Real Leadership in Under a Minute
View our real leadership in under a minute video about the New Hire Experience.
The fact is, you only get one chance to successfully onboard a new hire. Here’s how to get it right.
Our technology solution, building connections®, provides an engaging, automated, learning experience that’s branded for your company.
It addresses the two most critical, real-life areas new hires face: how to integrate rapidly into the organization, and then how to build the productive, positive relationships that lead to success.
We are firm believers that no new hire should be expected to navigate the onboarding process alone, as no form, manual, or even an attractive dashboard can ever fully replace the vital roles that the organization’s hiring manager, HR Partner and other stakeholders play. That’s precisely why all components of building connections® incorporate key players into the Onboarding Program.
Every email notification, every survey to track progress, every element that helps to guide the new hire, hiring manager and key stakeholders all combine to create a total, consistent, engaging, and successful onboarding experience.
building connections® is flexible, so it can address all your new hire needs, whether it’s to cover the period from Offer Acceptance to Day 1, Day 1 through the First 90 days, or both.
The most effective solution is a well-crafted new hire experience supported by a blended approach using both modules of building connections®: quickstart® and the first 90®.
For the client who wants to focus on jump-starting the experience prior to Day 1 by delivering knowledge and tools to the new hire, we offer our proprietary, dynamic web-based solution, quickstart®
quickstart® is designed to lower the new hires’ apprehension while increasing their engagement by providing knowledge about the organization, the experiences they can expect as employees, and information about Day One….ahead of Day One.
This is doubly important when your new hire is a Millennial, as a full one-third of Millennials start seeking a new job a mere six months after joining an organization. The good news is that quickstart® can effectively counter this by incorporating the kind of technology and interactive features that engage them, and make them feel more positive about your culture.
The point is, when a new hire starts off on the right foot, the path to success is far more likely.
The first ninety days are critical for success as the new hire’s goal is to transition from learning to doing — the faster the better.
And the fastest way to do that is to provide them with the right knowledge, and the right connections to the right people that provide the best channel for 2-way feedback.
the first 90® days solution accomplishes all this by delivering a combination of personal, high- touch support options, delivered using advanced technology, through each stage in the process. The online experience doesn’t have to end on day one. Once the new hire starts, building connections®, the first 90® days, gives them access to an interactive dashboard where they can see their progress and view action items and resources that will support them through the first 90 days.
The new hire’s support network (i.e., hiring manager, mentor and/or HR partner) will have access to plug ‘n play roadmaps and dashboards with key milestones and surveys that give insight about what the new hire needs and what needs to be done.
View our new hire experience videos
Real Leadership in Under a Minute – the new hire experience
Our Onboarding Re-Imagined video shows how the new hire experience fits into the total onboarding experience
Our New Leader Transition solution for onboarding is designed to enable the leader to maximize their impact quickly
View our real leadership in under a minute video about the New Hire Experience.
Onboard new hires like a CEO? What would an “executive onboarding experience” look like and how could it impact your new hires’ engagement levels? Per Gallup, 88% of employees don’t think their current organization is good at onboarding and 76% of HR professionals don’t think they are doing a good job at onboarding employees. Robust onboarding addresses organizational challenges–attracting top talent, increasing engagement, boosting productivity, and reducing high turnover.
Here are six strategies borrowed from executive onboarding that you can implement immediately to quickly build organizational knowledge and key relationships and deliver timely feedback to adjust and avoid negative turnover.
Employees at all levels are dissatisfied with their onboarding experiences, and the cost of replacing them has never been higher; however, there are some “bright spots” of best practices that tend to show up for the highest-level leaders, like CEOs.
Audrey Jarre, Head of Learning at 306Learning, put it plainly:
“A mere 12% of employees agree their organization does a good job of onboarding new employees. What’s more, if your organization isn’t among the ones that get onboarding right, it’s likely your new hires will be hunting for new jobs before you can say pro-ba-tion.”
We are not suggesting that all components of senior leader onboarding translate to the rest of the population, but here are some scalable strategies.
Strategy #1: Make it personal.
No CEO or senior leader would appreciate a generic onboarding experience, so why put your new hires through one? Try one or all of the following to make your new hires feel welcomed and expected:
We worked with a client to create a virtual tour of their offices narrated by the CEO so that the new hires would have some familiarity with the environment before Day One. The video was on the new hire onboarding portal that we helped them create. The “tour” was a fun, unexpected extra feature added to what the new hires need to know in the pre-start phase of onboarding; and some new hires watched it several times, even sharing it with friends and family members. The portal also allowed the manager to add a personal welcome message which she simply recorded from her phone and uploaded to the site. These personal touches helped the organization’s employment brand stand out and kept new hires engaged and excited before they ever walked into the building.
Strategy #2: Don’t use a firehose approach.
Too often, new hires are inundated with tasks, training, and meetings in the first weeks which makes it difficult for them to really absorb the knowledge they need. They forget who they met with during the first week and can miss key onboarding information if it is not clear how it is attached to their roles.
Use these tips to combat the “firehose” approach:
Our client, Mark, benefitted from this approach when we helped his manager and HR partner build a realistic onboarding plan with “meet-and-greet” meetings that supported his plan’s objectives and timing.
An example was that he met 1:1 with other functional heads who helped him understand how the company measures success, how they make decisions, and how long he was “allowed to be new” in this organization.
Cultural learning during the first weeks on the job is priceless and this approach avoids early burn-out and costly missteps. If new hires are bombarded early with meetings, presentations, and deliverables, they can often miss the most important onboarding lessons.
This is Part 1 of 3 installments of our series, “Onboard Like a CEO: 6 Strategies from the Corner Office that Will Engage and Develop Your New Hires. Read about the next two strategies in an upcoming issue.
Erika will be a featured speaker at the Gulf Coast Symposium on HR Issues address the topic: Onboard Like a CEO: Strategies from the corner office to engage and develop your new hires
Description:
Onboard new hires like a CEO? What would an “executive experience” look like and how could it impact your new hires’ engagement levels? Per Gallup, 88% of employees don’t think their current organization is good at onboarding and 76% of HR don’t think they are doing a good job at onboarding employees. Robust onboarding addresses organizational challenges – attracting top talent, engagement, productivity, and high turnover . You’ll get six strategies “borrowed” from executive onboarding you can implement immediately, including how to quickly build organizational knowledge; build key relationships and deliver timely feedback to adjust and avoid negative turnover.
Brenda Hampel & Erika Lamont, co-founders of Connect the Dots Consulting, were recently featured on the podcast series: Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future as onboarding experts.
More than 40% of new leaders fail within 18 months. Why?
Don’t blame the leader; look at the organization instead! Most organizations don’t onboard a new leader well, if at all. They assume a person’s success at one company will automatically transfer to theirs – but there are far too many variables at play to bank on that. Instead, an onboarding plan that goes beyond HR protocols and benefits sign-up is necessary: a plan that considers company culture, history, team dynamics…even quality of life differences if the new leader is coming from out of town!
Brenda Hampel and Erika Lamont of Connect the Dots share tips, tricks, and outright wisdom from years of experience helping organizations maximize the success of their new leaders.
Here’s what Brenda, Erika, and host Maureen Metcalf cover:
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Email: info@connectthedotsconsulting.com
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We start with thoughtfully diagnosing the team’s current culture by using available data, assessments and interviews.
This provides the team leader with a clear view of what is getting in the way of the team’s success.
We design a series of structured team sessions that:
Measure progress by leveraging CTD’s team-connect Survey to: