Page 122 - Successful Onboarding

Teaching Culture So That Our New Hires “Get It” • 111

resource for the new hire, helping him or her understand what the more
experienced employee wished he or she had known upon first starting with
the company, and serving as a safe person to consult when the new hire
wishes to understand the lay of the land. In both cases, the mentor and peer
buddy needs to have this responsibility as a formal part of the job descrip-
tion, and performance against the task should be measured and factored
into annual assessments. Another technique we like is the new hire summit:
Bring back the new hire class or cohort together periodically over the first
year, perhaps at the six-, eight-, and 12-month marks, for interactive work-
shops about the firm’s unwritten rules (among other educational and direc-
tive content). New hires have a chance to reconnect and share their
experiences, allowing for collective learning about the culture. Firms might
also incorporate into the first week orientation a panel staffed by recent new
hires that discusses what people wish they had known when they started.

Best Principle #6: Interactive technology is better.
Technology can make a difference. Wikis located on central intranet por-
tals enable new hires (especially younger ones and those who work off-
site) to distill unwritten cultural rules efficiently and collaboratively in a
less formal environment. In this instance, new hires can post what they
are seeing as the unwritten rules and other aspects of culture and per-
formance as they experience them. The collective group then has rights
to modify the cultural assessments, resulting in a community assessment
of the culture, which in turn validates or dispels the perceptions that are
being formed. If you deploy this kind of community approach to captur-
ing culture, you need to give the community the same guidance that you
would consider when outlining culture. Wikis, blogs (as long as they are
interactive and anonymous), and related tools allow new hires to experi-
ence culture in a fun, less structured, and more authentic way without the
constant circulation of an approved HR definition of culture.
General Mills provides streaming television content through its
Champions TV channel, offering cultural programs, social announce-
ments, and corporate information. The company also has an email-based
daily newspaper that informs employees about upcoming events, group
announcements, and relevant news about General Mills and the indus-
try as a whole. As one new hire remarked, “Thanks to the newspaper
I know what’s going on at both the wider company as well as in the