Onboarding

WHAT is onboarding and why should i care?

How can you prevent turnover, engage new employees and make them feel good about joining your agency? Do you know that a new employee can come to work excited about a new job and new friends and leave with a bad first-day experience that has them questioning their decision to take the job? Our research shows that employees will decide within 10 days if they intend to stay with your organization or begin looking for a different job.

So — how do you prevent turnover, engage a new employee and make him feel good about joining your agency? Forget "orientation" and try "onboarding." What is onboarding and how does it differ from orientation?

Onboarding is orientation done well. Designed to fully assimilate a new employee, an effective onboarding program orients the new employee to an agency's culture with frequent and ongoing communication between the employee and the manager and other key staff members. Onboarding strategies include frequent feedback, relationship building and mentoring. Effective onboarding programs help ensure that top talent becomes part of the organization's future succession plan.

Orientation: Imagine yourself here

Scenario: On his first day on the job, Nick Newby views the orientation video from the X Files, filled with buzzwords and acronyms. Doesn't have a clue what they mean. Waits for Susie Supervisor. Reads the manual and then the handbook. Waits for Susie Supervisor. Fills out confusing benefit forms. Waits for Susie Supervisor. Finally, Susie hands Nick his job description. A couple of folks stick their heads in the door. Then, Nick Newby is left to sink or swim.

Nick's Reaction: Overwhelmed. Bored. Unwelcome.

The Result: A confused new employee who is not productive and is more likely to leave the organization within a year.

Onboarding: Now — imagine yourself here

Scenario: As soon as Nick Newby accepts his new position and before he begins work, Susie Supervisor and other members of her team are busy making plans for activities to welcome Nick and to assimilate, induct, integrate, align, and transition him into his new job. For the first six months of his employment (maybe even a year), Nick receives special attention from various members of the organization on both job-related and non-job-related matters.

Nick's Reaction: Welcomed. Challenged. Engaged. Empowered.

The Result: A new employee who feels connected to his job and the organization. A productive employee who gets up-to-speed quickly, expects growth and is likely to be loyal to the organization.

Onboarding is the first step in building a long-term relationship between a newly hired employee and state government. It is an on-going, comprehensive program designed to cultivate, engage, enable and position a new employee to excel in their career with state government. Onboarding provides an ideal opportunity to reinforce the Employee Value Proposition (EVP).

Whose Role Is It?

In "A Manager's Guide to Orientation," Electronic Recruiting Exchange (2001), Dr. John Sullivan compares onboarding to adopting a new child. "Responsibility for the first day and the first week are too important to delegate to human resources or to devote to reading the manual. Managers need to take control of the process of bringing a new employee onboard. Just like a parent adopting a new child, the role a manager plays during the first week is of critical importance if the employee-manager relationship is to progress rapidly." Think of onboarding as essential nourishment.

Resources

If you would like to plant the seeds of success in your new hires, refer to the following resources for developing an onboarding program for your organization.

Tools and Techniques

Buddy System

Consequences of Poor Onboarding

From I Do to Happily Ever After

Planning Your Onboarding Program