Page 110 - Successful Onboarding

Teaching Culture So That Our New Hires “Get It” • 99

This is what new hires often experience when they encounter unspo-
ken norms in a new organizational culture. It is not a pretty picture—not
for the new hire, and certainly not for the firm. Yet the large majority of
managers take a defeatist stance and do nothing. They assume that accli-
mating to new organizational cultures is difficult by definition. They think
that new hires and companies alike need to buck up; that companies just
have to accept a period of lower productivity as new hires get up to speed,
as well as tolerate a certain amount of attrition. However, this just isn’t
true. Although no onboarding program can give new hires a perfect and
instant sense of familiarity and ease, an effective program can and should
make the acclimation process much easier. What if we put systems in
place to communicate unspoken norms to hires? What if we engage in an
ongoing, progressive dialogue about organizational cultures, revealing
them honestly, flaws and all? What if we exposed hires over time to the
nitty-gritty of our performance values, offering explanations about why they
exist and advice for how to perform in line with these values? Mark our
words: When these initiatives are implemented, performance rises.

New Hires and Onboarding as a Lever to
Drive Change
If nurturing happier, more productive, more engaged, and more com-
mitted new hires is not reason enough to include cultural education in a
strategic onboarding program, consider this: Structured cultural educa-
tion can also play an important role in helping an organization support
new strategic initiatives.
Transformational strategies do not exist in vacuums. Executing them
properly means addressing organizations’ daily functioning and experi-
ence, and specifically, helping our workforces to develop new skills,
processes, and habits. A wonderful illustration of this appeared in the clas-
sic Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street, which portrays the competi-
tion between two retail stores, Macy’s and Gimbels. A Santa Claus hired
by Macy’s for the holiday season delights customers by referring them to
other stores when Macy’s own merchandise doesn’t fit their needs. In a
lesson to any modern-day retailer who seeks to become more customer-
centric, Macy’s starts to infuse the practice of referring customers to the