Last week, we dove into the structural gaps at the heart of business conflicts. One early, critical mistake is the absence of a robust onboarding process. Onboarding is essential yet often overlooked—a crucial phase where employees find themselves unsure of their roles and responsibilities for months. Having led and experienced over 70 onboarding processes, I've categorized them into three distinct types:
The Bare Minimum: This onboarding process barely scratches the surface of what's needed. It typically involves a brief session of form-signing, handing over a job description, a glimpse into ongoing departmental issues, and a heads-up about a probationary review in three months.
The Rush Job: This one- to two-day affair is hastily organized by HR, where different staff members cover various components in a bombardment of information, leaving little time to digest everything. By the middle of your first week, you're handed a list of ten urgent tasks that have been neglected.
The Comprehensive: This ideal onboarding spans 1-2 weeks, offering a structured introduction to the organization. It includes introductions to key personnel, departmental overviews, and dives into job specifics. Unlike the others, this process is designed not just to fulfill HR requirements but to support employee integration and growth. It provides a loose syllabus for ongoing learning over the next 3 to 6 months, allowing for periodic assessments of progress.
Most of us can place our onboarding experiences in these categories. If you find yourself subjected to a Bare Minimum or Rush Job, I encourage you to advocate for better onboarding. Raise the topic during performance reviews and tie it to merit increases. Just as employees receive feedback, employers should be receptive to suggestions for improvement. Create a paper trail of your requests to make sure they're acknowledged.
When I was working in a national leadership role, I encountered an orientation that involved a few calls and a brief visit for a three-day meeting with headquarters. While at that point in my career a Rush Job was the established average, this visit didn’t come until six months into my role. I’d already grasped 80% of my job responsibilities by then and while the main takeaway was relationship and culture building, those were impressions that would’ve been much more useful when I was first creating my impression of the org culture and my leadership strategy.
Many organizations get in their own way by prioritizing organizational needs over the employee's integration by dismissing The Comprehensive as excessive. Consider that thorough onboarding cuts down expenses in the range of 50% to 200% of an employee's annual salary (Brandon Hall Group 2015) and makes employees 87% less likely to leave (Bauer, T. N. 2010). Onboarding also helps new hires embody organizational values and expectations, improving cultural fit and team morale (BambooHR 2014).
As my mentors often say, "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast." When we talk about structures needed to lessen the likelihood of mistakes, onboarding is foundational. Next week, we’ll talk some more about structures that help teams do their best work.
Let me know which orientation type you’ve experienced most below.