We pulled ten unique HR leaders together into a collaborative discussion about challenges presented by the pandemic and we all had one big (surprising) struggle in common: everyone is struggling with onboarding new employees right now. Whether managing remotely, creating a hybrid approach, or modifying on-site protocols to include safety and social distancing measures, no one has a solution that feels right.
Organizations do these multi-day orientations because that’s what HR traditionally does, right? You join a company as a new employee and you expect to spend the first day or two in some type of (usually boring) orientation program. But we also know that orientation programs can be overwhelming with information overload and new hires don’t often retain all the info covered. What we’ve learned during the pandemic is that what new hires do remember is the connection they form with others, the first impression of their new company’s culture.
Onboarding is generally a combination of three categories of items:
- “How Tos”: Training programs or step-by-step protocols and instructions (e.g. where to find resources, how to track your work hours)
- “The Rules”: Policies and Guidelines (e.g. confidentiality policy, the dress code)
- “The Culture”: Connections with others, Building community (understanding core values, learning how teams interact)
I would venture to say that HR teams started out with the intention to have orientation cover the first category – “How-Tos” – and then started adding in all the compliance-type tasks because it was efficient to do so (“while we have you here, please sign all this paperwork”). The third category – culture – really came as just a bonus, an unintended side effect. But what we have all learned while navigating the impacts of the pandemic on the workplace is that the third category was actually the most critical part of the new hire onboarding experience. So let’s break it down.
If an individual’s employment experience is equated to a dining experience, onboarding is the appetizer, the salad that whets the appetite for what’s to come. The base of the salad has been The How-Tos (picture the leafy greens) mixed with our protein and veggies being The Rules (let’s say grilled chicken and tomatoes) and The Culture glimpsed from the experience is the dressing on top (let’s go with a lemon honey vinaigrette!). It seems that, with the pandemic forcing our hands on needing to change orientation, we all have found that the most critical thing lacking when we change it up is actually the dressing. I mean – bleh, a dry salad with no dressing; who wants that?!
So the question we ask ourselves is – can we just make the dressing the base of the meal, or the meal in its entirety? Is a cup full of lemon honey vinaigrette too sweet or tart a first dose of the organization… or is it just the tangy zest we need to serve as the prelude to our employee engagement journey? Can you deal with serving the chicken and the kale later on? What’s the risk of doing so?
Think about a memorable meal you’ve had. For me, I can clearly recall the scents and colors and flavors of a particular course of chilled beets I was once served at a restaurant. That dish stands out because it was simple, focused, unforgettable. When you toss beets into a dish with kale and onions and dressing and peppers, they get a little lost. You just remember that there was a salad, but not its unique components.
Isn’t this how a new hire feels in a multi-day onboarding program? So much information comes at you, that you are grasping for what is essential to get your job done, and by the time it’s over, you barely remember the taste.
To deconstruct the process even further, the majority of onboarding programs are led by a single instructor – usually an HR professional. One individual responsible for teaching and guiding a new hire through everything from how to use company software, to compliance and safety protocols, to understanding the culture and values. Why not have HR serve not as the teacher, but as the facilitator of the onboarding experience, and instead have subject matter experts tackle the specific stuff? Back to my cooking analogy – have the sushi chef handle the fish, and let the prep cook do the onion chopping.
If you parsed out the onboarding process and scheduled components over the first month of an employee’s work days rather than the first few days, you could arrange it such that a technology professional could do the training on the company’s software platforms, and the legal team could tackle questions about the non-compete agreement. (By the way, think of the side benefits of this – if newbies aren’t understanding what is written, the people who made the software/policies are getting direct feedback from their consumers – the employees. Might spark some better processes and communication too).
So how do we do this? Consider this your Onboarding Recipe. 🙂
Prep Your Ingredients
- Chop your onboarding program up. Chop. It. Up. Make a list of every topic or document or tutorial that is currently included in your Onboarding program. This includes anything that happens in the first week of employment – calls with mentors, introductions to teammates, documents to be signed (physically or digitally), lessons to be learned. Break it out into a list.
- Now, categorize each item using the three categories above: Training and How-To protocols, Policies & Guidelines (“the rules”), and Connection/Culture/Community.
- Identify who currently is responsible for imparting information on each item to new hires (HR, Tech, employee’s manager, etc).
Clean Your Produce
- Flip all of your “this is how we’ve always done it” protocols on their heads. This part is difficult, especially for a well-established organization. But try to shake everything out of the bag, scrub them of all the tradition and past practices, and start fresh.
- Think about who should impart each topic to a new hire. Consider: Who has the most expertise in this topic? Who can best explain/communicate it clearly? Who would the employee most trust to learn this topic from? For example, it might be tough to hear this, but a new hire probably doesn’t trust the Head of HR to teach them about what the company’s culture is. What they’ll hear is what the Head of HR wants them to think the company’s culture is, but they’ll form their perception of the culture from their new peers. So why not put their peers in charge of the culture topic? What would this look like?
Conceptualize Your Dish
- Rate each topic in terms of its criticality – how urgent is it that a new hire learn this or complete this thing on day one of work? Yes, yes, I know – your legal team is going to say they MUST sign the Employee Handbook acknowledgement on day one because what if they commit a policy violation on day two?! See my next step for more on evaluating that risk, but for now, when evaluating the urgency of the task ONLY – can they do what they need to do on day one or week one without that task or learning? This is what you’re evaluating in this step.
- Now rate each topic in terms of its riskiness. Perhaps your legal team is fine with employees signing some basic forms within thirty days or ninety days instead of on day one. What is the risk of moving this back a bit, so you can focus on the topics that you ranked highest on criticality instead? Do you think a new hire is really likely to push boundaries and start breaking rules on day two or day fifteen?
- Now look at what you have ranked both critical and less risky. This is the stuff you want to start with.
Let’s Get Cooking
Take what you have come up with for each of your core topics and create something beautiful. You may decide to have a peer-led discussion on culture and core values that is scheduled over Zoom sometime in the first week. Maybe a mentor is assigned who walks new hires through navigating the company’s intranet and finding tools and resources. Try not to build the same salad as the restaurant next door serves. Your culture and policies and people are unique, and so should be your onboarding program. If you’re in charge of figuring out what the flavors are that will kick off your new hires’ engagement journey, what does your organization’s salad dressing look, taste, and feel like?
