Chapter 7
Elephant: Your Onboarding Process Is Outdated and Impersonal
Let’s imagine that your recruiting processes are humming along. Emotionally intelligent recruiters have forged positive relationships with your candidates and told a compelling employer brand story. You’ve managed to attract your unicorn. Congratulations! You can’t wait for her to get started.
Yet something still stands in the way: your onboarding process. The unicorn must listen to a lecture about company history, watch several videos, fill out multiple forms, and work her way through a 3-inch employee handbook binder. Then she will be able to properly begin her job. Sound familiar?
So many otherwise great organizations employ this archaic onboarding process, and people accept it as a necessary evil. The hiring manager must cover all bases; forms must be filled out to protect the company in case of liability; the unicorn must learn everything about the company and its greater mission to be effective in her job. Everyone hates this process, yet few companies can imagine a different way forward—they think this is the way things must be done.
An impersonal, grindingly slow onboarding process is an unnecessary elephant keeping your unicorn from reaching her full potential. Think of the excitement you felt when you got the “yes” from your new hire. Think of the excitement the new hire feels. Her enthusiasm and passion are likely what impressed you when you met her. But now, all that energy grinds to a halt.
How might organizations skip the boring parts and make onboarding dynamic—and, dare I say, fun? In this chapter, I’ll walk you through some ways to bring your onboarding process into this century and make it an asset for your company.
A good place to begin is by examining employer brand. In the last chapter, we explored how Graeme Johnson and his team turned BT’s employer brand around and created a positive experience for candidates. What story are you telling candidates? Does that story continue to its logical next act once the candidate becomes an employee?
The onboarding process should not deviate from the employer brand. Otherwise, it’s a bait-and-switch: “Here are all the great things the company is doing, but not yet! First, you must spend two weeks filling out these mountains of paperwork!” The best onboarding processes immerse the new hire in the organization as soon as possible—not by showing outdated videos, but by quickly engaging the employee in the work.
There’s a lot at stake here. Think of it like a marriage—you pull out all the stops to “wow” your unicorn while you’re dating. But once you’ve said “I do,” you can’t simply treat your unicorn with indifference. If you do that, you lose that spark of passion that drew you together in the first place. Maybe not right away; maybe your unicorn will simply shrug off the frustration of the impersonal process. But do you want to risk it? When you’ve both got a fresh slate, why force your new hire through all the annoying rigmarole? Your unicorn is raring to go. Putting her through a drawn-out, repetitive onboarding process is like slashing the tires of a brand-new Porsche.
Tips for a Less Painful Onboarding Process
You want to take advantage of your new hire’s excitement and work to maximize it. You can do this from day one. If you sense your sluggish onboarding process is an elephant that’s preventing your unicorns from launching quickly, here are some tips to make the process more personal—and a lot more enjoyable.
Automate Whatever You Can
Recall in the previous chapter when Graeme and his team were applying with various BT competitors to test their recruiting process. If candidates felt they were having to repeat themselves frequently, 70 to 80 percent dropped out of the application. No one likes to waste time with repetitive data entry. Look into software to streamline your onboarding so that new hires don’t have to reenter information they’ve already given you.
Make It Memorable
Just because you and your unicorn are now in a committed working relationship doesn’t mean you should stop treating him with special care. How can you make your new hire’s first day memorable? Does your company have a quirky tradition that gets everyone in a loose, silly mood? Are you near an especially cool part of the city to which your new hire and his teammates can take a little field trip? Is there a particularly neat area of the building—music room, yoga studio—that you think your unicorn would like to explore or has expressed an interest in? You only have one first day at a new job. Do what you can to make your unicorn’s experience special from day one.
Connect New Hires to the Team Before They Start
Remember finding out who your roommate was going to be before your freshman year at college? Having a connection to someone—even a slight one—can ease anxiety before a new venture begins. Is it possible for you to connect your new hire to their teammates before they start, via social media or some other tool? How can you encourage and incentivize your current team to reach out to the unicorn before his start date? Be creative. If done right (rather than in a way that scares the new hire, the existing team, or both), your efforts can do more than simply make your unicorn feel welcome. If he feels more at home from the beginning, your unicorn is likely to deliver on his potential faster.
Begin Before You Begin
Let’s take that previous suggestion a step further. Rather than just connecting a new hire to his team before day one, what else can be accomplished before the start date? If you don’t yet have technology that allows for a quick and easy, automated “paperwork crunch,” can you have your new hire fill out these forms before his first day? Just like a doctor’s office asks new patients to fill out forms ahead of their visit, you can have new hires get their paperwork out of the way before beginning work. Other information to consider delivering to the new employee before day one includes:
▶ employee directory (with pictures!)
▶ orientation plan
▶ information about their soon-to-be mentor
▶ details about the office location
▶ the best spots to grab lunch, coffee, after-work groceries, dry cleaning, etc.
The more information your unicorn has, the more in control of the process he will feel.
Ask for Feedback
Chances are this is not your unicorn’s first job. How does your onboarding process compare with his past experiences? Hiring managers should consider developing a system for receiving feedback on the onboarding process, which will serve two purposes. First, candid feedback on what’s working and what isn’t will help you continually improve. Second, your unicorn will feel like his input is welcome from the very beginning. This will only work, of course, if you are actually interested in the new hire’s feedback and communicate this openly. When a new employee (or any member of your team) gives you her opinion, you must thank her for her truthfulness. Most people are scared to give criticism, no one more so than a brand-new employee. Yet the faster you can get to a place of honest sharing with your new hire, the more quickly you’ll be able to drive toward goals together. (We’ll talk more about giving and receiving feedback in Chapter 8.)
Embed Coaching in Your Onboarding
I once coached a new hire at a large tech company who had worked there for months without meeting with the hiring manager. Everyone was plowing ahead with the best intentions, attempting to do their work without actually having formed relationships (the way it often works for remote offices). In cases like these, it’s helpful to have a coach or another third party say, “Everybody STOP!” I was able to fill this role, as I was unattached to the emotional currents and office politics of this particular workplace. In that instance, I served a simple function: merely bringing everyone (the chief people officer, the CEO, the new hire) together to ensure that all parties were on the same page. I was the connecter, reminding the chief people officer that the new hire was an actual person! It’s easy to forget this in remote work scenarios. Yet when we disconnect from the humanity of our colleagues, we create a breeding ground for resentments. Without this official “coming together” time, that hiring manager might have simply viewed my client as a number on a spreadsheet (“How much are we spending on this person, anyway? Is he really worth it?”) rather than as a teammate whose personal success is crucial to the larger success of the company.
Everyone needs a coach in their first 100 days, although this will look different depending on your level in the company. CEOs need an executive coach. For lower-level employees, a mentor is a must. The key is for all parties—the new hire, the mentor/coach, and the boss—to come together and determine what metrics they are going to hold themselves to. What will success in the first 100 days look like? How will it be measured? In what areas does the new hire (whatever her level) need to grow, and how can a coach help her get where she needs to be? Then regularly set aside some time—at least once a week—so that the new hire can have sessions with her coach or mentor.
Can you imagine how connected and supported your unicorn would feel with this system as part of the onboarding process? With seasoned professionals, there can often be a dangerous assumption that we’ve all done this before. The new hire will be fine on her own and will reach out if she really needs help. The “bigger” the job, the less importance is given to onboarding. But you can’t skip this crucial step. Employees who have strong relationships at work are more likely to stay and achieve their potential. The best way to help your unicorn feel supported is by showing her from day one that her team has her back.
At FORWARD, we provide 100 days of coaching for every candidate we place. No one can opt out of this; it’s a nonnegotiable part of our process. Why am I so adamant about it? Because getting hired is just the beginning. I am invested in making sure that all the candidates we place succeed; that means providing them the support they need as they begin their new roles so we can help set them up to achieve their potential. Here’s a peek into our process:
1. On day four of a new hire’s first week in his position, we gather all the people invested in his success. A coach facilitates by leading the group through the following questions:
▶ How is everything going on Day 4?
▶ What’s the vision for the role?
▶ Where is the company going?
▶ What are the opportunities?
▶ What are the challenges?
▶ Where do you all want to be in 30/60/90 days?
2. We hold mandatory, weekly one-hour remote coaching sessions with the new hire. In these sessions, we discuss wins from the previous week as well as possible solutions to any challenges that emerge.
3. We perform an EQ-i 2.0 assessment and debrief within the first two weeks. This allows us to discover and examine the new hire’s go-to behaviors and emotional intelligence growth areas with the goal of identifying new behaviors that would enhance his success.
4. At the end of the first 100 days, we hold a 360-degree review with the same stakeholders who gathered on day four. The self-reflection exercise below helps everyone identify their role over the past 100 days and directs the new hire on ways to improve and evolve over the next six months. We ask the following questions:
▶ What has <name>achieved in the past 100 days?
▶ Can you describe an area where <name>can improve?
▶ What three areas/attributes do you like about <name> in the role of <title>?
▶ How can you see <name>progressing in the next six months?
▶ Is there anything else you’d like to share?
As coach, I refer back to the original deck I co-created with the new hire and stakeholders during the first kickoff meeting, and we cross-check to determine how well all parties met the objectives laid out at our day four meeting.
The Emotional Intelligence Factor
A strong onboarding process puts your new hire’s interpersonal relationships (the third component of emotional intelligence) foremost. For the well-being of your new hire, it’s imperative she connects to her peers. New York Times bestselling author Shawn Achor, along with a team of experts, conducted a study of loneliness in the work force, the findings of which were documented in the Harvard Business Review in 2018. He and his team surveyed more than 1,600 employees to find who was most at risk of feeling lonely. They found that lawyers were the loneliest workers, followed by engineers and those in the science fields. There was a 10-percent decrease in loneliness for people making more than $80,000 a year. Geographic location and length of time spent working with one organization had little bearing on loneliness. Government workers were lonelier than people in the private sector. Singles were lonelier than married people. Troublingly, LGBTQ people reported high degrees of loneliness and lower levels of workplace support.
How does this impact you? Why does it matter? As a people leader who wants to lead teams of satisfied, healthy contributors to your organization’s growth, you need to be on the lookout for signs that your workers feel isolated. We spend an enormous portion of our lives at work. It’s impossible to divorce the mental and social well-being of a teammate from her job performance. If your new hire hits several indicators that suggest she would be prone to loneliness, are there any extra efforts you could take to make sure she feels supported?
At the end of the day, it is about achieving your benchmarks. You want to retain your unicorns for the value they’ll bring to your organization. It is best, then, to ensure that they feel supported and part of the larger team from the very beginning. If you’re aware that your impersonal onboarding process is an elephant, I invite you to evaluate it in light of this question: Is this process increasing or decreasing the level of connection my new hire feels to her colleagues? If the answer is “decreasing,” how can you tweak your onboarding to make it more human? Ask the question, and then listen to whatever feedback comes to you through various channels: your own intuition, long-standing employees, and new hires alike. Onboarding doesn’t have to suck; with some adjustments, you may even discover you can make it fun.
Now it’s time to reflect on your onboarding practices. Don’t rely solely on your own estimation—ask your employees, both brand-new hires and those who have been with the company for several years. Those closest to the onboarding process have a wealth of knowledge for you to tap. See what they say about these questions:
▶ What was the most memorable part of onboarding?
▶ Were you partnered with a mentor? How was this relationship for you?
▶ Was onboarding too fast? Too slow? Tedious? Overwhelming?
▶ What’s one thing the company could have done to make the process better?
That last question is key. It provides data you can act on. It’s also a chance for newer employees to own their leadership abilities: When they see their feedback implemented in the onboarding process for new employees, they will gain a tangible sense of how they are contributing to the greater good of the organization.