Employee Onboarding – Beginning a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Congratulations! Your new hire has had a successful first week! Having followed a thorough hiring process, you’re feeling confident. You are ready to call your onboarding process a smashing success.

Not so fast my friend! This is an easy trap to fall into; one that leads to problems down the road, taking time and energy away from your mission, frustration felt throughout the organization, disengaged team members, and potentially employee turnover.

Don’t lose heart – with one simple shift, you can avoid these challenges altogether, and increase the productivity, success, and satisfaction of your new team member almost immediately.

The difference lies in employee orientation versus employee onboarding. Employee orientation focuses on the first day(s), while employee onboarding can last for six months, or even longer depending on the position and company resources. Some have said orientation is a slice of pie, while onboarding is the whole pie.  

Often, companies think of these terms interchangeably.  Rather, orientation should be treated as the beginning of the larger onboarding process.

So, what does an successful onboarding process involve? Onboarding focuses on fully acclimating and integrating the new hire into the organization. This process is intentionally designed to align the needs of the employee and the organization, with the ultimate goal of having the employee perform at his or her best. 

Some effective components of an effective onboarding process include: 

• Training. In today’s hectic workplace, it is easy to let ourselves believe we don’t have time for this. We all want our team member to “hit the ground running” and that time spent training is lost productivity. However, training is absolutely critical to the success of the employee, and your company. To stick with the running analogy, in most cases, you hire a team member for a marathon, not a sprint.  In order to run well for the duration, proper training is the difference maker. First, it indicates to your new team member that you not only want them to succeed, but that you are there to help them do just that. There is data to support this further. In a November 18, 2019 HR Daily Advisor Article, Abby Lewis, Senior Product Manager for Harvard Business Review Corporate Learning, stated “Given opportunities to grow and build skills, employees feel energized and engaged, their productivity will rise, and teams will be able to keep pace with everyday tasks and the business as it evolves.” Consider training an investment that will pay dividends over time.
  
  
• Application of Training. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but training, no matter how relevant or impressive, is only internalized if the trainee has an opportunity to apply what he or she has learned, soon after receiving the information. Hermann Ebbinghaus studied memory over 100 years ago, but his findings still have merit today. After six days, we only retain about 25% of what we have learned. Countless training hours and dollars are wasted by leaders who send someone to be trained without a plan for how that training will be used. If the information is not going to be applied within a couple of weeks of the training, don’t waste your time, or money. Wait for a more opportune time. A great way to ensure that the training is easily applicable is to engage other members of the team. Ask for their input, have them give you feedback as to their own training experience, and what was most helpful, as well as what they wish had been the case.
  
  
• Job Shadowing. Have your new employee shadow other high performing team members. Begin within the new employee’s department, later by cross-training with other departments. This gives the new employee an opportunity to build rapport with other team members, which can improve retention. Cross department shadowing gives them a better understanding of how your organization works as well as the all-important company CULTURE.  
  
  
• Feedback. Volumes have been written about this subject. For onboarding purposes, first focus on regular, biweekly, check-ins. These check-ins are informal, but give you the opportunity to learn from the employee how he or she is acclimating to the new work environment, to answer questions, discuss roadblocks, team dynamics, to set direction, etc. As the new employee becomes fully acclimated and expectations for performance increase, these sessions are also opportunities to provide the employee with feedback as to how you think he or she is doing. At some point, feedback becomes a formal performance review. Also, be sure to provide the opportunity to receive feedback regarding your onboarding process. New hires are often the best sources of information about how they have seen other companies onboard, what in your process works and what doesn’t. Always thank the person giving you feedback, no matter how it may sting.      

A solid onboarding process can greatly improve your company’s overall success. From the moment a new hire enters the workplace, to providing effective feedback about their performance, properly onboarding a new team member goes a very long way in building their engagement and retention.

As always, I encourage you to make sure that your process makes sense for your organization. If you have questions or are interested in learning more about effective onboarding techniques, please contact Terry Keffer at terry@consultkeffer.com or call 540-815-3139.