Onboarding and Employee Engagement

We hosted a webinar last week, titled Onboarding: An Employee Engagement Tool, and posed a poll question to our participants:

"How do you currently know if your new employees are highly engaged at the 100 mark?"

Here are the responses--

54% used surveys
21% had one-on-one conversations
25% did not know and does not measure new hire engagement

The great news is that the majority of the organizations in our audience were taking the time during the onboarding process to find out how engaged their new hires are. As studies have shown, the decision to stay in a new job usually happens within the first 6 months, so it is critical to get a gauge of the engagement level of your new hires.

How are you collecting this data? What changes are you making to your onboaridng process in response?

Onboarding Resolutions

I guess it was the new calendar that I opened the other day, or maybe it was the list I made of things that I wanted to accomplish both personally and professionally, or maybe it was the barrage of media that switched from gift ideas to weight-loss programs, but I have definitely been thinking about resolutions.

Resolutions don’t always have to be something pledged on Jan 1 and forgotten by the 15th. They can be planful changes made based on research, best practices and implemented strategically over time. Those are the changes that stick.

If your organization’s onboarding program is in need of updating, overhauling or even just started, there are more resources available now more than ever.

There is a new report out by SHRM titled, Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success, by Dr. Talya Bauer. Its purpose, by my read, is twofold: to give the most recent information about what is being done inside organizations with regards to onboarding, and to give HR professionals some suggestions for putting the best practices into place in their organizations.

The author’s research-based model of onboarding also fits well with our own onboarding solution model of successful onboarding. Both focus on three core pieces; gaining knowledge, building relationships and getting/acting on feedback, delivered over about a four-month time period with a blend of coaching and technology.

It is most interesting to note that the biggest take-away is that onboarding seems to have left its “nice to have” status in the HR world and entered in the “must have” category.

Onboarding and the Manager Continued

Wow! What a response we got from our last webinar, Onboarding and the Manager! Seems like many organizations are looking for information and answers as to how to include and engage the hiring managers in the onboarding experience.

We did a poll question in our sessions and asked the following question:

"What is your top challenge with onboarding and the managers in your organization?"

-65% of our respondents said that it's the fact that the hiring managers think it's HR's job to do onboarding

-25% said that their hiring managers don't have the time, tools or skills to do onboarding

-10% said the their managers are simply unengaged in onboarding

Very interesting results that perhaps speak to the long-standing gap between HR processes and the business.

We spent a lot of time discussing how to engage the managers to bridge this gap and came up with the following tips:

-Don’t focus on how “it should be”
-Demonstrate what’s in it for the hiring manager
-Focus on the business
-Keep your onboarding action high impact and relevant
-Start with hiring managers who “get it”

We are interested to hear your thoughts, suggestions and ideas on this topic!

Onboarding and the Manager: From Reluctant Participant to Engaged Owner!

Everytime we meet with a potential client, the question always comes up, "How do we get our managers to onboard their people?" Unfortunately, most organizations have not done a great job of integrating their "HR" processes into the business and things like performance reviews, succession planning, and onboarding have been left to the Human Resources function to lead and deliver.

Most of the push-back from HR is usually when it comes to onboarding.

And they have a point.

The managers have the most to lose if their new hires are not properly integrated into their new jobs and the culture of the organization. And, they have the most to gain if these new hires can get up to speed quickly and deliver results faster and better because they have what they need to do so. But the managers usually drop the ball, or pass it to HR.

How can HR convert their reluctant managers to onboarding zealots? The answer is pretty simple to identify, yet not always easy to implement.

1. Show your managers what's in it for them.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Demonstrate the impact.

Read more about engaging your managers in your onboarding experience in our newsletter and join us for our next free webinar on November 16, 2010 @ 11 AM EST.

High Potential Moves and Onboarding

Do you have high potential talent identified in your organization?

Do you have assessments, coaching and development plans for each of them?

Do you plan to move these high potentials into different roles to either "stretch" them and/or solve a business issue?

Most mid to large organizations probably have some type of talent review in place that allows them to identify and develop their star employees and next generation leaders. However, most do not include onboarding as a key strategy to smooth the transition between these roles and head off potential failure--failure that could result in the missed opportunities and business objectives, as well as the potential loss of some great talent.

There are some pretty unsettling statistics in the May issue of Harvard Business Review's article, "How to Keep Your Top Talent". The article reports that based on the research HBR did with the Corporate Leadership Council of 20,000 employees, "nearly 40% of the internal job moves involving high potention ended in failure."
The article goes on to point out the most common mistakes that organizations make with their high potential employees. Because many times a role change is used to develop these high potentials, a well-planned and well-executed onboarding experience can and will surface issues before they result in big mistakes or failure.

Internal transitions are the riskiest for an organization and for the individual because so many assumptions are made.

Here are the top five (wrong!) assumptions made for internal moves:
1. The transitioning employee gets the culture. Not necessarily--even different business units, geographic locations and teams can have a culture different from the "corporate" culture.

2. The transitioning employee knows what he/she is supposed to focus on. Not every hiring manager is clear about the job or role. This trips up even the most seasoned employee.

3. No relo, means no personal needs. Just because someone isn't moving to a new location, doesn't mean there won't be personal transition. New hours, longer commute, more travel can create stress and challenge for the transitioning employee.

4. The hiring manager can deal with all the transition issues. Most hiring managers are not focused on transition, especially internal ones. Peers, direct reports and Human Resources contacts can be a hugs support during transition, especially if their roles are defined.

5. No news is good news. Feedback is critical and even more so during transition. These employees are vulnerable and need to hear how they are hitting (or not) the mark in their new roles immediately.

For more on how to successfully onboard internal high potentials, visit our website or call 1.888.793.8805.

Onboarding for New College Grads-Tips for Early Success

With hiring starting to pick up a bit now and organizations starting to look at how they will replace their "boomer" talent pools, hiring college grads is becoming more popular. However, getting these new grads integrated into the organization's culture and getting them up to speed so that they can be productive is the challenge.

It's hard enough for some of these new grads to transition from campus to corporate, but almost impossible without the support of the organization. Onboarding (not just sending them to a day-long orientation, or to skills training classes) is what they need. A good onboarding process will lay the foundation for a successful transition and productive first year, as well as create a roadmap for career development.

Here are a few tips for locking in your new grads and making them productive and engaged in their first weeks and months on the job.

-Keep in touch after the offer. Sometimes it can be weeks or months since the job offer is made and accepted and a lot of things can happen. Make sure that you are building in communication and touch points with your new college grad hires up until the first day on the job.

-Make orientation count. The days of 8 hours in a classroom with endless slides and and filling out forms are over. New college grads want and need a more interactive and relavent experience to introduce them to what it's really like to be a part of your culture. Use case studies, subject matter experts and FUN to introduce the company's stragies, processes and values.

-Engage the hiring managers. Before you bring in your "class" of new hires, make sure that the hiring managers are up to speed on what the onboarding experience should be and how they contribute to it. If consistancy is one of your main objectives, getting your hiring managers to understand what is expected of them and then giving them the tools to do it will be essential.

-Leverage the group. By reconvening the "class" of new college hires who have joined your organization at the same time, you can create a support system and network for them. They will be able to share experiences, talk about their challenges and successes, and learn from one another. Topics for workshops can include how to build a personal network, adjusting to the culture, and/or working through a 90 Day Onboarding Plan. Group assignments can also be a great way to build relationships, foster teamwork and demonstrate expected leadership behaviors.

Hiring talent right out of college can be a win-win for the organization and the new hire if done right. The organization can get strong talent without paying a steep price for experience and then have the opportunity to shape that new talent to fit its culture. The new hires get a chance to prove themselves and gain valuable experience inside an organization. Successful onboarding makes it all work.

Offer Accepted? You are so not done! Five Onboarding Tips for Hiring Managers

I just got off the phone with a hiring manager who got his top candidate to accept the position and he starts in a couple of weeks.

He's thrilled and excited, right? Not really. More like anxious and concerned.

This hiring manager gets it. He understands that his organization has wooed this candidate with an impressive selection process and said all the right things of how things SHOULD or COULD be in their culture, but not necessarily how things ARE.

This manager is perceptive and right to be concerned. He knows that once the new hire actually comes onboard and starts to see the realities of the culture, he may start to question his decision.

Sound familiar?

It happens all too often that the "hand-off" from selection to onboarding is not handled properly or at all. Hiring managers tend to be "done" when the offer is made and just expect the new hire to participate in some brief orientation exercises, then hit the ground running. The new hires usually hit the ground, all right, but not running.

So, as a hiring manager what is the solution? As in most business situations, the best strategy is to be prepared.


Here are five tips to prepare for a successful onboarding of your new hires:

1. Talk to her before her start date. Do not let there be a void of communication from the offer to Day One. Stuff happens in the meantime--communicate it!

2. List the top things that the new hire needs to do in her first months on the job. Make sure that they are "on the job" learning activities that also contribute to the team's objectives.

3. Identify people in the organization who can make this person successful. Create the list then reach out to them and tell them why you need their support in building the right relationships with your new hire.

4. Work with your HR partner. Get input from your internal resources on how to build an onboarding plan, what organizational support is available and ask them to support you in the delivery of the onboarding process.

5. Give feedback early and often. This is the most overlooked and most critical component of an effective onboarding experience. New hires cannot change what they don't know, and they usually don't ask. You as the hiring manager are the best person to give feedback and allow them the opportunities to adjust before it's too late.

Read more on our website at www.connectthedotsconsulting.com