I know many people like today’s paper because it is Friday and everybody likes Fridays except of course if your deadline is Saturday and you are one of those who “love to work under pressure”. What this means is that you are just doing the work that should have been done two weeks ago. I wish you all the best and I know you will still do this the next time you have a deadline. Except of course, if you partner with someone who plans and sticks to the plan. The chances are that because of that deadline, you will not get to read this article till next week. Wishing you all the best whichever way.
Today, we are going to be talking about onboarding. It is the action or process of integrating a new employee into an organisation or familiarising a new customer or client with one’s products or services. In this case, we are talking about staff, not customers. Onboarding enables new hires to quickly and easily become proficient in their roles by learning the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviour needed to function in their new place of work. Very many organisations ignore, onboarding completely or they limit it to filling out some forms and watching some videos that were recorded too many years before and are no longer relevant.
This is a problem because onboarding is an extension of the candidate’s experience and when executed effectively leads to sustained engagement and faster time to proficiency. Few companies that do this, end it after the first week. This timing is not enough to get the new employees up to speed on all that will help them.
Many companies now believe that “reboarding” an internal hire is just as important as onboarding an external hire, but very few effectively reboard employees after they take on a new role. Usually, in the few onboarding organisations, it is the HR department that designs and implements the onboarding programs. This should not be the case and HR is increasingly seeking input from business units and senior leaders for more effectiveness.
Onboarding needs to be added to the overall budget for each year. Once there is a manpower plan, it should be easy to know how many onboarding sessions there will be in a year. Except of course if an employee leaves unexpectedly. This should also be planned for.
When your organisation invests in onboarding, you will: emphasise people and performance over paperwork; create partnerships among HR, the manager, and the employee; see onboarding as a continuous process and be in a position to measure outcomes; produce onboarded staff that are twice as likely to reduce new hire time to proficiency.
Onboarding has a few emphases that should be included to get the best results.
Processes and paperwork; although it should not be the main focus, new hire paperwork does have a part in any onboarding program. Orienting an employee to organisational rules, regulations, and resources reduce time to proficiency in the role.
Performance and training; during the onboarding process and throughout an employee’s tenure, managers need to set performance expectations and provide feedback to them. Developmental coaching paired with training for skill gaps enables a new hire to become proficient much more quickly in his or her role.
People and culture; a company orientation and meetings with the new team and senior leaders are the most effective people and culture onboarding practice. It is however, recommended that a combination of all the above-mentioned practices is necessary for successful onboarding.
Onboarding should extend to external hires as well as internal hires, a process that could be termed “re-boarding”. Moving to a new team or business unit within an organisation can be unfamiliar as joining a company from the outside. This lets you know that this orientation or re-orientation is not only about telling the new hires the history of the organisation even though it is a major part of it.
Amy Robinson of Interchange group says, “employers have focused on finding that talent and making a good first impression through the recruitment process, but they’re forgetting to think about what happens once the employee shows up ready to work. That is the most critical piece. Do they stay excited? Are we affirming their decision of coming to work for us in the first 30 to 60 to 90 days?”
Organisations struggle with inconsistency in onboarding practices, competing priorities, and measuring the effectiveness of onboarding programs. Managers and HR need to work together to make sure all new hires (and internal hires) are on-boarded and ensure they make time for this important work. Lack of measurement of recruitment and on-boarding effectiveness is a top challenge
Four main principles of onboarding effectiveness are; there is a formal onboarding program focused on people and culture and/or a formal onboarding program focused on training and performance. Also, onboarding is implemented by HR, and /or Learning and Development AND senior leaders and/or business units. Meanwhile, for all new internal or external hires in managerial or non-managerial roles, on-boarding processes extend to the first year and beyond.
Next week, I will be giving you step by step essentials of a good onboarding strategy that has been tried and tested by many companies. This stems from survey results of 200 companies.
OLAMIDE BALOGUN
