Best Practices for Onboarding

Best Practices for Onboarding

1.       Introduction

a.       The key to an organization’s ability to execute strategy and achieve objectives is an effective workforce.

                                                               i.      Aligned with and committed to achieving the organization’s goals.

b.      The expectation for new executives is that they will hit the ground running at their new company and start adding value immediately.

                                                               i.      Organizations have much at stake when new hires don’t meet expectations and fail to add value.

c.       Onboarding is more than orientation. It is part of an overall talent development strategy and includes a process for providing a range of integrated, well-planned, and highly tailored support for both external new hires and internally promoted employees

                                                               i.      The goal of onboarding is to ensure successful assimilation into the organization’s culture, shorten the time to productivity, minimize turnover and maximize impact.

2.       The business case

a.       Fifty percent of new hired executives quit or are fired within the first three years.

b.      When a person is new in their role, they consume value for the first three months they are with an organization. After that point, they being adding value. However, they only begin to add more value than they have consumed after 6.2 months, which is why this point in the time is called the breakeven point. Seeing this contribution point visually can help organizations ask themselves two important questions:

                                                               i.      What is the value to the organization of bringing someone to that breakeven point early?

                                                             ii.      How is the organization impacted if the new person is not up to speed until 7 or 8 months?

3.       Greatest Risk and Potential ROI

a.       Internal Support

                                                               i.      Subcultures exist within different workgroups, stakeholders change, new expectations are set, roles redefined. Recognizing these risks companies are now more consistently making onboarding programs available to those internally promoted and transferred as a way to reduce high failure rates.

b.      Cultural differences

                                                               i.      Understanding and adapting to local cultural norms play a critical role in establishing strong interpersonal relationships necessary for contributing to and achieving shared business goals.

c.       Onboarding is not orientation

                                                               i.      Orientation programs have a transactional, event-based core curriculum. However, onboarding programs, which provide very individualized, targeted learning opportunities, are an integral part of a broad talent development strategy designed to accelerate and enhance performance.