth look at onboarding in the next Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

JobFox or Net-Temps?

Kathleen Coughlin wants to add a new job board to her list. Can anyone recommend JobFox or Net-Temps? Although Kathleen did not receive feedback on Net-Temps, JobFox (often considered the eHarmony of recruiting) has some work to do. Taryn Pfalzgraf has been satisfied with the customer service but feels that the process is too time-consuming. She recommends a “conditional trial membership” or “waiting a few months to see if they’ve ironed out their problems.” Kimberley Joyce would have to agree. As an Oracle-centric company, she was reassured that JobFox could meet her companies’ needs. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Among other complaints, they are unable to add different tools, languages, and functionality. Given this negative feedback, Eden Shaffer encourages Kathleen to consider Search Engine Marketing instead. What do you think?

Hiring a Virtual Recruiter/Sourcer and Unethical Competitors
These topics continue to dominate the discussion boards. We’d love to hear what you think about these critical and timely recruiting issues…

Organizations are devoting more time to the onboarding process and employing more creative and exciting techniques in an effort to get their newly hired employees productive sooner and to lay a foundation that will help retain them.

In fact, employees who have gone through some sort of onboarding process above and beyond the usual process of filling out paperwork and choosing benefit plans report feeling better connected to their colleagues and to the company culture. This translates into a loyalty that keeps employees from turning down offers that tempt by simply offering more dollars.

There are at least three reasons that orientation or assimilation programs are becoming popular.

First of all they help new hires feel that they are part of a larger organization and that they are important. By introducing new employees to senior management and by spending time to build in them an appreciation of the organization’s past and future direction, these programs create a sense of security and comfort.

Second, they help convey the culture of the organization so that decisions get made that are more in line with accepted practices and that help the organization function more smoothly. When senior-level employees explain why decisions were made or how a result came about, they are also conveying the cultural values of the organization. By building roots from the beginning, people flourish and understand better why things are the way they are.

And, third, they expedite getting the new hires up to speed and productive. Some new hires take up to a year to reach full productivity, especially if their jobs depend on interacting with many other employees or in linking work from different parts of the firm. Inexperienced employees, especially college hires, can have long learning curves that can be significantly shortened with good upfront education. This is where an internal social network or some other Internet-based tools can expedite their connections and bring different people with similar needs together.

The best onboarding programs have several characteristics.

First of all, they are fun, not overly formal, and engage employees. Make sure you develop a program that has substance and that addresses serious issues effectively, but do it in a manner that is interactive and fun. Some organizations are using the Internet to facilitate the experience and provide the new employee with the corporate history, the values of the firm, an overview of the strategy and fiscal goals. This is often delivered in a video. Videos can be used to provide an overview of the finances by the CFO, for example, and a greeting from some senior-level executive. Many offer tours of the facilities via video narrated by an employee.

All of these tools and activities set a stage for productive, aligned, and focused work. Don’t assume that employees are just going to “pick up” all the things they need to know to be successful in your firm. What is obvious to you may be very obscure to someone just walking in the door.

Second, good onboarding programs may extend over several months. After an intensive 1 to 2 day session up front to start things off, subsequent activities may extend over several months at periodic intervals. Some programs include rotational assignments; others may include special projects that are designed to expose the new employee to parts of the company they would not normally have any contact with. For example, an executive could be given as assignment to find out something about the manufacturing operations that would require her to actually go to the factory and gather data. This way she sees how other employees work and begins to get a feel for the culture in action. Scheduling events out several months gives you the opportunity to get into topics in an in-depth way that short programs cannot.

The third thing effective onboarding programs are good at is getting the manager to be part of the onboarding process. Surveys show that the relationship with the manager is one of the most significant in an employee’s work life.

Most employee turnover is ultimately caused by that relationship (or lack of it), which makes the ability to assimilate new employees a core competence of managers. An employee’s immediate manager controls all career progression, educational opportunities, and the assignment of projects. So a manager who takes time to discuss issues with a new employee, who shows concern over that person’s assimilation, and who knows what the employee can do and wants to do, will make wiser decisions and build loyalty over time.

The manager should be included as part of the onboarding process. Some firms have the managers attend a session designed to provide the employee with an initial set of goals — perhaps for the first 30 to 60 days. Others include the manager in team-building exercises or have a luncheon where the manager sits with the new employee. At the executive level, the CEO can invite new hires to dinner at his or her home or set up a special quarterly new executive dinner and reception. The key is to make sure the manager has a real role in both the formal process of onboarding as well as in the informal one that happens every day.

And finally the best programs offer coaching and mentoring to new employees right from the start. Again, research shows very clearly that providing a mentor who can offer insights into the corporate culture, who can explain the organizational structure and help the new employee understand why things get done in the way they do, is a major contributor to increased productivity and lower turnover.

These mentors should be individuals who are exemplars of the kind of behavior and results orientation your firm would like all its employees to exhibit. The role of these mentors can be very simple — as simple as going to lunch once a week with the new hire to show them the ropes and transmit some of the tacit culture that is never articulated or often even acknowledged in formal sessions. These mentors are the vehicles to educate the new hire, and they should be trained to serve as listeners who can intervene quietly with a manager if an issue arises. They need to be respected and well-networked in the organization.

Onboarding in tough times becomes an essential tool for building engagement and improving retention.

They forget to examine their orientation and onboarding process from the perspective of their new employees.

This creates two problems for employers interested in creating an onboarding process that leads to maximum employee retention and engagement:

1. They don’t realize the negative perceptions they inadvertently create through mindlessness — perceptions that can lead to employee retention problems or diminished engagement.
2. They forget how confusing, complex, and daunting things look to someone without institutional knowledge of “how things are done around here.” Because of this, processes that might seem obvious and easy to navigate if you’re an “old pro,” are anything but to the newcomer. Thus, they inadvertently dampen the new employee’s enthusiasm by adding unnecessary frustration and anxiety.

This is why you must borrow the “fresh eyes” of your new employees. They can see things you can’t.

I was reminded of this — and the impact of careless orientation and onboarding — by an interview I did recently with a former college senior, who, as part of a business class, participated in a bank’s orientation program. Here are some of his observations, along with a bit of commentary.

Since he requested anonymity, I will refer to him as “Brandon” as I share his observations.

Am I Welcome Here?

Brandon and his fellow business major classmate were told to arrive at the bank in the morning, prior to the time the bank opened for business.

They were greeted by a locked door.

“We had to call to have someone meet us. I can just imagine 10 people showing up for orientation and each having to call to be let in. That’s not a very good first impression,” observed Brandon.

I can understand why the bank would keep its doors locked if it didn’t want customers to come in at the time, but they could have either warned the employees or made some other arrangement to work around that awkward introduction.

What’s the Message?

If you’ve read my earlier articles, you might remember my mantras:

1. Everything Matters
2. Think Experience
3. What’s the Emotional Takeaway?
4. What’s the Perceptual Takeaway?

Imagine you are a new employee and you are locked out of your new place of employment. What perceptions would such a first impression create?

Perhaps:

- “This isn’t the friendliest place in the world.”
- “This is an impersonal place.”
- “You’re just a number here.”
- “This is a poorly run outfit.”

Does Your Orientation Program Shout “Second Rate” Or “Best in Class”?

Brandon went on describe the PowerPoint presentation he sat through in the orientation program:

“It didn’t leave any taste in your mouth. You’re thinking ‘OK, that was a nice PowerPoint presentation. You could have sent it to me at home and skipped that part, and I could have gotten right to work.’”

As Brandon’s comments reveal, inefficiencies and redundancies don’t go unnoticed. They also don’t create the kind of “This is a world class company” impression you need to create.

Compare Brandon’s experience with the Perceptual Takeaway created by Southwest Airlines. At Southwest, prior to new hire orientation, new employees receive an email link to a website that delivers a “pre-orientation program.” At the site, they learn more about Southwest as an employer and their unique culture.

At the site, new employees also find out what they can expect on their first day at work, helping to reduce potential anxiety.

According to Director of Onboarding Cheryl Hughey, when the company developed the online program, they wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a boring info-dump, but rather a fun experience that reflected Southwest’s fun employer brand.

Not only does it save Southwest time and money by freeing up about two hours of employee orientation program time to cover other material, but it communicates intelligence and efficiency to the new employee. It leaves the Perceptual Take Away:

“They do things right here.”

Being smart about how you conduct your orientation program is especially important with Gen X and Gen Y employees, who are more likely to cast a critical eye toward their new employer. As Lynn Desjardins, a VP at the NHHEAF Network Organizations, notes: “Just as you’re judging their performance, they are judging yours.”

Thus, the more intelligent your process — including the intelligent use of technology — the greater your “Employer Cred” with new employees. This is especially important to the type of employees you most want to attract and retain: the most talented and professional. The “cream of the crop” wants to work for an employer who is also best in class.

I Guess They Don’t Care About Employees Here

Brandon noted that there wasn’t any water available for those attending the orientation program until later in the day, nor were he and his fellow attendees asked to introduce themselves until mid-way through the program. Both made him wonder about whether this employer really cared about its employees.

You might think about his assessment: “Don’t be so picky; this is just a little oversight on your first day at work. Don’t go crazy extrapolating this to what your employer is like as a whole.”

While that argument might be rational, that’s not how human nature works.

Think of yourself. Haven’t you been treated poorly by a clerk, salesperson, or waitstaff, and generalized your feeling and impression to include the entire business? We’ve all done that. From one encounter, we surmise that “They have lousy service here.”

That’s how the human mind works. It’s designed to generalize. If that’s not bad enough, add to this our tendency to jump to conclusions in ambiguous situations. This is called “Premature Cognitive Commitment” by cognitive psychologists.

Because humans by nature need to make sense out of whatever is going on, and because we are more likely to feel anxious when we don’t, we naturally try to “figure things out” when placed in new, ambiguous situations.

Like a new job.

Because we’re hungry to make sense of our new situation — in this case our new employer and what it’s like to work for them — we’re very alert for clues. Because of premature cognitive commitment, we’re likely to come to a conclusion about our new employer that is hard to shake, despite later evidence to the contrary.

If the receptionist is friendly, we’re likely to think “This is a friendly place.” If the orientation program is run efficiently and effectively, we’re likely to think “This is a well-run outfit.”

Conversely, as in Brandon’s first day at work, if we experience thoughtlessness and carelessness, we’re likely to assume this is characteristic of the employer as a whole — whether it is or not.

Find Out What Questions They Want to Ask

In previous articles on onboarding, I discussed the importance of making it safe for new employees to ask for the information they need. Because they are likely to be more reticent about speaking up, for fear of being seen as “high maintenance” or “needy,” new hires need to get the message that questions are welcomed.

It was fascinating to hear Brandon comment on his experience with asking questions:

“I noticed a little bit of hostility from the trainer when I would ask questions. Instead of explaining, he would sound like he was defending. I was pretending I was joining their company and was thinking about what questions I would want to ask if I were going to be working here. He didn’t seem used to it. But if you don’t how to explain what’s on the screen, don’t put it up.

Myself, I’m not comfortable asking questions if I’m in a new situation, and don’t know how that question is going to be received. In this situation, though, because I wasn’t worried about what they would think, I would ask.”

While some employees ask questions and challenge people regardless of their position and status, many are reluctant to. But just because they’re not asking the questions, doesn’t mean they’re not wondering.

This is why you must interview new employees and find out:

1. What information they want most as new employees, both to do their job and to make their “new employee experience” as stress-free as possible.
2. What you can do to make it easy for them to speak up, give feedback, and get their questions answered.

So Now What?

So, now, besides asking your new hires the above questions, also ask them for feedback on each step of your orientation and onboarding process. Ask them what Emotional and Perceptual Takeaways each moment of truth left them with.

If you do, you’ll probably be quite surprised.

Preventing Applicants from Bypassing HR. The shaky relationship between the recruiter and hiring manager has always been an interesting topic of debate on ERE discussion boards.

Coral Blankenship wants to know if there is a “diplomatic way to inform candidates in a posting not to contact the hiring manager or any other person other than the representative listed in the posting.”

Amanda Blazo and Rob Levin were realistic, saying that unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to prevent someone from contacting a hiring manager, especially with the amount of information available through the Internet.

Amanda advises corporate recruiters and TPRs to respond to every applicant “qualified or not” and Rob added that many people pass over HR because “they know it will get them nowhere.” Mike Johnson included some helpful language to include in job postings while Jeff Altman wrote about the benefits an applicant might see in going directly to HR and included an example. He also sympathized with Coral’s situation since he agreed that most applicants can’t do an “adequate job of presenting themselves on a call.”

Monday’s Question of the Day. Work/life balance has become part of our everyday vernacular. We hear about it on the news, read about it in studies, and discuss it during interviews, but I couldn’t help wondering: Do most companies really want their employees to balance both and possibly leave work early for dinner plans and yoga classes? Elizabeth DeLouise feels that “It still seems the person who is willing to put in the longer hours are the people who get ahead.” David Rees questions the phrase “work/life balance” and asks, “does that mean that work is not part of life?” He also believes that work-life balance does not affect TPRs as much, since they are “evaluated on effectiveness not hours worked”? Anyone disagree? I wonder if work-life balance is truly a question about generational differences. Is this workplace philosophy accepted for younger generations and not Boomers? Maureen Sharib included some interesting data from a Monster survey conducted in 2007 that you might want to check out.

Paperless New Hire Process. Rob Levin wants to automate the entire hiring process and wants advice on best practices. Manoj Tiwari’s company, a small company with a homegrown applicant management system, has successfully gone paperless for everything except the interviewing process. Melissa Chacinski simply stated “look at your ATS.” Her company uses ATS, email, and Internet. For interview notes, she recommends faxing the notes in an email PDF and attaching that document in the ATS. Rob was impressed with the comments but what he really wants to know is how to automate the onboarding process, everyone’s favorite buzzword. Joann Starks uses an ATS with an onboarding function including electronic signatures. Her only challenge is when legal changes a form and they need to use paper until that form can be automated. I have a short research paper on automating onboarding. If you are interested, you can email me at madeline@ere.net.

What Tools Are Sourcers using Today? Maureen Sharib is using Hoovers, the Net, and the phone and wants to know where others spend their time. Tino Thomas wants advice on portals or search strings. I recommend listening to Glenn Gutmacher’s sourcing webinar. Richard Stack uses phone-based efforts for 75% of the sourcing as well as LinkedIn, Jigsaw, alumni lists, and directories, local associations, and business group websites. Paul Davenport spends one-third of his day on the Internet and two-thirds on the phone. He recommends using Vonage phone service thanks to advice from Shally Steckerl. Mike Johnson uses the Internet — Google, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Jigsaw — but the key to his success lies in their homegrown CRM tool. He can help you out if you want more information.

Is the Slow Down Affecting You? Scott Weaver wants to know how the economy is affecting the construction industry. “Specifically, has anyone’s recruitment department been downsized?” both corporate and TPRs? Anne Kutsher is feeling the effects and her company is not doing much hiring these days. So far, no layoffs in HR, but this will not last long. Suzanne Hucko says her hiring has not slowed down with the exception of hiring in Florida. She attributes this success to the fact that they are not hiring for residential projects and they are nationwide. Craig Bromfield brings us insight into the Polish and Eastern European markets and things are looking good. He predicts that residential developments will begin to slow-down while retail development will continue to thrive. The hotel and infrastructure industries are especially busy these days.

Tuesday’s Question of the Day. I read a few comments recently predicting that blogs will replace resumes. I thought I would throw it out there. David Rees sums it up best by stating that it “depends on how you blog and what you blog about. Sincerity, honesty, and transparency are what it’s all about, but not everyone is wired to blog like that.” Mark Nelson feels that blogs are more of a reference than a resume but recommends that job seekers take advantage of niche blogs. He wants to know if video resumes will replace traditional resumes. I personally think video resumes are a fad but can be very beneficial for branding purposes.

My friend was released after just 20 days on the job.

She was given work assignments to complete that had never been discussed in the interview. At her exit interview, her manager admitted he had overestimated her technical skills in the interview. She had not professed extensive technical skills in the interview. She was given no notice that she was to be terminated, just asked to come to the conference room at 3 pm on what turned out to be her last day.

Reflecting back, she realized that there had been virtually no communication with her manager over her last three days leading up to her termination. What’s ironic is that she was actually getting a lot of work done then. She felt that she was finally just starting to get the hang of things.

This was during the time when her manager was probably meeting with HR to work out and finalize her termination. At the exit interview, she was told that she “didn’t pick things up quickly enough.”

My friend had asked lots of questions of her manager while employed there, particularly when given work that was beyond what had been discussed in the interview. But whenever she asked her boss about her assignments, he talked about other things and never really answered her questions.

When a manager says something like “you didn’t pick things up quickly enough,” this can also be seen to mean, “I didn’t take the time to manage you well.”

Especially with new hires, managers have to invest a lot of time in integrating the new employee. When a new piece of equipment is obtained for the office, there is often instruction in how to use that piece of equipment, at least for the person who is responsible for using it. We may even send the person to training in how to use the machine.

Sink or Swim?

We don’t seem to do that consistently with people. We throw them into situations and expect them to “sink or swim.” We cannot afford to have too many new hires sink. It just costs too much money.

It costs a manager something more than money to admit that he may not have managed the person in the way that they needed to be managed. He didn’t take the time to figure out how to motivate the person. He didn’t figure out how the new person learns best, through careful instruction or trial and error.

The cost is that the manager has to admit that he made a mistake. That he was wrong. It’s much easier to blame the now-terminated new hire:

• “You didn’t pick things up fast enough.”
• “You weren’t communicating enough.”
• “You didn’t understand the culture here.”
• “You were a bad fit.”

In all these cases, the common denominator may have been that the manager didn’t do a good enough job in interviewing the person or integrating the new hire into the workforce in the first weeks or months. In every case, the manager blamed the employee for what may have been the manager’s shortcoming.

Managing is hard work. It’s not intuitive. No one is born a manager. Some people are born leaders, but managing requires training and it takes time.

Good managers can be developed, but only if they are given the time to learn, also the same way new hires need time to develop.

Managers need to master a broad skill set to be effective in all phases of the role:

• Understanding how the department operates so that the right mix of jobs is created.
• Interviewing (which is so much more than just talking to people) to effectively determine whether candidates have the correct skill-match for the position.
• Orienting the new hire to the workplace and to the job and his or her colleagues. Integrating a new hire takes weeks, not hours. Too frequently, managers leave orientation up to HR. No offense to HR, but new hires are too valuable to be trusted only to HR. The HR team has a critical role to play in integrating new employees, but the new hire is going to listen far more to what their new manager tells them than anything HR has to say.
• Setting performance objectives so that the new hire clearly understands what is expected of him or her.
• Giving feedback on an ongoing basis, not just at the end of the year in an anxiety-ridden performance evaluation.
• Recognizing and rewarding people for their effort as well as for their accomplishments.

When you look at all the expectations that we have of managers, it’s easy to understand why we invest so much in management development and training. It takes time to become an effective manager. Anyone promoted to management generally figures this out in the first few days on the job.

The piece that too often gets overlooked is training our managers in people management. How to interview candidates, how to select the right ones who can be most productive in their environment, and how to continue to get the most out of them on the job. Managers need to learn how to engage their staff so they give their best effort on the job as opposed to just doing enough not to get fired.

The good news is we usually give new managers the time to figure out how to do their new job, in part because of all the time and money invested in developing this person to the point of promotion.

No doubt, this new manager would certainly be annoyed if after a few weeks in the new position, their manager called them into a conference room and started in with, “You’re not picking things up quickly enough.”

Do you know the impact your onboarding program has on your new employees, moment-of-truth by moment-of-truth?

Do you know what it’s like to experience your company as an employee on the first day of work? The first week? What about the week prior to that first day?

What about when your new employees meet their supervisor and their teammates? Are you managing that experience in a way that produces an excited, engaged employee? Or for new employees at your company, is it more like buyer’s remorse?

I had a humbling reminder last week of how difficult it can be to think of all the little details that shape a new employee’s experience and their subsequent perception of their employer. It reminded me how difficult, and perhaps impossible, it is to think of all the little things that affect a new employee’s thoughts and feelings because we are not a new employee.

Borrow From Customer Service, Website-Usability Pros

Employers would be wise to borrow from the fields of customer service and website usability design.

Companies known for creating customer-centric experiences get that way by finding out from their customers what it’s like to do business with them, from the first moment of truth to the last. They design their customer experience from the customer’s perspective and needs, not from their own operational convenience.

Experts in the Web usability field, like Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug (author of Don’t Make Me Think), recommend that website developers watch novice users navigating their website, without giving them any instructions or guidance. By doing this, they can witness directly the choices, and mistakes, novice users make when navigating the website. This allows the developer to redesign the website, and the user experience, from the user’s perspective, not the tech-savvy developer’s.

What is obvious and user-friendly from the developer’s perspective might be confusing and overwhelming to the first-time visitor. Thus, they need to “borrow” the novice user’s eyes. Only by getting this real-time feedback are developers able to step outside their expert’s perspective and enter the world of the first-time user.

Get a Pair of Fresh Eyes

You can apply this principle to your onboarding process by borrowing from Chip Conley, CEO of Joie De Vivre Hospitality and author of Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow. At Joie De Vivre’s hotels, “Fresh Eyes” are an integral part of the onboarding process.

At each property, managers encourage new employees to share their perceptions about ways the hotel can improve both its customer experience and new employee experience. Conley and his team know that because their new employees have Fresh Eyes, they can see things that those who have been immersed in the environment cannot.

Doing this achieves two important objectives for the Joie De Vivre:

• It provides Joie De Vivre with useful information about how to improve both their guest experience and their new employee experience.
• It communicates to new employees from the outset: “You matter; your input matters” and “We respect you.” These are obviously important messages you want to send, since they increase employee engagement.

I Teach This Stuff and Still?

OK, back to my humbling experience?

Here’s what happened. Last week I conducted a public seminar that was hosted by a client.

As I enter their driveway, I see, as if for the first time, its two buildings set back from the road, each having their own expansive parking lot on opposite ends of each building.

As I take in this sight, this time through the eyes of a seminar participant who had never been there before, I think: “Oh, no. When I sent out email confirmations and directions, I just gave the address. I forgot that there were two buildings. I hope the seminar participants don’t get confused.”

Since I had only conducted seminars in the building on the left, the building on the right didn’t exist in my mind when I sent out the program confirmation.

Seeing it Through Their Eyes

Now, as I look at the scene laid out before me through the eyes of a seminar participant who had never been here before, I can imagine the confusion they will feel and perhaps even a bit of annoyance because if they choose the wrong parking lot, it will be a hike to the correct building.

Also, if they arrive at the last minute, this extra bit of time finding the right one could mean the awkwardness of arriving late.

What Will They Think?

When they realize an important piece of information was left out of the directions, I could imagine them thinking, and rightly so, “That wasn’t too bright.”

My oversight would likely create a mildly negative moment of truth early on in the “Attending the David Lee Seminar Experience.” To use the terms I’ve written about previously, my oversight would likely create, in some of the participants, an unwanted Emotional Take Away: the feelings of confusion and frustration.

It would also likely create an unwanted Perceptual Take Away: “That wasn’t too bright” and perhaps for the most unforgiving of seminar attendees: “He’s not terribly bright.”

You obviously don’t want your onboarding process to trigger credibility-damaging or respect-diminishing Perceptual Take Aways, especially if you want to attract and retain high-caliber people.

Being Hyper-Alert Isn’t Enough

While my oversight wasn’t earth-shattering and everybody found their way and enjoyed the program, the takeaway message from this little example shouldn’t be: “They got over it, so what’s the big deal?”

Instead, I hope it is: “Even if you’re hyper-alert about creating positive experiences for customers or new employees, because you’re so familiar with your environment and operations, it’s easy to forget what it’s like for those who are not.”

See Your Onboarding Program Through Their Eyes

That’s why I believe you must involve new employees in your efforts to improve your orientation and onboarding process, and in a specific way.

This means getting their feedback after the orientation program and then after certain milestones during the onboarding process, such as Days 1, 7, 30, 60, 90, 120, and 180. Because it’s easy for people to forget little details of an experience that were meaningful at the moment, you need to get feedback while the experiences are fresh in your new employees’ minds.

Specifics May Fade but the Cumulative Effect Sticks

The fact that your new hires will forget the millions of moment-by-moment details of their onboarding experience, if too much time elapses before you ask for their feedback, does not mean those moments of truth didn’t matter. While the specifics might disappear from memory, the cumulative Emotional and Perceptual Takeaways created by these “little” moments of truth do not.

To paraphrase Diana Oreck, vice president of Ritz Carlton’s Global Learning & Leadership Center:

People might not remember what you said or what you did, but they always remember what they felt.

Engagement and Retention Issues

Use a modified Fresh Eyes approach with all employees. Find out from their perspective how you’re doing with the many important Employee-Employer Moments of Truth that influence employee engagement and retention.

These include:

• “Getting feedback from my supervisor experience.”
• “Management institutes a change that affects our day-to-day work experience.”
• “We’re asked for our feedback in an employee satisfaction survey experience.”
• “My boss and I have a difference of opinion experience.”
• “The performance review experience.”

How your organization handles these and the many other critical Employee-Employer Moments of Truth will determine what your employees think and feel about you as an employer (e.g., the Emotional and Perceptual Takeaways you’ve created), and therefore whether they will stay or leave. And if they do stay, how hard they’ll work.

Given that Gallup’s research revealed that 55% of employees are in the ROAD Warrior category (Retired on Active Duty), finding out if you’re mishandling any key moments of truth should be on every management team’s agenda.

Thus, if you’re really serious about doing a great job with employee engagement, retention, and motivation, do this with all of your employees, not just your new hires.

Let’s Put This into Action

1. Meet with new hires at days 1, 7, 30, 60, 90, 120, and 180. Ask them for their insights and input about what you’re doing well and what can be improved upon.
2. Make sure every orientation program includes an explicit message that you want, no, you need, their input. Let them know that you realize your ability to attract and retain great employees like them means you must constantly pay attention to, and improve upon, the onboarding experience you deliver.
3. Coach your supervisors to do the same.
4. Make different communication methods available so it’s comfortable for those who are reluctant to speak up. Whether because of cultural norms, shyness, or a manager who doesn’t make it comfortable for them to do so, some employees are reluctant to give negative feedback. While I believe face-to-face, real-time conversation provides the most rich, actionable information, not everyone is comfortable doing this. Therefore, you will want to augment this with alternative modes, such as anonymous surveys, suggestion boxes, or an “input hotline.” Of course, to keep employees wanting to give input, you must let employees know what has been done with their input. Communicate what changes were made or if not, why not.
5. If you haven’t read any of my previous articles that discuss the various moments of truth and the concept of emotional and perceptual takeaways, you might want to read those next. The white paper Starting New Employees Off Right is the most thorough, but there are several shorter reads, such as 13 Questions to Maximize Your Onboarding Efforts. These will help you ask better questions.
6. If you’re interested in creating a work experience that leads to a strong employer brand, high employee engagement, and high levels of retention, expand your “Fresh Eyes” approach to include all of your employees. Since an employer’s culture has a huge impact on the success of their onboarding process, address the whole work-experience context. Whether you use one the many survey tools available or conduct a series of interviews, assess the key drivers and moments of truth that affect employee engagement and satisfaction.

At the recent onboarding conference I spoke at in Atlanta, I had the opportunity to listen to some great examples of companies that get concepts such as “It’s About the Experience” and “What’s The Emotional Take Away?”

At the conference, Diana Oreck, vice president of Ritz-Carlton’s Global Learning & Leadership Center, shared how their employee orientation program and onboarding process welcomes and inspires their new hires. She also talked about the mindset that informs how they design the experiences they deliver.

In some ways, I believe their mindset is more important for you to internalize and share with your onboarding team than are the particulars of what they do. I say this because understanding the foundational principles of effective onboarding is like understanding the fundamentals of great design: once you understand them, there’s no limit to what you can create.

Think Ritz As You Design Your Process

At Ritz-Carlton, one of the fundamental understandings that informs the guest or employee experiences it delivers, according to Oreck is, “People don’t remember what you said or what you did, but they always remember what they felt.”

This is why I believe asking, “What’s the emotional take away?” is so important when examining each step of your onboarding process.

Critical Questions in Your Orientation and Onboarding Process

Keep this in mind as you design and refine your onboarding process. For each facet of your employee orientation program and at each step of your onboarding process, ask the following:

• “What’s the emotional take-away here? What is the way we are doing this right now, and what emotions would a new employee take away from this experience?”
• “Are these the emotions we want to leave them with?” If your answer is no, then ask “What emotions would we like them to experience?” and “How can we create an experience that would naturally elicit these?”

Design Your Employee Orientation and Onboarding Process to Elicit These Emotions

Examples of emotions you want to elicit in your new employee orientation and onboarding process include welcomed; comfortable and secure; proud; excited; inspired; and confident.

Diana Oreck shared with the audience the video Ritz-Carlton plays for new employees during orientation. The video talks about what it would mean if you were in the top 1% in various fields. As images of Tiger Woods and Bill Gates and people in the top 1% of their field flash across the screen, inspiring music plays in the background with the lyrics “What have you done today to make you feel proud?”

The video then transitions into letting the new employee know that being with Ritz-Carlton means they are among the top 1% in the hospitality industry.

Even after seeing it a few times, it still gives me goose-bumps.

I can’t imagine watching that video as a new employee and not feeling pretty darn proud and excited about my new job and my new employer.

I found it interesting (and telling) that Ritz Carlton balances two important messages in their orientation program: “You are now part of an elite, best-in-class organization,” and “We’re lucky to have you.”

One message without the other is not enough. Because one of the most important human needs your new employee-orientation program should satisfy is the feeling of pride in one’s work and one’s employer, you want to extol the virtues of your company. You want new employees to feel lucky to be working for your company.

However, sending the first message without the second, “We’re lucky to have you here,” would come across as arrogant and snobbish. You’ve probably met people who worked for marquee-name companies, or even big-fish-in-small-pond companies with a regional reputation, who’ve crossed the line from proud to smug.

At Ritz-Carlton, Oreck and her colleagues tell new hires “Aren’t we blessed that you picked the Ritz Carlton for your ’second place’,” referring to the second most-important place the person inhabits each day.

The fact that Ritz Carlton achieves this gracious balance between “You’re lucky” and “We’re lucky” reflects their service philosophy of balancing elegance with warmth. Masters at creating a delightful customer experience, it recognized years ago that delivering elegance without warmth (like high-end restaurants with supercilious maitre des) projects a haughty, condescending image. By consciously blending elegance and warmth, the Ritz conveys “elite” without “elitist.”

It uses this same degree of emotional intelligence when creating new employee experiences. Think of whether you are emphasizing both messages enough and if you have a good balance between the two.

What’s Love Got To Do With Onboarding?

Love has a big connection with onboarding, especially if you’re Texas Roadhouse, a two-time member on the Forbes List of 200 Best Small Companies.

At the onboarding conference, speaker Mark Simpson of Texas Roadhouse shared two videos, including one they show new employees at their orientation. It communicated the “lovefest” that is this company. In their video, they had excerpts from a Managing Partner Conference, where store managing partners celebrate their hard work and accomplishments.

They had clips from humanitarian projects Texas Roadhouse employees participated in, including seven Habitat for Humanity projects in Mexico. It included clips from proud employees, including one memorable quote from a young man: “I’ve been working here for one year and I still eat here, so I think that says it all!”

Listening to the passion and pride as Simpson talked about their company, you can just imagine what it’s like for their new employees in orientation. I can imagine the pride they must feel, both from watching this video and from hearing Texas Roadhouse leaders share with pride about the uniqueness of their company and how they, the new employee, will help make their guest experiences “legendary.”

Their video, and their orientation program as a whole, communicates very clearly that this is a company that loves their employees, celebrates the good work that they do, and is not your average place to work.

Interspersed throughout Simpson’s presentation was the word “love,” including the guiding themes of Texas Roadhouse: “Love your people and show it!” and “If you love your people, they’ll love your customers.”

If you’re sharing this article with hard-boiled “old school” executives who are unmoved by such “touchy feely” concepts as loving your employees and loving your customers, here’s what it does for Texas Roadhouse, in the words of Simpson:

“The goal is to have ‘engaged’ employees engage your guests and build repeat business. In a 2006 attitude and usage study, 89% of the guests that visited us intended to revisit us. That the highest in our industry and 9% higher than the nearest competitor.”

Further, in a recent study by PeopleMetrics, a market research firm based in Philadelphia, involving 10,000 customers to find out which brands engaged their customers the most effectively, Texas Roadhouse scored the highest in their category, ranking third overall, right up there with such power brands as The Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton.

Onboarding with the Southwest Airlines Mindset

Southwest Airlines is another company that “gets it” about the importance of designing its employee orientation and onboarding process with the goal of creating positive emotional experiences.

Just as with Ritz Carlton, it’s not surprising that a company known for delivering a unique (and uniquely wonderful) customer experience brings this same expertise and intentionality to their new employee experience.

In a recent interview with Cheryl Hughey, Southwest’s director of onboarding, I was struck by how their awareness of what was important to accomplish in onboarding was more advanced, in my opinion, than most companies.

The fact that they showed a higher level of awareness is not surprising, given how acutely aware they are that their culture is the secret to their success. Creating a work experience that produces such a culture requires mindfulness and intention, so it’s not surprising they would bring that to their orientation and onboarding process.

Hughey noted that when their onboarding team went out and benchmarked other companies’ onboarding process, they noticed that the others seemed to focus primarily on creating logistical efficiencies that allowed the new employee to become productive more quickly.

Capturing the difference in mindset, Ms. Hughey explains:

“Here’s what it is that I think we do differently, or what we emphasize more: in a lot of companies, it seems like if there are online forms to check off and documents that get passed around from HR to the hiring manager to the new employee, they think onboarding has been accomplished. While getting those kinds of logistical things automated can help you get your new employee up to speed and productive more quickly, it won’t necessarily help you with retention.

If you want them to stay, if you want them to become engaged, you need to make sure you do the “feeling” part of the process, and you do that by showing them how they will make a difference, giving them examples of how their fellow employees make a difference, making them feel welcome as with our Sponsor a New Hire program. It’s those kinds of things that lead to not just better retention, but a more inspired workforce.”

Consciously designing work experiences so they lead to employees feeling welcomed respected, valued, inspired, proud, and determined doesn’t just help you with employee retention. It also directly improves employee motivation, productivity, and customer service.

That’s why I believe in the following four mantras, which are important for management to keep in mind when making decisions that affect employees’ work experiences:

• “Everything Matters”
• “Think Experience”
• “What’s the Emotional Take Away?”
• “What’s the Perceptual Take Away?

I hope this article stimulates you to examine your orientation program, share more stories that communicate what makes your organization great (i.e., stories that elicit pride), and share more stories that show how employees make a difference.

Last, but certainly not least, remember to ask your new employees for feedback on what you can do to create a more emotionally engaging onboarding experience.

Moving into a new position of leadership is one of the toughest challenges people face. Nearly half of new leaders fail in their first eighteen months. Often, failure is the result of crucial mistakes made in the very beginning. Critical mistakes made so early can be devastating for companies and leaders alike. But how can organizations and new leaders avoid them?

Learn how new leaders can take charge, build their teams, and get great results in new roles faster than anyone thought possible. This is important because of the time value of accelerated performance and because delivering better results faster is the best way to reduce the risk of failure in a new leadership role. This webinar focuses on how to manage onboarding as a process with discrete steps, invest in pre-boarding preparation before the start, and the need to focus on accelerating team performance after the pivot point of day one.

If you’re serious about upgrading your new-hire orientation program and onboarding process as a whole, here are 13 questions you need to ask. Ask them of yourself, your HR department, your management team, your frontline supervisors, and most important, your new employees.

1. Do we make our new hires feel welcome? Analyze step by step the first few days on the job that your new employees experience. Do you do things that communicate “We’re glad you’re here” or is it more “All right get to work, we’ve got things to do here?” Ask new hires who’ve been on the job a month or two how welcome they felt the first day, the first week, the first month. Ask them what you did that made them feel welcome and what you could do to create a more welcoming experience. In overhauling a call center orientation program, we had all the team leaders sign a welcome poster and put a sign in the lobby welcoming our new crop of call-center reps. In our evaluations, new hires reported that they never felt so welcomed in any of their other jobs.
2. Do we inspire pride? The first application of this question requires brutal honesty. Look at how well-run both your orientation program and the onboarding process as a whole are. Are they thorough, organized, compelling, and state of the art, or are they a slipshod, haphazard mess? Most organizations tolerate a level of professionalism and efficacy in their onboarding process they would never tolerate in their overall operations. The other aspect of inspiring pride relates to the next three questions. If you want to inspire your new hires, rather than leave them with buyer’s remorse, make sure your orientation program lets them know they joined a great company. The next three points explain how.
3. Do we connect them with the big picture? The more new hires understand the mission, vision, goals, and uniqueness of your organization, the more engaged they will be from the outset. If the centerpiece of your orientation program is rules, regulations, and logistical minutiae, you can guarantee they will have second thoughts about their job choice. Orientation programs that don’t emphasize the big picture rob the organization of perhaps the greatest value new hires bring to their new employer: enthusiasm and the desire to make a difference.
4. Do we show them how much they matter? Engaging employees from the outset requires more than just communicating “This is what we’re about and why we’re a great company.” It must also include “This is how you help make it all happen.” Communicating this is especially important if you want to attract and retain Gen Y employees, who place an extremely high priority on work that matters and being able to make a difference. At the call center I worked in, the original orientation and training focused on the technical side of the call center reps’ jobs for the first couple of weeks. The message? “Your jobs are about processing transactions. In this company, you’re a worker bee.” Mindful that what we emphasize communicates a message to employees about what’s important, we changed the order of topics. Day one was devoted to how important their jobs were and how, to our customers, they were Acme Insurance (obviously not the real name of the company.) Think orientation programs you’ve attended and what difference it would have made for you if you heard how vital your role was from day one, rather than hour after hour of transactional, technical information.
5. Do we collect and share stories? Great companies communicate their greatness through great stories. Whether it’s Nordstrom’s legendary customer service stories (remember the one about the customer returning the tires?) or Southwest Airline’s legendary customer service and work environment, greatness is communicated not through PowerPoint lectures, charts, and graphs, but through stories that touch the heart and capture the imagination. One of the best things you can do to upgrade your orientation program is collect stories from your employees about experiences they’ve had that embody the unique personality of your company; convey what it’s like to work at your company; illustrate the great things your company does; and demonstrate how employees make a difference. Share these with your new hires. Better still, have the people who told you these stories come in and share them. Doing so accomplishes several useful objectives. First, it creates a more engaging, inspiring orientation programs. Second, it communicates to current employees they are an important part of helping new hires come onboard. Third, it gives frontline employees the chance to be a star and informal leader.
6. Do we make our orientation program interesting and interactive? Many, if not most, orientation programs are about as interesting as watching cement solidify. Besides being boring, such programs send a disturbing message to your new employees. Such programs say “You just joined a company that doesn’t know how to do things right.” Think of boring orientation programs you’ve attended and what you thought about your new employer. There’s too much information available on how to make learning fun and interactive to excuse old-fashioned, boring data dumps.
7. Do we make our process employee-centric or employer-centric? Borrow from the playbook of great customer-service companies: design the customer experience from the customer’s perspective. In this case, analyze your onboarding process from the new hire’s perspective. When you’ve been with the same company for awhile, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to not know what’s going on, who to go to for help, and the desire to not be seen as a high-maintenance employee. To design your process from the new hire’s perspective, ask them for their perspective. Smart companies, like Northeast Delta Dental, awarded the Fourth Best Small Company to Work For in the U.S., do this. They continually ask new employees for feedback on how to make their onboarding process more user-friendly and how to more effectively address the needs of their new employees.
8. Have we broken our orientation program down into bite-sized chunks? Think of times you’ve endured orientation programs that were info-dump ultra-marathons. How much did you retain? How impressed were you with your new employer? You knew that was a stupid, ineffective way to impart information. Your new hires will have the same opinion. As one manager I interviewed wisely noted, “With today’s employees, just as you’re rating them, they’re rating you.” By breaking your orientation program into digestible chunks, you not only communicate, “We’re a company that does things right,” you also communicate, “We care about you and respect you enough to spare you a lousy, nonsensical training experience.”
9. Are we offloading as much information as we can onto our intranet (or non-digital equivalent if you don’t have an intranet)? Have you ever had someone give you detailed, step-by-step instructions days, weeks, or months before you would actually need them? How helpful was that? By offloading as much information as you can so it’s available in an “as-needed” basis, you are being more efficient and effective. You’re also once again communicating to new hires that you know how to do things right.
10. Do we make it easy for new hires to get the information they need? Having a comprehensive intranet gives your new hires a greater sense of security that they can find the information they need when they need it. This, combined with a culture that makes it ok to ask for help, reduces the anxiety of being in a new environment, not knowing the ropes, but not wanting to be considered a pain in the neck. Do you have both a comprehensive knowledge base and a friendly, “glad to help you” culture? If you do, your new employees don’t waste valuable time and energy fretting about how they are going to find the information they need.
11. Do we make it easy for new hires to tell us how they’re doing?and how we’re doing? In companies that have a “suck it up” and “sink or swim” mentality, new hires learn quickly that it’s best to keep their mouths shut. Their employer never hears about what they do that alienates their new hires (until the exit interview, and often not even then). Designer Blinds, an Omaha-based company, reduced turnover from 200% to 8%, in part by instituting what they call the “Entrance Interview.” After analyzing its turnover statistics, it discovered that most of its new hires were leaving between 90 and 180 days into their employee experience. So rather than wait to find out why they were leaving in the exit interview, the company decided to prevent them from leaving in the first place. It did this by instituting the Entrance Interview. These are now held prior to the 90-day “witching hour,” so they could find out what their new hires needed, how they could help them be successful, and so on. At Northeast Delta Dental, at 90 days, new hires get to have their “20 Questions with Connie” meeting. At this meeting, new hires sit down with Connie Roy-Czychowski, VP of HR, and give her feedback on every aspect of the onboarding process and their work experience.
12. Do we have an effective mentoring program? A good program also lets the person doing the mentoring win, since recognition plays a major role in employee engagement. Mentoring also provides tremendous value to current employees because it gives them a chance to develop coaching, supervisory, and leadership skills. Given that professional development and skill portfolio expansion are especially high priorities for today’s workers, a mentoring program also aids your efforts at retaining and engaging your current employees.
13. Do we help our managers do their part well? As Gallup’s research has shown, when it comes to employee engagement and performance, it’s all about the boss. More than any other factor influencing employee engagement and performance, an employee’s supervisor plays the most important role. Helping supervisors understand how to create a positive, productive, inspiring work experience is not only the foundation of a high-performance workplace, it’s a “must” if you want an effective onboarding process. If HR simply asks supervisors to help their new hires get started without helping them do it right, they won’t. Make sure your supervisors receive training, support, checklists, and so on, so they cover all the bases. Companies like Bensonwood Homes, a New Hampshire-based company, and Northeast Delta Dental have detailed checklists for supervisors that outline what they should do the first day, first week, etc.

One Final Point

Business sage Jim Rohn has a simple saying that conveys much wisdom: “It’s not what you know, it’s what you do with what you know that makes a difference in your life.”

My hope is that as you read through these questions, you didn’t simply ask yourself if you knew these factors were important. They’re pretty common sense (yet despite this, rarely done). Ask yourself, your HR department, your management team, your frontline supervisors, and most important, your new hires whether you are actually doing these. Then involve all to make sure you can answer each with a confident “absolutely.”

If your organization is doing a great job at new-hire orientation and/or the onboarding process as a whole, let me know.

This article originally appeared January 17, 2007.

Agency folks tend to see the corporate world as bureaucratic and slow to make decisions; more specifically, they see most corporate recruiters as lacking the requisite skills and bare-knuckle tactics required to make things happen.

On the other hand, corporate recruiters tend to see agency people as mercenary, often unable to be trusted, and as slick salespeople who just want to close the deal.

As someone who has been on both sides, I smile as I write this, as I can assure you that both perceptions are, to a great degree, correct.

Many corporate recruiters want to compete with their agency brethren, but this lofty achievement is akin to losing weight; so very optimistic for the first few days but ultimately not doable because losing weight is so very hard to do.

Sadly, so is competing with agency recruiters, because you have to think differently if you want to be different, and most corporate recruiters will have to be very different to make this transition.

For openers, I urge you to consider the following concept as it relates to money, the ultimate driver of our behavior. If it makes you shiver to the bone, consider it your introduction to the agency way of thinking and doing business.

Forget the comfortable paycheck. There is no meaningful check to speak of, so let’s think on terms of a pay-cut to the tune of 75%. You must close deals to get paid, because you are no longer in the business of trying to make hires; you are in the business of getting it done, because that’s how agencies make money. No deals equals no money; no money equals no food. (See “Eat What You Kill: Using the Sales Model to Improve Your Recruiting” for further insight.)

Now that compensation is out of the way, consider the following tenets, presented as two categories, Attitude/Mindset and Action/Task, as tools for the change required if you really want to make this transition to more effective recruiting:

Attitude/Mindset: Change How You Think

• Push hard. If you want to compete, come to work on fire every day and be the driving force behind moving every deal forward as far as possible; every? single? day because a deal that sits is a deal that dies. If you are not making a hiring manager a bit crazy, you are probably not pushing hard enough. (Believe me, they will not fire you for getting people hired, but they just might if you don’t! Agency people make placements first and friends second! If hiring managers are not responsive, see “8 Secrets to Dealing with Non-Responsive Hiring Managers”.)
• Reject “I don’t know.” Hiring managers must know, because you can’t do your job of getting people hired without their direction. An “I don’t know” means no forward progress, and that is not good. If you want to compete, find out what the candidate is thinking as fast as possible, and then do the same with the hiring manager. Catch them both right after the interview; they are busy but so are you. I often wonder why recruiters act as though the time of the hiring manager is more important then their own. (See “Recruiters as Business Builders”.) Ask the hiring manager, “Can the candidate do the job?” If the candidate can do the job, you should be talking with the hiring manager about moving forward. If the candidate can’t do the job, determine why and adjust your recruiting as it relates to future candidates.
• Turn “I don’t know” into “I do know.” Some hiring managers simply do not know and never will until it is too late, so these folks need your help. (Ever have one come to you a few weeks after a candidate has practically died of old age asking if they can make them an offer?) Not knowing is incongruous with the reality of business, as they are managers and as such they are running a business and making decisions is part of their job. (Think Gates or Jobs can make decisions, or do you think they just mull things over for a few weeks?) However, if they really do not know, help them. Use the line I use: “Ok, let’s go through this together.” Sit with them for awhile and go over the requirements they laid out in the position profile, asking whether that person has that skill and to what degree. Next, look at the experience they requested and go over the candidate’s background from that perspective, one type of experience at a time. Lead the hiring manager in this way and you will help them to think things through in terms of what they really need, and help them to come to a decision on what to do with that candidate. Don’t be surprised if you end up with a totally different search profile, but do not be disturbed either, as it might be the first time anyone helped the manager to think through what they really need in the candidate you are trying to locate.
• No sleeping. The answer, “I just need to sleep on it for a few days” makes me nuts. There’s little to gain from sleeping on it. On the other hand, if the hiring manager needs more information to make a decision, that’s acceptable. Have they used JAVA Beans in financial applications? Did they design comp packages in a team or alone? Can they speak Chinese? What version of SAP do they use? It does not matter what they need to know; get it and get it fast. Before you run out the door, ask the hiring manager, “When I get you this information, will you be prepared to make a decision as to a next step?” If the answer is yes, get the information. If the answer is no, ask the hiring manager, “What other information do you need such that when I come back from my conversation with the candidate, you will be able to make a decision on the next step?”
• When talking to candidates, understand that “no” simply means “maybe.” This bullet alone can fill multiple articles and most books on sales will back up my statement. No is a normal reaction to the unexpected call from the recruiter. No is simply what the candidate says when they have no idea what else to say. Frankly, no is not a word I can relate to. How can you decline if you do not even know what you are saying no to in the first place? “No” is an invitation to listen, probe, and continue the conversation. Getting to “yes” is part of every salesperson’s job and the first “no” is just the starting point in the process of meaningful dialogue and the presentation of a great opportunity.

Action/Task: Change What You Do

• Ask pointed questions. It is the job of an agency person, after an interview, to find out whether the candidate is “up” or “down.” Up is ready for the next step; down is no longer under consideration. Let’s assume that the interview is over, you have spoken to the candidate, and they are interested in moving forward. That means the candidate has made a decision and now it is the responsibility of the hiring manager to do the same. To determine the next step as it relates to the candidate, ask about their reaction, the next step, and what you should tell the candidate. If they do not have the answers right after the interview, that is okay, but they need to have them within a day or two. John F. Kennedy once said, “Not to decide is to decide.” Please do not let this be your fate.
• Play take-a-way. At times, the managers will simply not be able to make a decision, and as a result, you are stuck. To get unstuck, tell the hiring manager, “I have an idea: let me give the candidate a call and tell them you are not interested.” Then get up and head to the nearest phone. If the manager agrees, you have saved a ton of time and grief. If the manager balks, there is your decision. It may be forcing a decision, but at times, it simply must be done.
• Send fewer but better candidates. In my days in the agency business, you sent three qualified candidates. More is not better, because the hiring manager begins to forget which candidate did what and loses the ability to put a face with a name. Give a hiring manager 20 great candidates and it will be a long time before you see a decision or a placement. Provide three great candidates who can do the job, and be done with it.
• Get on the phone. I know you’re tired of hearing how in the old days we had no shoes and ate catsup sandwiches without bread. But trust me, there was no Internet and no computers. As a result, we became great on the phone or we left the business. Agency recruiters are running and gunning all day long, and the phone is a big part of how to make things happen. You connect on the phone, form relationships, share a laugh, convey urgency, and establish trust. Your phone line is your life line and link to the candidates you need to reach. That will never happen in an email.
• Learn to source passive candidates. It is hard to get on the phone if you have no one to call so I strongly suggest you take a workshop to become a Certified Internet Recruiter.
• No more meetings (almost). In my days in the agency business, aside from weekly training, we had two meetings per week totaling approximately 60 minutes. First, we met Monday mornings to discuss who on the team was going after what new accounts. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, we discussed candidates in play and next-step strategies. (Heaven help the agent who had nothing new to report.) Of course, it is good to spend time with hiring managers in short meetings, but the rule of the day is simple: if the time spent in the meeting does not support coaching on recruiting issues or closing deals, you should be using your time on things that support filling positions.
• Do a great interview. Read “10 Things Recruiters Should Know About Every Candidate They Interview”. The more you know about the candidate you are representing, the more things will fall into place.
• Forget active or passive candidates. Learn to think in terms of candidates who are qualified or not qualified. Your job is to find the best candidate for the job and close the deal; great candidates come from many different places.
• Give great service. I tell clients they can call me anytime, and I do mean anytime. Respond instantly to hiring managers, always knowing the when and what of the next step in the process. Then, make that next step happen.
• Know the process or develop one. Everything goes better if there is a process in place because it removes the unknown for the candidate, gives the hiring manager a road map to follow, and helps you maintain some degree of control. According to Scott Weston, author of HR Excellence, “Having and articulating a hiring process means the recruiter needs to act as a project manager; be able to establish a rough timeline with a series of milestones for each stage of the process. This makes the process clear for everyone involved, sets reasonable expectations, and encourages joint accountability with hiring managers.”
• Sell the company. Agents start selling the opportunity and company as soon as they see that the candidate is viable. You need to do the same because if you do not create a dramatic value proposition, there is no reason for the candidate to change jobs. Read “Selling the Company” for more information.
• Be up on changes in the candidate’s life. If you think that the candidate will always volunteer this information because you have a “great relationship” with them, you are in for a surprise. Read “What Has Changed Since Last We Spoke?” for more information.
• Control the offer. Pre-close the candidate before the offer is made, and do all that you can to be the one to make the offer. If you can’t actually make the offer, try to understand what the offer is before it is made. Hiring managers will, for reasons that are all over the board, do things such as lowball candidates or change titles. This might not bother you, but to those who are sensitive to these considerations, it can kill the deal really quickly. You have probably worked far too hard to lose a deal in the 11th hour. Control the offer and you increase your chances of a successful placement. (See “Close the Deal and Land the Candidate” for added insight.)
• Prepare for counteroffers. There are few things more painful than getting that phone call on a Sunday night from the candidate declining the offer. It is even worse when you know that you did not fully prepare for the counteroffer. Honestly, it is a debilitating event that can send you spinning. Read “What Great Recruiters Do to Prevent Counteroffers” to get the full story.
• Say you’re sorry. If you are as successful as the best agency people, you will at times step on some toes in your attempt to make things happen. In the event that anyone might be miffed, tell them you are sorry if you drove them crazy. Explain that making hires can be stressful. Soon, the new candidate you hired will begin to do great work and make the hiring manager so happy they had you to make this hire happen. Bottom line? They will get over it.

The reality is that not all corporate recruiters will be able to make all of these changes. If I were not an agency recruiter in the days when my kids needed shoes, I might not be able to do it either.

However, all of us can become better to one degree or another, and I do believe it is worth a try if you really want to compete with those in the agency business. Besides, if you get good at this, you can always go over to the agency side and at times, double your income.

Regardless of where your career takes you, it is nice to know you can compete at a higher and more effective level.

This checklist continues last week’s article about comparing your onboarding program against the design components of a “world-class” onboarding program.

Part 3: Operational Design Components

The last level of components for world-class onboarding programs is still important, even though they are more operational in nature. They include the following:

25. A written and integrated plan. World-class onboarding programs have a short written plan that is integrated with the overall business plan, the HR plan, and the recruiting plan. In addition, hiring managers and those impacted by the onboarding program should be involved upfront in the program design and planning process.
26. A compelling business case. The program design must include the development of a compelling business case that convinces the chief financial officer, as well as line managers, that the onboarding program will directly improve their individual business results.
27. Prioritized jobs. Because there is never enough budget, world-class onboarding programs prioritize and focus their talent, time, and resources toward onboarding individuals in mission-critical jobs, critical business units, and in jobs with a significant revenue impact.
28. Continuous improvement and testing of system effectiveness. The onboarding program should have a formal process for continuously assessing and improving its processes and output results by assessing each onboarding success and failure and then feeding back the information to process managers. In addition, World-class onboarding programs periodically use “mystery shoppers” to identify system problems.
29. Ownership by management. The onboarding program design should make it clear that onboarding problems and processes are owned by hiring managers. Managers must realize that they suffer the most when poor onboarding takes place.
30. Individual accountability. Responsible individuals must also be rewarded or punished based primarily on program performance.
31. Best practice sharing. The onboarding program must have a formal design component for the rapid identification, sharing between business units, and the adoption of best practices related to onboarding.
32. Risk-taking for improvement. The onboarding program must have design features that encourage periodic experimentation, pilot tests, split samples, and reasonable risk-taking, as long as rapid learning occurs after a failure.
33. Data-based decision-making. Major onboarding program design and resource decisions must be made based primarily on data, rather than just on emotion or historical practice.
34. Uses the latest technology. The onboarding process should be paperless and offer additional information on an exclusive onboarding website.
35. External recognition. Although world-class programs maintain their competitive advantage by keeping their critical design components relatively secret, world-class onboarding programs eventually do receive some external recognition. This includes winning ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards or Optimas awards; being highlighted in major HR, recruiting, and general business publications; being included in benchmark studies; and/or being featured in academic case studies.
36. The program avoids common onboarding program killers. Some examples that keep your program from reaching world-class status or may cause it to fail:
    • Letting the program be run 100% by the benefits function, which almost guarantees “death by form” (i.e., boredom and loss of enthusiasm as a result of filling out forms all day).
    • Over-reliance on videotapes and slideshows, with little time for interaction.
    • Not having a “local component” of onboarding at the departmental level in addition to the corporate component.
    • Failing to make effective onboarding as part of a manager’s performance appraisal and bonus process.
    • Failing to reward the onboarding program manager and the manager of each independent HR and non-HR component of the process, based on program performance.

Part 4: Program Metrics

37. Corporate metrics for assessing world-class onboarding and orientation. Onboarding is no different from any other business process: if it is to meet its goals and continually improve, it must use metrics and measures. Because the language of business is dollars, all key metrics must also be converted to dollar impact. Key metrics for onboarding should include the average time to minimum productivity, average retention rates during the first three months, manager and new-hire satisfaction rates with the onboarding process, and the program’s return-on-investment. The following is a list of possible corporate metrics that can be used to determine whether your program is world class. I recommend that you work with the CFO’s office early on to ensure that the metrics you pick have credibility and will be relied on by senior management. Some of the possible metrics you might consider include:

    Business impact metrics

    • The average time in days it takes to reach the minimum productivity expectations for new hires (often compared by job family).
    • Voluntary turnover rates of new hires in the first six months.
    • Diversity voluntary turnover rates in the first six months.
    • Percent of involuntary terminations of new hires in the first six months.
    • The percentage of times that the proscribed (needed) development and training classes were available to the new hire within two weeks of hire date (and that were successfully completed).
    • Number of referrals by new hires that are hired by the organization with them six months of their starting date.
    • When tested in a random sample, the percentage of designated “essential information” that is actually retained by new hires after one month.
    • The percentage of hires, when surveyed after six months on the job, who rank onboarding as a “major or critical contributor” to their performance.
    • The percentage of hires who left the firm within six months, who cited onboarding (in a post-exit survey), as a contributor to their leaving/failure.
    • Since one of the goals of onboarding is to identify, and eventually eliminate, barriers to productivity, you need a metric to track the number of barriers that new hires encountered that were identified and how long before these barriers were reduced or eliminated.
    • The dollar impact of onboarding activities on the business and the program’s return on investment.

    Satisfaction measures

    • New-hire satisfaction rates (including separate metrics on high priority hires and diversity hires) with both corporate and “local” onboarding processes after one month and six months (Note: this metric can reflect onboarding’s impact on your employment brand).
    • Percentage of hiring managers who are satisfied with onboarding (from a survey).

    Program delivery

    • The percentage of new hires who had no trouble receiving their first paycheck, IDs, receiving benefits, or receiving telephone and computer equipment.
    • When surveyed in a random sample, the percentage of designated “essential onboarding program elements” that were not delivered to new hires within the first month.
    • Average number of days, after an acceptance offer, before onboarding/orientation begins.
    • The percentage of new hires who receive “customized information” that fit their particular needs, business unit, and/ or job family.

    Other

    • Have a separate metric for every major onboarding program goal you have set. This data covered in these metrics is used both to provide evidence to senior management of the value of great onboarding/orientation and also provide HR with an opportunity to further refine the onboarding process and to mass-customize the information that is provided to future new hires.

Part 5: How Does Onboarding Differ From Orientation?

38. Clearly defining the difference between onboarding and orientation. Because there is disagreement as to how the two programs differ, it is important to define how onboarding differs from orientation. The traditional process of getting new hires up to speed has been known for years as orientation. More recently, onboarding has become a variation on the term orientation, and has become more popular. Although there is no official definition of the two terms, here is the distinction that I have found to be the most useful:
    

    Orientation generally means…

    The term orientation has for years meant the narrower range of corporate activities controlled by the orientation coordinator, the payroll, the employee ID, and the benefits departments related to “sign up’s” and providing basic information. The goals of traditional orientation are relatively narrow. They are to get you on the payroll, signed up for benefits, and to give you a brief overview of the company’s culture, products, and values. Most orientation programs are corporate-driven and have no “local” component.

    Onboarding generally means…

    The broader term onboarding has a more comprehensive reach and a broader perspective. The primary difference between onboarding and orientation is that onboarding has as its goal decreasing the time it takes for a new hire to reach the minimum expected productivity level on the job. This business impact and results perspective is the primary differentiator from orientation, which has a process focus.

    Onboarding differs from orientation in the following ways:

    • Goal. The primary goal is to get new hires productive as fast as possible.
    • Integration. It coordinates and integrates both HR and non-HR functions to ensure there is no delay in reaching productivity (i.e., payroll, benefits, employee ID, computer access, telecommunications, and training).
    • Local component. It includes a “local” component where managers continue the onboarding process to ensure that the employee meets the right people, knows how they will be assessed and rewarded, understands the business goals, and learns all necessary resources.
    • Continuous process. It is a continuous process that starts the minute the person accepts the offer and it is a continuous process that might go on for weeks rather than just one day.
    • Metrics. Results are measured using performance metrics and they are then quantified into dollars. The primary measure of success is the time to productivity for new hires but in addition, ROI, retention rates, and both manager and new-hire satisfaction are constantly measured.
    • Feedback loop. The causes of successes and failures are communicated to ensure that every process continually improves.
    • A primary function. Rather than being considered an overhead or back-office function, onboarding is given primary status as a business impact function that directly impacts business results. Although others are involved, it is “owned” by line managers because it is their business results that suffer if onboarding is not done correctly.
    • Customization. The onboarding process prioritizes jobs, new hires in business units, and focuses the most time and resources on those who have the biggest impact on business results and where great onboarding has a significant impact on decreasing time to productivity. In addition, there are variations in the onboarding process to provide different information and in the appropriate formats to diverse individuals and individuals working in different geographic in business unit locations.
    • Remote. While most orientation is done face-to-face, onboarding programs include the capability to onboard individuals remotely using technology.

Final comments

Most onboarding programs are poorly designed and have limited goals; as a result, they produce limited results. This is true even though there is data to show that great onboarding can improve productivity, retention, error rates, customer satisfaction, and even your employment brand. If your organization is ready to break away from the pack in this underappreciated area, use this checklist to begin your design process.

World-class is a term that is often used and misused by those in human resources. It’s important to realize upfront that good or even very good onboarding programs are quite common, but they are also quite different from the few existing “world-class” programs.

Almost by definition, the number of world-class programs in any field is extremely small. For example, to be considered as world-class in an Olympic sport, you must win a gold, silver, or bronze medal. Such an achievement is truly unique and the winners of this world-class status always number below one-half of 1% of the total number of participants in the sport.

Anyone attempting to design a world-class onboarding program should also realize that the program must include features and produce results that literally only a handful of onboarding programs in the entire world can achieve. As a result, the requirements for qualifying as a true “world-class onboarding program” are by definition, strenuous and quite difficult to meet.

If you’re trying to move beyond “very good” and instead develop something that is truly “world-class”, there are design features your onboarding program should include. In researching and writing my latest book on onboarding and orientation tools, I developed the following checklist with 38 essential program components, which are segmented into four distinct parts.

Part 1: Primary Strategic Goals of Onboarding

The items in this section are the primary strategic goals that serve as the foundation for world-class onboarding programs. Incidentally, they also differentiate onboarding from the more traditional “orientation” approach. The program should have clear and measurable goals that are communicated to all. In addition, the goals should also be prioritized or weighted.

A world-class onboarding program must have components to fit each and every one of these primary goals:

1. Make world-class the goal. The onboarding program has as its primary goal to become “world-class” and industry leading. Onboarding program features and elements are developed and updated by comparing current design components on a side-by-side basis to the attributes of benchmark “best in the world” or “best in class” programs.
2. Shorten new-hire time to productivity. Supporting the primary goal, the onboarding program is to impact the business by getting new hires up to the minimum expected productivity level as soon as possible. Each day of delay in achieving minimum productivity may equate to the loss of thousands of dollars in revenue if the product-development life-cycle or sales function is impacted. Delay in time to productivity can also frustrate new hires and lead to less than desirable viral marketing. Although providing information and getting forms filled out is necessary, it should not be the primary goal. Instead, having a business impact by increasing productivity and reducing initial errors and accidents is the primary goal. Other important goals should include retention, increasing referrals, gathering intelligence, and improving the company’s external employment brand.
3. Integrate and coordinate all onboarding efforts. World-class onboarding programs make a special effort to integrate and coordinate what are traditionally independent activities. The program needs a process that integrates traditionally independent efforts including benefits enrollment, payroll registration, technology set-up, security registration, business supply delivery, office assignments, new-hire training, and local onboarding activities at the departmental level.
4. Create a competitive advantage. The onboarding program is designed to provide a clear and continuous competitive advantage for the firm. As a result, competitive analysis is conducted periodically in order to assess specifically where the firm’s onboarding approach is superior and inferior, in order to expand the firm’s competitive advantage.
5. Reinforce the employment brand. Immediately after accepting an offer, as well as after starting a new job, new hires can get dozens of calls and e-mails from their friends, family, and colleagues. How the new hire is treated during this crucial period has a direct impact on what they say when colleagues ask about the new environment. If they hear positive things about your firm, their friends would also want to join your firm. Negative comments can also negatively impact the over all image of the firm and even future product sales. In order to reinforce and build the brand, provide the new hire with compelling, repeatable stories, comparison information, and examples that differentiate and highlight what makes the organization an excellent place to work.
6. Learn how best to manage the individual. Identify what motivates and frustrates new hires, and learn why they quit their last job. This enables the new boss to manage and motivate them more effectively. It is equally important for the manager to find out what expectations the new employee has in the areas of training, promotion, and their preferred communication styles.
7. Make managers’ expectations clear. During the first week, it is important for the new hire’s manager to make sure that the new employee is aware of both company and departmental expectations. Provide information on corporate success measures, departmental plans, strategies and goals, how performance will be assessed, and bonus and promotion criteria. Specifically, reinforce what is expected during their first week and month on the job.
8. Gather referral names. An often overlooked but critical goal of any world-class program is capturing critical information from the new hire. Most important, gather names of any potential top performers that the new hire might refer. It is also an opportune time to solicit the help of the new hire in contacting and eventually recruiting referrals.
9. Keep new hires from changing their mind. Although the candidate has accepted, if the sale isn’t reinforced, he or she could rethink the acceptance and instead accept another offer or be convinced to return to his or her previous job. Provide the new hire with an experience that is 100% positive, with an atmosphere akin to a celebration and a welcome ceremony, rather than a marathon exercise in bureaucracy.
10. Involve the family to bolster retention. A new job can impact the whole family, so provide the new employee’s support team with anything that helps build their loyalty (remember their loyalty might positively impact retention). Potential loyalty builders include providing them with a listing of the company offerings that impact family and friends, small gifts, branded items, T-shirts, samples of company products, or even having a separate family orientation.
11. Improve the recruiting process. New hires are prime sources for identifying what worked and what didn’t in recruiting. Ask new hires directly during onboarding what source motivated them to apply, as well as what information was the most persuasive that led to accepting the offer. Also, ask what part of the recruiting process almost caused a new hire to reject the offer.
12. Meet diverse needs. Because corporations make a special effort to hire diverse individuals, there must be variations in the onboarding process (either different information, the same information presented in a different way, or the information presented by different individuals) to ensure that the complete range of new hires get the information they need to become productive rapidly. This diversity might include slight variations based on geographic region, business unit, job level, or job family.
13. Have global capabilities. The onboarding program must work effectively in all locations around the world and be designed so that some elements of it can be tailored to meet local needs.

Part 2: Strategic Design Components

The following primary strategic design components serve as the foundation for world-class onboarding programs:

14. A “pre-start” component. The onboarding program provides information, online access, computer and telephone equipment, business cards, and an opportunity to sign up for benefits prior to the new hire’s first day on the job.
15. An extended onboarding process. A world-class onboarding process extends well beyond the traditional first few days after the employee starts and continues as long as six months. By stretching out the process, you help to ensure that the new hire is not overwhelmed and that frustrations and questions that do not arise until weeks later can be addressed.
16. The manager is present. The most common fault at departmental-level onboarding (and the one with the most negative impact) is not having the employee’s direct manager present on the first day with a plan of action for the first month of the new hire’s employment. By not setting the expectation that the manager must be available with the plan on the first day, the organization is almost guaranteeing frustration and extending time to reach minimum productivity. Invariably, in the absence of the manager, new hires are shown their cubical, given a manual to read, and told to be patient until their manager returns.
17. The CEO is present. The chief executive officer or top local executive participates and appears “live” (even if it is a remote broadcast) at onboarding sessions on a scheduled basis.
18. Online capability. It is common in today’s world of business for some individuals to work remotely, work on night or weekend shifts, or work in global operations. As a result, it is essential that world-class programs contain a component that allows onboarding to be completed 100% online, when a face-to-face meeting is not possible.
19. No delay in offering onboarding. Organizations that hire a small number of individuals frequently postpone providing most onboarding components until a large group of new hires can participate in a single session. Unfortunately, any delay can negatively impact new-hire productivity, as well as providing the new hire with an opportunity to make mistakes or learn poor habits that will later be difficult to erase. As a result, world-class programs offer online onboarding or do not delay onboarding beyond two weeks after the employee is hired.
20. The process periodically identifies frustrations. Because “sudden quitting” within the first three months is a real problem, the process should include at least one scheduled opportunity (whether face-to-face or anonymous) for the new hire to provide a list of the things that are frustrating them and keeping them from being their most productive. Include identifying positive factors that if added, could increase their motivation and productivity.
21. Opportunities to ask “stupid” questions. One of the most common things that prevent an employee from reaching productivity is that they are afraid to ask questions. One of the primary drivers of this fear is that the new hire feels that asking “dumb” questions might be inadvertently revealing that they were the wrong person to hire. World-class programs take that fear as a given and provide both direct and anonymous opportunities for new hires to get information and ask questions as long as six months after hire. Provide mentors, anonymous chat rooms or websites, pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings with a manager, an online glossary of key company specific terms and acronyms, or a photo gallery to help identify key individuals.
22. A growth plan is provided. Most professionals accept a job, quit a job, or are motivated to perform at a higher level by their desire to continually learn, grow, and be challenged. As a result, world-class onboarding programs require that the new hire’s manager provides them with a personalized learning, challenge, and growth plan. This plan includes whatever immediate training they might need, who they feel that they need to meet, where they would like to be in 12, 24, or 36 months, as well as what the organization needs them to learn. Include personal learning and growth goals. In addition, periodically monitor these plans to ensure that they are both realistic and effective.
23. Debriefing to improve. World-class programs debrief all new hires in key positions after six months. Ask what worked well, what didn’t work well, and what information would have been helpful. That information is fed back to program and new-hire managers in order to drive continuous improvement.
24. Culture is reinforced through examples. Because new hires can “dilute” an organization’s culture, it is critical that new hires truly understand the organization’s culture and how they are expected to act in certain situations. Research shows that the best way to reinforce these values is through telling compelling stories that illustrate these expected actions.

Next week: Look for 25-38, operational design components, program metrics, and how onboarding differs from orientation.