Effective Onboarding

Onboarding is the term used in business for bringing on new employees and getting them up-to-speed.  Throughout my career, I've developed a variety of onboarding activities--everything from 1- to 2-week immersion workshops to simple, pre-employment checklists.

However, over the last few years, these activities have become more formal, depending on the specific needs of my clients, most of whom are no longer satisfied hiring people and letting them learn on-the-job without any structure.  Some of my experiences were:

• Archstone-Smith, where I worked with Joe Durzo and his staff at to establish and formalize "Training Communities" where new employees hired to work in apartment communities would first be sent to learn the key aspects of their jobs through supervised activities and videos.
• CertainTeed, where I implemented a process described by Steve Rosenbaum and Jim Williams in their book, Learning Paths.  Steve and I later led a seminar about that process at the ISPI Annual Conference.
• Monster, where, working with Linda Duchaine, we developed several activities related to onboarding an entire sales staff that was added with the acquisition of HotJobs.
• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where I worked again with Linda Duchaine, as well as Nicole Fromm and Susan Ryan, to develop some self-paced activities and immersion training for new account executives.

In each of these cases, the goals were simple:

• Reduce the time it takes new employees to achieve the desired level of performance.
• Quickly weed out those new employees who, for whatever reason, are not bound to be effective at their jobs.

Of course, the resultant self-paced activities and formal training provide the added benefit of being used by managers as "prescriptive" remedies for those existing employees who may be falling behind in a specific skill or knowledge area.  I should also note that how a company approaches onboarding has a direct impact on the long-term success of that company.

Which leads me to the lessons I've learned with regard to onboarding processes.  Overall they are too numerous to describe here, but below are five, key points that should be considered when developing any onboarding process:

1. The process needs to work for the organization.  I believe that the formal, Learning Paths process outlined in Rosenbaum and Williams's book is probably the most effective, but it also involves a greater commitment of time, energy, and involvement than most organizations want to provide.  In many cases, my clients have asked me to simply interview key people and develop an approach and materials based on those interviews.
2. Management involvement, at all levels, is key to success.  For any onboarding process to work, there need to be activities completed by each employee, as well as corresponding activities performed by a manager or mentor.  In addition, the approach must be actively endorsed and supported by the top of the house, or it is doomed to failure.
3. Identify and utilize best practices.  With regard to any activity a company wants its employees to perform, there are usually several ways it is already being performed in the field.  The key is to work with the company to determine which are the "best practices," and implement them on a company-wide basis.
4. The logical learning order is not always chronological.  Even though an activity is something an employee needs to know as soon as possible, learning it may rely on his or her knowing other things first.  Therefore, the onboarding process should first focus on the skills, knowledge, and attitude an employee needs in order to perform the higher-level skill or behavioral sets they are being asked to demonstrate.
5. Listen, test, and modify.  An effective onboarding process is never finalized; it is constantly in flux based on changing needs, conditions, and personnel.  If you want to be effective at onboarding, keep listening to what the organization is telling you, repeatedly test to ensure that the activities are right and relevant, and make modifications as needed.