JT7 | Give Them A Win (New Hire Onboarding)

Got a new joiner on the team? Maybe it’s a new employee or perhaps someone who’s transferred from elsewhere. It’s their first few days and they’re naturally a little tentative, feeling their way around the org and getting used to the working style in your team. So, how do you help them in onboarding to settle in and build their confidence so they can start taking on their share of responsibility quickly?

Discussion Topics: Give Them A Win (New Hire Onboarding)

• It’s not just on the new employee to make a good impression but also on the manager to make it possible.
• Every company has new hire onboarding but to start them off right, have an onboarding checklist.
• A second way to make a new hire feel welcome is to assign a buddy.
• The third way is to have a welcome gathering, even if virtual.
• But the best way is to give them a win, with a limited project they can own and deliver independently.

Transcript: Give Them A Win (New Hire Onboarding)

Hi there and welcome to JobTok, My name is Amit and I’ve spent almost two decades in various large and small organisations as well as startups. I’ve been an individual contributor, as well as a leader managing hundreds of talented individuals in fast-growth environments. In the process, I’ve learnt a lot about what it takes to be successful in the corporate world. In this show I share with you everything I’ve learnt so you can accelerate your career, land exciting roles and shape the career of your dreams.

There are dozens or maybe hundreds of books written about how a new employee should approach their first few weeks at work so they make a great first impression and start off on the right foot. But all those tend to focus on what the employee should do, which is fine but that should really only be half the story. It’s equally on the manager and the team to help them settle in so today we’ll talk about what managers need to consider before onboarding a new employee.

And if you stick around till the end I’ll share a secret of the onboarding process that will immediately elevate you from a good manager to a great manager, so far as your new joiner is concerned.

For the purpose of today’s discussion I’m going to give our new joiner a name because, well, it will be very boring to keep saying New Joiner. Let’s call her Putri. I’ve spent a lot of time in Indonesia over the past couple of years and it’s a pretty familiar name. Ngomong ngomong kalau nama Anda Putri, maaf, Saya tidak bermaksud Anda secara khusus. Like in the movies, any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.

Every company has a new employee onboarding process of some kind. If it’s a larger place it is likely a full day affair with hosts of presentations by leadership or trainers. There’s also likely an IT onboarding where you get your laptop and set up access to email, chat and internal systems. If it’s small, maybe it’s a welcome presentation and tech onboarding before you’re shown to your seat. Those sessions are ok for a sort of overview but in reality they mean little to the new joiner, who really only wants to know how they should get started at their actual work.

That’s where a good team onboarding comes in.

• For a start, you could have a new onboarding checklist so they get familiar with the nuts and bolts of how you work. This should include links to important Wiki pages, documents, dashboards and other important material that would make it easier for Putri to catch up to what’s happening. I’ve found that including links to business reviews is a great shortcut to learning, since these cover all the key things that management cares about. It should also include an org chart with names, roles and key projects. Finally add in key meeting cadences and a list of all the chat and email groups they need to join and you’d have got Putri off to a very good start. New joiners usually have a lot of free time at the start before they get sucked into the day to day of their work, so a checklist allows them to self-study and make good use of the time. It also reduces the burden on the rest of the team, which is super important if you have a fast growing team with new joiners coming in weekly.
• Another useful component of new joiner onboarding is to assign a buddy. This person will likely welcome them into the team, take them out for a drink or coffee and catch them up on who’s who, what’s what and maybe even some of the politics of the place. And they are available to answer questions Putri may not be comfortable asking in group sessions or even to their manager. Just make sure not to overwhelm anyone with too many newbies to buddy.
• A third way to help Putri settle in is to have a gathering of some sort, even if virtual. Pick a Thursday evening or a lunchtime to get the team together in a casual, informal setting. A little icebreaker game might not be a bad idea as well. This way Putri at least can associate names and faces and have a better sense of who everyone is.

If you do all these, you’d already be well ahead of most companies which typically just give the new guy a laptop and have them sit in a corner till they find some use for them. I know, because I’ve experienced that in the past and it’s mind-numbingly boring.

But there is one more thing you can do, if you really want to go above and beyond and make Putri’s early weeks in the company truly productive. It isn’t easy and it takes some effort, but it is well worth it.

Give her a win: Plan their first small successes

Give her a win. By that I mean, after she’s had a few days to absorb the material on the checklist and get her bearings, assign her a pre-arranged mini-project that she can own and deliver. I don’t mean some dead-end assignment that nobody wants. I mean an actual project with a limited, well-defined scope that means something and can be completed in 2-4 weeks. Giving new hires a clear route to their career and development involves outlining exactly what they need to do after onboarding.

Why Small Wins?

Because every new joiner, irrespective of how good a performer they were at their last place, comes in with a bit of self-doubt. Will they fit in? Will they be able to get the job done? Will they perform well? Will they be valued? And that little self-doubt doesn’t really go away till they actually accomplish something. And the longer that takes the longer they remain uncertain about their place in the company.

So the most important thing you can do for your new joiner is to build her confidence by giving her a quick win. And that’s why you need to design a clear cut deliverable that she can own, execute and complete independently. So she has something to point to, early in her stint with your team. It will also allow her to start applying her new knowledge, build relationships with stakeholders and overall accelerate all the things she would need to do in order to become productive.

And once she has the confidence that she belongs in the team, she will be able to shoulder her responsibilities quicker. And the effort you put in to design the original project will be more than paid back by the speed with which she will take on new work.

Summary: Give Them A Win (New Hire Onboarding)

So that’s it to get the best out of your new joiner.

1. Create a checklist
2. Assign a buddy
3. Have a get-together.
4. But most importantly, give her a win.

If you found today’s chat useful please do Follow/Subscribe and tell others about JobTok so we can help even more people accelerate their careers and become more valuable professionals. Show notes and a best-practice template for an onboarding checklist are in the episode description so do click through to get them for free.

This was Amit with JobTok. See you next time.