onboarding

Have you ever had an outstanding onboarding experience with a new job? Apparently, very few people have. For some reason, this is an often overlooked part of management and leadership for companies and teams. Although you may not be able to change the onboarding process for the entire organization that you work for, if you’re leading a team, you can control how the new hires are welcomed, trained, and prepared to be part of your team. And who knows? If you are able to improve this process for your own team, you may be able to change it for the entire company too.

Onboarding is the process by which you bring a new person onto a project, team, or company. Onboarding is not just an HR task. There is the obviously required paperwork that HR oversees for the company that all new hires will complete. Beyond HR, the onboarding process that you oversee as a team lead or manager is the first impression you’re giving a new member of the team. If you do not prepare for it, your new hires will be undertrained or feel unwelcome. 

Onboarding is a key factor to retaining employees. In other words, employees with bad onboarding experiences are more likely to leave a company.

A good onboarding process is important when you manage a team that works in person, and it’s even more important when you work remotely. The same approach to the process applies to both scenarios, but it takes more up-front work and overall communication when you are managing a remote team. This is because there are fewer opportunities for impromptu, in-person encounters for clarification for the new person. A new, remote hire may be too timid at first to take the initiative to direct message or call you for every question they have during the process. It is up to you as their manager, overseeing their onboarding process, to reach out to them and be proactive in communicating.

When you are welcoming a new teammate, whether remotely or in person, you should make an Onboarding Plan. You should consider it to be an introduction to the company and a checklist for the new hire. Here are some tips on how to approach creating an Onboarding Plan:

Make a plan before their first day

You should be thinking about the new person’s role before they join and planning for their onboarding before they start. Give yourself enough time to put your thoughts together, and make this task a priority. Making an Onboarding Plan in advance of their first day will also help you identify what you might need to confirm with them before their first day. This will help them feel prepared and welcomed to their new job. Think of the Onboarding Plan as a to-do list for yourself and for them. 

For instance, you may need to tell them what time to meet and where to go on their first day if they are meeting in person, or confirming that they have received their laptop in the mail if they are working remotely. These are items that need to be confirmed before they start, so it benefits you to start planning for their first day in advance.

I worked with an experienced senior manager who had hired a new remote employee. The senior manager did not confirm if the new hire had received his laptop in the mail, did not know when the new hire would be logging on for his first day, and did not have any plan for what to do with the new hire on the first day or the first week. He did not prepare anything for the new hire’s onboarding, even though he knew for over a month that this new hire was starting – since, this manager hired him. 

On the day the new hire started, I took on the new hire’s onboarding because the senior manager did not prioritize or plan for it. I very quickly prepared the onboarding plan that the senior manager should have prepared a week ahead of time. I reached out to the new hire on his first day (because the senior manager had still not spoken to him!), set up an initial onboarding meeting to review the Onboarding Plan which served as a to-do list, and I also put 15-minute every-other-day meetings on the calendar to check in with the new hire during the onboarding process. 

The new hire gave constructive feedback about the process afterwards. He expressed that no one told him what to do or who to speak to before he started, he didn’t know what to do on the first day he logged on remotely, and he appreciated the proactive approach I took despite the negative experience he had leading up to his first day. It was during this conversation that I realized the importance of preparing before the new hire starts.

Assume they know nothing about the office, culture, or work

As a prompt to creating your Onboarding Plan, think about your day and every single detail that goes into it. This includes when you know to log on or show up to work, how you access your workstation or systems you need to do your job, the meetings you attend, the people you speak to… everything!

If there is a formal onboarding session with HR or IT, paperwork and system access might be taken care of by another group. However, it could still benefit your new hire for you to cover everything you can think of that is relevant to their position even if HR or IT might already cover it.

Some examples:

• In-office info they might need: how to get into the building, where the kitchen is, any expectations for reusing mugs or cleaning dishes, where the restroom is, a layout of the office, location of printers, wifi access, how to reserve meeting rooms… 
• Remote work info they might need: confirming they have their laptop, expectations for hours worked or availability online, an org chart of who to contact to get up to speed…
• Role-specific information: system access, file storage, communication channels, meeting invitations, immediate assignments to complete …

By thinking through the details of your day, you can identify the logistical and administrative information your new hire will need to know for their first day, in addition to the role-specific information they will need to get trained up to do their job. Remember, they know none of the things you know about this job and company, so you need to consider every detail. 

Years ago, I worked with a manager who had hired two new system testers to his team. He did not want to take time to onboard them, so he sent the new testers to talk to testers who were on my team to help get onboarded. The fellow testers on my team were happy to help onboard the new folks to common tools that both of our teams used, but the manager spent no time with the new testers introducing them to their specific role.

When performance review time came around, their manager cited how unprepared they were to do their roles, and how they were very slow to understand how his team worked. He did not mention how he did not spend any time helping them get ramped up or assisting them in their roles. By not spending time to introduce the new testers to his team, he set them up to fail, which was a waste of time for him, the two new testers, and his entire team.

Ask for feedback and input to improve the onboarding process for the next person

No one will know if the onboarding process that you created went well than the person who just went through it. By allowing the new hire to suggest changes and updates to the Onboarding Plan, you’ll be able to improve and refine the process for the next new hire. In my experience, this has been the best way to learn what information new hires need to feel welcomed and to be successful. If you give the new hire the responsibility to make edits to the plan, it could also be a miniature project and leadership opportunity for the new person. They could see it through by implementing it with the next new addition to your team.

For reference, here is a simple outline of an Onboarding Plan:

• Name of employee
• Start date
• Role
• Job description
• Priority task – Schedule Introduction Onboarding Meetings: List of people to reach out to to get acquainted with and to learn what they do
• Priority task – Schedule Knowledge Sharing Onboarding Sessions: List of people and topics for deep dive knowledge sharing sessions relevant to role
• List of reoccurring meetings and their purpose
• Other relevant team or company project areas that the new hire should know about
• List of required accounts, licenses, and tools and how to get them
• Links to relevant company information
• Common acronyms